It was a busy old time at the RSPB this week with newspapers, TV and radio crews all clamouring for a glimpse of the increasingly elusive cuckoo.
Unless you’ve been living in a hole in the ground – or maybe just returned from a trip to the outer solar system – you will have seen the news this week that cuckoos have been added to the Red List of the UK's most threatened bird species.
Satellite news broadcast trucks rolled onto the RSPB's headquarters at Sandy and the Barnes wetland reserve in West London. Our director of conservation Mark Avery and species monitoring expert Richard Gregory must have felt like celebrities as they rushed from one journalist to the next for interviews with everyone from Sky News and ITN to the BBC’s Newsnight as well as all the national newspapers. There’s a list of links below if you want to see how the story was covered.
It was picked up even further a field including the Boston Globe, the Sydney Morning Herald and the Times of Malta. The Independent even managed to tie the story in with the ongoing political expenses row when their cartoonist Dave Brown drew embattled MP Julie Kirkbride as a cuckoo sitting on a nest full of cash.
So why has the plight of this single species created such a major stir and captured everyone’s attention?
The cuckoo makes one of the natural world’s most instantly recognisable sounds - any schoolboy will tell you it’s the male bird’s two note call that gives the species its name - and it's this call which for many is the traditional harbinger of spring. It also nests right across the UK - as a result it has entered the national psyche and become part of our shared heritage.
Everyone has their own personal connection with this cheeky bird – and everyone would feel the sad loss if it were to disappear.
The Times
The Guardian
The Independent
Daily Telegraph
Daily Mail
The Sun
Daily Mirror
BBC online
BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
So the government has pledged some money to create more adventure playgrounds for our young people and has been accused of making a U-turn in doing so.
Given that the health and safety issues surrounding school trips and outside play often make such experiences seem like more trouble than they're worth for our teachers and youth workers you can see this point might have some legs. But many of us finally woken up to the fact that a few scratches and bruises are all part of the growing up process - we must celebrate and not deny this.
Hopefully they will soon take another step in the right direction in making sure that all children automatically have access to these sorts of outdoor learning opportunities. Many school children will have these adventure playgrounds on their doorsteps and enjoy regular trips but there are still many schoolchildren who don't have access to outdoor learning and are worse off for it.
There is no better way to learn about the environment and the role we play in protecting it than getting outside and experiencing it for ourselves. There are plenty of opportunities for young people to do this, not least the RSPB's own network of nature reserves all around the UK.
Adventure playgrounds are great for swinging, climbing and balancing and the natural world offers the chance to get your hands dirty digging, discovering, and protecting. A balance of all of these things make for a happier, healthier child and a gives nature a fighting chance in creating budding Attenborough's of the next generation.
The phones at RSPB HQ have been buzzing since Wednesday’s episode of The Archers on Radio 4.
For the minority who do not tune in religiously every night at 7 pm, the programme saw David Archer and his daughter Pip paying a visit to a barn owl nest on their farm to take pictures of the eggs.
Mrs owl takes flight as they approach and Pip shins up a ladder with her camera.
As several listeners have pointed out, this is disturbance of a bird listed on Schedule One of the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, or in laymen’s terms, birds that are ‘specially protected’.
You need a licence for that, David. That or a willingness to do six months at Her Majesty’s pleasure or to stump up the £5,000 fine.
Well, we have spoken to the Archers, or rather to the nice people who broadcast them to the nation. They assure us they are aware of the law pertaining to barn owls and that David and Pip’s position will be made clear as the plot unfolds.
So, keep listening then. All together now: dah dah dah de dah dah dah, dah de dah de dah dah...
It can work, this renewable energy stuff.
The announcement that a number of energy companies are to plough £2.2 billion into building the London Array windfarm is proof of that.
It is also proof these schemes can be built without harm to the natural environment.
At first glance a massive – and it is properly big this one – windfarm in the Thames Estuary seems like something the RSPB might oppose. It seems a fair assumption, especially when you learn the initial site surveys found it was home to a large and previously unknown population of red-throated divers.
But then you know what assumption did.
From the start, the developers worked closely with us to find a way of building their windfarm without robbing the birds of their habitat.
The result was an agreement that the scheme would be built in stages, with the first to the south of the site, well away from the divers. A close eye will be kept on the birds during and after construction to make sure they are not disturbed.
So built in stage, but built nonetheless. There should be power flowing ashore from the London Array by 2012. The turbines will produce 623 megawatts, which is a lot.
We badly need schemes like the London Array. We need them to help us move away from fossil fuels and avoid the catastrophic climate change which now threatens. We need them to show how talking early and often to conservationists can get schemes built faster and better.
Above all, we need them to show how we can have clean power and wildlife.
There has to be a world left worth saving after all.
They're noisy, smelly and bustling with activity 24/7.
Seabird cities are among the most evocative wildlife spectacles in the UK. Whether walking among clifftop colonies on the Farnes, ducking divebombing skuas on the Shetlands, or gawping at gannets on Bempton Cliffs - these are experiences you'll never forget.
Our coasts and seas not only support millions of seabirds, they're also home to playful dolphins, giant basking sharks, starfish, seahorses and seals.
You’d expect these remarkable treasures to enjoy protection at least equal to the best of our onshore wildlife. Far from it. In a deplorable demonstration of ‘out of sight, out of mind’, the UK has a paltry three marine nature reserves - Lundy, Skomer and Strangford Lough.
Thankfully we now have an unprecedented opportunity to correct this abysmal state of affairs.
And you can help us. Tomorrow we’ll be at Westminster, lobbying MPs to ensure that the forthcoming Marine Bill does the job it needs to.
You're very welcome to join us, we’d love to see you there. Come along and help us make a little bit of maritime history.
Find out more here.
Or if you can't make it in person, you can write to your MP telling him or her why our marine wildlife matters to you.
Remember, all those puffins and porpoises can't speak up for themselves.