British Trust for Ornithology

Hello, my name is Dr. Viola Ross-Smith and I'll be the host of this episode of Beyond the Bird Table.

I am delighted to be joined today by Senior Research Ecologist here at the BTO, Dr. Chris Eason.

Hello, Chris.

Hi.

It's got an individual code on it, which allows us to identify that particular bird.

If it's reported back again, we know where it was ringed, where it turned up again.

BTO, so he runs the UK and Irish ringing scheme.

So I wondered whether you could talk to us a bit about BTO work on migration and tracking, including, of course, a bit more of your own work.

Hey, whatever you're doing over the next week or so, enjoy your gardening.

You've been listening to gardener Tom Pattinson, Tom Cadwallender from the British Trust for Ornithology, and Steve Lowe from the Cresswell Peel Tower.

Don't forget you can listen back to all of our previous programmes via the Nature Garden podcast.

I'm Carl Steinson.

[upbeat music] Hello, and welcome to episode 58 of the Wilder Podcast.

In this episode, we explore, along with our friends from the RSPB and the BTO, world-leading and groundbreaking research into how climate change is affecting bird populations, specifically in the UK, what this tells us about wildlife generally, and the actions that are needed at all levels.

Chloe, good evening.

Good evening, Tom.

So let's get into the conversation today.

Chloe, who are the guests we've got on, and what are we looking forward to?

These are the sort of conversations I absolutely love because Professor James Pearce-Higgins, who's the scientific lead for the BTO, is so informed on this subject and clearly so passionate about communicating what's happening to the bird populations across the UK with the effects of climate change.

And what I love is the number of people that have contributed to this story, and then that's beautifully balanced with the policy implications from Bethany Chamberlain, who's the climate mitigation officer for the RSPB, and she has so much to contribute about what this actually means and the things that we need to be putting in place, whether as an individual, as a landowner, or from policy perspective.

Um, and I did my first bird survey in 1972, and that was gulls on Puffin Island off, near Beaumaris.

Joined the British Trust for Ornithology and the RSPB, and, uh, basically started to develop a citizen science approach, alongside being passionate about wildlife.

And I've done lots and lots of surveys, um, a- across the world.

I was in the Falklands for a few years.

And, um, I l- have not specialized in waders particularly, but they fascinate me.

And because these birds, you know, are migrated long distances, and they are resident here in the winter, plus the fact that I've done a lot of work in the uplands.

And I did that for the British Trust for Ornithology and for the Atlas, the National Atlas, and there were a lot of waders up there.

So it became a passion, really, to explore what these birds are doing and, um, and as we are here today looking at a fantastic roost.

So Maya's been birding from the very ripe old age of eight.

And here she is in her early to mid-twenties, already a BTO Youth Ambassador, already winning the BTO's Young Ornithologist of the Year Award and a familiar voice on Radio 4's Tweet of the Day.

And she joins me today to talk all about how she's so focused on getting the next generation completely and utterly hooked on our beloved hobby.

Let's get into it.

Yeah, that's one of the best things about it actually is, is sharing that information.

We collect it for the British Trust for Ornithology, but then sharing that with the landowners, the people who are actively managing the land, and in some cases take the information that we're providing them into account when they are managing the land and making it better for the birds that we are there monitoring.

But what we've discovered is that things...

We're finding things that would go absolutely unrecorded, and only because of, um, constant ringing, monitoring of a site that literally wouldn't be bird watched.

Sunderland, a couple in Northumberland, a couple on Fair Isle, one on Orkney, and I think the rest were potentially Shetland.

And then, yeah, one in Highland that was trapped and ringed, probably the only one that's ever been fitted with a BTO ring in the middle of November in some nondescript area of the Highland coast.

Amazing stuff.

And I understand that one of these birds in the northeast was part of a very special and memorable day of autumn birding for you.