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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Because it doesn't take long. No, you just make a few positive steps in the right direction.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.