The year in pictures

We've got to that time of the year when all the newspapers and tv channels are doing a review of the past twelve months. This image was published and widely reported and it serves as a salutory reminder for me to keep saving my stamps to help save the future of the albatross. With the failures of Copenhagen still fresh in the memory this photo shows the progress that mankind has wreaked on the environment.

This Laysan albatross carcass was found in the Pacific Ocean. Mother birds fly to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch - an enormous floating vortex of plastic debris that has been brought together by ocean currents - and bring back what they think is food for their young. The chicks, which obviously cannot digest the plastic, often starve to death. About 80% of plastic debris in the ocean is discarded on land and kills more than a million seabirds each year.

Coupled with the 100,000 albatrosses killed every year by longline fishing, the fight to try and do our bit to save these beautiful birds has to be worth a try. At any time of the year your used British and foreign stamps can be sent to the RSPB and sold for this project. Read more here.

If you start keeping your stamps from now it will take a while to get a good size package to send. I send ours about four times a year but it's always a mega pack at this time of year because so many people save their Christmas card stamps for me, for which I am very grateful. All the RSPB need are the stamps with a small amount of envelope edging, separated into UK and foreign packs and sent to RSPB Stamps, PO Box 6198, Leighton Buzzard, Bedfordshire, LU7 9XT.

I'll get off my soap box now and promise not to go on about this again. Thanks for reading.