I have, my GP explained, not been getting out enough – by which she meant that a birder who never goes birding and who spends all the day hunched over an editing programme listening to other people talk about wildlife rather than enjoying wildlife himself is throttling off a large part of what makes life worth living. It is not healthy. And it always catches up with you in the end.
As someone who strongly believes that mental health as well as physical health is linked to exercise (which is so obvious if you pause for even a minute to think about how our bodies and brains evolved to work hard in what is still our recent history), it’s come as something as a lesson in humility to have pointed out in a doctor’s surgery that my expanding middle and the dull look behind my eyes is a result of not getting outside enough. Or at all.
So, I’m making a conscious effort to take her advice and walk more. I’m walking for two reasons: firstly I’ve not very cleverly manoeuvred the family finances over the last eighteen months into a position where if ‘getting out’ were to involve paying through the nose for diesel for the car I could probably only afford a trip across the road once a month; and, secondly, because I live in an area that many people who DON’T live here drive to just so that they can spend an afternoon walking. Which has only made my doctor’s apercu even more humiliating. I’m an amateur naturalist who lives on what is practically a nature reserve and for the last year or two I’d almost forgotten that. And I think of myself as an intelligent person…
Anyhow, one circuit (and there are many at Great Chalfield) I’ve been following and which I’ll undoubtedly refer to in the future is called ‘The Mile’. It is – perhaps unsurprisingly – called ‘The Mile’ because it is roughly a mile from one end to the other: in fact it almost precisely a mile from my front door step, up the garden, out onto the single-track road, and up to the Lodge marking the turn onto the Broughton Gifford village road. It is – again perhaps unsurprisingly – almost exactly a mile back again. It’s a gentle stroll rather than a ‘bash along the shingle to Blakeney Point’ kind of a slog, but it’s better than nothing, and it is really rather beautiful.
‘The Mile’ used to mark the old carriage route up to Great Chalfield Manor (so a long driveway in effect) that’s now tarmacced and lined with oaks and hedgerows of blackthorn, field maple and hazel. There are fields (mainly used by sheep) on either side, views right across to Wiltshire Wildlife Trust’s reserve at Morgan’s Hill some 15km away, and Marsh Tits, the occasional Hare, Buzzards breed, it was where I heard the first Chiffchaffs and Willow Warbler of this Spring, plants flower in ditches and on rough grass verges (Celandines, Primroses, and Dog Violets at the moment), and while I never have the place entirely to myself I have a growing sense of proprietaryship which I’m going to have to quash before I start ordering cyclists and fellow ramblers to ‘Get ORFFFF moi lannnnnd!’.
Ah, the evangelicalism of the convert…
Anyway, my doctor’s advice is still ringing in my ears, the drizzle that has been threatening to turn into something far more drenching is easing off, and I have a few Easter Eggs to burn off that middle of mine. It’s time to put the hiking boots on and get some exercise (and ‘panrecording’ – more of which later) done…
Photos copyright Charlie Moores/Talking Naturally 2012
A by-product of the increase in fuel/fool prices will mean far less year-listing, a return to ‘sensible’ twitching i.e. making sure your car has at least 4 birders (in the 80′s that was always the case, for me anyway), an increase in local ‘patching’ and an appreciation of every minute of foreign birding holidays before the government taxes those out of existance! – I now, in-between polishing my halo, walk and cycle virtually everywhere during the week and only have access to a shared car on a Sunday and even then we stick to an hours drive. It should lead to more being found and an appreciation of the more common birds and wildlife around you, definately an appreciation of something ‘rarer’ if and when you do see it and fitter, healthier birders. Some of the mass twitching pictures i have seen of late look more like an outdoor gathering of off-duty coppers!
ATB Laurie -
You may be right Laurie, but it does seem that whatever the cost of fuel birders/twitchers find a way to pay for it. It would be quite sad if we all only got into ‘local’ observations because we have no financial choice rather than because it’s actually really interesting – but then again I do wonder whether if I won the lottery I’d be so self-restrained
Love the comment about off-duty coppers!
Cheers