An apparent major blow to the BBC’s popular Spring/Autumn/WinterWatch programmes was the departure of presenter Kate Humble. Whatever the season, the sight of la Humble – charm and beauty combined – was for many – chiefly males let’s admit – a draw to equal any of the featured wildlife.

But Ms Humble’s successor, Michaela Strachan, has proved just as appealing. More chipper than Kate, she brings unfailing freshness and enthusiasm to her role – not to mention, as demonstrated in the recent Winterwatch, a superb choice of headgear.

My home can’t have been the only one in which Michaela’s succession of bright woollen hats was as eagerly anticipated as the nightly appearance of owls on a carcase, or the (rarer) wanderings of a local otter. Where did she get them from, pondered the lady of the house? Not from any of mountain of (unsolicited) fashion catalogues she receives. Since Michaela sometimes wore more than one per programme, it’s nice to think they were knitted by some fond aunt, rewarded for her efforts by Michaela’s determination to show off as many as possible.

All that is by the way to the serious business. Running through the three programmes was an experiment to test the relative intelligence of red and grey squirrels. Which would be fastest to obtain nuts from a cunningly-designed feeder? “Everyone is rooting for the red,” declared presenter Chris Packham at the outset.

Well, I wasn’t. A defender of grey squirrels, detesting their demonization, seemingly I’m not alone. Come the climax of the test, Chris’s “everyone” was modified to “many” by his fellow presenter Martin Hughes-Gaines. After a promising start by the reds, the greys won hands downs. Sadly, Winterwatch left it there. No-one remarked on the fact that the reds had been just as keen as the greys to take the nuts. Yet it is the greys’ invasion of bird tables and feeders that is one of the chief complaints directed at them. But if reds replaced greys they would act just the same, though with less success.

Over most of Britain, however, there would be little chance of reds returning if the greys disappeared. Too much habitat has been lost, and the shy reds wouldn’t colonise suburban terrain previously occupied by the more human-tolerant greys. It’s shameful that we repay their friendship with persecution. Better, surely, to have grey squirrels than no squirrels? Yet, with a £100 bounty per hectare per year newly offered to landowners in a five-year nationwide grey squirrel cull, that is the deplorable direction in which we are heading. The Youth Sport Trust reports that the amount of school time devoted to PE has collapsed since the 2012 Olympics. Only one in five children now meets national targets for physical activity. So much for claims that the Olympics would make athletes of us all. And did you know that there’s no requirement for the Government’s much-vaunted “free” schools to provide any outdoor space for sport or physical recreation?

In the wake of Scottish independence (well, it feels like that) a call is being made for a Yorkshire Manifesto for the general election. First and foremost, of course, should be a demand that the county’s true boundaries are recognised, junking forever the diminished, hated creation of Ted Heath in 1974.