CHRIS PACKHAM: People always underestimate just how tough it

is to be a bird, fragile little thing you've got to go halfway

around the world every year and back again. I mean, it's a, you

know, it's a tough life and and and that's what we show on

Springwatch that, you know, it's always been tough, you know, for

wildlife, but things are getting tougher due to the, you know,

the extra burden and pressures that we're putting upon it.

AJAY TEGALA: Hello, my name is Ajay Tegala, and today we're

bringing you a special bonus episode of Wild Tales, a

springtime conversation with wildlife legend Chris Packham.

Chris is a wildlife activist, he's open about his journey with

autism, and he's been presenting Springwatch for over a decade.

We've travelled up to the Longshore Estate in the Peak

District.

It's a beautiful location with rolling hills, lots of trees,

and a fair amount of birdsong. For the past 3 weeks, Chris has

been filming Springwatch here, seeing the best of British

wildlife, and there was one story that particularly caught

our ears.

I worked on the Norfolk coast and one of my highlights was

seeing migrant pied flycatchers. So small birds, black and white,

not your little brown jobs, but beautiful black and white

plumage, catching flies having just crossed the sea. And now to

see one in a nest in a nest box on Springwatch. How does it feel

to be following that this year?

CHRIS PACKHAM: Yeah, it's a treat. I mean, very, very rare

visitors to where I grew up in the south of England and live

now in the in the New Forest. So if you want to see pied flies

these days, you've got to go to the western side of the UK.

There are a few in the West Country and then in Wales and

then stretching up into the Lake District. Striking males, as you

say, dark brown, black and white, striking birds.

And the female a little bit duller, but still nevertheless

very, very beautiful. But I think aside from that, they're

indicators because they are a barometer of what's been

happening to many of our bird species on account of the

pressures that we've put upon them.

Pressures start here at home, you know, there's been a

significant decline in large flying insects, and that's what

they're feeding on and that's what they're feeding their young

on due to the abuse and and dependence of chemical

insecticides.

And then of course the trials and tribulations of of

migration, which is just incomprehensible to us. You a

tiny little bird weighs a few grams. It's got to fly all the

way to Africa.

AJAY TEGALA: And that one of the themes of Springwatch this year

is that nature writes the story of the season, but that's

changing.

And I, I wondered if there's anything in particular this

year, a key moment or a key story that symbolises change of

spring for you.

CHRIS PACKHAM: Well, I mean, Springwatch is a learning

experience for all of us because we are confronted by things that

we haven't thought about previously, and then we need to

understand them. And one of the things that we've uncovered this

year is the intense competition between great tits and pied

flycatchers, and our great tits nest in my garden.

pied flycatchers don't, they're not a bird I know as well. I

don't see them as frequently. So when I come here, I want to

learn as much about them as possible. And what we see is

that great tits are nesting over a broader period of the spring,

they're starting to nest earlier.

By the time the pied flies arrive, in the past, great tits

would have been coming to the end of their nesting period, and

there would have been opportunities for the pied flies

to use their nest holes. That's not now the case, and we're

saying that 10% of prospecting male pied flycatchers being

killed by great tits.

Great tits are a feisty little bird, you know, so that that

isn't unusual, but pied flies are a species that's in trouble.

Great tis are increasing. We put a lot of food out in the UK

that's contributed to that increase in some way.

Pied flies are migrant, they're struggling in their wintering

ranges, they're struggling, you know, during that process of

going to and fro, migrating, you know, a great distance across

the planet, and now they're confronted with this

asynchronicity, which is an impact of climate breakdown, and

we're seeing that as something which is real and tangible and

having impacts on these birds' populations, and it's, you know,

pretty terrifying, really.

It's making all of that big existential thing that we

imagine as a separate entity. That we imagine is something we

can do nothing about. It's making it very real when you

look into a pied fly box and see a dead animal there that's come

all the way from Africa to breed and is prevented from doing so

because the seasons are messed up.

AJAY TEGALA: Oh gosh, yes. And I work at Wicken Fen where we have

lots of cuckoos, or I say have lots of cuckoos, we're seeing a

similar thing where that synchronicity is changing and

their numbers are decreasing. As well as of course, the shortage

in insects, the decline in insects.

The winners to me seem to be some of the heron species that

we're seeing increase in numbers, the egrets, and indeed

also cranes as well. And that's nice to see the habitat

restoration especially of wetlands is providing these

habitats that are enabling some of these species to really go

from strength to strength.

CHRIS PACKHAM: Yeah, I mean, we must be clear, it's not all bad

news. Certainly when it comes to generalist animals with a very

broad niche so that they can live in different habitats, they

can feed on different things. They're more robust, if you

like, ecologically.

And they are prospering and the heron species are amongst those

groups which are. The other thing that you mention is

habitat restoration, and this is one of the things which

consistently frustrates me, and that is that we deal, you know,

constantly with all of the problems.

But what we have to remember is that we have so many solutions,

you know, we have the capacity to rebuild, restore, reinstate,

reintroduce the cranes and you know, it's just that we're not

doing it broadly enough and we're not doing it rapidly

enough. We're not short of ideas and we're not short of ideas

that have been tried and tested.

We're short of them, the motivation, the energy and the

determination to, to make sure that they're happening, you

know, in, in real time, and that's, you know, for me, that's

incredibly frustrating because if I thought there was no hope,

I just, you could be forgiven for giving up.

There is hope. There's lots of hope. We have the capacity to

address everything from our reduction in fossil fuels, our

reduction in dependence on meat and dairy in our diet, you know,

we can build better houses for people to live in that are

better insulated and serve wildlife as well as people.

You know, we can reinstate habitats in, in pretty short

order. I mean, you're, you're at Wicken, you've seen the great

Fen project and how much that's achieved in a relatively short

space of time. We can do it. If you build it they will come.

We've got to get building.

AJAY TEGALA: Because it doesn't take long. No, you just make a

few positive steps in the right direction.

CHRIS PACKHAM: Yeah, and we learned so quickly. I mean, look

at Wicken, you know, block up a few ditches, do some planting

here, bring in some, you know, grazing, herbivores, shape

public access. I mean, there's a lot of work being done there.

That's not underestimate, you know, how much toil and trouble

the staff and volunteers have gone to to achieve it. We're not

diminishing that.

It's fantastic. The vision is fantastic as well.

AJAY TEGALA: The great thing about all these organizations

like the RSPB, the BTO, is the amount of youth involvement

there is now as well.

And for me, I'm really uplifted by, I mean, for example, there's

an 11 year old near me who's just done a fenathlon raising

over 4 grand for the RSPB, the Wildlife Trusts, and the

National Trust. And seeing the articulate and passionate voices

of youngsters standing out from the crowd, that's really

inspiring for me.

CHRIS PACKHAM: Well, that does give me some hope, although I

would like to see changes in the way that that's, perceived. You

know, I've grown rather tired of people saying we listen to young

people, it's patronising.

What, what we need to do is empower young people. Make them

part of a decision-making process, because young people

are clear seeing, clear speaking, and they're not risk

averse, and it's the last of those characteristics which is

the most important. And you know, it's, it's essentially,

you know, I'm 64 years old. I know that my future is now

increasingly limited. But when I look at 6 year olds, the

future's theirs.

One stat that I I love and it and it says a lot about, you

know, the power of youth to achieve great things is that in

1969, long before your time, but I was alive, Neil Armstrong

stepped out of a spacecraft and landed on the moon. And

obviously it was a momentous occasion for humankind.

When when the rocket took off in America at Cape Canaveral, the

average age of the people working that day in that place

was 25. 25. Now why was that? Well, there was a lot of old

expertise there.

If you look at the, if you look at the, you know, the film at

the time. In the central control room, there were a lot of people

who were older than 25, but in all of the rooms that were off

of that, the people that were managing that. The

troubleshooters, they were all young people. They were quick,

they were bright, and they were prepared to light the blue touch

paper under a giant firework that fired 3 incredibly

important astronauts into space.

What the world needs now in terms of environmental care is

young people making decisions about their future. Let's stop

listening to young people. Let's let young people make real

decisions and shape real outcomes.

AJAY TEGALA: Fantastic.

Just before Chris headed back to his busy filming schedule, we

took a moment on a track with trees arching either side to

just listen to the birds that surrounded us.

CHRIS PACKHAM: Well, it's not the best time of day to listen

to birdsong, but nevertheless, there's sort of, there's

Twitterings, isn't there? I can hear a blackbird going

somewhere.

Robins. The one thing I will say is that when I got into birds, I

was 12 years old, so that would have been in the early 70s and

it was just so much noisier. Do you know, I remember going out

and it was like confusing. There were so many birds singing at

the same time. It's like trying to decipher who was doing what

in an orchestra.

And I think that one of the problems we have is that we take

these things for granted, you know, all I can say to All of

you youngsters out there, all of you youngsters, is don't take

any of this for granted, you know, suck up every moment,

listen to every song, watch every moon rise, you know, every

time you see a butterfly, get on your knees, get down and look at

it.

AJAY TEGALA: My conversation with Chris was just as wonderful

as I'd hoped it would be. I was really pleased to hear him talk

about youth empowerment. He made that very clear. And I felt

almost a bit sheepish about talking about some of my own

wildlife experiences next to this nature legend.

But when he really endorsed the work to restore habitats, like

at Wick And Fen, and when he talked about the reserve that

I've worked on and that I love so much and hear him really

champion it, that was such a great feeling. And I, yeah, I

could, I almost had to stop myself from jumping up and down

at that point.

And so, yeah, I felt kind of wiser from my chat with him, but

I felt, yeah, uplifted, there's some tough things that we talked

about, but there's so much positivity that I'm really

focusing on. And yeah, I just feel, I feel better for for

talking to him.

Thanks for listening to this episode of Wild Tales with me,

Ajay Tagala. Video podcasts from the National Trust can be found

on our YouTube channel or on Spotify. While you're there, why

not check out our history show Back When? Or for smaller ears,

Ranger Rae and the Wildlifers. See you next time.