Sedentary

Back blipped on 14 January 2020.

There are several havens for the sparrows in our garden where in dense thorny cover they are relatively safe from marauding sparrow hawks. This one is outside our kitchen window in a tangle of rambling rose and Hydrangea petiolaris.

Sparrows are the most sedentary of our British birds, rarely moving more than 2km from the nest site, though juveniles leaving the nest may disperse a little further and beyond the colony in which they were born.

Since finishing work at the end of October last year, I have been consciously trying to keep my movements as local as possible, part of our effort to reduce our carbon footprint. It does present a dilemma for someone interested in wildlife as the urge is always there to explore new areas and see new species. We are fortunate here to live somewhere that remains rich in habitats and species, and with sites like Leighton Moss on the doorstep, rare birds often come to us without the need to travel far.

I'm dwelling on the dilemma here, because this evening there was an Arnside Naturalists Society talk by a speaker who is well known locally.  His talk was about his quest to see all the British butterflies, dragonflies and orchids. Inevitably this has involved a fair amount of travelling around Britain.  He is a very good photographer and a funny and well-informed speaker, and his reputation drew an audience of 120.  It was a good evening out.

There was a time when this sort of quest would have involved collecting specimens of each of the species found, and the populations of some butterfly and orchid species still reflect this destructive hobby.  The quest of modern naturalists is to see and record the target species as photographs, you would think an altogether more benign form of collecting.

But the inevitable question is just how benign it really is if it involves a lot of fossil fuelled travel - since we are now seeing every day the damaging effects of a changing climate on people and wildlife?