David Bennett

Originally published December 22, 2008

The Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust (WWT) is a conservation organisation dedicated to saving wetlands for wildlife and for people.

It was founded in 1946 by Sir Peter Scott, a naturalist and an artist. He bought the first wetland site for the trust and for many years he hosted a TV programme about wildfowl and habitat preservation. The programmes were a great hit, and an entire generation of English lovers of wildlife and the countryside owe their interest in part at least to those programmes.

But as Sir Peter Scott recognized, it is not enough to see wildlife on television, and it was always part of his vision that Trust sites should not only be areas of conservation but also places where visitors could see wildlife.

The WWT now has nine visitor centres in the UK and has captive wildfowl collections from all over the world. Flocks of wildfowl, some in their tens of thousands, also visit.

The Trust also does essential work internationally for the preservation of wetlands under the Ramsar Convention, an international treaty signed in Ramsar in Iran in 1971. Under that convention, various national agencies cooperate to preserve wetlands and the wildlife that depend on wetland ecosystems.

Martin Mere Wetland Centre is a WWT site about five miles from the coast in Lancashire in the North of England, facing the Irish Sea.

It is formed around a series of meres or shallow lakes, which are home for the season to thousands upon thousands of wildfowl.

At the moment (December 2008) there are over 6,000 Pinkfoot Geese and over 1,000 Whooper swans overwintering at Martin Mere. The photo here is of a greylag goose, which is a close relative of the Pinkfoot.

The Whooper swans will leave in March and fly to Iceland for the summer. It is well known that they fly the same route year after year, but their precise route is not known.

Wind Farms

Because there are more and more wind farms being built along their route, the swans are colliding with them. So the WWT and the wind farm development companies are working together to work out where the wind farms should be sited to minimise the risk of collisions.

To find out the route of the migrating Whooper swans, for example, the WWT fitted transmitters to the backs of some swans.

For their flight at migration time, every bit of extra weight puts the swans at risk. So in order to be at their optimum weight for the flight, Whooper swans stop drinking for a period before they begin their annual migration.

Some birds weigh 12kg (26lbs) or more, and I guess that like me, you would think that bigger birds are stronger and more likely to make a successful flight. The staff at the Wildlife Centre know, however, that a bird that weighs about 10kg (22lbs) is most likely to make the journey successfully.

Now WWT has feedback from the journeys to enable it to work with the wind farm operators to site the wind turbines with least risk to wildlife.

Originally published November 18, 2008

By the south bank of the river Thames in London, close to the Globe Theater and just across the river from St Paul’s Cathedral, there is pretty house, painted a creamy white.

Above the door, the name Cardinal’s Wharf is written. And to the side of door on the front of the building is a plaque that reads –

Here lived Sir Christopher Wren during the building of St Paul’s Cathedral.

Here also, in 1502, Catherine Infanta of Castille and Aragon, afterwards first Queen of Henry VIII, took shelter on her first landing in London.

One can easily imagine Sir Christopher Wren getting up in the morning and looking out of one of the upper windows to see, across the river, his creation rising out of its foundations as the work progressed from the laying of the first stone in 1677 to the completion of the cathedral in 1708.

The St Paul’s Cathedral that Wren designed is the ‘new’ building that replaced the old St Paul’s that was gutted in the Great Fire of London in 1666.

Today, Wren would not have a clear view of St Paul’s because it is hemmed in by later buildings. But from the pedestrian bridge that spans the Thames the cathedral commands the skyline.

Originally published November 8, 2008

The village of Haworth is set in the Pennine Hills, overlooking the Worth valley, and it is in the parsonage that the Bronte sisters wrote their most famous works, including Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte and Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte.

Behind the Parsonage, which now houses the Bronte Museum, there is a field aptly named Parson’s Field.

It slopes gently uphill, and as approached we saw a ram and several ewes in the top corner by the dry stone wall.

As we approached, they looked up and the ram stood at the back, side-on to me, full-coated and magnificent. The ewes looked a little spooked and one of them pawed the ground like a bull, and pulled back her lips to tell us not to come any closer.