The media has been bitten by the Big Garden Birdwatch bug with wide coverage for the launch of the annual event today – let’s hope all the mentions translate into lots more people taking part.
Many news outlets have gone with the angle that the survey could reveal this winter was deadly for garden birds, and the robin is singled out as being among the main casualties. But the main message is take part! It could genuinely be more important than ever before and with your help, the RSPB will get an idea of just how much impact the cold weather has had.
In the past few weeks TV and radio shows and newspapers and news websites across the UK have really taken the plight of our garden birds to heart. They've been falling over each other to tell their audiences what they can do to help, the food we can put out and the importance of water and shelter. All those people that have heeded the advice will hopefully be rewarded this weekend as they enjoy watching all sorts of wild visitors to their feeders and tables.
The main media push was today to give people advance notice that the birdwatch is happening this weekend so they can get their feeders filled and their tables stocked up, but we are hoping for lots more great coverage today and this weekend. BBC Breakfast will broadcast a package tomorrow (Friday), with a young family taking part and an RSPB expert talking through how everyone else can get involved. Radio 5 Live will do interviews with both the RSPB and birdwatching celebrities on Saturday morning and we’re keeping our fingers crossed for mentions in the weekend gardening supplements.
It promises to be another great year and the fantastic media attention will certainly add to this. Now, where did I put those binoculars…
It’s fair to say that we, as conservationists, have sometimes had a tricky relationship with rural landowners.
In the past if there has been an argument about wildlife in the British countryside, the RSPB and the CLA (Country Land and Business Association) were often to be found on opposite sides of the fence.
So it may have surprised many to hear us both standing in a field, on the same side of the fence, listening to the dawn chorus on the Today programme this morning and agreeing whole heartedly with each other.
The RSPB’s Gareth Morgan and the CLA’s Allan Buckwell were talking about the two organisations’ joint vision for the Common Agricultural Policy ahead of the launch of a report in Brussels.
Now, I’ll forgive you if you drifted off in the middle of that last sentence - European agricultural policy is not usually the most electrifying of subjects. But if we, and our new friends, can get our message across then it could mean more money from Europe targeted at farmers carrying out environmental work.
With the financial boost provided by environmentally targeted subsidies we could see seed rich field margins, protected hedgerows and much needed foraging habitats like over winter stubble on farms the length and breadth of the country. If this happens then we can halt the decline in farmland birds like skylarks, yellowhammers and lapwings.
Watch this space…
I’ve spent quite a bit of time in a cold muddy field in Bedfordshire this week.
Why? Well I did ask myself that a couple of times as I rubbed my frozen hands. But then a large flock of corn buntings would take off from amongst the stubble and dart nervously towards the cover of trees and I’d remember.
Corn buntings are one of the UK’s most threatened farmland birds, their populations have declined by 90 per cent since the 1970s. So discover 700 of them – around 4 per cent of the total UK population - in one field in the village of Stotfold was remarkable.
It caught the attention of birdwatchers and also the media, and gave us a chance to talk about our work with farmers on Radio 4’s Farming Today – you can hear the programme again on the BBC Iplayer.
And although it was the corn buntings we were there to see, we were also surrounded by skylarks, yellowhammers, redwings, starlings and rooks. There surely cannot be many farmers’ fields in England with more birds in than this one, and it was all down to simple environmental measures the local farmer had taken the time and effort to put in place.
Which makes our message on farming all the more relevant. Farming’s raison d’etre is to put food on our table, but farmers are also at the forefront of countryside conservation - and that’s something they should rightly be proud of.
I’m sure you don’t need me to inform you that we’re all pretty keen on birds round here.
But we also love otters and bats. We’re potty about trees and lizards. We are more than partial to wild flowers and natterjack toads. And insects – glorious, buzzing, fluttering, creeping, swarming, burrowing insects.
So we’re more than a little proud to be making a song and dance about our plans to reintroduce four species of insects onto our reserves.
We will be helping to bring the dark bordered beauty moth back to Scotland, and back from the brink of extinction. The short haired bumblebee will be released at our Dungeness reserve in Kent, after some specimens have been brought back from New Zealand where the species has clung on since British settlers introduced them there 100 years ago.
Pine hoverflies are currently being bred in captivity for a future release and the field cricket is set to make a comeback to our Farnham Heath and Pulborough Brooks reserves.
So net time you’re out at one of our reserves make sure you keep your eyes peeled for bugs as well as birds.
Tinnies, barbies, Kylie and Neighbours are all popular Aussie exports that have been warmly adopted by the British. Now conservationists are hoping that another Antipodean staple - caring passionately about wildlife facing extinction - will become an addition to the list too.
In a bold move, highlighting the British government's relative dormancy on global wildlife protection, the Australian government is pursuing a plan to remove invasive species from the country’s Lord Howe Island. The island's unique wildlife - including birds and a stick insect found nowhere else on earth - is being pushed to the brink of extinction by non-native rats, which have munched their way through the wildlife and habitats in equal measure: five bird species have already gone to the wall.
Well, the wildlife of Lord Howe Island may be unique, but the issue definitely isn't. On some of the UK's Overseas Territories non-native species, especially rodents, are also driving many species to the point of oblivion; an RSPB report shows 32 species of birds in the UK's 14 Overseas Territories are facing extinction. Arguably, top of the list is the Tristan albatross, which only occurs on the UK's Gough Island, in the South Atlantic. This species is literally being nibbled alive by introduced mice and unless they are removed the albatross's countdown to extinction will not stop.
We’ve all heard Robert Peston telling us that money is tight at present but, for only £16million a year or, to put it another way 16 top bankers' bonuses, we challenge the UK government to make a major contribution to world conservation by preventing the extinction of dozens of species, many of which are unique to the UK's territories.
We find it frustrating that as a G8 nation, the UK is lagging behind rather than spearheading the conservation of species for which we have ultimate responsibility. Our overseas territories already have the ill-deserved reputation of being extinction blackspots – it’s time the reputation of these territories become beacons of conservation.
Safeguarding the future of the wildlife of the UK Overseas Territories is one of the six asks within our recently launched Letter to the Future campaign - urging the government to invest in the environment instead of investing in projects that threaten the planet and its wildlife.