There it goes, the teewhuppo, tieves nacket, peewype, tumbling and falling out of control, piebald birds on an aerial spool, squealing electronic feedback, their vocals somewhere between ‘the Clangers’ and a wobbleboard, slurred wheezy squeals, uttered in day and night-time flight rituals.
The Peewit, with its fascinator feathered crests, signalling in the breeze, with owl wide wings, making music as they move in semaphore black and white patterns, dot-dash, black -white across the sky; Then out of clouds like the black and white arrows display team, looping, winnowing and loping, ducking and diving; suddenly collecting themselves and landing softly, or jerking upward again into an anarchic looping of the loop, all to signal territory and impress and protect the girl.
Oh, for the wings of the Green Plover, oh, for the cry of the pirouetting posturing teeawit! On the breeding ground its lovely olive backed iridescence shades to black as jet, then to malachite, jade or emerald. Tail up, head down in a musing ritual lekking, the males’ cinnamon undercarriage upended brazenly in a flag of passion; male and female teeter around each other in a slow stubble shuffle, the field pitted with their ceremonial scrapes.
It’s that flight, those calls, the black, white and green sheen, the headgear and those aerobatics that set the lapwing apart, the sum of whose special parts and behaviours have a power to distract us in this lockdown, holding the moment in careless joyfulness, a freedom, that is displayed in their every move and vocalisation, rippling out their aerial somersaulting message of hope to all who stop and watch.
Watching lapwings, or ‘peewype’, of course, in Northumbrian, up the lane from my house between fields and the coast, has definitely been my wildlife highlight of the Covid-19 lockdown. They have been so comical, cute and aerobatic and strange in their calls and habits and we have been able to observe from start to finish their elaborate breeding rituals.
What has been or is yours? We live in uncertain and challenging, even frightening times and like many people are rediscovering that nature is our solace and our natural health service in hard times such as these.
Quietly and unintentionally, because we are forced to live more in our gardens as a wonderful spring unfolds and to take our exercise locally in natural surroundings, every day people are reconnecting with nature, rebuilding a bond many of us have lost. We are beginning to re-appreciate what we still have and have no longer. Perhaps it’s a start of nature not being taken so much for granted in future?
I hope by the time this edition comes out the restrictions have been lifted and we all feel a bit freer and easier, but I doubt it will be as it was before. In the post Covid world nothing will ever be quite the same. I hope we do eventually go back to embracing and shaking hands, but I also hope that bond with nature continues to grow as never before. It has, the sickness, fear and personal losses incurred aside, been a great opportunity to have a simpler and more connected life in nature hasn’t it?
Do we really want to resume all of our frenetic lifestyles? Can we maybe continue to travel less and eat and exercise heathier and more and simultaneously take a bit more time out and put something back in for nature that sustains us? Can we help nature recover itself and work together at every level to sort the climate crisis as we have pulled together and focussed our society on coming through Covid, as we too recover from this terrible human crisis? I hope so.
The starting place for this to happen is I believe our reflecting as a body on the great ties we have actually had in lockdown. For despite our semi confinement and lack of absolute freedom to move at will and interact with others, when we or our loved ones have not been affected by the virus or other health issues, nature has been there for us and not only provided a great context for our relaxation and mental and physical work outs but something that has genuinely enriched us every day. All of us must realise and be aware as never before just how much nature does for us and that we rely on it as our framework for living well.
It’s the little things we can remind ourselves of things noticed locally and, in our gardens, and skies, as glorious spring unfolded around us and we had for once, time to actually take it in. There were so many reports of these little encounters and observations that highlighted and lifted people form their worries and stresses.
And in a still wildlife rich county as this, indeed across all the old region of Northumbria, there were just many sightings that excited and surprised. It seemed that there were more people out looking and noting what was about, but also in this natural time of spring abundance and where driving and wider activities were prohibited, nature also seemed to be making a come back, in places it had previously fled from. Nature, all around us was ‘coming home’.
Here’s a few from hundreds we have logged and would like to know more of. They include the lady in Stanfordham, who in the night, was woken up by a fracas in the garden next door, where she saw the bird table knocked to the ground and peanuts being fought over by two raucous badgers! Many noticed fed and even filmed the normally elusive unseen hedgehogs in their gardens, from Cullercoats to Corbridge and learnt how to help them and what to and not to feed them; one of my trustees lives near Hadrian’s wall and reported a wren nesting by the back door, a lot of pygmy shrews around and found a great crested newt in his garden for the first time.
Others filmed and tweeted about a red kite every day over Hexham, all sorts of pond life in their small back yard pond near Acklington, seal encounters on the beaches around St Mary’s and glimpses of dolphins at Cresswell, while out for their daily exercise. Yet others were sustained by regular views in the middle of Newcastle of the breeding kittiwakes and other birds and wildlife along the Tyne. In many ways and for many people wildlife became more central and important, often the momentary highlight in a stressful time.
At NWT we were out in small numbers keeping an eye on our reserves and sites and our field staff and rangers did see quite a lot of wildlife getting on with things in our human absence, a profusion of nesting birds and animals, from otters to herons to wagtails and waders.
At Hauxley the only vandalism we experienced (so far, fingers crossed, was the rubber surround of our big viewing window being chiselled away by crows attacking their reflections. We had several reports of slow worms and adders and common lizard in new places and many new bird records.
Unfortunately some took advantage of the quietude and lack of ears and eyes in some corners and wildlife crime was reported in several places, such as at Prestwick Carr and Linton Lane, including a red squirrel caught and killed in a Fen trap, reports of people interfering illegally with badger setts, poaching and lamping for hares; idle hands make more than mischief you might say.
It’s wasn’t just the lapwings that gave me inspiration, there have been hedgehogs in my own garden and out on the lanes and cliffs near home I have seen so many things it has been slightly mind blowing, restoring my faith that nature has not as yet gone to pot entirely.
I’ve seen a peregrine stoop and catch its prey, migrant birds like ouzel and wheatear and whitethroat and swallows drop from the mist, five or more hares an evening, long eared, little and barn owl and heard tawny. I’ve seen curlews as well as watched closely those lapwings fighting and displaying and settling down on their eggs and raising young, a fox and a glimpse of a badger. I’ve seen shapes of porpoise and gannets out at sea, and more bumble bees and butterflies than I’d expected.
I saw a weasel and a stoat, heard skylarks and watched pipits parachuting, got almost sick of hearing a chiffchaff in my garden and heard every evening yellowhammers and linnets and finches and more all singing out their territorial notes. There has been amazing dawn and dusk choruses. In other words, spring is still spring!
There could have been more, but I was thankful there was no less. I’m lucky I live in a wild rich area still, there are many across Northumberland, Tyneside and the North East. I know` too that all these were once richer and more widespread, but it confirmed to me, all this wildlife in lockdown, that there are many building blocks in place to enable natures’ full recovery as we recover from the Covid pandemic. There is hope and there is the chance of a new start in turning around what has felt at times like our collective war on nature.
Our absence hasn’t all been good and the lack of management in the countryside in some places has and is causing problems for certain species. We have not been able to re-introduce more water voles as intended so far at Kielder, we have planted many less trees than we had planned, some areas have not been cut and managed as needed to be diverse floral meadows. Some sites, near where people had to go to exercise, have been a little over used and disturbed, others have taken the extra use well.
It’s a mixed picture, but for the most part a totally inspiring, nature filled, experience that has distracted from the torment of not seeing loved ones, loneliness and illness, or fear of it and the strain of weeks of being tethered and trying to balance homeworking and childcare and survive.
In some cases, it has enhanced and reaffirmed people’s joy and wonder in all around them and they have never been so thankful for what nature provides.
So, will we just shrug off all of this and with a sense of relief and denial just go back to, ‘as we were’, with nature as a mere backdrop, unnoticed and unloved, just ‘nature’? Or will we now, many of us at least, develop further this new relationship with our world and very local wild places and things and always seek to include it in our daily lives?
Has all this actually rewilded all of us a little bit? A sort of extension of the effect people say they get from taking part in our Wildlife Trust 30 Days Wild and random acts of wildness, where people pledge to daily interact with their local wild bit?
Will we value our real re-found freedom, that of a more balanced life and make adjustments, such as, for me and others, less travelling about and meetings and more online working? I think that could happen. For me it will.
Then, as this becomes the ‘new normal’ we might just coalesce around the longer term and much bigger and threatening things we and future generations have to face; the rebalancing of too much nature going extinct linked to the climate crisis.
If we all pull together as we have on Covid and make some personal and societal changes, backed fully by government and resources, locally and globally, this can happen. It hasn’t been easy or straightforward and it has been painful and tragic at times, but we have shown worldwide with the pandemic we can sort anything almost, if we set all of our minds towards it and cooperate across communities for our mutual and the environment’s benefit.
And if that emerges from the Covid lockdown, as some bright spark (perhaps a former US President) said, we will not have ‘wasted a crisis’, but used it to solve two bigger connected other ones which are affecting humankind as much as the whole planet and its ecology.
That is, I think, if we pull it off, what you call, a treble whammy!
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