THERE is a generation gap today when it comes to nature and bird spotting.

Many adults have a passion for wildlife as a result of being inspired as children, yet many youngsters today have little contact with nature.

As a youngster at Wharton schools, part of our curriculum involved Nature Study, where every week during the summer a lesson involved walking on the Wharton Common, bird watching, tree spotting and getting close to nature.

Skylarks would be used in abundance. Red admiral and large tortoiseshell butterflies also would be common and kestrels would nest in the headgear of the old brine shaft still littering the common, which still had the ruins of many old salt works.

A must-have Christmas present in the 1950s was the Observer's Book of British Birds and their Eggs. Many children collected birds' eggs, which were first blown then stored in shoeboxes.

When not on the common, we would cross Crook Lane by the Church and go down the pathway next to my Auntie Marie's bungalow. This was the clapaches' and led to the railway line, accessible in those days, then on to the woods of Bostock with hares and pheasants.

The woods down Rilshaw Lane were our favourite though, with a stream running the length of them. The dense woodland was hundreds of years old, and came out by the flashes, with its geese, ducks, and swans.

I was talking to a friend, Paul Lightfoot, last week. He mentioned skylarks and pewits being plentiful years ago, but the last skylark I heard was on some wasteland opposite Fords of Winsford a few years ago.

Nesting and breeding sites are getting fewer and fewer, and more and more species are being pushed to extinction due to greed.