Make all walks a Nature Walk - and Greenbirding
Make all walks a Nature Walk - and Greenbirding
Observing, not just seeing
Breaking news - this utterly despicable thing has just happened.
Sycamore Gap tree at Hadrian's Wall cut down by 'vandals' https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-tyne-66947040
Six years ago today we went for a walk and met the Green Man …
We have always enjoyed walking and hiking and the older we get, the more important it seems to make sure we get every single day of the year, regardless of weather. Keeps us fit and hopefully adds days to our lives. On our walks we don’t just go from A to B or count our steps but we also make sure to look at the things we encounter and put names to what we see. Naming things matters.
“Few people know how to take a walk. The qualifications are endurance, plain clothes, old shoes, an eye for nature, good humour, vast curiosity, good speech, good silence and nothing too much.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
I (which includes ‘we’) find it hard to walk anywhere without frequently pausing to look at stuff - we might get in our several thousand a day, healthy step-count but we won’t ever get out of breath, as we are advised to do, simply because there is so much really interesting stuff to look at. Even cracks in the sidewalk on the way to the shops for a few groceries might contain something new and exciting. Look up, look around, and especially look down at small plants and smaller creatures scuttling over them. You will never know what’s there if you don’t ever look. I think every time you step out of the door, there is the opportunity to see and enjoy and learn about something new in the natural world. Even if you never get more than 100 yards down the road in your walk, it just proves there were good things along the way to pause and spend time with.
Helga Synnevåg Løvoll, a Norwegian professor of friluftsliv (which roughly translates as “getting out of doors and into nature”), says the five documented ways to wellbeing can be achieved through friluftsliv (they are “connect”, “be active”, “take notice”, “keep learning” and “give”).
We also like to keep notes and records and share what we have seen with the various “citizen science” databases eager to increase their size and utility. It’s all about digital collecting. At least make a point of having a notebook and your smartphone camera with wherever you go.
“Digitally Collecting” Wildlife
There is nothing magical or particularly hard about keeping accurate records of species seen in a particular habitat – our patch – as such locations are known. Taxonomy – that’s the science of naming and describing species and fitting them into the “tree of life” as it were, is an arcane field and most practitioners are the first to tell you they only really “know” about their own specialist and often tiny field of interest. Being a biologist certainly helps me to know what I don’t know, and anyway, taxonomy was never my particular area of expertise (it might be though if ever I find reincarnation is a thing). Mostly it just means I usually know to look for the information I need, and that is half the battle in putting a name to something that interests you.
In other words, if birds or flowers or spiders or whatever are something you find interesting, then you can learn about them too by recording what and where you found the species of particular interest. This is actually immensely important to building the information needed to protect them and anyone, however much of a layman you think yourself to be, can contribute meaningfully. It is all the more important, in these days of climate change and habitat loss, to keep good records of seasonal and annual changes in the places we know well and live in. All the professional biologists in the world cannot gather the breadth of data that is needed – but citizen scientists like you can contribute. There are internet tools available to report your observations, and I urge everyone to use them. A few even have surprisingly accurate artificial intelligence facilities built in that will assist you in putting a name to what you see. They are not always infallible, but they will usually narrow the field down enough for you to work out the rest for yourself.
Check out some of these:
iNaturalist will keep a record of all the species of all the groups of plants and animals that you encounter and has the AI ability to help you find their names. The downside is that you have to submit a photograph for the AI engine to work on, so while plants are easy to take a snap of, things that move fast such as insects and birds can be a bit more problematic unless you have a camera with a long lens. A nice feature is that once you have reported, let us say a Song Sparrow, other users who are often experts in the field will confirm your identification or gently suggest an alternative, so you learn as you proceed.
eBird is the worldwide mega-database for bird records. It doesn’t assist in identification but the quality of data within it is superb and as a contributor, you can use its database to discover what others are seeing in your area, and where recent observations have been made. So if you are desperate to add a sighting of Spotted Sandpiper to your personal life list this is the place to find out where to go to see one. Birds are relatively easy anyway, simply because there is so much easily accessible information on the internet and in pocket field guides. So many birders out there too, who are all lovely people and always keen to help a novice.
Merlin Bird ID is a FREE app available for smartphones. It doesn’t keep records for you, but it helps you identify birds with ease. You’ll get personalized results of birds to expect based on the time of year and your location or your choice of regions around the world, including a digital field guide with more than 80,000 photos and sounds, plus maps, and ID tips! Merlin is the most fully featured and global bird app available, and the only one enabling both sound and photo identification powered by AI.
https://merlin.allaboutbirds.org/
iBird PRO is a smartphone bird app (phones are wonderful, no heavy books to carry around with you and always available). It offers a lot of information about the different species. This costs a few dollars but is well worth it. The link is for the Apple version, but it’s available for Android as well.
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/ibird-pro-guide-to-birds/id308018823
BirdNET is another app from the Cornell University Lab of Ornithology that this time helps you identify birds you can’t see just by their songs and calls. The Merlin app above also has this facility.
But there are plenty more – certainly there are tools to help you identify butterflies and moths, spiders and fungi.
And now … having discussed the enjoyment of taking a walk and looking around, there follows something for the birders among my readership. A good few will know about this already, but not everyone. Again, the message is, just go for a walk.
Greenbirding
I like to stick to our patch for the most part – birds, insects, plants, whatever. I like to know about our neighbours. When it comes to keeping lists, it is probably birders for the most part that make a big effort. Listing has even be called a sport but some. There is an understandable desire to see the more spectacular, far away birds and other wild creatures in their natural habitats and in our travelling to see them we have all expended undue energy and added to green- house gas emissions over the years. Just hopping in the car to go an hour away adds to this. Many people now find that this is no longer quite as acceptable as it once was and have found that, by birding locally and traveling by human-power alone, we can minimise our contribution to climate change while really coming to know and appreciate the birds and other lives we live with and amongst. Hence “Greenbirding” (yes, one word). It’s for those of us who ever felt even a tiny bit guilty about driving or flying to see good birds or plants or butterflies. GreenBirding has no membership organisation, nor does it have any pretence to grow into one. It does have a good number of blog posts though and an active Facebook group you can visit at https://www.facebook.com/groups/620268465096967
Many old-school birders had hitherto simply not been aware of the lives lived within a bike ride while they were frantically heading over the hills and far away in a cloud of exhaust fumes. A Greenbirder has decided to only count those species seen within human-powered travelling distance of their home or regular place of work. As simple as that – no dashing off to the far corners of the planet burning fossil fuels as you go. There are no prizes apart from glory, but we have fun, keep fit and maybe make a statement about what we value. There are almost no rules besides that you go birding from a consistent base. Normally, this will be your home. Secondly, you may move about your count area by any legitimate means of self-propulsion such as walking, cycling, skiing, snowshoeing, canoeing, kayaking – even horse-backing. The use of any powered vehicle is forbidden, with the sole exception some birders allow themselves of the occasional use of scheduled public ground or ferry transport.
If you enjoy the “sport” of Lising then you might enjoy doing a Green Big Year (aka: a Bigby) which speaks for itself. Then there are several sub-categories – the more obvious ones are perhaps the Big Green Day, the Big Green Sit, and any other similar achievements that birders can come up with. Enjoying a BIGBYDAY is a wonderful emissions-free alternative to the traditional “Big Day” which generally involves a lot of internal combustion.
Although I confess to going on an annual distant vacation that will almost certainly include some serious birding and travelling (mea culpa), for the rest of the year I stick firmly to my local patch. One definition of this that many birders have adopted is confining their activities to an area described by a circle of 15 km radius around the base. This idea was derived from the annual Christmas Bird Count protocol that most North American birders are familiar with. You might instead pick a local park or something similar. This is something positive that all birders and naturalists can enjoy: you will find many birds near your home base that you probably never knew existed, and feel virtuous while ticking them off. I am commonly asked: Can we really see enough birds to satisfy us? Indeed, you can!
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