in the Winter.
It’s not every day you get a national treasure and a lead thinker and broadcaster on wildlife and Nature speak up on your behalf and encourage people to donate to your cause. Sir David Attenborough, long term President and supporter of Wildlife Trusts, including Northumberland, did exactly that recently, taking time in his 100th year to prepare a video on the importance of our harnessing the Rothbury Estate to demonstrate nature recovery at the biggest scale possible in England. He did this as he knows how critical it is that we start to develop bigger nature networks, he’s seen so much change for the worse in his lifetime but still inspires hope and sees this as part of a new wave of conservation. It helped, immediately over a million was donated and the waves of excitement are still being felt.
It’s been that sort of year for Northumberland Wildlife Trust, enormous fundraising and scaling up of our action and lobbying to reconnect people to Nature in their daily lives, as well as upscaling in connecting wildlife areas and corridors to bring more nature back, if we can’t do that here what chance does nature have anywhere else?
We are so lucky in Northumberland to already have, by comparison with most places south of the Border, stunning landscapes and great habitats with a good selection of species. But even here it is less than it should be and regeneration, preservation, restoration, even reintroduction, are necessary to rebalance life around us. All this to be achieved whilst keeping areas productive for our food and forestry needs and other land uses.
The Tyne Valley is a perfect example of this with its rich and varied mosaic of land uses often at great scale, nature very much in the picture, but also pushed into the margins and not the priority very often. Change is needed here too. But I like to celebrate, especially at this time of year what is still there and take in its good and wonder, to fuel me up to take this big agenda forward. My forays in the last year around the Tyne have all been about this.
Like for many Nature is my retreat and reenergises me when life gets too busy and challenging. The Tyne valley is just the place for that as we know. Christmas is a time I often take a long work break and explore deeper into wildness.
One of the most memorable examples for me of this is one day walking out into a gentle snow fall, plodding into the woods with my snow boots on that I’d last used in Greenland. I secreted myself in a wood and, well dressed for the cold, sat like an old bear on a log, until the snow settled around and on me, until I looked and felt just like a part of the woodland itself. I stayed like this until I was literally a snow-man!
It was incredibly peaceful and calming just watching the snow fall, birds coming close, a woodpecker so black and red against the white, a hare sneaked past almost touching my boot, a rustle in the trees revealed a deer grazing undisturbed, unaware of my presence. In Native American culture this is knowns as ‘still hunting’, just seeing what happens when you blend into the background.
On another occasion by the Tyne, again in light snow, I followed the trail of a fox, who every few metres or so had killed and eaten or buried a redwing, one of the many flocks that had probably flown in from Iceland. After about a quarter of a mile I stopped and looked up a bank to see the actual fox, on the last course of his Christmas dinner!
I’m always on the look out at this time of year for birds such as winter thrushes and also siskins, and redpolls in the alders and willows by the river and if you are lucky crossbills in the spruce and pine plantations. I’ve had incredibly close encounters with these at Kielder and other places. On one occasion my grandson and I stood for some minutes with a flock of crossbills a few feet away, at his head height, the bright pink males and wine gum green females, like little parrots hanging there, quite oblivious of us.
You never know what is waiting for you out there in Nature, even in the depths of Winter, and I’d encourage everyone whenever they can to walk and explore. But even more importantly, to also slip away now and then, leave all the food and drink and family gatherings behind, even for short spells, to make connection with Nature. For in these moments, we sense the real meaning of Christmas in the turning of the season and feel truly human, held there in natural magic. It’s the best present you can give yourself.
All the very best!