Children have lost touch with the natural world and are unable to identify common animals and plants, according to a survey.

Half of youngsters aged nine to 11 were unable to identify a daddy-long-legs, oak tree, blue tit or bluebell, in the poll by BBC Wildlife Magazine.

We have failed! Oh public education, we have failed. Our children are not connoisseurs in ornithology. It is indeed a sad day when little Susie cannot indentify the passerine bird in the tit family Paridae, the resident of temperate and subarctic Europe and western Asia’s deciduous or mixed woodlands.

For shame.