Nature Tripping

Jo and Cathy venture into squelchy upland territory in search of sphagnum moss, a key species of the peat bog. Discovering that a third of the UK was once bog or fenland, and that most has now been degraded, they find out what needs to be done to restore these watery wonderlands and their carbon capturing powers. Up in Galloway they meet environmental artist Kerry Morrison and learn all about a tasty project which reconnects a local community with their peatlands.

Jo takes a trip up the west coast to the Inner Hebrides to join Cathy who is helping with the RSPB’s annual corncrake census on the Isle of Tiree. Locating these elusive birds involves listening for calling males in the dead of night. Join Jo and Cathy on a midnight journey to track them down, followed by an in-depth conversation with RSPB officer John Bowler who shares the story of the corncrake, why the Inner Hebrides remains one of the UK’s last strongholds for these birds, and what is being done to look after future generations.

Jo and Cathy resume learning birdsong in lockdown, this time tuning into the calls of the blue tit, great tit and coal tit. With Spring fast approaching, gardens, parks and woods are alive with the sounds of these three common UK tit species, but it’s easy to be confounded by all their chirping and tweeting, and treat them as background noise. In this episode Jo and Cathy set about investigating their individual sonic signatures and explore how to distinguish and disentangle (most of the time!) one species from each other. (Blue Tit @ 4m 23sec; Coal Tit @ 16m 35sec; Great Tit @ 23m 45sec)

Setting out to explore the River Colne, Jo and Cathy start at its source on the edge of the moors and journey downstream through urban West Yorkshire to its confluence with the River Calder. Their trip takes in weirs, walls, abandoned mills, industrial pollution, combined sewer overflows, liminal space and river life. As well as exploring the historical and present day human impacts on the river, they begin to question more deeply our relationship with rivers and the role they can play in our lives.

Vast swathes of Britain's upland are currently managed for grouse shooting. As the official start of the shooting season kicks off (12th August) Jo and Cathy finally decide to confront this controversial topic. Listen in from their local grouse moor to find out about the history of this peculiarly British pastime, the ecological and environmental consequences of managing the moors in this way, the range of stakeholders involved, and possibilities for the future.

In this episode we take the opportunity to meet the warblers, millions of whom travel thousands of miles every year, returning to the UK to breed, and sing - possibly in a tree near you! We then reveal the often overlooked acoustic charm of the long tailed tit. [Timings: Willow Warbler @ 2mins 19secs; Blackcap @ 13mins 45secs; Long tailed Tit @ 25mins 03secs]

As lockdown continues Cathy and Jo go out to explore their immediate locality: a post-industrial valley cut deep into the South Pennine hills. They survey the landscape from the moor tops, with the skylarks high above them, then journey down to a small wooded valley to investigate what’s living in the stream. The episode wraps up with a visit to an area of nearby upland fenced off some 20 or 30 years ago for tree planting, and a chat about the positive impacts of this small ‘rewilded’ patch of the moor.

This episode is a long field recording of a dawn chorus made at the beginning of April, and accompanies our podcasts on learning birdsong in the coronavirus lockdown. We provide a short spoken introduction, but then just leave the birds to it.