Last week I headed to Cornwall. Cornwall is a long way away. It’s a long way away from everywhere (except west Devon) and even those in Cornwall think that west Cornwall is far from east Cornwall.
I gave a talk to the the Cornwall Bird Watching and Preservation Society – click here – and I enjoyed the evening very much. I’m told the audience did too and that is certainly how it felt.
The locals, apart from the Herring Gull pictured above, all had friendly faces and Cornish pasties were enjoyed by all in a break after the AGM and before I spoke.
Before my slot, the CBWPS gave a young researcher, a slot to talk about her research on ‘The effects of cleaning bird feeders on bacterial growth’. It was a very good talk by Tiffany Farrant-Clark who was awarded the CBWPS’s annual Victor Simpson award for her 6-week dissertation study while a student at Exeter University. Her study suggested that fat balls were the ideal environment for bacteria and antimicrobial resistance to flourish.
My talk was about whether we are winning or not in nature conservation and touched on the BTO/JNCC/RSPB Breeding Bird Survey, driven grouse shooting (ahead of the debate which has now happened and to which I will return next week) and why our large number of environmental charities aren’t getting much response from the establishment these days.
I don’t often travel through Cornwall (though I’ll be back in September) but I am struck by how many windfarms are dotted around. This makes sense as it is a bit windy down there. I asked what the audience thought about windfarms and, with some caveats, the guesses were that they hadn’t made much difference to birds although it was concerning that a harrier roost may have been lost due to one windfarm. My view on windfarms is that we need them, but we should be careful about where they go.
There was also some discussion about Swift bricks and the fact that they were missing from some developments where they had been promised – see the report Lost Nature on the Wild Justice website – click here – for more on this subject.
I’ve given a lot more thought to disturbance since Right to Roam lost their rag – click here – with Patrick Galbraith’s book – reviewed here – and Cornwall must be a good place to think about coastal disturbance of wildlife. We had a brief audience discussion about this and a bunch of birders in Cornwall agreed that there weren’t many bits of undisturbed Cornish coast. Take a look at the breeding distribution of Ringed Plovers from the last Atlas – click here – and you won’t find many breeding records on the whole of the Devonian or Cornish coasts. But maybe Ringed Plovers don’t like those coasts? They seem to like them in winter – click here. Food for thought but nothing definitive – but thought is quite useful when considering large policy proposals. I see that the Nature Policy of Right to Roam is still forthcoming but has not yet come forth – click here. I’m keen to read it.
In touching on the brilliance of both the work behind the BBS survey but also the feat of clear summary that is the annual report – click here – I tested the audience’s knowledge on UK population trends – this was a room of keen birders so they did very well but there are always some species that people get wrong. I recommend occasional scans of the BBS report to keep your knowledge of bird population trends up to date. It’s an amazing free resource. But have the figures over the years led to policy changes to address the trends in bird numbers? That’s another question entirely.
I also talked about driven grouse shooting and about being a conservation investor. The audience was friendly, engaged and knowledgeable – but then one of them was a schoolmate whom I haven’t seen for about 50 years (though he hasn’t changed a bit), another was a colleague from way back who had, rather unexpectedly, been talking to my sister-in-law about me a couple of weeks ago and a third was an ex-Defra staff member who sat in many meetings with me and others 20+ years ago.
The journey to Cornwall was well worth it although the ominous sound from a rear wheel suggested to me that the wheel-bearings had gone and so the journey home was slightly fraught and to the tune of rumbling from the rear. Still, as with campaigning, one has to travel in hope and I was travelling home to see what parliament and government had to say about driven grouse shooting. The car is now in the garage and the debate has happened.
Herring Gulls do look quite severe, don’t they? This one was eyeing my cod and chips. And they are big birds. I can see why some might be a bit scared of them.
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