THE AMATEUR NATURALISTS

I’ve reached an age where I spend plenty of time looking back, reflecting on how things once were in comparison to how they are now. It’s easy to have a rose-tinted view. Our minds snag on the negative aspects of life today, while slipping easily into nostalgia for times long gone.

There can be little doubt that wildlife is in trouble, assailed from all sides as farming become ever more intensive, semi-natural habitats are destroyed and the climate continues to warm. Endless reports and scientific assessments document losses and declines that show no sign of slowing down. In Britain we are lucky to live in a country where our wildlife is more closely monitored than almost anywhere else. And, contrastingly, we are unlucky to find ourselves in one of the most nature-depleted places on the planet. Our ancient woodlands, heathlands and flower-rich meadows have been reduced to mere fragments of what they once were; but at least we have shelves full of paper to record the losses in fine detail. As the shelves fill up, so the declines continue.

Is there any cause for optimism? Much depends on your personal outlook. One option is to travel your way to a life full of wildlife. For those with time and money (and pandemics aside), we live in a golden age. Yes, wildlife across the globe has been greatly diminished. But our ability to journey to inspiring places has never been greater. If you could choose the period to live out your life, in the hope of seeing as wide a diversity of wildlife as possible, you would do well to pick now. Any earlier and your travel options would be far more limited; any later and while travel might be easier still, wild places would no doubt have been further diminished.

If you prefer your home comforts to travel, watching wildlife documentaries on TV can plug the gap; you can immerse yourself in scenes of wilderness from around the planet and wonder what all the fuss is about.

Is a positive spin still possible here in Britain, given the scale of losses? On a good day I like to think so, in part because we have no choice but to make the best of what’s left. Pockets of interesting habitat are still out there. And information about how to find them, and what you are likely to see, is easy to come by. Within a few miles of home, I can walk through places rich in wildlife: in nature reserves, on the local common, through forgotten woods, or tracing the course of a stream running through swampy field corners, fragments of habitat survive where time is well spent. So much has been lost, but there is so much yet to lose.

Alongside the changes to our countryside, there have been huge changes in the way we interact with it. In just a few generations our relationship with nature has radically altered. This reflects the diminishing opportunities to experience wild places; there are fewer of them and more of us now live in urban areas or landscapes dominated by intensive farming. There are also more competing interests these days. An innate love of engaging with wildlife is present in almost every young child. These days, as children get older, that love often fades - other interests, usually indoor pastimes, begin to take precedence. The wider world, accessible as never before through our electronic devices, is an irresistible draw for curious, ambitious young minds. A basic knowledge and under­standing of the countryside and its wildlife would once have developed in nearly all children; it was a natural progression from that early, instinctive love of nature. Nowadays, that is the exception rather than the rule - most kids quickly move on to other things.

All this is brought home to me most clearly by thinking about my own experience of growing up and how it differed from that of my parents and of my own children. When I stayed indoors, especially during the long school holidays, I was bored witless; there was very little to do. But from the age of about eight I was allowed to roam freely from the house, armed only with a few simple words of advice: ‘Take care when crossing the road; don’t get into a stranger’s car; and don’t waste all your money in Mr Lovatt’s sweet shop.’ I was obliged to follow only one rule: ‘Be back home in time for tea (or bed) or there’ll be trouble.’ There was often trouble.

We lived in a largely rural area and the fields, woods and ponds offered interesting spaces where we could climb trees and play games. Wildlife was sometimes part of the entertainment, though when I was young, I didn’t venture out specifically to engage with it. It was incidental rather than sought. But if an area of rough grass was full of grasshoppers then an hour could be spent seeing who could catch the most, or the biggest. The Bracken-covered hillside near home was valued for no other reason than because it was away from adults and allowed us to construct a network of hideouts beneath the fronds. I doubt if I knew what the plant was called.

Conker-hunting was an exception. We did visit places specif­ically to collect these nuts in the autumn, and spent hours hurling sticks up into the canopy to dislodge choice-looking examples. When we managed to hit a good cluster of fruits, there would be a shower of split skins and a pulse of excitement as we scanned the leaf-litter. If we were unlucky the nuts would be ‘whiteys’ (not yet fully ripe), ‘flaties’ (not much good for conker fights) or even ‘water-babies’ (small, poorly formed and soft inside).

Another exception was fishing. I learnt the names for the most common fish, and places where you could catch them, though I never seemed to have much luck. The local canal produced a few Eels, which in those days were viewed as stealers of bait rather than a worthwhile catch.

One horrific memory, still vivid after four decades, involved snagging my hook in a tangle of vegetation and snapping the line. I gave up in disgust and headed home. The next day, with renewed determination, I went back and waded out from the bank to retrieve it. I found the line and followed it back to where it was caught. There, on the end, was a dead Moorhen. It had tried to eat the worm on the hook. I told no-one, but it was a lesson learnt about the consequences of carelessness: our behaviour has direct impacts on the other animals living around us.

I didn’t go birdwatching until my later teens; when I was younger, I didn’t know the names of many birds. There was a brief phase of egg-collecting which appealed to my hunting and collecting instincts, but it ended abruptly when ‘Auntie’ Marjorie, from a few doors down, warned that I could be sent to prison.

When I was older, I did start to learn more about wildlife through books and the monthly magazine of the Young Ornithologists’ Club. The two books that had most influence were Gerald Durrell’s The Amateur Naturalist and the Reader’s Digest Birds of Britain. The bird book was the one that, finally, taught me to identify the common local species. It was given to me by my Uncle David and Auntie Pam for my fifteenth birthday and I’m not sure I’ve ever properly thanked them. Perhaps that’s because they included my unmentionable middle name in the inscription, and added ‘happy spotting’ for good measure - but I’m over that now, so I really must make amends.

For each species in Birds of Britain there was a small photo of the bird, and a map to show where you might find it. Every bird was also painted in numerous different poses, indulging in natural behaviours, so you got a real feel for how it went about its life. And the images included enough background to suggest the preferred habitat.

I still thumb through Birds of Britain occasionally, and it provides a salutary reminder that nothing stays the same for very long. I had yet to encounter a Willow Tit when I received the book but I learnt that there were up to a hundred thousand pairs in Britain. Not anymore. The maps showed that Cirl Buntings and Red-backed Shrikes could still be chanced upon across much of southern England, and I looked out (in vain) for both. The Hobby, Goshawk and Red Kite were either scarce or absent from the English countryside, while Crane, Little Egret and Cetti’s Warbler sneaked into the book as unobtainable rarities, given just a few words and a single small image. These were birds to dream about rather than look out for in the local landscape.

Gerald Durrell’s book was very different. I wasn’t interested in his titles on collecting and keeping exotic animals, but much of The Amateur Naturalist was about native British wildlife and how best to experience it for yourself. I was especially drawn to the double-page photos showing things that had been collected from the wild in each habitat. There were feathers, skulls, bits of broken eggshell, hazelnuts opened by various small mammals, as well as leaves and fungi.

These books changed my life. I decided to do a degree in ecology based more on Gerald Durrell’s take on the subject than anything I’d learnt at school. And my main passion, and later my career, involved birds and their conservation.

My dad grew up in the small village of Hillesley, in rural Gloucestershire, during the rationing years after the Second World War. When I talk to him about his memories of childhood, I’m struck by two things. Firstly, knowledge of wildlife and the countryside was seen as a routine, everyday part of life from a young age - so much so that he struggles to say how it came to him. Not so much from books or school, he thinks, but probably more ‘by osmosis, simply through spending time in the countryside and talking to other children about it’.

The other aspect that stands out is the way in which the countryside then was far more than simply a place to play and

while away the hours. In those tough, postwar years it was used as a way of making life more tolerable. Moorhen nests were raided so the eggs could be eaten. Hazelnuts and sweet chestnuts were gathered and buried in a tin so they would keep until Christmas.

Animals were caught for food as well. A few of the older kids tied Woodpigeon squabs into their nest so that the adult birds continued to feed them and they could be harvested when nice and plump. Rabbits were caught with wire snares, the trick being to find a place on a Rabbit trail where a small hop was required. If the wire was set in just that spot, the animal would jump into the loop, ensuring that it was caught. Some people kept ferrets to help increase the catch. Dad recalls people walking back to the village with the ‘coneys’ strung out along a pole, slung over the shoulder. Mushrooms were gathered and Watercress was valued as a source of greens, to be collected only from fast-flowing streams to make sure it was safe. The local wood was owned by someone my grandfather knew well and so the family were allowed to cut stakes for the peas and beans in their vegetable plot.

There was money to be made too. Blackberries were gathered in huge quantities and sold to a man who came by the village regularly, parking his van next to the pub to conduct the trans­actions. They were sold by weight and kids would spray them with water to help nudge the price a little higher. My dad kept pigs, buying them when they were a few weeks old and fattening them up to be sold on. Acorns gathered from the woods could be used to save on expensive feed. A sign of the times was that profits were as likely to go towards new school shoes as anything more frivolous.

My mum had a more urban upbringing, living in the suburbs of London in Welling for much of her childhood. Unsurprisingly, she had far less contact with nature and remembers the nearby parks as places for fresh air and exercise rather than for engaging with wildlife. From days out in London she recalls the Feral Pigeons massing in Trafalgar Square and the Ravens at the Tower of London, noting that they held more interest than any of the dull buildings or their contents. Perhaps this hints at an interest in nature that was there but had been suppressed through lack of opportunity.

The war opened up a wider window onto the countryside. Mum was evacuated as a young girl to a coastal village near Eastbourne, East Sussex to stay with relatives. Here, there were regular fishing trips with her uncle and she remembers her delight at finding Primroses and Bluebells in the local woods, two plants that she stills holds in special affection. She would pick a few to bring back to the house - one of the simplest, yet most effective acts of connection with nature, and one that is far less common in modern times.

In contrast to my dad, she has fond memories of books, and one in particular that taught her about wildlife. Enid Blyton was popular in my childhood, but back in 1944 she published a volume called the Nature Lover’s Book, with poems, short stories about countryside walks, and colourful, lifelike illustrations. My mum loved it and even remembers the name of the friendly uncle who imparted his knowledge so readily in the stories: ‘Mr Merryfield, I think it was, though we just called him Mr Merry!’ As a child myself, I can remember pulling that book down from the shelf and leafing through the pages. It looked and sounded rather formal and old fashioned, but that didn’t stop me reading it.

My own children, Ali and Ben, were born either side of the new millennium. Wildlife was very much part of their early experi­ences, in the garden at first, and later out in the woods and fields. I phoned them today, interrupting their respective university studies to ask about their memories of early childhood. I was surprised how much detail came flooding back to them, and then to me. There were evenings peering out of the kitchen window watching Fox cubs clamber around by the climbing frame. There was the time we wrapped up warm and lay on the ground at the edge of a field to watch shooting stars. There were a few failed attempts to see Badgers and then one successful trip, remembered more for the two buck Muntjac that chased and barked at each other relentlessly in the fading light.

Visits to my parents’ house, ‘Eastfield’, invariably involved a pond-dipping session and an accumulation of Palmate Newts in a goldfish bowl - to be shown off and then carefully returned to the water. Some of those animals must have been caught dozens of times over the years. We rescued Toads from the lane near the village pond and deployed small mammal traps overnight, catching Bank Voles, Wood Mice and the occasional Common Shrew. We left the porch light on overnight to see what moths would visit, before trying to work out which species they were before breakfast the next day. Even now if they find a moth it quickly appears on WhatsApp with an expectation (usually unfulfilled) that I’ll tell them its name.

There were holidays on the south coast and then in north Cornwall, near Tintagel, where we spent hours dangling crab lines into the harbour and later fished for Mackerel. Rock-pooling was a favourite pursuit, as it was on my own childhood holidays, allowing yet more creatures to be caught and temporarily held captive. There was a spring visit to Shetland where we ‘rescued’ Oystercatcher chicks from the road, dodged the overprotective skuas with a mixture of delight and genuine trepidation, and watched Otters scrambling along the rocky beaches. On Unst, as far north as it’s possible to go in Britain, we were entranced by Puffins waddling past our rucksacks as we ate lunch, and watched Gannets swirling around the updrafts of the immense cliffs that make up their colony.

One striking thing about all these memories is that they are shared; they are things we did together as a family. That’s the most obvious difference between my children’s experience and that of my own childhood: my kids had far less scope for the independent learning that was routine for previous gener­ations. When I was growing up, if I wanted to escape from parental control and do my own thing, I wandered off into the woods and open spaces. Now that option is closed off because of fears about safety. If escapism is what children are after, they must get it by staying indoors and engaging with a virtual world, one that comes with its own concerns about safety and wellbeing.

The modern, parentally guided approach to the countryside is not all bad. When we did things as a family, we talked about what we saw and some of the problems that wildlife faces at the hands of humans. I like to think my children learnt something about the natural world as a result. They certainly got to know the names of some of our common birds and plants at an earlier age than I did. Another advantage, for me if not for them, is that we can now reminisce fondly about days spent together exploring the countryside, as indeed we have just done.

I can see a clear transition in just three short generations, one that I think will ring true for many families. For my parents, my dad especially, the countryside was integral to everyday life. All the local children knew it well, made good use of it and learnt about it from each other as well as from their parents. It was a way of life. By the time of my own childhood, some of that intimacy had gone. I count myself lucky to be in the last generation allowed to explore the outdoors more or less on my own terms. But the countryside for me was a playground and a source of entertainment. Other than a few family expeditions to pick blackberries or sweet chestnuts, my connection with the wildlife was less meaningful and my knowledge not especially deep. Only later in childhood did I become seriously interested in the natural world, and that was very much as a hobby. Tellingly, it was not something to be shared with my peers because it was seen as an unusual interest and a rather uncool one at that. My dad chatted to his friends and classmates about wildlife. I kept quiet.

Because of my own positive experiences with freedom, I had wanted a similar thing for my children. I battled against the prevailing view that unsupervised roaming was just too risky. But, in the end, I mostly went along with it. The quandary parents face is summed up by something I read recently by E. O. Wilson, one of the greatest biologists of our time. He credits unsupervised, hands-on experience in childhood as a crucial factor in his devel­opment: ‘Better to be an untutored savage for a while. Better that the summer at Paradise Beach [where he honed his interest in wildlife] was not an educational exercise planned by adults. Better that it was an accident in a haphazard life.’

During one such unsupervised session, the young Wilson hooked a sharp-spined pinfish and contrived, by pulling too hard on his fishing rod, to jerk it into his right eye. His eyeball was pierced by a spine and subsequently lost most of its function. Another fishing accident, though with a far higher personal cost than my own. And another example of an independent lesson well learnt, although this time with life-long repercussions. Perhaps this would have happened even had an adult been present, and perhaps not. Not many parents these days are willing to take the chance.

We live in a golden age for international travel and connectivity with the wider world. But the golden age when children could explore the local countryside on their own terms has gone forever.