In these strange times, potentially bogged down in a cycle of Netflix comedy repeats it would be easy to contemplate Phylloscopus collybita as a phrase used to raise a tongue in cheeky rumbunctious smile or two. For instance in the Fast Show, `Phylloscopus collybita…….hmm suits you sir`, in a Tony Hancock sketch visiting his doctor with severe belly ache`a bit of collybita` or indeed in a Carry On film. I can just imagine Charles Hawtrey announcing Phylloscopus collybita,and Kenneth Williams with his characteristic nasal charm retorting `I`d so something about that if I were you!`.

Well usually I do. I mean I usually do something about it. Around this time of year to satisfy my craving for a dose of Phylloscopus Collybita I have a wander through gardens, parks and woods and immerse myself in its viral spread.  It`s a contagion I embrace. A prescription and a cure from the winter blues The emergence of the Common Chiffchaff engenders a deeply satisfying joy rather than a forced TV smirk, as it signals the onset of warmer weather. Flying in from West Africa weighing less than two teaspoons of sugar these fluffy bundles herald spring tidings of life affirming delight. It`s a proper little biophilic catalyst.

The charm of the Chiffchaff lies in its subtlety. It is what it is. Undemonstrative, unpretentious unassuming, an all encompassing understatement. The Chiffchaff eschews the heavy mascara preferred by another vernal avian harbinger the dapper moustachioed Wheatear for a more refined delicate eyeliner.  The Wheatear displays its more obvious charms and boldly confides `Look at me, you seen how far I`ve flown just to sit on this fence post for you?….a round of applause might be nice`. Whilst the Chiffchaff gets on with scouring the underside of leaves for aphids and other insects hence Phylloscopus, often furtively out of visibility at the top of trees. The males pioneer for territories and pronounce their arrival with a delicate rattling of loose change hence Collybitta the sound of money clinking. None of this end of the pier show repartee espoused by the summer arrivals; the screaming Swift and the outrageously beautiful Swallow prancing about in an Edwardian frock coat; the winged Beau Brummel. If at all the Chiffchaff does do a bit of tail wagging but behind the scenes.

Everything about this graceful warbler whispers style and delicacy, the female creates a nest low down in brambles and nettles with a care and attention to detail lining the dome shaped cradle with fine grasses and finally with feathers.  Her eggs echo this restrained refinement, rich creamy white dabbed with small purple motifs……what`s not to like?

We could learn a lot from the Chiffchaff as within all this characteristic humility lies success and survival.  Along with many other bird species the Chiffchaff suffered large losses in the 1970`s but unlike many migratory birds has come back strongly and has increased abundance and range within the UK….it`s doing well and that adds to the smiles. That is despite an onerous lifestyle, having to eat a third of its body weight daily to survive, making up to fifteen hundred trips (!) to construct the nest and enduring heavy seasonal population losses through predation from baby faced feline assassins, mustelids and birds of prey. Then its time to go leaving our shores from late August through September back to Iberia and Africa in a series of energy sapping hops.  Life isn`t easy but you have to get on with it. 

Phylloscopus collybita, the Common Chiffchaff  colloquially known as the Huck Muck, Chip Chop, Feather Poke or my particularly favourite Lui Piccolo (Italian). I make no apology here for anthropomorphising this little gem……………we could learn a lot from this survivor…humility for a start.

Phylloscopus collybita..indeed it does suit me sir.

A trip to Bedfont Lakes

During the preparation for this Bedfont bird trek my internal discourse pondered politically on the engineering works at London Bridge. Engineering works at the weekend are for the mill owner not the mill worker, for work not leisure, for growth not conservation; so while I internally ranted on the first frosty morning of the year I set off on the 30 mins concrete trawl to Denmark Hill station, a circuitous South east to North West London trip beckoned. We`re on a birding mission, Sarf East London to Heathrow.  Joy of joys a proper winters day kitted out with thermals, glove liners and a post Christmas calorie loaded podge I braved the outside. The bird song within even the hardest of urban habitats was clear and tinkly on this still and frosty day. Black headed urban warriors were raiding their own food banks as I passed the industrial sized Sainsburys, whilst Robin, Wren and Great Tit provided a discordant glockenspiel of sound as I waited for the first train.

My reading on this venture was `The Volunteer` a true story of an Auschwitz infiltrator, a suitably sombre tomb for this mardy Midlander (aka me) traversing the graffiti ridden badlands of Loughborough Junction where Carrion Crows lazily parachuted from red brick parapets.  The messages at the various tube nodes did not lift my mood as train announcements were littered with negative verbs: delayed, cancelled, stopped, … forcing my internal discourse back into political territory, plus the trip was now birdless. Back to the book, despite offering no respite from the grim and cold it was nonetheless suitably heroic.

Hatton Cross tube.  Autogeddon, Aerogeddon. Forty years living in London and my first visit, the perpetual smell of kerosene and stark brutalist concrete structures meant I`ll probably not book a holiday here anytime soon.  But as ever chocolate and conversation with birders flipped the mood and a short car journey; thank you Nigel Dodd, (bus for some) took us to the lakes. The Bedfont country park was opened in 1995 and is owned and managed by the London Borough of Hounslow; a previous landfill, gravel extraction site it is now a nature conservation area of Metropolitan importance consisting of amenity grassland, wooded areas and a couple of lakes with an information centre, toilets and a car park, providing a 90 minute circular walk if you don`t stop to scope.

Such a clear day and leafless canopies provided ideal conditions for clarity and contrast for bird id.  The well coiffured Andrew Peel, as ever, created a welcoming and informative atmosphere for the twenty or so takers. We walked away from the car park to a flurry of Long tailed tits who proved particularly confiding as we heard Great spotted and Green woodpeckers. The Lakes had recently been visited by Bittern and Smew, not today, but the joy of birding is scratching beneath the tick box surface and enjoying the behaviour of our more common birds.  Watching four Swans displaying a Concordian elegant vulnerability at take off , my they need a long runway, was breathtaking, whilst low flying Canada and Greylag Geese shook the stillness with their honking and wingbeats as they approached us from behind splashing noisily as they dropped their undercarriages into the water. Common, Herring and Black headed Gulls argued seemingly just because they can with the prizefighters of the day being a pair of Ruddy Shelduck who were particularly antagonistic towards a couple of Egyptian Geese who had dared to encroach upon their territory. Across from us below the Business centre a Sparrowhawk was furtively camouflaged within the low cleft of a tree, the wild yellow eyes the only giveaway, its calm demeanour suggesting digestion of a kill.

We strolled on towards the visitor centre accompanied by smatterings of Redwings passing through resting high up eyeing their next roving opportunity high above the waterborn dapper male Gadwalls fussing around their partners like cocktail waiters at a particularly prim sherry party.

After a brief sojourn at the centre where the bird count increased by one courtesy of  an incongruous plastic Flamingo, we slowly returned. A Kestrel accompanied us on its speedy mission along edge habitat and then abruptly stopped and windhovered whilst a solitary Red Kite nonchalantly soared providing a parting gift, the azure sky superbly contrasting the orange, brown, black and white underwings.

And then back to Hatton Cross where in the car park plane spotters lazily spied various Heathrow Boeings from the warm confines of their vehicles….providing an interesting counterpoint to our endeavours and as I pondered this sociological dichotomy and compared and contrasted whether they were Thurnbergs or Trumps the tube arrived and I was ensconced once more in tales of heroism and messages of delays……..but this time my spirit was uplifted by the fleeting but fruitful engagement with nature. Thank you Bedfont.

Why do we feed wild birds – the pop version

Lets get one thing straight, the importance of feeding wild birds should not be underestimated it`s quite simply massive. On many levels. As a business, estimates vary between £200-300 million pounds per annum are generated just in the UK.  The fields that grow the seed mixes which fill our feeders are industrial in size and so are the warehouses that store it.  As a pastime the number of people who feed wild birds in their gardens or on their balconies varies between 40-50% of all households and this does not even take into account the more informal feeding of our wildfowl in the local park. More importantly this practice has an, as yet, unfulfilled capacity to engage, re-engage and energise our relationship with the natural world.  This at a time when there is an increasing recognition in both scientific and social channels of the importance of nature for our physical and mental well being whilst the degradation of the environment and loss of species is becoming a hot topic within mainstream media channels.

But why do we do it?

A few years ago I started to wrestle with this question and to navigate the arduous corridors of academia to give a scientific dimension to any answers.  Was it just about a self centred joy and pleasure we get from this activity or was it about a more altruistic motive, the birds survival. To go forwards always a good idea to check out what has been before and there had been surprisingly little research done on the human part of this common day activity; lots and lots of scientific papers on how feeding may or may not affect birds but little about us. 

I`m guessing that we have probably fed birds from when we were cave dwellers, but it is our relationship with bread that gives credence to a long history of feeding wild birds.  We`ve been making bread across societies for over 10,000 years, indicating a change from nomadic to sedentary agricultural lifestyles whilst the breaking of bread cannot be underestimated. It is deeply embedded in our psyches. Across societies and religions it symbolised and symbolises sharing and caring and goes hand in hand with a ritualistic aspect. And where there`s grain there`s birds. Spread the seed in the chicken coop and the sparrows will congregate.

This religious theme continues through bird feeding history with various hermitic saints practising goodwill to birds and other animals but it`s not until the Renaissance and into the 18^th century that the factual mentions start to mount up often in the context of a large house with grounds, an upper class household, crumbs and plenty of largesse. 

When we get to the 1890`s the practice really accelerates. During this decade Britain is in the throes of chronically hard winters, and in urban centres it was common to see birds in distress and dieing through cold and lack of food.  In London, Gulls, previously rarely seen inland, were becoming part of the common tapestry of the Thames and where two decades previously it was common sport to shoot them now workers were sharing their lunches with them.

This informal feeding rapidly became more formalised with the introduction of bird feeders and tables. Where once it was winter feeding it`s now all year round, where once it was scraps left in the garden, on the windowsill or thrown from a London bridge it is now so sophisticated that seed mixes are being sold on the strength of the types of birds they will attract and by inference the species they may deter,  playing on the deeply engrained ambivalence we still have for birds……….we still eat them, shoot them for sport, we have favourites. whilst enjoying their antics in our gardens and chasing across the country when a rare species flies in.

This history lesson suggests that our motivations are a mix between anthropocentric, e.g. pleasure and ecocentric or aviancentric drivers such as bird survival….but is there more to it than this?

Lets go to the science.

The research itself was based in London and the South east where 30 individuals who fed birds regularly were interviewed in depth about their habits and motivations.  These interviews often lasted well over an hour and formed the basis of a disitillation into an online questionnaire in which over 500 people feeding birds took part of which approximately 50% were members of environmental organisations such as the RSPB, BTO and Wildlife Trusts. From this qualitative element 9 major themes were elicited which fed into the quantitative part of the research which produced the numbers as expressed graphically within the paper which you can find here:

https://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol24/iss1/art26/

Pleasure and bird survival were confirmed as the two most important motivators to feed wild birds alongside nurture, being close to nature, childrens education, not wasting food, personal atonement, companionship and making amends.  Not all respondents would have all these nine motivations operating but the research showed that such a simple practice has potentially complex  themes operating. These drivers have been formed through equally complex cultural roots. Our historical relationships with birds through domestication, pet ownership and garden stewardship, our innate need to be close to nature, themes of austerity reinforced by two world wars and environmental guilt as it is slowly dawning on us how we have negatively impacted on nature. Furthermore for respondents with children there was a strong drive to pass on this interest and a recognition that a trigger to feed is often instilled at a young age.

What was a striking element of the research findings was the real depth of feeling and importance that respondents placed on the practice. `They are the world to me`, `I don`t know what I would do without them`, `I get lost in their world` were just some of the quotes that displayed a profound connection with the birds that visited the respondents gardens.

As with all research more questions than answers have been posed particularly the need to unpick what do we mean by pleasure. From the interviews this pleasure seems to encompass the softer side of the human psyche; spirituality, wonder and awe but also harder edged themes of control, paternalism and domination. The research also suggests the untapped potential for engagement and barriers to engagement as the majority of respondents declared themselves as white and over 35 years old.  It should be classless, ageless, raceless and creedless. 

In an increasingly urbanised society where urban green spaces are becoming more important yet more threatened there is an increasing concern that millennials will suffer from an extinction of environmental experience. Bird feeding offers a direct interaction with wild animals at home and in communal spaces with little financial investment and very little effort.  The trick will be to communicate the over-riding pleasure that can be experienced through feeding birds and the potential care for our environment that this can generate for all of our health and well-being; that`s massive.

A couple of days ago I was enjoying some downtime in the company of a longstanding good friend, deep in conversation putting the world to rights, as you do. We were walking alongside the Embankment in central London and we came across three carrion crows tucking into some human throwaway that was wedged between two workmen’s barriers at the side of the road.

We stopped and in the dusky shimmering half-light we could differentiate between the various blacks of their lustrous coats. There were wondrous and deep azures, maroons and sea greens emanating from their feathers and their deep indigo black bills were so shiny you could see the reflection of the roadside puddle. We were lucky they had been especially confiding – crows do not usually let you get to within twelve inches – but they eventually had enough of our gaze and proudly strutted away, effortlessly took off, flew over the River Thames and were eventually lost in the autumnal greys.

As we resumed walking the first thing my friend said was, ‘Now what were we talking about?’ We had been lost in another world for thirty seconds, we had switched off – not only our conversation, but also that universal and ubiquitous human condition, our internal discourse – and been engaged with nature. This engagement had been simple, free, intoxicating and natural. We both still have the image of those crows and the moments we had with them etched in our mind. I smile at this mutual memory, which has added another tiny bit of cement to our already fond personal relationship.

Engagement is a topical buzzword within the green, environmental, conservation movement and, although it can be overused, is an intrinsic key to solving the greatest issue facing us today: our ever decreasing natural world. The Sixth Extinction, Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Petrochemocene – no matter the nomenclature of the era we are living in, the degradation of nature and our environment has been placed sharply in focus by the WWF’s recent report and David Attenborough’s emotional ‘Time is running out’ speech at the COP24 Climate Change Conference in Poland.

Nature is us and the environment is the bit we live in – in other words, nature is not a peripheral, an adjunct, an add-on, neither is it a deluxe part of life that we can discard at will. At our bigoted worst, we treat nature as a minority group, plants and animals transgressing into our kingdom. How should we term that? Being anti-nature? Natist? Elementist? Essentialist?

It is true that many of us are doing our bit in trying to save the environment, reducing our plastic consumption and our food waste, recycling responsibly, turning off our lights, shutting off the tap between tooth brushes, using low-energy rated devices – the list goes on and on. These measures are all very well and honourable, but they are rather prescriptive and sometimes dictatorial – they are chores, require effort for little obvious reward and, let’s face it, not all that sexy.

And indeed, in the face of monumental species and ecosystem collapse, the Titanic and deckchairs comes to mind. More importantly these measures are external devices in so much as they are not necessarily internal motivators that touch us in a more profoundly essential way. Engagement, on the other hand, allows us to access much deeper relationships with nature and the environment providing us with multiple benefits.

Let’s split the term engagement into two: passive and active. Passive engagement takes no effort, it is happenstance: seeing the red kites on the M40 motorway, the sparrowhawk in the garden, the dolphins off the coast or watching that nature documentary. It often involves ‘big’ nature or environmental events and large iconic species. All, hopefully, enjoyable and uplifting. However, you cannot rely on passive engagement, by itself, as you just don’t know when it will happen or indeed if it will and you may not have a garden, a car, a TV or even get time to go on holiday.

Active engagement, on the other hand, requires a modicum of effort, but does not necessarily need money or even time out of our busy lives, just our senses. At the simplest level, it requires us to look, listen and learn. It could be as straightforward as going for a walk without the unnecessary peripheral distractions, leaving the phone, the headphones, even the dog at home, for once. It could be buying that book on butterflies you always promised yourself, planting those flowers on the windowsill, putting up a bird feeder; it’s not prescriptive, it’s whatever floats your boat.

Start to engage and if you feel you’re already ‘there’ then up your levels: start naming that plant, flower, bird, recognising their songs and calls, join the local Wildlife Trust or similar green organisation and share your enjoyment with others. Then over time engagement becomes, well, more natural.  

What does nature get out of this? It’s simple: the more we engage, the more we care about our environment and the more chance it has a priority place in our personal as well as national decision making. There are no excuses; access is easy, nature is all around us. It’s here in the city, out there in the suburbs, in our hills and lakes and coast, not limited to special places or nature reserves.

A few days ago my friend and I could have walked past those crows. I’m so glad we didn’t.

THE IMPORTANCE OF URBAN AREAS FOR NATURE

The countryside. What is it? The bit outside the city which is green….right? It`s the bit where we can see and commune with nature, where we can frolic about in meadows and get away from the grey oppression of the city and urban sprawl. This traditional idyllic perspective has been embedded in my psyche from an early age.  However having explored the data on the recent birdlife and other natural losses in the U.K. I now realise the error of this innate conceptual view.

Lets dig into this thin descriptive veneer `countryside` and see the shocking reality beneath. If we take out the 12% of land use which is urban and developed land in the UK i.e. where most of us live and work, we are left with nearly 80% of our so called countryside being used for farming; to put this in context less than 1% of land use in England is set aside for Nature Reserves. With the increased pressure on farmers to produce cheaper and cheaper food alongside advances in bio-technology most of our countryside is nothing more than an open air factory. Here`s a quick run down of some of the things that have happened to our countryside since WW2 and have accelerated from the 1970`s until now; reduction in mixed farming, increased arable fields of monocultures, a rise in the use of fertilisers and pesticides, drainage of wetlands, hedgerow removal, loss of hay meadow, destruction of scrub and heathland, not to mention our internationally important moorlands where we intensively farm Red Grouse to the detriment of other wildlife… Oh and then we go and shoot them! The most nature found outside of urban areas is often now found on motorway verges and railway cuttings. Stand back from that bright yellow rape field and consider that building a housing estate would almost inevitably increase the biodiversity.

It is no wonder that of all our bird population indices it is farmland birds which have suffered the greatest reductions, over 50% in the last 40 years with 67% of the UK`s bird species of conservation concern, disturbing, but true. Who would have thought that the one time pest Starling would now be a species of concern. Lest I be accused of being too aviancentric consider these other examples of UKs nature loss; a 45% decrease in invertebrates, 66% decrease in common toads and 75% decrease in common hedgehogs during a similar period…….hmmmmm maybe not so common. Adding to and reinforcing these unfortunate statistics is the recent revelation from World Wildlife Fund (WWF) that there has been a 60% reduction globally in our wildlife populations in the last 40 years. Grim reading indeed.

So what about our cities….they are just as bad aren`t they? Hardly havens for wildlife? We all are aware of the well publicised urban demise of the cheeky House Sparrow. Well lets start off with the striking statistic that 47% of our biggest urban area, London, is greenspace with a commitment to making it 50% plus by 2050 (London Environment Strategy). This large green area consists of parks, playing fields, railway cuttings, brownfield sites, gardens and local nature reserves (LNRs – over 140), Furthermore it is not intensively farmed or managed, is surprisingly rich in wildlife and has the potential to be richer.

Of course this urban environment has its own pressures. Loss of garden area is the greatest erosion of London`s greenspace with the continued rise of hard surfacing of front drives, the encroachment of patios, and the increased use of artificial grass. We really should be having a word with  ourselves when we are concerned more with the protection  of a lump of inert metal than we are our natural landscape.

There are also losses due to development of brownfield sites, traditionally and incorrectly considered poor for wildlife whilst we still retain a tendency (or should that be a Capability) to overmanage and manicure parks and gardens. The mantra should be scrub is good.

OK, but why should we care anyway? We are already in the so-called Sixth Extinction, there`s not much we can do and the younger generation never knew paradise before they put up a parking lot, therefore they don`t rue natures losses. Well I believe this so called `extinction of experience` , particularly amongst urban millennials, can and importantly should be overcome.

Cities are where the majority of people live and work (82% in the UK) and urbanisation is a global and national increasing fact of life. Most of us recognise and qualitatively pronounce the beneficial feelings of getting out of our stuffy office / house into natural spaces but there is also plenty of scientific evidence to say having access to nature, interacting with nature and being proximate to nature is good for our physical and mental well being, aids recovery from severe illnesses, reduces stress, crime and anti-social behaviour.

We can`t get away from nature , it`s all around us, its the air we breathe, the food we eat. No use in denying it. The abundance of nature is an indicator of the health of our environment and indeed the health of us. We city dwellers need to recognise the growing importance of our natural surroundings over the so called countryside and understand it is incumbent on us to engage more with our surroundings and protect and enhance what we have. The more we engage, the more pleasure we get, the more we communicate and importantly the more we care and the more nature has a chance. Oh and the more we feel good about ourselves.