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.