Changing Skies

Where have you been really fast?

Well, you can hardly see it. Yeah. In the distance. Yeah. It was going really fast.

I don't think I can say something. Oh, you're just disappearing there. Over them trees. Over here.

“That's the problem in it you say something.”

You got it. That looks exciting, but it's just gone. Yeah. I can't go with buzzard. Not there.

Look, there's two buzzards up there. Weeling. See, am I here? I remember not too long. It's going to be, I would say, 10 years ago.

I saw a buzzard, and I was excited. No, that's brilliant. Well, now it's kind of tender panic. Yeah. You get a blassoy.

Yeah. But I still love looking at them. They say they kind of, we've read Kaiser. They're a bit more aggressive buzzard, aren't they, than read Kaiser?

Apparently. Red Kaiser, they're very bold. They're lovely. Yeah, I was driving somewhere. Not far from here, I think.

Last year. And one landed right in the road, right in front of the McAar. And then picked them up just for a while. Yeah. Sort of.

It looked at me like. Yeah.

“You're looking at me. I'm in charge here.”

I'm sure I'm being, and this is get-bearding, collaboration with Forestall it is. It's like a drug. It's like I get a feel really good. Yeah.

You know, when I'm bird watching, it's like it's a calmness. But it's also an excitedness as well. Yeah. In this episode, we're exploring bird migration.

There's just fly off. Well, yeah, they just, um, they're up with the other birds, then they just leave. Yeah. You know what they're doing?

They're just relaxing. Yeah.

And welcoming the first day of spring.

So it was like this relief almost of like, ah, that was what was missing. And you know, when you realise that you're part of that, not apart from it, you kind of got a bit, a wider sense of community communities,

not just about people communities, about the whole landscape. Did you hear that? Yeah, well, I don't know. I don't know. No, no, no, just caught out of me one good evening.

It sounded a bit like some sort of ghost. You didn't, didn't it? Yeah. Jim Moyer. He's an artist and comedian.

I can hear Ren's quite a few Ren's about it. Loud out there. Yeah. The volume of a Ren is quite incredible. If you could actually sing at the volume of a Ren,

it'd be like, "Forgon." (laughs) I won't. Do you know what's incredible about? Why do we like birds?

What makes people interested in birds? And I think one of the things is that it's the like superheroes. They're totally different to us. They've got like super powered eyesight. You know, if you could look over there and see it.

You know, a rabbit on that distant hill over there. You know, a mile or so away. It's different. You can't go to the grip on it. You can't understand it.

It's got brilliant vision. Yeah.

They can pick up colours that we never recognise.

Yeah. I don't realise they had such fantastic vision for colours, as well as long sight and stuff, you know. Long sight and seen in the dark. Yeah.

Then singing like a fog on. Yeah. A little rain. Both of them show over there. I was chiffed up.

But I thought it would might have been a black cap, but it was a chiffed up on a closer inspection. Yeah.

“You should be a poor bit of a Camden town, black cap.”

The old mother, black cap, the black cap. Yeah. Yeah. Mornington creasant. Yeah.

That was nothing to do with the bird, the black cap. I think she was some sort of murderer. Wish you. I think so. Yeah.

I heard a green wood pack her over there. Oh yeah. Pack it around on the grass. Yeah. Yeah.

You know what it's like. What you've got here is virtually every garden bird in great store. There's a lot of them. Yeah.

There's everything in all the time. It's great here. Actually because there's constant movement. Yeah. And quite often you're out and you don't sit in.

You're like struggling to see anything, but it's all going on here. Yeah, it is. You should have to sit there for a bit, don't you? Yeah. For sure.

We're going to do all get interested. You're very young when you're. Well, when I, I suppose I'm about the same age as you are. Yeah. And so in the 60s there wasn't any laptops or phones or anything like that.

So in Darlington's eyes to go out in the fields. So when we make to either playing football or looking at birds. And I was on the bird watching side. And a lot of kids that were aged then were bird watching. And there was a bloke who lived opposite us.

And he used to have crows that used to get the birds. I don't think he took him out the nests.

“I think he just sort of liked saved him.”

But he had crows and bagpies leading his garage. Yeah. And he, he was a mod. And he had a scooter with like easy rider, folks on the front. Yeah.

He used to go up and down our right showing off on his bike. With a crow and his shoulder. Yeah, the castle as well. But yeah, this crow and his shoulder at this time. And the fox snapped.

And the crow flew off.

And was never seen again.

But I remember that. So there he comes. And it just snapped in half and the crow flew off. Yeah. But that was a kind of scene that you would have seen.

Yeah. Around. You know when I was on the old. Yeah. I was out yesterday on.

Because near us where we live. We've got a lot of. It's history in marshland. Yeah. And yeah.

I was out at Conia Creek yesterday in Kent. And there was. Thousands of godwits. Brent geese. Red shanks.

Green shanks. Yeah. And I love that. And complete different landscape to here. It's just flat.

Yeah.

I don't know what I like best.

Yeah. Yeah. And you were a king went to some. Right. And the king.

Well, yeah. It was a long. It wasn't godwits. Long shanks. Got it.

So. No. Oh, red shanks. Not long shanks. Well, yeah.

A long shanks. Yeah. You're good to go. You're good to go. It's an old one.

It's an old one. It's an old one. What's that? Is that a bird? No.

It's an old one. King. We're really long legs. Yeah. That's what he was.

Yeah. And then if you look at a red shank, it's got red legs. Yeah. And a green shanks got green legs. And you'll find that with a lot of birds.

There's a red pole. Oh, yeah. Which has got a red pole is the oldest. Yeah. It's the top of your head.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Red and start is the back. So you've got a red start.

Yeah. You've got a red start. You've got wheat here. Do you know what the old English for wheat here was? White house.

What's it? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So if you said white house in old English, it got, and then it got a developed into wheat here.

Nothing to do with wheat warriors. Oh, yeah. No. White house. Yeah.

There's something flying around over there that's got an erratic. Do you know what I mean when I say jizz? Yeah. That's the bug. Yeah, laughing at it.

Yeah. You would do what you. But jizz is the way that a bird has. Yeah. But it's the way that it flies.

Yeah. As it's jizz. And you can tell what it is.

“So if I saw bird over there with unusual jizz, that's what drew me attention to it.”

Yeah. You can keep laughing. But it's natural. That's the real thing. Look, you have a look in a, you Google it.

You're looking the bird watches Almanac. Yeah. It's such a thing. A little say. And if it's jizz, it's telling what a bird is about the way it moves.

Yeah. All right. [laughter] This is the time of year when the sky starts to fill with travelers. It was really foggy this morning.

It's not open. I know. It feels like springs finally coming. Yeah. Yeah, it does, doesn't it?

Yeah. Which I mean, like, for me, migrations, like, probably the most exciting time of year. Because there's just so much new stuff coming. Yeah. Like, it's incredible.

Birds are on the moon crossing countries, seas, and sometimes entire continent. Is there anything in particular you're looking forward to coming back?

I mean, I always like swallows in house martins.

Yeah. But that's quite late on isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. You obviously, they come back earlier than they do.

No. I mean, at the moment, we've got, like, um... Tiffchaffes and stuff like that, it should have already started.

“I think I might have seen one in your garden, actually, before I saw you, which is nice.”

That's quite early. But they seem to be here all year round, you know? Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Mmm.

I've never seen a sisk in before, until the other week.

Really? Yeah. Yeah. The bird's herbal. Oh, you saw it in your garden? Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. I know. Dr. Miro's Creek is an onlyologist, environmentalist, and diversity activist. I feel like I'm, like, cookies, actually.

Like, they used to be such a sign of spring. And I feel like we just don't really talk about them in the same way anymore. But for me, I really associate them with, like, that early May spring migration. Yeah. Yeah.

Very excited to see one of them. Did you hear them watch these, these, cockles? I don't know. Very, very, really. I didn't, um, I didn't see one till I was about seven as well,

which, like, considering how much bird watching I was doing as a kid. Yeah. They're, like, they're weirdly hard to see. But some of them, they should have about 10 years ago around the world. Yeah.

Just ones, and that were it. Yeah. I guess if, um, if they're not looking after their own nest, they're probably not hanging around in the same way or they do. They just fly off.

Well, yeah. They just, um, lay there up with the other birds, then they just leave. Yeah. Oh, they do. And then you're just relaxing.

Yeah. You know, the bird does that, isn't it? No. And it's that, actually. Just not so sure of it.

Yeah. It was just kind of, um, like, a kid's to a full time man in it. Just going on holiday. But it's, um, I forget, though, sometimes the birds also migrate to the UK for the winter as well. So, like, you know, all the ducks and geese that come down from the Arctic to,

to, this is, like, the warm place that they spend the winter. And I feel like that's one of the signs of, um, spring migration that people don't talk about as much. As when all the geese and the ducks start gathering and leaving, that, and that's when you go, like, oh, this is when, you know, the, the cook who's chiff-shaffs, while it's whatever we're going to start arriving.

“Like, I like that we've got a bit of, um, given the time on, you know?”

Yeah. So, do the geese, or, or this from the Arctic, do they go back when they were, they guess? Yeah. Warm and here. They're breathing up on the Arctic tundra.

It's a pretty, you know, they come, um, basically to lots of our fields and they're just eating, kind of, a grass seed and stuff like that over winter and they'll be, like, just create, like, thousands and thousands of them crazy numbers. Um, then they go back to the Arctic.

Yeah. It's very fun. Yeah.

So there's always something happening.

It's always like, they're leaving, you know, the lots of comedy. Yeah. Migration reminds us just how connected the natural world really is. What happens in one place, kind of fake birds, thousands of miles away. For many species, the journey is long and uncertain.

I mean, we're living in a tricky time where bird migration is changing and it's changing rapidly.

“So I think we have to be quite flexible on what we knew to be true.”

Because our climate is changing. I mean, birds are relying upon change of day length and sunlight to have this hormonal cue to know when it's time to breach. No when it's time to move and go to your breeding grounds. We're seeing massive shifts in all kinds of environmental cues all the time.

Some of that we pick up on and I imagine most that we can't. And we don't pick up on that these small, you know, beautiful feathered friends are kind of subjected to all the time. Migramor Corbin is a zoologist and conservationist. So things are bound to shift and it's important that we keep an eye on that

and we watch how things are moving and fluctuating so that we're better able to conserve them in the areas that that happens. I mean climate changes here, it's not next or it's not in the global south. It is all over the place and we're all experiencing the pinch in different ways and it's only ever going to increase here in the UK.

We have to kind of accept that these changes are going to happen. Really keep an eye on it and you know, support the wildlife that does show up and, you know, give space for the ones that stay a little bit longer. We all are active beings on this planet. We all have an impact and every day we get to slide what impacts that can be.

And I have said, you know, shows like Springwater Animal Park and everything. You know, what we can do to help wildlife in our gardens. You know, you can feed the birds or not feed the birds. You know, if you notice one that is quite unwell, clean your bird feeders. Put in hedgehog highway, put in plants that will flower at different times

of the year to provide food for different animals. All of these things and quite frankly, like I've said it a million times before,

I'll say it a million times again, but that isn't the most important thing you can do for wildlife.

Yes, please do make your gardens as good as possible. I'm not saying don't do it.

“Why I am saying is the best thing you can possibly do is to use your voice.”

There are so many people that love wildlife, whether it's birds or plants or birds or anything else. We absolutely love it and it brings us so much joy. But juxtaposed with that, we live in a time right now where we're seeing nature's loss

And so we have these really kind of opposite sets of emotions within us.

“We have all of this joy and love and adoration of this amazing thing that gives us fascination.”

And yet we're witnessing it's loss. Lucy Lapwing is a naturalist. And the author of Love is a toad. Exploring our relationship with nature. She's joining us again on her patch in Scotland.

I personally struggle to deal with these opposing emotions within myself. I didn't understand how you can go about carrying these really big emotions at the same time.

When you have one of those amazing nature days where everything in use is just fizzing and buzzing and there's a little Robin just come to watch me.

Hello. And you just have these magical nature encounters, be it up close with a Robin or bird watching whatever. Jokes to pose with just those days where you just want to scream and cry and lie on the floor and have a tantrum because the headlines are so bad or you've seen your favourite local tree get cut down or you know, the Virges near you've been sprayed with herbicide. It's this roller coaster of emotion and I really wanted to kind of prod and poke at that because it kept coming up with lots of other people that I was talking to.

“I think the consistent thing is that everybody is feeling this, this kind of unease that things aren't quite right.”

People are really feeling this sense of loss, this sense of hopelessness comes up quite a lot and it really is becoming apparent that the sector is dealing with grief even if we've not learnt to name that yet. Even if we just look at bird life, you know, 92% decline in turtle doves since I don't know, I think the 70s. I've seen species decline lots since I was a kid. I only saw my first night in girl and I was 30. These are all birds that should be very, very common in the UK and then not anymore. And they are kind of the canaries in the coal mine for showing us that there is a widespread loss and draining of nature going on in the landscape.

And of course we're going to greet that. Brief doesn't have to exist in this definition to do with our relationships with other humans. I believe it's very applicable to our relationship with the natural world. We're grieving the loss of a relationship, we're grieving the loss of a presence of other living things and their variety and abundance. The systems in which we've built the ways that we operate are very damaging at the moment, that's absolutely true. But there's examples from communities and groups all over the world that live in a much more reciprocal harmonious relationship with nature where there is that really deep connection with the natural world on a level that we've, you know, pretty much lost in the West.

“And you can see, you know, that's where our history lies. That's our entire backstory. That's how we got here is that our species has a great relationship with nature otherwise we wouldn't have survived.”

So I think that kind of belief has been lost quite a bit. And so, yeah, there's a lot of kind of healing and mending for us to do there in terms of that, but I think, yeah, if we can start with interrogating our own relationship with nature. You know, it's the beliefs that and the emotions that sit at the heart of our relationship with nature that then translate into actions, systems, behaviors that can or cannot cause harm to nature. I mean, it's really hard thing for some people to understand is that what is going on around the world at the moment with the multiple wars is an environmental issue. It's a social justice issue, but a social justice is very much part of environmentalism.

You know, we're seeing it now in the Middle East and it's got everything to do with oil, of course, and, you know, it's very, it's very complicated situation, which, you know, deserves a lot of time to read up and understand better. But these sort of issues and and conflicts will only be on the rise, unfortunately. So we as a sector need to do better in using our voice for people, because people as we've said a part of nature, we need to stand up for the people that are really suffering and of this, as well as, you know, the environmental impact of war.

I mean, the mining it takes to produce a bomb, what it takes when it goes off, the lasting impact on nature and the environment when that happens. You know, so we need to be talking about these things all together as a round issue, because they are, it is a round issue.

It's always a joy to find a nest. And here's a beautiful example of a blackbird nest, I mean, exquisite, using mosses and mugs.

And strands of grass. Now we're heading over to one of the forest holiday ranges to see what's happening on their patch.

Which we want to call inside it.

Hi, I'm Allison, one of the ranges at Blackwood Forest, working for Forest Holidays. And I'm standing in this beautiful ancient woodland of predominantly beachwood, and there's some blue bells over there just coming up. We've got black, black birds and robins, of course, and a song for us, absolutely beautiful in the mornings.

“There are a little bit quieter in the afternoon, I think they have a C.S. star.”

We're in a beautiful beach forest here, and this tree obviously went down, it was processed, and it popped back into its root ball. And they thought we'll leave it there for natural standing deadwood. And that is great for invertebrates. You can see that loads of holes where the invertebrates are burrowing in, and then birds will feed on those. And if you look further up, there's a hole, which a woodpecker has made. Fantastic. Nice nesting sight for Mr Woodpecker.

You can hear the difference in song as well. You get like Jeff Jeff's doing that spring, the Jeff Jeff song. Yeah. Jeff Jeff Jeff there. Yeah. Great in the morning.

“The one I never got was a little bit of bread and some cheese, but that one.”

No, that's supposed to be what a chaffin says, but I can never work, but it doesn't sound like it to me.

It's a bread and some cheese. That's good, but it doesn't sound like it, but it's a little bit of bread and some cheese. Try to throw that down from cheese. Or mind a bit of bread and some cheese, yeah. It's the rhythm of the Jeff chaffin. No, it's how I do that with my hand, because I'm mimicking the sound of a turntable of a wreck or scratching.

[Music]

“Chief Chaffs are tiny birds, but once you heard them, you start noticing them everywhere.”

[Music] Here to help us listen more closely is our resident bird, the composer and nature bee boxer Jason Sink. [Music] Interestingly enough, where I live, there's loads of birds, flat birds and swans and magpies and rens and whole manner of things and then there's this one bird, and the rhythm of it just like stuck out and identified it using my app.

Found out it was the chiff chaff, and it's of all the birds that I hear around me. This is the one that reminds me of turntableism and DJ culture and scratching, and that is how I identify the rhythm of that bird. And the music quality of that bird through this. So, there is a technique called scratching in DJing where you put your hand on the record and you bring it backwards and forwards. And you can create rhythms and melodies. You literally push the record forward and then you pull the record back.

So push and record, push and pull. A lot of the time, I don't hear chiff chaff in the call of the chiff chaff. For me, you know, it's not called the chiff chaff, it's called the Baby Scratch. [Music]

Recently, I have been in India, and birding in India is incredible.

I was very lucky enough to stay on a farm just outside Delhi, and the range of bird song was absolutely phenomenal. It actually reminded me of the book "The Conference of the Birds" by Ferdid or then Other. And just the range of calls of bar bits and parakeets and peacocks and birds I couldn't even identify. Like a whole range of songs all kind of at different proximity as been absolutely phenomenal. It was a treat actually to hear that amount of bird song from morning all the way through the night.

And seeing the habitats that the birds were in, you know, black kites, nesting in trees, different birds, you know, going up to mandarin tree or in trees and interacting around there and seeing the peacocks moving all the way through the gardens.

It's not something like that they own, but it's something that they are, that they are part of.

“And I guess for me, I don't understand how people can't see like that, you know, that we are somehow separate from everything else that we are surrounded by and live in.”

It actually doesn't register in my brain of like how can we look at a holistic system like the planet and see everything that operates and lives and dies and regenerates and transforms on it and say that we're separate from that. Spending time outdoors there's a way of changing how we see things. Once you notice what's there, it's hard not to want to protect it.

Right now, it's a chaffin chaper there, wait a minute, up, flowing over this way, it's a cult it over that way.

So for me, the high of just connecting with nature, it feels like you're just this relief almost of like, ah, that was what was missing and you know, when you realise that you're part of that,

“not a part from it, you kind of got a bit wider sense of community communities, not just about people communities about the whole landscape, so that's it.”

Like it's as simple as that, it's the birds, it's the wildlife that I get to see every single day when I feel the world gets too much and it does a lot of the time, especially at the moment. It's really easy to feel paralyzed with the state of the world, environmentally, and socially, it's a heavy weight to bear. But just here, listening to these little birds, which are carrying on breeding, which are carrying on the cycle, which, you know, have struggled massively. I mean, a lot of the spring migrants have traveled 5,000 miles all the way from South Africa, you know, just to breed and then they'll fly back again.

“That's impressive, and sometimes you have to remind yourself of what you're fighting for and it's worth fighting for it.”

It really is, it is tiring and it is hard at times to keep on banging the same drum, you know, asking people to act more for wildlife and it's not happening fast enough, it's a hard thing, you know, to do. But all you have to do is remind yourself, go and listen to your favourite bird, go to your local patch, see the flowers come into bloom, see the insects, see the birds, that is motivation enough. Hope is the thing with feathers by Emily Dickinson.

Hope is the thing with feathers that purchase in the soul and sings the tune without the words and never stops at all.

And sweetest in the gale is heard, and sore must be the storm that could abush the little bird that kept so many warm. I've heard it in the Chile's land, and on the stranger's sea yet never in extremity, it has to come of me. [Music] That's all for this episode, thanks for coming along with us today, and I'll see you in a four night birdies. If you're of bird watching, why not join the flock, I'll get birding members club.

Enjoy exclusive content, this is bird in yours, add free episodes, and access to community chat rooms to share tips, spots, and more with birdies around the world. Got to our website, GetBird.ing. GetBirding was produced by Hannah Walker Brown, the executive producer is Jane Gerber. Be sure to subscribe and leave a review wherever you get your podcasts. This is a GetBirding production, collaboration with forest holidays.