Nature Spring Diary, May 26, 2007
- 26 May 07, 06:20 PM
Thank you :-)
Don't miss the programme that we've made from blog.
........and what shall we do next?
cut and paste -- old-style!
this blog has now been turned into a radio programme Nature -- Spring Diary which you can hear On 主播大秀 Radio 4 at 9 p.m. on Monday, May 28, immediately after the first big television Springwatch programme. And it's repeated on Tuesday, May 29 at 11 a.m. or you can hear it by the listen again facility on the Radio 4 website.
It's been a real thrill to share the energy of this wonderful season with all of you........
.........Thank you all so much for all your contributions over the last couple of months. We had great fun turning them into a programme, with actors -- Anton Lesser and Bonnie Hurran -- reading the blog entries. Of course I couldn't squeeze everything in, but I hope that if you have a listen, you'll think that we got across the jizz of the whole thing and did justice to your writing. Do let me know what you think.
So............... what shall we do next?! Surely there's loads of potential in this idea of turning blog into prog. Anyone got any ideas about how we could develop it?
Oh -- and we got a lovely dawn chorus Nature going out a week after the diary with the best nightingales I have ever heard! And we need your spring wildlife questions for a live Nature on Monday, June 11. So if you got any questions that come out of what you have seen or experienced this spring, or that come to mind when you start watching the television Springwatch programmes, you can e-mail them to nhuradio@bbc.co.uk
Thanks again
Grant -- producer
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What's the honorarium? Carbon credits?
The time has come for the 主播大秀 to finally shed the taboo.
The natural, logical conclusion of any debate on this blog (and any other forum for that matter) is that overpopulation and our rates of consumption are the big issue. Yet the 主播大秀 resolutely fails to do anything serious on the subject.
So how about it? Let's try a little honesty.
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I have just been listening to the delightful programme made from people's Wildlife blogs so far. No-one mentioned butterflies I think? I checked my diary and found:
21 April: Today is 3rd or 4th day of seeing a Spotted Wood in my garden (Oswestry, north Shropshire); the little powder blue butterfly you usually see on chalky downs has been here again - 2nd sighting this week; several lone Cabbage Whites; and most amazingly - a Yellow Brimstone today! This is only the second year I've seen one here in Oswestry. The other time was 3 or 4 years ago, when one came regularly to my garden at 2 o'clock every day for a week or so in the summer. Several Red Admiral &
Tortoiseshell have been around for a few days as well.
28 May - since the beginning of May, no butterflies apart from a few Cabbage White - though not lone anymore! Judy Gough
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My first blog or message board. I am off work on annual leave watching the rain trickle down my windows. I was entranced to hear the spring blog turned into a radio programme. Well done bloggers! Well done readers! Well done editors and well done for the idea. Being off work spent midnight til 2am watching the night cams! Thank you springwatch and Bill Oddie rocks! I've probably just given my age away.
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Well, I enjoyed it ... how about more of the duh duh duhh bit next time!?
Mrs Davidson politely listened with me and I made the mistake of seeking her opinion. She smiled kindly and said: "pretentious, self-satisfied, bourgeois ramblings".
Although possibly accurate, what else do you expect from someone who listens to Radio 2 and supports Man Utd?
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Managed to catch the prog this time and found it to be very enjoyable.
Seems like an idea that could just run under it's own steam anyway without having to be directed just at spring. Running as peoples observations and feelings on Summer, Autumn and Winter wildlife and the natural world around us.
I guess it could also be expanded to allow individuals own voices by setting up a voice messaging service where people could relate their own perceptions - this can be done on line. As nice as it is to have the segments narrated by 'actors' more different and regional voices might be a nice touch.
Again people could do short recordings maybe at their favourite spots or around their favourite seasonal subjects and send them in - which isn't beyind the average person to do these days. Although as a podcaster I might be a little biased in my perception of the ease of recording audio, but in truth it is easy and doesn't really need anything highly technical to do something basic.
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You said at 11 this a.m. - you had not heard a cuckoo yet and it was too early - well they are already on the Isle of Wight - heard last week on Brading Marsh to be precise!
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I am increasingly amazed by the number of journalists, both print and broadcast, in this country who seem to have no idea of how the calendar works or when the seasons begin and end.
Broadcasting a 'Springwatch' blog less than a month before Midsummer Day is self-defeating. It is now SUMMER! It has been SUMMER since the first weekend of May, and will continue to be SUMMER until the first weekend in August.
Not only is this an inexcusable, and frankly embarrassing, display of corporate ignorance on the part of the 主播大秀, but by suggesting that activity by flora and fauna which is taking place now is 'happening early for Spring' the programme is rendered inaccurate, misleading and irresponsible as it undermines the case for Global Warming.
'Springwatch' and all related broadcasts should have taken place between February and May, the actual Spring season, and not in early Summer. Particularly as all this programming has been paid for with public funds.
Personally I blame the introduction of British Summer Time, which in fact begins more than halfway through Spring and finishes more than halfway through Autumn, for confusing every generation since its inception.
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Oak Apple Day, 29th May
What a wonderful programme!
A World First of its kind?
Congratulations to all concerned.
Be happy forever,
George,
Wellington under The Wrekin.
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I think what Amelie is saying is that she is in the Ogden Nash camp (with apologies):
"The spring is sprung
The grass is riz
I wonder where the boidies is ..."
I do agree that the hour switching nonsense is an anachronistic pain in the pituitary - (if that's not an oxymoron?).
George - I hadn't heard of Oak Apple Day before, so thanks for that. Hopefully that menace of a pipe of yours will help to keep the parasitic(symbiotic?)wasps away!
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I have been meaning to post for weeks since i heard two cuckoos in our garden - anyway - they hung around for ages and now today i notice that the hedgesparrows we also have nesting are bringing up what i am pretty sure is a cuckoo baby as one of their own. It is very cute. We live in West Sussex RH20
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Thanks for the excellent blog-based programme.
I got some yesterday of a red squirrel female who is obviously nursing young. A close look at her right side between fore and hind leg will show two teats. Click on the pictures to get a closer look.
I first noticed because of the cleavage from the front view. She's eating peanuts about five meters from me while a CD is playing quite loudly (Rory McLeod). It seems to make the wildlife quite calm to have either the radio or some other sound source going. I shall keep the blog posted if/when she chooses to bring the young around.
xx
ed
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Message for Springwatch team.
The recent programmes have been very interesting but I have a problem in my garden with JAYS and MAGPIES who,I think,are predators of our garden birds. I discourage them and have been rewarded with SPOTTED FLYCATCHERS nesting at waist height near the house and lots of BLACKCAPS,WRENS,GOLDFINCHES
,CHAFFINCHES,SONG THRUSHES etc nesting around. Today however I have been delighted to find a LONG TAILED TITS nest less thank 3' off the ground in a redcurrant bush in my veg garden.I checked this morning and it has 3 eggs. I will try not to disturb them again.I enclose 3 pictures of the bushes- the nest is there in the centre but difficult to see. Just visible in the close-up
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The squirrel is !
xx
ed
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It's moved to .
xx
ed
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Sorry not to have replied to your comments sooner, after I had finished the spring diary program I got rather bogged down in the dawn chorus special Nature that is going out tonight. Actually bogged down as the wrong expression. There's not much that I enjoy more than messing about with birdsong.
Anyway, in answer to some of the comments above:
Bob -- consumption and human population are undoubtedly enormous environmental issues, but are they the natural development of a diary of spring wildlife, I wonder! I probably ought to do the good corporate bit and trawl through the entire radio 4 output to find out where these issues have been covered and to deny emphatically that I have been bribed with carbon credits in an attempt to stop me revealing these environmental fundamentals, but instead I'll just take this is a good reminder of what lies beneath almost every conservation or environmental issue that we cover. Always good to be reminded : --)
Judy Gough mentions butterflies -- we have had a fair few comments on them, but I'd love some butterfly or insect-related questions for next weeks Springwatch questions programme. That's the Nature that we're planning to do live on the evening of Monday June 11. Has anyone been seeing anything unusual or wondering butterfly-related thoughts? There's a new posting about that program.
Very glad that Jacqui Haynes has contributed for the first time to any sort of message board or blog as a result of the Spring Diary. It's only through doing the diary program that I've got enthusiastic about this and its potential. Never could see the point before. Now I do!
Brief mention for Deep Purple -- Bob's reference to them in the blog and me having to dig out an album of theirs led to a happy weekend of overindulgence in 1970s heavy rock. Pleased to say, I am recovering, slowly.
Chas Creek -- I agree with you about getting audio contributions directly from people, although at the same time I really did enjoy working with people's writing. I think we would get a real immediacy from the audio, but we might miss out on some of the art and elegance that there was in that writing. I also think that the diary could run and run, but at the same time it could just run out of steam. Wouldn't it be great, though, if we could make a program like that about each of the season is over a year. Would people be up for that? And, Chas, I've been wanting to find easy ways for people to record audio for other projects that I'm working on. One plan is to follow animal migrations all around the world through people recording their own audio observations. What do you think are the technologically easiest ways for people to do that? I'd love to know your thoughts.
The Cuckoo that Lynda Kidd heard referred to was part of the diary, which is why the timing of it in the calendar sounded strange to you.
And then there is the perennial subject of the timing of Springwatch -- Amelie. I'm pretty sure that my television colleagues do their programs so late in the season because they think that live images of baby animals are going to be more interesting than live images of eggs. That's got to be in it. But it always sounds strange to me too. And I expect there's also something to do with the murky world of TV scheduling as well. I thought the nice thing about the diary that we did on radio was that we were all busy writing it in the thick of spring when that whole feeling of rising sap was all around.
Pleased to hear about Katie's Cuckoo -- I think we're bound to have something about cuckoos in the Springwatch questions programme. And the same goes for magpies. Are they really such villains? If you do have any questions for that program I am going to put up a new posting and we can put the questions on that one.
Finally, thanks to Ed for the dancing squirrel. Unfortunately it wouldn't dance on my computer. But it was a nice still anyway.
Thanks to you all
Grant -- one of the producers of Nature
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Grant - thanks for coming back to us and for atleast responding to my question. I agree with your response - it was a good reminder. The trouble is that a reminder can only really be good if it is acted on. Overpopulation and the exploitation of our env are the drivers underpinning Nature and Springwatch. Why are we not hearing the cuckoos? Why has Spring weather changed? Why did the toads spawn so early? What affects the timing of the arrival of the swifts?
Unless these questions are asked - you run the risk of promoting nothing other than cloud cuckoo land.
You don't have to trawl the archives to see how often the subject is properly covered as there is a book on the subject by population expert, Jack Parsons called 'The Treason of the 主播大秀'. Jack sadly died (while still fighting the cause)last October. Details of his work are available at www.popolpress.com or via the Optimum Population Trust.
Incidentally, in the 3 days since you posted your response, the population has grown by a further 660,000.
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