Grumpy Old Birder

This article first appeared in Birdwatching Magazine April 2017

The question I see asked on local birding forums, more than any other, is ‘how do I get the kids interested in birding?’ Some may take to birding like ducks to dabbling, but most will reach their boredom threshold after about fifteen fidgeting minutes in a hide. The more they are encouraged to enthuse over the simple beauty of a rare brown blob doing nothing much, the more, depending on age, they are likely to pine for the X-box, snap-chatting their friends or excluding the real world by attaching ear-buds and focussing on a You-tube ‘epic fail’.

The wild world is not what it was in ‘our day’ whenever that was. Greybeards like me, at junior school in the 1950s remember a very different world. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not one of those who thinks the past was all rosy. I remember rationing and racism, polio and poverty, but there were some valuable practices that have all but disappeared. For example, I remember proudly putting a bird skull or pretty leaf on the school ‘nature table’, which was permanently in the front entrance, for us all to see and enjoy. I went looking for bird’s nests in the Easter holidays, not to rob them, but to marvel at them. Is there anything more perfect in the world than the ball of moss, sheep’s wool and gossamer of a Long-tailed Tits nest?

These days kids may be trailed round a city farm at best, or, at worst, rely on unnaturally vivid Disney-coloured cartoon worlds with nice fluffy talking animals and equally nasty animal villains to miseducate them about the natural world. When I ran youth projects in the 1980s and 1990s I knew kids who really believed that carrots grew in bunches and were shocked when they found out where milk came from… we dared not reveal the truth about the origin of eggs!

If our children and grandchildren are to fall in love with birding they must become fascinated by birds, and to do that they must see how they fit into nature and soar above it. There is only one way and I think that it is more or less constant exposure to the real countryside and daily doses of its wonders. Don’t expect them to enjoy seemingly pointless walks or try to stuff feathers down their reluctant throat too early… boredom is more likely to put them off for life. To be fair, I never went on ‘walks’ either. I spent my entire childhood in fields and woodlands, messing about on streams or building dens out of dead branches… everything I did had a point, albeit an esoteric age-related purpose.

Why not try taking them ‘geocaching’, my grandchildren love it… exposure to fields and fresh air wrapped up in mystery solving and the hunt for clues. With younger children, a walk in the country can turn into a challenging game if you set them ‘treasure’ like an acorn or a snail shell to find before their siblings.

The RSPB is taking the initiative with a brand-new schools’ programme with their ‘Big School’s Birdwatch’, but a few days a year will not hook them on nature forever. In Majorca, every schoolchild must visit the Albufera reserve every year, thus cementing the relationship between freedom from school discipline and enjoying wild things. But none of these are enough.

I say bring back the nature table. Moreover, sport isn’t the only way to get kids to exercise more, so put active ‘nature study’ firmly back on the junior school curriculum and don’t you forget to help them with their homework!

Hear the Podcast:

The post GOB 89 – Nature Study appeared first on Grumpy Old Birder.

(This article first appeared in the March 2017 edition of ‘Birdwatching’ magazine)

Mindfulness seems to be the buzzword of the last year or so… it’s a therapeutic technique, the idea being that you achieve a desired mental state by focusing your awareness on the present moment, while calmly acknowledging and accepting your feelings, thoughts, and bodily sensations, etc. It has come to be a shorthand for those activities that produce the desired serenity.

It’s not a new idea of course, just a recasting of an old one. Hindus were meditating 3,500 years ago!

Our pastimes are not all adrenaline rich activity some are very much in the mindfull mode. Isaac Walton wrote in ‘The Complete Angler’ (1653) “God never did make a more calm, quiet, innocent recreation than angling.” He also reported Sir Henry Wotton saying “…angling was an employment for his idle time, which was then not idly spent, a rest to his mind, a cheerer of his spirits, a diverter of sadness, a calmer of unquiet thoughts, a moderator of passions, a procurer of contentedness;” and “that it begat habits of peace and patience in those that professed and practised it.” To my mind everything these guys said about fishing I can say about birding, but in spades!

I have maintained for many years that a day spent birding is a day added to your life.

But like other pastimes some of us are more mindful than others.  Just as there are anglers who trudge the banks spinning lures or whipping flies across rushing streams, so there are birders who want to rush through the countryside chasing rarities or adding ticks. Any long-term reader of this column will know that I believe we ‘…also serve who only stand and wait’. You will also know that more and more pundits are declaring the need for wilderness not for the sake of the planet or even its wildlife, but because it very directly impinges on our own mental health. Sure, we need green and unpolluted spaces to act as the world’s lungs and reservoirs of wildlife, but even if that was not the case they would be needed to keep our souls in fine fettle.

Why is this important to more than the individual birder’s well-being? Simply, because the more we adopt this mindful way of being, the more good we will incidentally do for the birds. Manning the conservation barricades always leaves one open to the accusation that we are just tree-hugging, woolly-minded, liberal do-gooders putting the needs of hawfinches above that of humans. Like you I think this is a spurious argument, but one seemingly in vogue right now as selfish politics seem to reign here and overseas. As a culture, we seem to be losing site of compassion for suffering humanity, let alone cruelty in farming, the unnecessary culling of badgers or the needs of non-furry beasties. If we are back to the days of selfishness and greed then we need do more than admonish and cajole, we need to show how conservation can be self-serving.

If we all want to reduce stress and retain our sanity then we need to find ways to spend time mindfully… what used to be called ‘communing with nature’ does just that.

Have you ever sat on a bird reserve bench with the sun on your face, swifts wheeling over the reed-beds, warblers chattering in the bushes and frogs croaking in the stream; drifting between sleep and wakefulness revelling in the world as it once was and could and should be once again? We birders can leave the rate race’s existentialist nightmare and show others how to join the human race again.

Hear the Podcast:

The post GOB 88 – Mindfulness appeared first on Grumpy Old Birder.

(This article first appeared in the February 2017 edition of ‘Birdwatching’ magazine)

This winter waxwings were far enough south for me to see some on an outing that took just forty-five minutes, including thirty minutes watching time! Half a dozen of these beauties surprisingly, were not gorging on hips and haws, but actually catching flies. That was a new observation for me, but obviously, these birds can only eat fruit when there are fruit to eat, so eat insects when raising a family at their spring and summer homes before there are any fruit about.  Moreover, I happened to be reviewing some really top flight binoculars so got incredible views. With the birds close by and in full sharp focus I could practically count the number of feathers in their erect quiffs.

It struck me how convenient the birds were, perhaps only 500 yards from where I had last seen waxwings a few seasons ago. Then something more awesome struck me… they were less than three hundred yards from where I first saw waxwings decades ago, way before I moved to the area. Clearly not the same birds, so there could be no true site loyalty, (such as is seen in winter swans that use the same isolated ponds to rest on their long migrations and suffer losses when such ponds are filled in).

So why have I so often seen waxwings there, when better berry sites have never produced waxwing sightings by me or others? I’ve pondered this mystery deeply, but not come up with a satisfactory answer; I can see nothing special about the location. Waxwings do not fear man, so winter invasions often favour city centre ornamental plantings. I imagine the added warmth of cities keeps food more available to them, but my site is nothing out of the ordinary.

It begs the question, why are birds where they are, when they are?

There are plenty of good solid reasons, such as the right habitat, the right weather, migration routes, food abundance, roosts sites et al., but there are plenty of times when it seems completely random and sometimes desperately annoying.

Try taking a visiting birder to your ‘guarantied’ spots for particular species… that will be the day when you might as well be at the north pole or in the middle of the Kalahari Desert… not a bird will show. Never, ever, say ‘I always see (add the species of your choice) here’… as it will work like black magic to conjure them elsewhere.

Big days and bird races are another way to charm the birds out of the trees before you turn up. You can prepare your route for weeks in checking sites daily and finding your targets happily munching seeds, but on race day several of those easy peasy lemon squeezy ‘bankers’ will have decided to temporarily migrate.

Try perfectly timing a trip to a part of the country where you can see some special birds too. I went up to Scotland in one May and loved the trip, the only disappointment being missing out on Osprey… we got home to find out that no less than two ospreys had spent that week fishing in our local reservoir!

Of course, if you really want prime examples of birds at the wrong place at the wrong time then consult my old twitching diary… my year of chasing rarities. It wasn’t too full on, but as much as a more than full time job allowed. I lost count of the number of times I arrived in the nick of time, exactly that moment when the bird had just disappeared over the horizon!

Hear the Podcast:

The post GOB 87 – Waxwing Winter Wonders appeared first on Grumpy Old Birder.

(This article first appeared in the January 2017 edition of ‘Birdwatching’ magazine)

Do you have a bogie bird? One that, despite not being rare you keep failing to connect with, especially after passing someone saying its ‘showing well’!

How about what US bird writer Al Batt calls an ‘onion’ bird? That’s a bird you so badly want to see it makes you cry tears of joy and pent-up emotion. Mine was Wallcreeper, a bird I first saw on a cigarette card sixty years ago; immaculate slate grey plumage made glorious by vermillion wings. When I finally connected with this glory on a boulder as we crossed a northern Indian riverbed in a jeep, tears rolled down my face. This ‘stonking’ bird gave me a stonking headache for the rest of the day, as well as a wide grin!

The twitching community has loads of terms describing esoteric bird categories, their own cannon of bird names, mostly compressed into monosyllabic bursts like ‘spawk’ for Sparrowhawk or shorthand ones like ‘P G Tips’ for Pallas’s Grasshopper Warbler. Their generic terms include ‘plastic’ for any feral birds not on the official British list like Emperor Geese or escapees from collections like Hooded Merganser that might confuse us hoi polloi into thinking they were blown across the Atlantic by an October storm.

The extreme end of that ‘sport’ also have a term I hate ‘rubbish birds’ referring to the everyday birds one might expect to see on the worst of birding days in the city centre like Rock Doves and Starlings. I could never dismiss a bird as ‘rubbish’, even the common place has its charms… have you ever really looked at a Starling’s plumage in the sunlight? Moreover, one of the great sites in the avian world is the swirling ariel artistry of hundreds of thousands of Starlings turning as one as they descend into a roost.

I concede that there are ‘weed’ birds, a term I’ve just invented to describe birds that are great to see where they belong but that have no place where they have been introduced. In Australia and New Zealand Common Minas are everywhere out competing with the locals, excellent to see in northern India, not so great in northern Queensland. Invasive introductions often replace the natives whether its House Sparrows in the US or Grey Squirrels in the UK. A Canadian friend of has a name for the European Starlings that have spread across his continent ‘tree rats’.

Of course some of these ‘weed birds’ are the twitcher’s dream one day and their ‘rubbish birds’ a few generations later. In the 1950s seeing a Collared Dove over here would have been amazing now they number tens of millions. In the early 1990s I remember the excitement of seeing my first Little Egret, now every ditch and dyke has shed loads.

I have one more term to introduce, that I coined only a few hours ago… ‘bug birds’. These are the birds which you glimpse as a major rarity only to see for what it is a split second later. Certain birds seem to have this ability to morph from pulse quickening rarity to the commonplace with incredible regularity. Do you know of any? I’ll start you off with a few. Pigeons seem to cloak themselves in raptor jizz; I have often rushed binoculars to eyes prompted by a peregrine stoop or flutter that turned out to be a pigeon taking the mickey. I’ve spent hours staking out a bush with a glimpsed mega that turns out to be a Chiffchaff dressed in odd light. My third is the humble Chaffinch that can set your heart racing with a random call or its wet plumage

This is an international phenomenon. I once birded in Florida where every really interesting bird seemed to turn into a Ruby Crowned Kinglet or what my US companion called a ‘Blue-grey Time-waster’; the Blue-gray Gnatcatcher… and they really bugged him!

Hear the Podcast

The post GOB 86 – Bogies & Bugs appeared first on Grumpy Old Birder.

(This article first appeared in the December 2016 edition of ‘Birdwatching’ magazine)

In the 1970’s TV sitcom ‘I didn’t know you cared’ Uncle Mort says that women are made for the fripperies of life, like DIY and carrying in the coal, whereas men do important stuff like sitting in their shed thinking.

Women have long been socialised into caring, nurturing roles and, whether by nature or nurture many feel the same way about the planet’s wild places. Like children they must be protected with tigress-like ferocity.

Since the last Bird Fair I’ve been trying to give support to two such women and have corresponded with another for nearly two decades. There is something about their fearlessness that puts most men to shame. We stand back or leap in angrily; strong women grab hold and don’t let go until the wrongs are righted. No wonder so many work in conservation.

I’ve known Denise Goodfellow for longer than either of us care to remember. A woman who has literally wrestled crocodiles, she has spent half her life standing up for the rights of native Australians so tenaciously that she has made many political enemies. An artist, author and guide she loves to show people the birds of the ‘Top End’ and has battled away for years to get local tourist authorities to recognise just how important birding tourism is, even to the extent of writing her PhD on the issue. When others might be taking it easy she has set out to combat the invasive species on her property – a relentless two-year battle with Mission, Rats-tail and, in particular Gamba grass… and this means pulling out acres of the stuff by hand! She is single-handedly demonstrating that it can be done if you have the determination… not many people are thanking her, but there are a lot of endangered Partridge Pigeons quietly applauding.

Do you care enough about nature to spend your own money to lease a lake, saving it from destructive fisherman who shoot all the birds? Well Alex Appleby does. She fell in love with the lake and has ever since been trying to raise money to sustain its conservation, well what do you expect from someone who once lived alone (if you don’t count her dogs) on a small tropical island.

Talking of Islands there’s my third friend who currently lives on the popular holiday island of Lanzarote, famed for its volcanic national park and all year round sun. Carmen Portella runs a small tour company there and invited me to take a look at the birds (try migration times when anything from Europe or America might turn up). Less well-known is El Jable a unique desert formed in the ice-age when lower seas exposed the sea-bed and trade winds blew the sand against the towering cliffs of this Atlantic island. More than half the plants that live there are endemic as are a number of races of birds like Linnet, Lesser Short-toed Lark and Southern Grey shrike along with some other wonderful desert species like Houbara Bustard, Cream-coloured Courser and Stone Curlew. Despite the fact that the entire island is designated as a World Biosphere Reserve, the desert is unprotected. The problem was bought home to me when Carmen told me how a local farmer had said that when he had shot and eaten Stone Curlew he always found that their crops were packed with desert snails. She is doing everything she can to ensure the desert is not ruined by grant-generating ‘agriculture’ and dune-buggy destruction.

Blokes have had our way for too long, sowing wild oats, fighting wars and organising religion. I think we are the ones who started to see the world as there for our exploitation, incapable, with exceptions of course, of seeing the need to sustain it all for future generations.  Lucky that a lot of us men now ‘get it’ too. These strong women, and others like them need the support of both genders!

To learn more about these women and their causes see:

Denise Lawungkurr Goodfellow or Alex Appleby aor Carmen Portella

Hear the Podcast:

The post GOB 85 – Women’s Work appeared first on Grumpy Old Birder.

(This article first appeared in the November 2016 edition of ‘Birdwatching’ magazine)

Somewhere between 65% and 70% of this sceptre isle’s land is used for agriculture. 57% of agriculture is ‘rough pasture’ and another 24% is grass. Add these together and it means that around 57% of the UK is used to feed animals… We raise some animals for dairy produce and wool growing, the rest is directly for food. This means something less than 15% of our land is used to grow crops (some of which is, of course, used for animal feed, and some small amount for non-food crops. Whichever way you look at it we devote a huge percentage of our land to rear animals. Believe it or not this was my main motivation for eschewing meat over three decades ago… the less meat that is eaten the more people can be fed from the same sized piece of land!

More recently I’ve become a complete convert to the re-wilding movement… the urge is not to turn back the clock to some idealised, misty-eyed pastoral utopia, but to try and save the planet and humanity from irreversible decline. The wild world is not an oversized zoo for us to visit for pleasure, but a vital resource to keep planet Earth from declining into an arid Martian desert. It’s often said that the rainforest is home to thousands of undiscovered medicines and millions of unknown plants and invertebrates. However, more importantly, wild areas are the lungs and header tank that enables us to breath and most of us to drink. Masses of phytoplankton, kelp, and algal plankton in unpolluted seas produce the air we breathe and still hold untold resources and unfound mysteries.

There are great chunks of the undeveloped world that are not much use as watersheds or lungs being dry desserts and barren mountains, yet there is still a lot that is wild. Unfortunately, as any schoolchild knows, huge areas disappear every day burnt to clear land for unsustainable agriculture and unnecessary crops like palm oil and corn syrup.

What I only found out recently is that the prevailing opinion is that to return the world to a sustainable ecology 50% of it should be left wild!

It is of course easy to rail against subsistence farmers in Madagascar who cut down forest, just as it is to vent our spleen on multi-nationals that bulldoze rainforest to plant palms or burn it to encourage grassland growth for cattle, or mobile burger units as I’m sure someone, somewhere calls them. While I am happy to join that lobby let’s start here at home.

If 50% of the UK was given over to wildlife great benefit follows for us all. It doesn’t have to be real wilderness so long as wildlife needs are prioritised and destructive animal husbandry or use of chemicals, pesticides, herbicides and the like are banned. There is room for rough grazing in the right places and even some organic, wildlife sensitive haymaking. While we are at it, let’s inoculate cattle against TB not slaughter badgers!

13% of our land is used for forestry and it could be far better managed for a more natural environment. Moreover, we could lead the world by taking back the uplands for deciduous woodland thus solving many flooding issues and creating natural wildlife corridors on a geographical scale as well as upping the percentage of Britain that’s now forested toward the 30% that should be! We don’t need grouse moors, nor should we go on subsidising sheep raising where it degrades the land. How did we end up thinking it’s OK to give tax payer’s money to farmers, but wrong to keep other types of industry going through government grants?

If land use is judged with the re-wilding yardstick there are still ways for people to make their living and for us to feed our people. Everyone could help by eating meat less often.

Hear the podcast:

The post GOB 84 – Call me 50 (per)cent appeared first on Grumpy Old Birder.

(This article first appeared in the November 2016 edition of ‘Birdwatching’ magazine)

Jonathan Swift of Gulliver fame wrote his famous tract A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People From Being a Burthen to Their Parents or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Publick advocating that the rich should buy and eat the children of the starving Irish. It was an ironic attempt to show up the British rich for their attitude to the poor. It seems that our elite has a long history of doing what they wish regardless of the sensitivities of the majority.

UK ministers who issue buzzard-killing licences to protect ‘shooting interests’ do so despite an overwhelming public antipathy. Or should that be apathy?

It irks me beyond all reason that the great caring British public loudly proclaim their hatred of the ill-treatment of pets and livestock but seem far less vocal when it comes to protecting the wild world, which if there is any justice, should be treated at least as well as farm stock or fireside cats.

We can be outraged by the notion that some Romans liked to eat snails fattened on milk, peacocks’ brains and flamingos’ tongues. The public issues steam from its collective ears when mention is made of Foie gras, the luxury food made from the liver of a duck or goose that has been horribly force-fed. Is our ire saved up for Johnny Foreigner or our limited supply of sympathy exhausted once pets have been protected from cruelty and farm animals humanely despatched.

Maybe we only understand ill-treatment of wild animals when it’s straightforward? There is reckoned to be something like 75% of the population against hunting fox and deer with dogs. Parliamentary elites may seek to make the illegal practices, that continue, legal again, but there seem to be enough among them to stop that from happening. Would there be enough public outcry if there was not?

Here in my home conurbation there is a presence of protesters, as permanent as a peace camp, against live exports. They will not allow sheep and cows to suffer in European slaughterhouses and would, no doubt carry on the fight into French goose farms had we not decided to Brexit away from the rest of Europe.

How is it then that it is left to a vocal minority to rail against driven shoots, and grouse moor Hen Harrier slaughter? The inane killing of Golden Eagles, Red Kite and any other bird of prey that has the temerity to drift over captive-reared pampered pheasants and red-legged partridges, or worse still set up house on a grouse moor, seems hardly noticed?

It seems to matter little that a tiny percentage of wealthy individuals manage moorland in ways that add to flood risk. Just as it used to be considered acceptable that huntsmen’s horses could ride rough-shod over even those farms which were utterly against the practice, so long as adequate ‘compensation’ was paid.

Thanks to the hard work of a dedicated band of birders whose names you will not know, and a vocal group of well-known conservationists who are willing to put themselves on the front line, the movement gathers pace.

It would take a very small change in the law to stop raptor persecution. If licences were needed for all game shooting that would be irrevocably revoked if any evidence was found on their land of raptor persecution, no matter whom by, I wonder how many ‘shoots’ would survive?

I’ve long aired my dislike of all hunting and shooting, but even I can accept that there are some well-run shoots that manage their land brilliantly for pheasants and partridges as well as for passerines, waders and wildfowl, which are positive awash with raptors. They prove absolutely that it can be done and that eliminating birds of prey is as outmoded as eating banquets of bitterns and sending all the able-bodied paupers to the workhouse.

Hear the Podcast:

The post GOB 83 – Eat The Rich appeared first on Grumpy Old Birder.

(This article first appeared in the October 2016 edition of ‘Birdwatching’ magazine)

I remember the first time I visited my parents after they emigrated to New Zealand; as we started our descent into Auckland the pilot came on and as part of his introduction to ‘God’s own’ country he said, “…welcome to New Zealand, a country with a population of Forty-six million; Forty-three million of whom are sheep”.

As a recent BBC TV documentary amply showcased New Zealand has a unique fauna due to its separation from Gondwanaland millions of years before mammals appeared on the planet. For the most part the ecological niches occupied by them elsewhere are, or were, occupied by birds instead. Before man turned up seven or eight centuries ago the world’s biggest birds (fourteen species of Moa) roamed the land and were preyed upon by the New Zealand Eagle… the world’s biggest ever raptor, more the size of a small aircraft than a bird!

Even although man wiped out Moas, letting the eagles starve, NZ still has many unique birds and a range of unique invertebrates, fish, amphibians and reptiles including the sole representative of a complete animal order the Tuatara, a mini dinosaur.

Bats made it by themselves but man has accidentally or deliberately introduced many mammals and other species many of which have caused the extinction of native bird species, with almost all the others under threat.

There are more Brushtail Possum in New Zealand than in their native Australia. The good old British Hedgehog thrives there better than here, and is free of fleas apparently lost on the voyage from Blighty. Both out-compete native birds and prey upon their eggs and young. The worst pest of all are mustelids – stoats are the bane of birds everywhere. Rats, mice, cats, hares, goats, feral pigs and deer abound too. Each seems to threaten some poor local. For example, one species of bird the Kakapo eat fruits from the Rimu and Kahikatea trees, the shoots of certain shrubs, and the seeds of Manuka wood and leather wood… now so well browsed by deer than there was no food for these flightless parrots! Ground nesting Kea’s are pushed further and further back in Fjiordland as stoats find their nests and eat the young.

The response has been some of the best conservation projects in the world. For decades the kiwis have been eradicating rats and other predators from off shore islands (and even some in the middle of large lakes) and culling goats, pigs and deer. Left to their own devices remnant populations of some stunning birds like Saddlebacks, Kiwis, Stichbird, and even Kokako and Kakapo have thrived.

These successes led to more ambitious schemes whereby birds were re-introduced to other islands that were predator and competitor free such as the wonderful Tiri Tiri Matangi in the Hauraki Gulf. The next brave step was to establish mainland ‘islands’ of forest where predators and other invasives are constantly kept at bay and rare breeders like kiwis are monitored.

But here’s the thing – a lesson for the whole world surely – their Prime Minister recently announced a thirty-year programme to eliminate ALL the invasive mammals from New Zealand. This will be done by using a poison that only effects mammals. Using baits that will be ignored by ruminants (those 43 million sheep etc.,) and harmless to birds and reptiles, every part of the country will eliminate the problem species.

This is done in the face of some scary opposition. Not the cat owners (he is one himself and emphasises that indoor cats will be safe), but the hunting lobby. They want to keep the deer and wild boar for sport. This is not a timid lobby – a scheme to cull deer undertaken in a National Park saw the warden’s hut and car torched!

Such courage shames UK ministers who issue buzzard-killing licences and fail to prosecute grouse moor owners where Hen Harriers are shot.

Hear the Podcast:

The post GOB 82 – Brave Kiwis appeared first on Grumpy Old Birder.

(This article first appeared in the September 2016 edition of ‘Birdwatching’ magazine)

Do you remember the Rio dictum ‘Think Global, Act Local’?

How about NIMBY – ‘Not In My Back Yard’?

Not everyone does. My local Green Party is railing against a plan to resurrect our local airport, which shut down a couple of years back. They are supporting turning the site into housing and recreation instead. Bravo, you may cry! Houses and jobs before foreign holidays and unnecessary overseas food imports. I’m sure they are the very thoughts of the local greens. Oddly, given it is our backyard, the majority of the locals want to see the airport back

Step back and mix a little realism with a lot of globalism. The airport is close enough to London to relieve some of the pressure to create another runway at one of the major London airports. Think back and recall that this used to be the busiest freight airport in the country with a runway big enough to deal with Jumbo Jets.

Yes, but the take-off and landing is over the sea. What is more it’s over an important mudflat; an SSSI with thousands of waders and wildfowl.

Think again, there is no history of bird strike here. Moreover, the birds were as numerous when it was a busy airport as they are now that the tarmac is untouched by landing gear. They are more affected by our massive off-shore wind turbine array.

The infrastructure exists, wide roads joining motorways and a close railway line an extension to which would be low impact. Many permanent jobs would be created where unemployment is currently disastrously high.

Aircraft emissions would be the same, but a local solution has far less environmental impact than the devastation to rural land and existing homes that developing Gatwick or Heathrow further would cause, not to mention the colossal expense and disruption.

Think about those houses and leisure facilities again… promised jobs are few and twenty years down the line. More housing will draw in more people without employment and put a strain on overstretched utilities. In this case a non-existent water table is already being drained dry by Europe’s largest area under glass supplying 15% of the countries peppers, tomatoes and so forth.

That monstrosity employs only part time labour most of which goes to short term visiting Europeans, who earn for six weeks or six months before leaving the country again.

The proposed housing is not ‘social housing’ and it’s not even going to have built in solar panels or water conservation measures.

Did I mention that those wanting to re-open the airport want to create the world’s first aircraft re-cycling operation? Instead of parking redundant aircraft in the dessert – the aviation equivalent of landfill, parts and materials could be re-used.

There we have it agriculture and housing being championed by conservationists because they think its greener than an airport, which, when you look deeper and wider, is just not the case. In the real world expanding aviation is about where and when, not about ‘if’.

What has this got to do with a leisurely stroll in England’s green and pleasant land with your binoculars?

Everything!

The beauty of birds includes all the redness of beak and claw. Flesh tearing and cannibalism are as much part of avian life as pretty feathers and charming song. We have to understand everything that natural life encompasses to appreciate the wonder of nature, not just the Hollywood version. When it comes to the ‘real’ human world we need to delve deep into the realities too, not just hug trees and aspire to veganism.

Don’t get me wrong, passionate opposition to so-called ‘progress’ has its place. But we have to judge every development in the round not jerk our knees thoughtlessly. The weeds growing between the solar panels in your local ‘sun farm’ may be better for the planet than the chemically coshed monoculture they replace.

Hear the Podcast:

The post GOB 81 – Rio & Reality appeared first on Grumpy Old Birder.

(This article first appeared in the August 2016 edition of ‘Birdwatching’ magazine)

My food bill has risen and I’m glad!

We recently decided to change what we eat. I’m still a non-meat eater married to a carnivore and we still shop at the same supermarkets. The difference is that we have gone over to only buying organic veg and in my wife’s case meat. Moreover, wherever possible (and it sometimes adds half an hour to the average shop) we want British grown organic food.

If you only eat stuff that isn’t injected with antibiotics, growth hormones, and worse, or grown with the aid of enough chemicals to stock a virtual outdoor science lab, then you are unlikely to be ingesting them second hand.

I still have a sneaking suspicion that eating organics is healthier for us, despite the research a year or two back claiming there is no difference. But the decision was prompted not by our own health so much as that of birds and other wildlife. So, while I don’t mind aiding the health of Peruvian Pigeons or Polish Plovers, I’d rather be helping good old British Bullfinches and, perhaps even more importantly, putting the buzz back into British Bees!

It has become ever more apparent that pesticides are nowhere near as ‘targeted’ as manufacturers claim. Bees and other pollinators face a double jeopardy… often they will die the instant they are caught in the spray. However, even more insidious is the effect some pesticides have in the slightly longer term. Two of the worst culprits, neonicotinoids and coumaphos damage their brains so that they ‘forget’ flora scents or collection routes. Carried into the hives they effect the growing larvae, over time populations drop or loose their effectiveness as pollen collectors and the swarm slowly dies off, long after the initial contact with the poisons. Short-term profits lead to wholesale use of chemicals that could lead to our own doom too, so even those who care nothing for animal life should start to worry.

Right now of course we are all squeezed financially, our farmers barely survive supermarket diktats and overseas competition and many families survive only through their visits to food banks. Those of us who are less strapped have no excuse and have to lead the way. If we all started to demand home-grown wildlife friendly food and shopped British whenever we can, we could make a difference. Our government spends huge amounts of our money subsidising all the wrong sorts of farming practice… if we could edge that sideways a bit it could make a tremendous difference.

But bringing pressure to bear on government, retailers and agri-business is not enough when even those of us who care can be ignorantly poisoning ourselves and our garden critters.

Given that our collective garden is a huge percentage of the nation and of overwhelming importance to birds in particular, its incredible that so many of us feed birds and yet at the same time poison ourselves and them by the wholesale use of one of the worst chemical coshes about – glyphosate! The chemical kills weeds by disrupting their ‘shikimic acid pathways’, preventing them from growing and producing new cells. When ingested by mammals (us) it disrupts the production of a vital enzyme called cytochrome P450 the function of which is to help us detoxify. This in turn can lead to the build-up of toxins that cause a whole gamut of organ damage. Moreover, our gut bacteria have shikimate pathways so their growth is disrupted too. This is not only likely to lead to stomach upsets, but may even effect our overall health as its thought that these bacteria are part of our bodies’ immune mechanisms.

I doubt many of you set out and to buy this noxious chemical… but take a look at the content list on the back of the most advertised and widely used garden weed killers and you are sure to find it there.

Hear the Podcast:

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