Public Engagement

Waking a bit too early this morning, I felt rough. Not too rough to go out though, and almost an hour's seawatching from the West Bay shelter produced my first three Manxies of the year, 12 Common Scoter, 10 Sandwich Terns, and singles of Red-throated Diver and Med Gull. Home for breakfast and the resigned acceptance of yet another nasty bug. Sandra has it too, and one negative COVID test later we could lay the blame squarely at the feet of last Friday's snuffly granddaughters. Sigh...

I thought a day's rest might set me up for a late-afternoon outing somewhere, but I thought wrong. Grim. So the day has been frittered on various indoor stuff. Browsing Twitter earlier, I spotted this...

I urge you to click on this heart-warming little thread. It doesn't take long to read and, if you are remotely like me, it will make you smile.

When it comes to birding I have never been big on public engagement. And since living somewhere so sparsely populated, with such an abundance of locations where you might easily spend hours birding without meeting another soul, I have allowed myself to get worse. Just recently however, my little castle has been breached...

Strangely, some of that is down to a scarce bird on my doorstep. Our local Yellow-browed Warbler is a few minutes from my home, frequenting a pretty area much loved by dog-walkers, etc. It is impossible for a birder to stand around for long without arousing curiosity, and this has led to some positive conversations. One chap was able to see the bird with his naked eye, and vowed to look it up when he got home. I have been shown where Water Voles live, a creature I didn't even realise we had on the tiny River Asker. And apparently the (though not actually 'the' - there are at least two) local Little Egret has a name: Eddie!

Compound this with the uncannily persuasive powers of Tom Brereton getting me up in front of a room full of people to talk about nocmig a couple of weeks back, and I can feel the defences beginning to crumble. Interesting.

So yesterday I was out with a small tour group which Tom was leading at Coltleigh Farm, part of the two-thousand acre Mapperton Estate, which is in the early stages of a major rewilding project - details on the website Mapperton Wildlands. Such a stunning location, and just four miles from home.

Tom - with camera - utterly relaxed in the presence of many tons of White Park cattle, an ancient breed integral to the rewilding project.

Among the Primroses and Cowslips, this hybrid, or 'false' Oxlip. There were loads of orchid rosettes too. It is going to look amazing soon.

I am looking forward to seeing this in a few weeks, covered in lush vegetation and bouncing with butterflies...

Reading Mark Andrews' Twitter thread earlier, what really came across was not just the woman's delight at seeing her first Kingfisher, but the pleasure Mark derived from that exchange too. Yesterday I couldn't help noticing the enthusiastic appreciation shown by the tour participants. They loved it! One couple had recently moved in to a new-build and were really keen to inject maximum biodiversity potential into their blank canvas of a garden. Clearly they found the Mapperton project inspirational, and that was a real pleasure to see. I'll say no more about Mapperton just now, but I will be back...