birdgirl: Chew Valley Lake

Showing posts with label Chew Valley Lake. Show all posts

Saturday, 13 May 2017

Ringing a Tawny Owl Pulli (Chick) on 11 May 2017

I know that I am really lucky to live in a beautiful place near Chew Valley Lake, South of Bristol, surrounded by nature and wildlife and having parents that are so interested in birds and who have so much to teach me.

My Mum has a lot of passion but my Dad has trained himself in birds to a really high level. He has had a lot of commitment and patience to do that. He has also been putting a lot of time into his bird ringing skills. That means that even though I am a teenager and think I know best about most things, when it comes to birds, I listen when my Dad speaks (or almost always).

A few days ago Dad and I went to check out an owl nest box and found some pull (chicks) inside, which we took photos of. At first it was hard to make out what was inside, but then we realised it was a Tawny Owl pulli.

Last Thursday evening after school, we went back and I got to ring the pulley, my first owl ringed.

I was a little anxious about holding it because of it's sharp talons, but it was quite sleepy and so not a problem to hold or ring. OMG, what an amazing experience! How lucky am I? I feel really blessed.

Young Birder Mya-Rose Birdgirl Craig ringing a Tawny Owl Pulli
Photograph taken by and copyright Chris Craig

About the Author

Birdgirl Mya-Rose Craig in Antarctica
Photograph copyright Young Birder Birdgirl Mya-Rose Craig

Mya-Rose Craig is a 15-year-old young British Bangladeshi birder, naturalist, conservationist, environmentalist, activist, writer and speaker. She is based near Bristol and writes the successful Birdgirl Blog, with posts about birding and conservation from around the world. She loved seeing Mountain Gorillas in East Africa and Penguins in Antarctica over Christmas 2015, her 7th continent.

Mya-Rose was a Bristol European Green Capital Ambassador along with Kevin McCloud, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, Tony Juniper, Simon King, Miranda Krestovnikoff and Shaun the Sheep! See the full list of Bristol Ambassadors. She has also been listed with the singer-songwriter George Ezra and actress Maisie Williams from Game of Thrones as one of Bristol's most influential young people. She is an Ambassador for World Shorebirds Day, See It Her Way and a Charter Champion for The Charter for Woods, Trees and People. She organised a conference, Race Equality in Nature, in June 2016 aiming to increase the ethnic diversity in nature and plans to run her third Camp Avalon camp in 2017. She has also set up Black2Nature with the aim of working with organisations to increase the access to nature of Black Asian Minority Ethnic people. Please connect with her on LinkedIn (Mya-Rose Birdgirl Craig) so that she can invite you to join the Race Equality in Nature LinkedIn Group and be part of the change. She has been awarded the Bath and West Show Environmental Youth Award 2017 for Bristol for her Black2Nature work EYA 2017. Please also like her Birdgirl Facebook Page and follow her on Birdgirl Twitter.

Saturday, 6 May 2017

Birdgirl's Interview for BBC Radio 4 "You and Yours" Programme

Young Birder Mya-Rose Birdgirl Craig in her garden
Photograph taken by and copyright Chris Craig

During the Easter holidays, I was contacted by a journalist, Jess Quayle, from the 'You and Yours' consumer programme from Radio 4. They were planning a feature about the number of people feeding birds in their gardens and how this had increased massively in recent years. They wanted me to answer a few questions on the topic and talk about how I feed my garden birds.

Young Birder Mya-Rose Birdgirl Craig in her garden
Photograph taken by and copyright Chris Craig

The only problem was that I was away skiing and then was going straight to Paris to spend a week with my grandmother in Disneyland.

Luckily, the programme wasn't due to be aired for couple of weeks, so after I was home, I got up at 7 am midweek to record the last bit of dawn chorus in our garden in the Chew Valley, south of Bristol. If I am ever up at 5 am for ringing or twitching, hearing the dawn chorus is a truly fantastic experience. I was too tired to actually talk then, so fitted the recording in at Chew Valley Lake after school. The only problem was that the Bristol Water gardeners were out cutting and strimming the grass, so I had to do my recordings in between the noise. I always learn a lot about being a presenter, every time I have to do anything like this so is a brilliant experience.

It was amazing to have my first interview for BBC Radio 4 aired last Friday 5th May 2017, which you can still hear on BBC IPlayer for the “You & Yours” programme in the section about the increase in people feeding the birds in their gardens. I am at 10:45 into the programme on http://bbc.in/2qeC28M with images at http://bbc.in/2qMuXts.

Young Birder Mya-Rose Birdgirl Craig in her garden
Photograph taken by and copyright Chris Craig

About the Author

Birdgirl Mya-Rose Craig in Antarctica
Photograph copyright Young Birder Birdgirl Mya-Rose Craig

Mya-Rose Craig is a 14-year-old young British Bangladeshi birder, naturalist, conservationist, environmentalist, activist, writer and speaker. She is based near Bristol and writes the successful Birdgirl Blog, with posts about birding and conservation from around the world. She loved seeing Mountain Gorillas in East Africa and Penguins in Antarctica over Christmas 2015, her 7th continent.

Mya-Rose was a Bristol European Green Capital Ambassador along with Kevin McCloud, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, Tony Juniper, Simon King, Miranda Krestovnikoff and Shaun the Sheep! See the full list of Bristol Ambassadors. She has also been listed with the singer-songwriter George Ezra and actress Maisie Williams from Game of Thrones as one of Bristol's most influential young people. She is an Ambassador for World Shorebirds Day, See It Her Way and a Charter Champion for The Charter for Woods, Trees and People. She organised a conference, Race Equality in Nature, in June 2016 aiming to increase the ethnic diversity in nature and plans to run her third Camp Avalon camp in 2017. She has also set up Black2Nature with the aim of working with organisations to increase the access to nature of Black Asian Minority Ethnic people. Please connect with her on LinkedIn (Mya-Rose Birdgirl Craig) so that she can invite you to join the Race Equality in Nature LinkedIn Group and be part of the change. She has been awarded the Bath and West Show Environmental Youth Award 2017 for Bristol for her Black2Nature work EYA 2017. Please also like her Birdgirl Facebook Page and follow her on Birdgirl Twitter.

Sunday, 25 October 2015

More ringing

These are some photographs from my recent ringing at Chew Valley Ringing Station. I love ringing and I'm grateful to everyone at the ringing station who helps and supports me. Mike Bailey is my trainer there and he is brilliant, dedicating his retirement to the ringing station.

Special thanks also to Pete Burston, for all his patience as a trainer.

Ringing a Goldcrest on 27 Sept 2015
Photograph taken by and copyright Chris Craig

East Harptree School Environmental Club at the ringing station on 8 Oct 2015
I have taken them out birding before but missed them because of school
hotograph taken by and copyright Helena Craig

Two scarce Lesser Redpoll at the Ringing Station on 8 Oct 15
New ringing birds for Chris Craig and Pete Burston
Photograph taken by and copyright Helena Craig

Ringing a Great Tit on 8 Oct 2015 after East Harptree School had gone home
Photograph taken by and copyright Helena Craig

Ringing with Pete Burston on 8 Oct 2015 after East Harptree School had gone home

Photograph taken by and copyright Helena Craig

Ringing a Teal at Chew Valley Ringing Station 10 Oct 2015
Photograph taken by Chris Craig

Ringing a Teal at Chew Valley Ringing Station Oct 2012
Photograph taken by Chris Craig

Ringing a Teal on 10 Oct 2015
Photograph taken by Chris Craig

Ringing a Nuthatch on 11 Oct 2015
Photograph taken by Chris Craig

Ringing Redpoll sp ringed on 25 Oct 2015
Photograph taken by and copyright Chris Craig

About the Writer

Young Birder Birdgirl Mya-Rose Craig on Scilly

Photograph taken by and copyright Chris Craig

Mya-Rose Craig is a 13 year old young birder, naturalist, conservationist, environmentalist, writer and speaker. She is based near Bristol and writes the successful Birdgirl Blog, with posts about birding and conservation from around the world. She loved seeing Mountain Gorillas in East Africa and is looking forward to watching Penguins in Antarctica in December 2015, which will be her 7th continent.

Mya-Rose is a Bristol European Green Capital 2015 Ambassador along with Kevin McCloud, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, Tony Juniper, Simon King, Miranda Krestovnikoff and Shaun the Sheep! See the full list of Bristol 2015 Ambassadors. She has also been listed with the singer songwriter George Ezra and actress Maisie Williams from Game of Thrones as one of Bristol's most influential young people. Please like her Birdgirl Facebook Page and follow her on Birdgirl Twitter

Sunday, 12 July 2015

My guest blog for The Wildlife Trusts - 30 Days Wild

#30DaysWild was a Wildlife Trusts initiative for June 2015 to get people out into nature.

On Day 30, I wrote an article for the Wildlife Trusts website about dome of the issues in getting people into nature.

This is the link to my article http://bit.ly/1KZncI5

This is the article:

During June, The Wildlife Trusts ran a hugely successful nature initiative, 30 Days Wild. The idea was that each day people looked out for something wild or natural. Not a planned event searching out wildlife, but something that was a random act of wildness. It was a brilliant idea and got people across the country involved.

As a young birder, it would have been easy to just go birding daily at my local patch, Chew Valley Lake, listing a different bird each day. This would have been too easy, too within my comfort zone. Instead, I tried hard to choose wild things that were not planned at all, that I just came across, in my normal life. This was much harder. I do usually notice wild things as I pass them, but now I needed to take special notice with a photograph.

The month started well and on day one I ringed baby Blue Tits (pulley) from a nest box in our garden before school. We didn’t know until we opened the box whether there were any birds inside, so it was exciting to see them.

Then on day two, I sat and watched the wildlife in our pond, the next day I photographed a blackbird in our bird bath, then on day four, I went for a stroll in our beautiful woods and on day five I noticed a bee on flowers on my way to the school bus.

Some days my ‘doing something wild’ was obvious, like when on day six, I gave a ringing demonstration to Bristol Nature Network, when it was brilliant to see them so excited.

Other days I had to look harder and think harder. I had a 5 day school trip to Barcelona, so had to think of wildness in a city. In the end, I was able to come up with something wild for each day, pretty impressive for a city break (if I don’t say so myself). My favourite was the leaf carvings at La Segrada de Familia, with carvings of insects in them. Gaudi, the architect, was inspired by nature and always tried to bring an element of that into his work.

I know that I am really lucky to live in the countryside and be surrounded by nature. It might be more difficult in the city, but as David Lindo ‘The Urban Birder’ tells us, there is plenty of wildlife in the city. The Wildlife Trusts’ city centre reserves are really essential for this.

I think that it is crucially important for everyone in our society to be able to connect with nature, whatever their age and whether rich or poor. I have written and talked a lot about how to get children into nature and birds, including a list of things to try. It’s especially important to get children interested as they are the future. I think that the best way to inspire them is outside of school, at groups like after school clubs, Scouts and Guides. Teachers are already including important subjects like climate change, deforestation and conservation within Geography and Science, but I think teaching kids about nature as a stand alone subject in PSHR would give it the kiss of death, as nature is seen as nerdy. That is something that we must change.

In recent years, lots of people have written about how eco-therapy (going out into nature as a treatment) works better than anti-depressants for people with severe depression. However, you are more likely to be able to use eco-therapy if you have already connected with nature before. What this means broadly is that people who are already used to connecting with nature (for example because they live in the countryside), can use it to make them feel better more easily than someone who has never connected with nature (for instance because they live in the inner city).

Areas of our society most impacted by this are ethnic minority people living in the city. The research shows that ethnic minority people, especially men, are far more likely to suffer from mental heath issues. They are also the least likely part of our society connected to nature and so eco-therapy is unlikely to be an option for them.

It’s very difficult to engage this section of our society and virtually no research has been to find out why. There are no role models and nature is seen as a white past-time. I have spoken to a few ethnic minority birders that I know, but everyone says the same, that they didn’t have any role models, they got into birding just because they saw something in it and that their family were unsupportive.

Last weekend I organised a camp for young birders, Camp Avalon. I had read an American article by David Lindo talking about taking inner city ethnic minority teenagers out birding and “opening the door to nature” for them. I realised that it was important to try and overcome the barriers and get ethnic minority teenagers to attend my camp. In the end we had 14 teenagers with 6 from ethnic minorities (including me). It was hard work for them and us because engaging with wild things did not come naturally to them. Over the weekend, all fourteen teenagers managed to engage with nature in their own way. I really believe that even if some only engage with 20% of the weekend, hopefully they would have seen and understood enough for that “door to have been opened” so that they might connect with nature sometime in the future, when they are ready to. That might not be until they are in their twenties or even with a family, but the weekend would not have been wasted. One 16 year old Asian boy plans to return next year, which is am brilliant result.

Ringing at Camp Avalon

These are areas I intend to continue highlighting and want to look into more, see what can be done to overcome the barriers and then try to make the changes happen.

Camp Avalon

About the Writer

Young Birder Birdgirl Mya-Rose Craig on Scilly

Photograph taken by and copyright Chris Craig

Mya-Rose Craig is a 13 year old young birder, conservationist, writer and speaker. She is based near Bristol and writes the successful Birdgirl Blog, with posts about birding and conservation from around the world. She is looking forward to going Mountain Gorilla Trekking in East Africa in the summer and watching Penguins in Antarctica in December 2015, which will be her 7th continent. She has recently been listed with the singer songwriter George Ezra and actress Maisie Williams from Game of Thrones as one of Bristol's most influential young people. Please like her Birdgirl Facebook Page and follow her on Birdgirl Twitter

Tuesday, 30 June 2015

30 Days Wild - Doing something wild everyday in June - The Highlights

30 Days Wild - A Wildlife Trust initiative for June 2015

The month has flown by and now we are at the end, I thought I would remind myself of the best bits and in some cases maybe the nature I would otherwise have missed.