Blogger: Steve Rowland, Public Affairs Manager
Spring seemed a long way off last week as I took my lunchtime walk through the woods, the leaves on the trees were yet to unfurl, the ground was bare and covered in a mulch of last autumns dead leaves, and a light, cold wintry rain drizzled down.
And yet I realised that my mind had picked up on the subtle changes in the quality of light and drawing out of the days. I became aware of a slight tightness in my ears, an unconscious straining and heightened alertness to the bird song around me. And I thought that after more Springs as a birder than I care to remember, my brain was quietly and unobtrusively saying to my ears to be alert for couple of unremarkable notes of bird song one up followed repetitively by another down, up and down in short bursts, from a bird that takes its name from these two notes of song, the chiff chaff. (photo below).
Naming a bird after the sound it makes is known as onomatopoeia and two other species that occur in the UK the cuckoo and the kittiwake also take their names from their calls.
I will acknowledge here that chiff chaffs are not blessed with the most captivating of names or musical of songs. But for me they compensate for that with the charisma that comes from being the first of our returning migrants to fill our bare Spring woods with their song, perhaps a month before the other returning warblers have got back from a winter spent south of the Sahara.
Chiff chaffs like many of our other warblers, might at a glance appear a little drab and indistinct. In particular at first you might easily confuse a chiff chaff with its close relative the willow warbler. (photo below).
A rough guide to telling them apart is that a willow warblers legs are a light flesh colour whilst a chiff chaffs are black and a chiff chaffs has a more olive coloured plumage (being a birder you carry a veritable colour palette in your head to describe shades of green and brown feathers).
But the surest way to tell these cousins apart is to listen to them singing. Compared to the chiff chaffs repetitive two notes, willow warblers have a to my mind a much nicer song, a lovely tinkling sound that seems to gently descend a set of musical scales before being hauled by the bird back to the top only to descend down them once more.
Willow warblers arrive from their wintering grounds in Africa a little later in the spring than chiff chaffs which tend to spend the winter in the Mediterranean. So my brain wasn't tipping my ears off to listen out for a willow warbler practicing its scales, but for that starting gun of the season, a simple two note Chiff then Chaff song that would light up the woods and put a smile on my face, a sign of the end of winter and the beginning of natures headlong rush into spring.
I didn’t hear a chiff chaff last week but I’ll be out again for a lunchtime walk in the woods this week, listening carefully for those two notes. If you have some time to spare over the next week or so why don’t you go out and see if you can hear a chiff chaff and then tell us here.
Photos credit John Bridges (rspb-images.com)
Blogger: Kate Blincoe, Communications Manager
Look out of your window. The catkins are swaying in the spring breeze, the blue tit is hunting out caterpillars for its young family and an early bumblebee buzzes by. Nature is busy all around us.
What if pound signs were flashing over all these beautiful, natural events? If you look on these living things as paid workers for us then the catkins tree is capturing carbon, the blue tit is performing pest control on your garden and the bumblebee is a professional pollinator. All these creatures are in fact performing tiny actions that in sum, add up to a healthy environment and hence healthy economy. In simple terms, if they didn’t do it for free, we’d have to pay to find a technical replacement.
Let’s look at some of the massive ways in which we benefit financially from nature. Carefully managed wetlands reduce the risk of flooding to our homes and businesses. Salt marshes, such wonderful habitats, provide protection from sea level rise, acting like big sponges. Forests and peat bogs store carbon for us, helping in the battle against climate change.
The list doesn’t end there: It is estimated that one third of the human food supply depends on insect pollination, most of which is accomplished by bees pollinating crops. Of course, beautiful places with charismatic wildlife also equal booming tourism and lots of visitor spend – especially in our stunning region.
What about you and me and a walk together in the bluebell woods? Does that have pound signs attached to it? Yes. It will reduce our stress levels, increase our heart rates and hence improve our health. It’s a proven fact that nature is good news for the NHS budgets. For children, time spent in nature can even improve their behaviour and performance at school.
As a bit of a nature loving ‘tree hugger’, a part of me screams at this reduction of wonder and marvel to pounds and pennies. Wildlife means so much more than that and has a basic, intrinsic right to exist. I believe that is the case, however, when so many political arguments are made in financial terms, it doesn’t do us any harm to be able to speak that language too.
In a troubled economy, the need for a new development or construction project is often justified by saying growth is critical for our financial future. However, if we trash our special habitats and lose incredible species then, even in crude monetary terms, we risk jeopardising so much more than we gain. We overlook the function that the environment plays in our economy at our peril.
The bottom line is this: We need nature more than it needs us.
Article in Eastern Daily Press on Saturday 10 March 2012.
Photo by Mark Sisson (rspb-images.com)
Blogger: Jane Warren, RSPB in the East Green Team
As we edge along towards spring in the Northern Hemisphere, it’s worth sparing a thought for the climate. Today is the beginning of Climate Change Week (12-18 March), and there are easy ways for us all to get involved. Many of us are already doing our bit, but it’s always good to be reminded! So here are three things to do this week:
Get cooking with Climate Week cuisine: Make food part of the solution to climate change by eating a low carbon meal during Climate Week. Just follow one or all of these three tips: eat less meat or dairy, eat local and seasonal ingredients, and eat leftovers.
Walk, cycle or use public transport: Use Climate Week as an opportunity to use more sustainable ways to get to where you are going. Take the train or bus instead of driving. Take advantage of the spring weather (!) and walk or cycle, getting some additional exercise!
Swap, recycle or upcycle old things: Eliminate waste by finding a second life for things that would otherwise be thrown away. Host an event to swap unwanted items, such as books, toys or clothes, with friends or colleagues. Recycle unusual things like batteries, or electrical goods such as old mobile phones.
You can even recycle through Ebay, by taking up the RSPB’s Ebay for charity challenge. Do you have something lurking in a loft, back room, garage or shed? Something that you know has some saleable value but you have never got around to selling? This could be your chance to do just that and step up for nature at the same time! Please do get in touch with suggestions of what you might have to sell, and we can check if it is worth us getting our fabulous Ebay volunteers to sell it on the auction site for us. Please do not send anything to us without checking first and please note that we can’t accept electrical goods! (It’s worth repeating that so that our collector Matt Howard isn’t locked in the cellar as punishment along with the potential deluge of books, CDs, DVDs, autographed Barry Manilow LPs etc.) Matt is looking forward to hearing from you at email@example.com Tel: 01603 697515.
Our thanks to Climate Week for ideas and tips. Check out their website at www.climateweek.com and get inspired to create a sustainable future!
Blogger: Gena Correale-Wardle, Community Fundraising Officer
Do you remember in January when I blogged about the great partnership the RSPB had with Dozen Artisan Bakery and Pulse Cafe Bar, two great independent eateries in Norwich? I bet you’ve been waiting with baited breath to see how we got on....
Well, today I went to see the lovely manager of Pulse, Helen, as she presented us with a great big cheque (literally – see the photo!) for £86.50. That equates to 173 starters, mains and desserts eaten in aid of the RSPB. Dozen Artisan Bakery sold their field loaves for nature too – another £91 and 91 satisfied tummies and smiles on faces! Wouldn’t it be nice if all fundraising could be that easy?!
The lovely people at both outlets also hosted pin badge boxes and gave out lots of leaflets to promote Big Garden Birdwatch, raising awareness of the project as well as raising even more money (over £40) through pin badge donations. A win-win all round!
We are really glad to work with such great local, independent businesses in the area and hope we can do more with them in future. We are always looking for ways to get businesses involved throughout the whole of the Eastern England region so if you have any links or want to promote your business and raise money for nature in the process, do get in touch!
The money raised will help the RSPB save and protect wildlife supporting schools and families through field teaching programmes and schools visits as well as directly managing habitats for wildlife at our amazing nature reserves.
Thank you to all of you who ate great food and saved nature at the same time. Here’s to more fab little initiatives like this in the future! Email me at firstname.lastname@example.org or call me on 01603 697521.
Blogger: Adam Murray, Communications Officer
Last June you may have remembered my Swift, Swallows & House martins - I am a bit clueless blog post, well just as think I have nailed some of my bird ID skills I recently went on my hols to Osea Island.
We went as a family with my brother and his gang and spent the time walking the island when the causeway (as seen on the Woman in Black movie) was covered by the tide. The island was a perfect tonic as there were no modern day distractions that seem to fill our free time usually. This meant that we had an excuse of not doing very much at all – just what I needed after the crazy hustle bustle of the RSPB Eastern Region office in Norwich.
Each day we would spend many hours in wellies walking the island. In the interior we spotted dancing flocks of skylarks, eyeing foxes in the distance and then the adventurers inside us would walk alongside the beaches and salt marshes to circumnavigate our little piece of Essex. If we were lucky enough to get the tides right we would see vast numbers of birds coming into feed or queuing up ready for the seafood frenzy. The rest of my family were happy to spot a “funny looking goose” or distinctive oyster catcher with their carrot beaks. I on the other hand, trained zoologist and bitten by the RSPB bug, realised that I wasn’t just seeing a few species of animals out there on the mud flats but dozens – all ever so slightly different. However, this is my question to you – how on earth are you supposed to tell the difference? I am now going to give it a go. The keen ones amongst you, feel free to correct me, I won’t take it personally ;)
Dunlin: Little fella, grey wings, white belly, slightly curved beak
Turnstone: Little, black wings, white belly, red legs
Common sandpiper: brown body, straight beak, black eye stripe
Curlew sandpiper: if you squidged the two sandpipers together
Green sandpiper: dark, white bellied sandpiper that is not green
Grey plover: a more speckly version of a turnstone
Curlew: This one I get, bendy beak and big as a chicken!
Redshank: Medium sized, red legs and red beak near face
Spotted redshank: red legs, black top beak, red lower beak
So, can you see why I was confused. It doesn't help that when I was reading the information on my RSPB i-phone app it told me that these are the winter plumages of these birds - so as new species come in for the summer I will have to learn this all over again. I did however figure out that the bird call I has associated with the wilds of southern Ireland ( a previous family holiday) was not the charismatic oyster catcher but the close neighbours the curlew.
I guess the beauty of this whole thing is now, once I get my eye in, I realise how many different species find the eerie and beautiful Essex coast a perfect tonic, just what they need.