[Chris O'Carroll]

Since I've started posting the Staggers competitions here, it makes sense to post results as well. I didn't post the specs for this one, but you will recognize names among the winners and hon mens.

No 4210. Set by John Riddell. We asked for a country diary from a newspaper of your choice. This week’s winners. Well done and a slapped wrist to all those who failed to say in which newspaper your diary would appear! Hon menshes go to Bill Greenwell and Lisbeth Rake for their fine Daily Mail and Daily Express diaries, and to newbie Wendy Burrell for hers from the Milton Keynes Citizen. The five winners get £25 each, with the Tesco vouchers going to Ms Prince.

Daily Mail
Spring – that brief but glowing period, the glory of England, before migrants flock to our shores and compete with native species for summer’s harvests – has arrived early. Plucky blue tits, the most popular British bird, are pairing off; robins (neater than their continental cousins) are mating; and sparrows, that chirpy, Cockney archetype, are building nests. Every bird knows the value of a good site: secure location, sheltered aspect, like-minded neighbours (no thuggish sparrowhawks here!). See blackbirds collecting moss for insulation and swans mating for life: proud families, repairing the depredations of winter floods. Woodpeckers spring-clean hollowed branches, mindful of their future mates’ desire for only the best, residentially. All nature climbs its property ladder, singing with joy.
D A Prince

Daily Telegraph
Rank ivy grabs at the noble oak with its suckers, parasitically claiming a living space free of charge, and fungoid growths sprout from the ancient bark, sucking its goodness, yet failing to weaken it. Even the foreign mistletoe dangling from the elegant branches, or the lichen, blown there on the wind from outlandish regions of Europe, grizzling the careworn visage, cannot diminish the stature of our national tree. A sparrowhawk perches superbly on the topmost branch and the earthbound world falls silent. Cowardly rats dare not peep from used Italian car tyres, which they have turned into seething, contagious slums. The dung beetle is locked into its filth and the only movement is the humble ant piddling on a maple leaf.
Josh Ekroy

Socialist Worker
Here in Cumbria, where limestone outcrops overlook rushing rivers, then snake through glaciated valleys, and yellow stonecrop mottles the roofs of barns, nature lives in organic harmony with humans. But that must not blind us to thereality of the class struggle and the necessity to support and direct the radical energies of the working class, which the bosses and the Tory-led government are attempting to repress with the aid of neo-fascist legislation and a militarised police force. As the crisis deepens, our cadres remember the words of Trotsky – “Fascism is nothing but capitalist reaction” – and guided by a fully theorised strategy of revolution will ensure that the mountain ash and the waxwing are not the privileged pleasures of a wealthy few.
Basil Ransome-Davies

Times Educational Supplement
Last season’s rookery intake is making rapid progress owing, doubtless, to this encouraging weather. In the stubble fields, under low sun, they can be seen learning from their mentors, not only where to forage but how to give up bullying and instead use their intelligence to gain advantage over other youngsters and acquire fatter worms and insects. Their noise can be troublesome, as can the incessant chatter of those sparrows, more playful than belligerent, skittering among the larger scavengers. Holly, hawthorn and elder are bare, denuded of their berries by quick learners, and the eglantine holds only occasional blackened hips. Under that tree a scatter of bright crab apples proves a magnet for a family of blackbirds, conscientious individuals who deserve success for their patient, determined efforts.
Alanna Blake

The Big Issue
Spring is here! Life is returning to thawing country haunts. Down in the woods, the tramps, newly released from winter city shelters, huddle in old rusty freezers, green with mildew and decayed globs of pizza. It is the mating season for rats and rabbits and they flirt and dance, skilfully circumnavigating the traps of the starving human masses. On the village green, bedraggled primroses droop in the rain while the flimsy tents of the unemployed homeless flap in equinoctial gales. Brent geese and exotic migrant mergansers cruise the rubbish-filled canal, rank with its burgeoning weed, easily avoiding the stretching hands of famished drug addicts, who, knee-deep in rich, squelchy mud, warm themselves on fires of ornamental cherry trees and recycled street furniture.
Shirley Curran

[Ann Drysdale]

I see nobody tried the Yorkshire Evening Post. I held the country columnist spot there for twenty years and it would've been an honour to be spoofed by such masters of the art!