A climate-friendly aproach to ornithology
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 