A climate-friendly aproach to ornithology
By Steve Dudley There appears to be some debate among conservationists and environmentalists about what we should be prioritising—the climate or biodiversity. For me it’s clear. There will be no biodiversity without a planet, so climate change remains the biggest threat to all life on Earth. Our planet’s biodiversity is ultimately tied to the planet’s …
By Charlie Peverett Finding your own rarities close to home is often considered peak birding, but there’s another summit worth scaling and it’s coming closer into view. As many of us have found in 2020, local green spaces are precious and can be full of surprises. I live in the middle of a town in …
Continue reading "Bringing back the birds: the next level of patch gold"
By Jonnie Fisk Birding trips abroad are a high-carbon indulgence. But that can be cut down by quite some margin by ditching air travel. I spent two weeks on Europe’s winter rails to show that productive, fulfilling and affordable birding can be had without the need for a plane or car. In January 2019 I …
By Jonathan Dean “Keep the politics out of birding”: it’s a familiar lament which anyone active on birding twitter will likely have come across at some point. Such sentiment is understandable. Politics can be fractious, tense and divisive, while birding is something we do for fun, to relax from the stresses of everyday life (well, …
By Nick Acheson Life is all about irony; nowhere more so than in our relationship with nature. In the UK we cast ourselves as nature-lovers when — demonstrably, if we would only stop to look — we have harried nature so successfully from the landscape that she cowers only in forgotten corners. There’s a double …
By Tim Allwood A family holiday to North Norfolk in the 1980s sowed the seeds of what has become a lifetime addiction to birding. I was allowed to wander the reserve at Cley on my own, and remember being mesmerised by the amount of waders beetling around on the scrapes there. The presence of a …
By Amy Robjohns Driving has always felt like a chore for me, and with the need to try to reduce carbon emissions, I like to use public transport instead whenever possible. Birding by public transport is not always feasible as some sites are too remote, but when it works, it allows me plenty of time …
By Amanda Bourne During my doctoral research, I explored the impacts of high temperatures and drought on a desert-adapted bird – the Southern Pied Babbler Turdoides bicolor – in the Kalahari Desert of southern Africa. High temperatures and drought, both increasing with climate change, inhibit successful breeding in pied babblers and the interannual survival of two important age classes: juveniles …
By Matt Livesey For many photographers, the car is as vital a piece of equipment as the camera. Since January 2020, however, I have consciously made a transition away from travelling by car and towards engaging with nature on a much more local scale on foot. The primary reason for this is the obvious and …
By Steve Gale If you walk up to a crowd of birders and utter the words “Low Carbon Birding” there will most probably be two different responses. The first will be from shiny-eyed converts, nodding profusely as they extol the virtues of adopting such methods. The second will be one of panic, with crucifixes thrust …
Low-Carbon Birding 