Episode 4 - Two dawn choruses recorded seventy years apart

In this episode of the Green Pledge Podcast we listen to two dawn choruses, recorded in the month of May, in the same place, but 70 years apart. 

In the 1950s on a couple of May mornings,  Harry Grimes took his reel to reel recorder to a view point on the Old London Road, just as you head out of Wotton Under Edge.  

Harry’s son, Hugo, has turned the recordings into a beautiful CD. He tells the story of his dad, interlaced with the sounds of the birds and an oral history recording made of Harry later on his life, The CD is available at Wotton Heritage Centre 

The full length recordings of the birdsong will become part of the Green Pledge collection at Gloucestershire archives as 

70 years later, on May 19th 2024, Green Pledge Project manager, Christina Wheeler, returned to the viewpoint and recorded the dawn chorus again. 

Hugo and Christina visit Ed Drewitt, a local bird expert, at his home in the Forest of Dean. Ed listened to the two recordings and gives us his insights into what  he heard.

For more info
the Green Pledge Project - https://www.gloucestershire.gov.uk/archives/our-projects/the-green-pledge-project/  
Ed's website - https://www.eddrewitt.co.uk/
Wotton Heritage Centre https://www.wottonheritage.com/
https://wottonheritage.bandcamp.com/track/06-hugo-grimes-introduction

Transcript

The Green Pledge Podcast
Episode 4 – Two Dawn Choruses 70 years apart. Transcript. 

CHRISTINA : Welcome to the Green Pledge podcast from Gloucestershire Archives. Travel with us through time to discover stories of local people who've protected nature and addressed climate change. We'll dive into the historic archive, bringing to light our environmental past, to reflect on the present and imagine what our future could be. 

In this episode we’ll be listening to two dawn choruses, recorded in the same place but seventy years apart. 

ED: I can almost count on my hand, one hand, the, the individual birds I can hear singing. Whereas actually in the recording from the 1950s, it's just, it's almost deafening, do you know what I mean, there’s so many birds (it’s a cacophony) it’s a cacophony exactly.

Until you have these two recordings to compare to, you're not really aware of this changing baseline syndrome, which is where people who, are alive today because they don't recall how things sounded 50 years ago, they just think that how they hear birdsong today is normal. and actually don't realise that actually, not that long ago it was a very different sort of soundscape really

HUGO: What fantastic thing my dad did, because without this, we wouldn't have those comparisons, you know? And it is a, you know, it is a census of birds at that one point in time, It's interesting to hear that, you know, the differences we have created a different environment, which obviously is reflected in the birds and other animals that can survive in that

CHRISTINA:  In this episode of the Green Pledge Podcast we are going to be listening to and talking about recordings of the dawn chorus made by Harry Grimes in May in the 1950s. Harry took his reel to reel recorder to a view point on the Old London Road, just as you head out of Wotton Under Edge. He recorded on a couple of May mornings.  

Harry’s son, Hugo, has turned the recordings into a beautiful CD. In that, he tells the story of his dad, interlaced with the sounds of the birds and an oral history recording made of Harry later on his life, The CD is available at Wotton Heritage Centre 

The full length recordings of the birdsong will become part of the Green Pledge collection at Gloucestershire archives.

70 years later, I returned to the exact same viewpoint on Old London Road and recorded the dawn chorus again. 

In this podcast you’ll hear a conversation when Hugo and I visited Ed Drewitt, a bird expert, at his home in the Forest of Dean. Ed listened to the two recordings and gives us his insights into what  he heard. 

But first let’s hear from Hugo, his dad Harry, and a little of the dawn chorus in 1950’s Wotton.

Dawn chorus

HUGO: We always knew they were there. The tapes on those old reel to reels. But first, we need to go back. My dad, Harry Grimes, in the year before we was married back in 1955, had bought a Grundig reporter reel to reel tape recorder,  for £80, expensive, professional heavy. 

HARRY: It was a Grundig and it was the one the BBC were using at that time for their, external broadcasts and I used it, I used it to broadcast, dawn choruses. The countryside was, teeming with birds compared with now.

CHRISTINA: It’s the 19 May 2024. I do know that this is where Harry sat, I do know that this is where Harry sat, looking straight down on St Mary’s Church in Wotton. There's just a few houses below me, so compared with when Harry was here, I don't think, it's not that there's a massive housing estate close by. There's a lot of trees here still now. Sycamore. Rowan. Hazel. Silver. Birch. Beech. beautiful cow parsley peeping through the fence. And nettles.

CHRISTINA:  Hugo and I  are with Ed Drewitt now at his home in the Forest of Dean. Thanks both very much this. Ed, can we begin with you explaining what it is that you do. 

ED: I'm very lucky in that I have the opportunity to take people out to see wildlife, but I particularly specialise in helping people to hear birds and birdsong.

So I do dawn chorus walks, and I do training courses where I help people to learn birdsong. And I'm in my early 40s now. I learnt birdsong originally when I was a teenager in the 1990s. We didn't have apps, we didn't have CDs back then, so it was a traditional method of going out and hearing the birds and learning them.

So I'm a sort of freelance naturalist, really taking people out to see wildlife, hear wildlife. I also do bird surveys, and I do volunteer bird surveys for the British Trust for Ornithology. So I'm very much outdoors all the time, but also very conscious of how the sound of birds differs across the county of Gloucestershire, and also very conscious of how data tells us how perhaps the sounds of birds and the populations of birds has changed over time.

CHRISTINA: So it's going to be really interesting to hear your take on these 1950s recordings. Hugo, can you tell us about your dad?

HUGO:  He was, you know, born in and grew up in Wotton and he suddenly had this thing that could capture sound and what's the most beautiful sound around. And it was the dawn chorus.

at the time he was single, so I think just before he got married, and he just got up early one morning, in fact, on a couple of mornings and, and I, from what I understand, had an inverter. He had to connect it up to his car, left it running, went off with his gun and shot a few rabbits, which you can hear on the recordings as well.

You can hear some of the shots. and these recordings were then I can remember I can remember them being played when I was a kid, but then for years they were just locked away in an attic.

After he died, I found all these tapes and had them digitally digitised and, yeah, it was it was a treasure trove and ended up then sending a clip of that to Radio Gloucestershire. And Mark Cummings and a lot of Gloucestershire fell in love with it and then eventually went on recently, more recently when I retired and became, a trustee of the Wotton Heritage Centre, I thought that more people would like to share this and share the the whole thing. So we've now put it onto a CD, available with a bit of background and history of, both the birds, the family, my, my family, Wotton itself the steam train, all of the stars of the show really

CHRISTINA: Your dad, Harry Grimes, is part of a really big Wotton farming family, isn't he? 

HUGO: yes. So the the Grimes is in Wotton have been around for quite some time. A long time. yeah. We’re locals. My dad traced the family tree back, and it went back 400 years the early 1600s, actually, then in Nibley rather than Wotton. But we've that's that's only two miles away.

And in fact, I was brought up between the two in Bournestream. So the family were a farming family, and in fact, he then subsequently look, traced his mum's family tree back the Excels and they went back to Nibley in the 1600s. as a kid, I can remember my dad saying when he was young, he could walk all the way. Well, he could work almost all day on various land that was farmed by relations. You know, from, Swinhay down near Charfield all the way through Wotton up to Coombe. Very much rooted in the local area.

CHRISTINA: it's the Grimes. Is that still have the Wotton Farm Shops are they're still very much a Wotton family aren't they.

HUGO: Yes. Yeah. And in fact, the name is still on the funeral directors as well although there's no family involved in that. But that was my grandfather and in fact, his coffin shop where he used to make the coffins is on the other side of the road from where I now live. So, my, my father was actually a property developer as well. So some of the estates in Wotton Cherry Orchard, Shepherd's Lease, Tabernacle Road were developed by him,

CHRISTINA:  Ed, I know it seems an obvious question, but what actually is the dawn chorus? 

ED: The dawn chorus is when all the birds at first light start to all sing. And this happens. This starts to happen in January, February time. But but actually it's at its best in kind of April, May particularly early sort of May when you've got all your migrant birds have come here from parts of Africa.

So all the birds are getting up early. They're singing and saying, this is my territory, this is my patch. And it's a way in which they blackbirds and songs thrushes and robins are able to just tell other male birds of the same species that this is their patch, and try and keep other male birds out so that they don't take over the territory and they don't mate with their females.

And it also has a role of attracting a mate as well. So that's happens first thing in the morning and it gets earlier and earlier as you go throughout May. So at the moment we're on the 28th of May. And so it's about four in the morning at the moment. For example. And you also get a bit of a dusk chorus, so you get a slightly less intense course at the end of the day.

So when we if we go back to the recordings that were taken in the 1950s, soon as you start listening to that recording, what's really very obvious, really is the intensity of the sound. It's loud. it's quite dominated by a bird called the song thrush. But actually, when the song thrushes  stop singing, you can just hear a real intense background sound of of blackbirds in particular.

And when you listen to that recording, you can hear other birds coming and going. You can hear the fantastic sound of steam engine in the background. You can hear chickens clucking, you can hear cows mooing. So for me, as somebody who who didn't really have all the background and was coming at it sort of quite, quite fresh, it gives me the sense of quite a mixed kind of farming landscape.

And it also gives me a sense of a very rich, wildlife landscape. Yeah. The other bird that's that's in there also is the cuckoo. I can hear at least two cuckoos kind of cuckooing each other off, as it were, in the background. So there's this real rich soundscape there. And it's really wonderful to hear and listen to.

1950’s recording with steam train and cuckoos

CHRISTINA: And then and then I went out and I took advice from you, and I didn't go out quite as early as you suggested. I tried, but I got there at 4.37 and I recorded it. And it's quite nice because I've got the bells of Saint Mary's chiming at 5 a.m. So first the 1950’s and then 2024. 

Bells of St Mary’s and dawn chorus 1950s

Bells of St Marys and dawn chorus 2024

CHRISTINA: So, first reactions on listening to the difference then Ed?

ED:  I had to change the volume on my, on my computer because I wanted to just check that it wasn't simply just the sound levels, because obviously they can differ depending on how the recording is being taken. So when I turned up the volume, it was just so stark how much quieter the background birdsong was. We can talk a bit about some of the species in a minute and how they how they differ. But the key thing is, is that I can almost hear or almost count on my hand my, you know, one hand, the, the individual birds I can hear singing. whereas actually in the recording from the 1950s, it's just, it's almost deafening. You know what I mean? There's so many different birds on it. (a cacophony) a cacophany exactly.

And you know, where I live here in the Forest of Dean we do still get a cacophony, you know, there's still lots of birds here, but in the wider countryside, you know, there's there's there are less birds out there.

So what's very interesting, I think, is that until you have these two recordings to compare to, you're not really aware of this changing baseline syndrome, which we call it, which is where people who, are alive today because they don't recall how things sounded 50 years ago.

They just think that how they hear birdsong today is normal. and actually don't realise that actually, not that long ago it was a very different sort of soundscape really. And I think listening to those two sound recordings is, is very, is very, it's very stark. 

CHRISTINA: It is very stark. And this changing or shifting baseline syndrome is a concept I've only come across recently. It strikes me as so true. When I told people that I was recording the dawn chorus, they said, it's really loud, isn't it, this year? And of course, I'd heard Harry's recording. I said, well, actually, no it isn't, so I think that's a real example of how we do shift our expectations and in a way, the opportunity to bring these things out of the archives will give us the chance to look further back, to make different comparisons, which will be more telling.

So Ed, the number of birds would definitely lower in the new recordings. But what can you tell us about the different species that you heard? 

ED:  I made a note of the different species of bird that I could hear at the for the two different time timings, really. And what was interesting was that there was an overlap with some species, but there were some species that are missing from the 1950s that are around today. And there are some species that are missing today that were around them. What is interesting, though, is that the number of species is a little bit more. about a dozen species of birds in the 1950s, recording 123456789 ten. Actually, it was a similar number of species, but it's just the different types. So what was dominating the 1950s recording are song thrush and blackbird, and in there you can also hear chaffinch and the cuckoo. But there are other things as well. There's different corvids, crows, magpie, rook, jackdaw for example and they're all still very common today. I can hear a bit of wren, but what is interesting is in amongst the chickens and the cows, I can hear house sparrows as well.

And we know that although house sparrows will still be in Wotton edge, there are what we call a red data species today because their numbers have declined significantly nationally.

So if we look at the, recording that was taken very recently, we've got blackbird, we've got wren, for example, which are in the old recordings, but we've got robin, and robin very much dominates the sound of your recording.  And I, despite listening very hard, I couldn't hear robin in the 1950s recording. It's possible it's there and it was being drowned out, but that's really interesting that a common and widespread bird like the robin that was around then is, is not nowhere to be heard. And yet it's in today's recording, some of the birds that weren't in your dad's recording are things like the chiff chaff we know that the chiff chaff for example, has increased by 156% in the last 40 years alone. So if we then add on and if we were to go back to the 1940s and 50s, we'd find it's probably increased even more so since then. So there's chiff chaff in there. I heard a tawny owl in your recording, which wasn't in your dad's recording.

Wood pigeons, now wood pigeons interesting enough, a very common, like super common pigeon now, they've increased by about 36% in the last 40 years or so. But I couldn't hear wood pigeon in your dad's recording. But I did hear another farmland woodland dove called the stock dove, so that was definitely in the recording. They tend to go, a-wooh, a-wooh.

So other birds I heard in the contemporary recording was goldcrest, which is our smallest bird. also the red kite and the red kite is a bird that almost went extinct in Britain in the 1990s that's been reintroduced, across the Chilterns. And it's now quite a widespread bird across the Gloucestershire countryside and breeding. So again, the red kite is a bird that your dad probably never got the opportunity to see because actually by the 1950 that was pushed right back to the hills and mountains of Wales due to persecution, for example, and things like that. So it's really interesting that there's quite a different mix of birds. So it's not that there are less species today, there's just a different mix of species, but actually the species we've lost are ones which are an indication of perhaps what's not quite going right in the countryside, you know, in terms of the loss of insect species. So we know that the cuckoo, for example, has declined just in the last 40 years. So it's probably a lot more if we would go back to 1950s. But the cuckoos declined by 72% just since the 90s. Since 1994. So it's probably declined closer to 80 or 90%, I suspect, since the 1950s. 

And we know there's two main reasons that we know that there's less moths in the Gloucestershire countryside. We know there's less less moth caterpillars, which is the main diet of the cuckoo. We know that there are less species, that they lay their eggs in the nests of, like dunnocks for example, and tree pipit, which would have been more common when your dad was younger. And we also know that the migration route that English cuckoos take back to their wintering grounds in central Africa is different to those birds, those cuckoos in Scotland that are doing very well. So Scotland's have increased by about 50% in the last 40 years. They're doing really well. There you go via Italy in the Po Valley and Lake Chad. Whereas English cuckoos via go, via Spain and Portugal and West Africa. And that route is not so good. There’s  been lots of wildfires in in Iberia, for example. And the nature reserves you have in West Africa are not as good for the cuckoo. So there's lots of complicated kind of changes for them. But we do also know that we've got 2 million less blackbirds in in England or certainly across Britain since then, since the 1970s. So in, in in the 1950s recording we can hear so many blackbirds and in the recording taken this year I can hear I can hear some blackbirds. So, why? Well, the simply less food out there for them. 

There's when you look at a map, a modern day aerial map of Wotton Under Edge, you can see that there's quite a lot of intensive farming, arable farming. So there's probably insecticides being sprayed there and have been for many decades.

And that doesn't affect just the arable fields. Spray ends up in the woodlands, ends up in people's gardens, and it affects the overall supply of invertebrates. And insecticides aren't just sprays that get rid of flies. You know, they're insecticides that get rid of soil invertebrates as well, which affects earthworms and things like that. So, I suspect that's why we're hearing a lot less.

So although we're hearing a different suite of birds, the intensity of the sound is probably down to the fact that we've got some urbanisation going on in Wotton Under Edge, but it's probably largely to do with the fact that we have less mixed farming, that less. We used to have a much more of a mixed farming model of arable and pastoral farming, so we would have cows and chickens and pigs alongside some growing of crops and orchards. and it's gone the other way now we've got much more, intensive arable crops. And when you look at the maps, you can't really see where there's any cows or sheep. There probably are some there, I suspect, but it's certainly not dominating the landscape in a way they would have been in the 1950s.

CHRISTINA: I'm not a bird expert do blackbirds stay here, they're not a, because in some ways the migratory birds tell one story. And birds like blackbirds, if they're here all the time, tell another. Is that right? 

ED: So what's really interesting is that things like blackbirds, song thrushes, robins, they're generally resident birds.  Some robins head to France, and we do get blackbirds coming to Gloucestershire from Scandinavia, for example, the winter. But generally our local Gloucestershire blackbirds, robins and wrens, etc. will stay local, I must add, though that on a positive note, the British Trust for Ornithology’s breeding bird survey where volunteers go out across Gloucestershire and record how all birds are doing in one kilometre squares. the sort of the national kind of English numbers do show that since the 1990s, blackbirds have increased by about 9%, song thrushes by about 23%, and robins by about 30%. So although we've we have seen an overall decline in the blackbird and song thrush since the 1950s onwards and the 1970s the has in in in a much shorter space of time been a bit of an increase. So that's a good that's a good news story that although there's been an overall general decrease, we've lost those 2 million blackbirds. We have seen an increase in numbers in in recent decades, which is good news.  

HUGO: One of the reactions, clearly Is that what fantastic thing my dad did, because without this, we wouldn't have those comparisons, you know? And it is a, you know, it is a census of birds at that one point in time, you know, but it's interesting to hear that, you know, the differences we have created a different environment, which obviously is reflected in the animals, the birds and other animals that can survive in that. and actually around Wotton, to some extent there is probably a bit more woodland than there was because, because of the farming techniques now, some of the bits of land that could be farmed before are no longer economic. So they've just wooded them and in fact, opposite that the point where Dad did the recording is, is a quarry and that that's even when I was a child, which was all open and now it now it's all wooded. So, you know, we are changing the environment and there are good things and there's ups and downs on it all, but we are having quite an impact on it, you know.

CHRISTINA: I don't usually go out and record dawn choruses. I, it was a really magical thing to do. I really enjoyed it. One of the things I wanted to ask you was actually at sunrise, at the point of sunrise, It felt like everything went quiet. It'd be much noisier up to that point. Is that a thing?

ED:  Yeah. And actually, it's an interesting note you make there because the dawn chorus generally lasts 20 minutes to half an hour, depending on maybe the habitat you're in. What's interesting is that when I listen to the 1950s recording, it seems to go on for a long period. There's lots of birds singing, there's lots of competition. So the birds are really trying to make sure I think that that they make their, they make it very clear that their territory and the recording that that's taken recently, the dawn chorus sounds very short. So the birds are singing. You've got that sort of quite a lot of birds will sing it at once and then it really drops off very quickly. And that's probably because there are fewer birds there. They're making themselves known, realising there aren't many, there isn't much competition and going much quieter. So they're going, oh, okay, I might as well carry on with feeding them. So that was really that was very stark actually, because when you scroll through the recording for the 1950s, it's going on and on and on.

CHRISTINA;  so we’ve got evidence right here of different bird numbers, different species, and then the length of time that dawn chorus carries on for, all backs up the statistics which we already know about biodiversity loss and changes.  And we now that it’s human behaviour which is causing these changes - what we can do to address global warming and nature loss happens on many,  many levels doesn’t it? And so we need to do what we can to push for national and global changes in legislation and the infrastructure that allows us to be greener, but what are some of the things that we can be doing alongside that, as well as that, on a personal level? 

ED: So it's a really good question because we can often feel very powerless when it's a global issue kind of thing like that and some of the changes we're seeing, for example, like the increasing chiffchaff which we could hear in your recording, you know, they've increased by 156% since the 1990s across England. They you know, they're saying we think they're increasing because they're benefiting from our changing climate, along with another species called the black cap and another species in Gloucestershire called the fire crest. They seem to be benefiting, whereas other birds like, willow warblers, which used to be very common in Gloucestershire, they seem to be shifting their range north into Scotland and northern England. you might think, well, we can't do very much about that changing climate. But you're right. We can think about how we travel. it's not necessarily about flying or completely eliminating it, but it's about perhaps the frequency in which we do our journeys, whether it's cars, whether it's flying and just reconsidering that. But it's also about these two things really, I think is about what we can do in our own space that we have control of, so thinking about our own garden. So eliminating the use of chemicals, whether it's roundup to get rid of, you know, it's about tolerating plants we don't want in our garden or removing them in a, in a more, you know, pulling them up rather than spraying them kind of way.

Because we know that roundup, for example, can affect soil organisms as well. It's about maybe leaving part of your garden or your green space, your balcony, so it does have some wildflowers in it, or it's unmown, for example. So you create a little bit of a meadow, however small, in your garden, which can create space for for insects and things like ladybirds and spiders, which are predators. And they help to control things like the aphids and other animals that you might that might otherwise eat your vegetables, for example. It's about getting a better balance in your own garden. It's also I think about, you know, contacting local councillors, contacting local MPs about, how you how you feel, you know, your local spaces are or should be could be managed differently really. You know, I, I myself you know, I talk to councillors about, you know, saving money but but reduce the amount of mowing that goes on, so it's done sensibly in a way that it's not being cut just when it's really important for insects, which of course then benefits the birds or reducing amount of roundup used along along pavements, you know, so there are things like that that we can, we can be in control of. We can help make a difference and quite often councillors, for example, they're not experts in nature and wildlife, and sometimes they rely on local residents who might well be more informed and can lobby and can advise to help make changes happen. That may also help save money as well, because quite often people don't listen until it has an impact on budgets, unfortunately. And that is just that's the reality. You have to sometimes think and speak in a way that appeals to business or appeals to councillors and what have you. The other thing, of course, is, you know, if if you want to make donations is to support organisations like the Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust because organisations like Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust, Plantlife, the Woodland Trust, the RSPB, the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust all have a presence in Gloucestershire. They are helping to join up habitats and landscapes. They're thinking on a landscape scale now across Gloucestershire that also connects with other counties like Worcestershire and Herefordshire for example. So if we can make a difference to nature on a landscape scale, and also support, for example, farmers, you know, going down a more regenerative farming route that uses less chemicals and it uses, you know, ways that's going to benefit nature, then that slowly but surely is going to benefit the small stuff, the health of the soil. And that in turn will then benefit bigger things like our small mammals and our birds. 

HUGO: The other thing that came to mind as we were talking there was when I was a kid, the my dad had a Volkswagen Caravanette as they were called in those days and good old combi and we went anywhere and the front of that was plastered and insects absolutely plastered. You don't get that any longer. And obviously that is the food source for all these birds. So it's no wonder we've got less birds, they've got less food.

ED: For me, the biggest thing is that, I was watching the BBC's Springwatch last night and they talk about what we just have done about little things that we can all do. But I said to my wife, actually, the biggest thing that we can do in Britain is just stop using insecticides and finding other ways that the, the problem is that we've, you know, farmers, land owners, it's complex. And I'm not trying and I'm not trying to simplify what is a complex situation. But at the end of the day, many of them have got locked into the situation, often from the chemical companies themselves, you know, but they're using these chemicals. And the problem is, is that if they stop using those chemicals, it takes 2, 3 or 4 years for the predator populations of lace wings, ladybirds, carnivorous beetles to build up enough to then do it instead. But we've got to be brave at the end of the day, because otherwise we're always going to be locked in this chemical warfare of insects, and we're always going, you know, we're not going to get any of our insects back on a landscape scale, because actually we can do our own little thing in our gardens, but it's the thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of acres across Gloucestershire and the connecting counties that are being sprayed. so until we have more support for regenerative farming and, more support for using less chemicals and trying to bring some of our natural predators back into play, I think that's going to be the real sticking point. The again, it comes down to finances. But the good news to some degree, though, is that because some of these fertilisers, some of these pesticides are costing farmers so much money, farmers are choosing to not use them because they can't afford to buy them, taking a certain loss. But actually I've spoken to 1 or 2 farmers, for example, in Somerset, who they've still made just the same amount of money I realise that's not the case for everybody, but I think that's the sort of  

So, you know, incredibly as ever, it's it's money. It's the money side of things. It's kind of forcing farmers to get down to more environmentally friendly routes. But if that's the way it has to happen, then that's the way it has to happen. 

CHRISTINA: You know, what matters is that it happens, isn't it? Even in the nature reserves, they've noticed, you know, 60% less. Not again, not species, but numbers. I mean, there's two different things we're looking at all the time. And that's quite important to distinguish.

(Yeah) isn't it. And that's what I think this recording shows us is actually the numbers. 

ED: It's the density of birds. It's right. So for example with skylarks we don't have skylarks in either recording. But skylarks will be on the outskirts of Wotton Under Edge in arable farmland. the key thing about skylarks is that they're still very wide, spread across the Gloucestershire countryside. The key thing is they are at a much lower density. So a farm might have one, two, three, four pairs of skylarks, which in the 1950s would have had maybe a hundred. That's one of the big differences. So yes, there are missing species like cuckoo and corn bunting and yellowhammer in many parts of Gloucestershire now, but for the vast majority of species, they're still there.

They're just they're much, much lower densities. The good news, though, is that because they are still there, when farmers do make changes across Gloucestershire, they can, you know, those little kind of places where those species are still hanging on and then spread out into those better places. So as long as we don't lose them completely, they've still got potential.

And even with the cuckoo, we've still got cuckoos at Slimbridge and places like Rockhampton and the Cotswolds Water Park. So potentially if things do improve for the cuckoo, there's more, moth caterpillars for them, for example, then, you know, there's still potential for those things to come out. And that's that's the positives. We've got to look at that.

You know, we do have lower density, but if things improve we can get higher densities again.

HUGO: My aunt, it was my aunt's chickens or my great aunts chickens and she was she was a farmer, a single lady farmer. and yeah, she had cows and horses as well at one time. fact, there's some there's some sheds just further along, some old, stone, which were cow sheds, my aunt's cow sheds. And they were originally, I think, even built by the family, many, many years ago. But today are used actually by the scouts as, as, as a kind of clubhouse. And it's a, it's now, a camp field, camping field there as well. So, so the land use is, has changed. And also actually when, one of the things are woodlands nearby with the, with the Westridge Woods, when even when I was a kid, I lived partway in through the, through the woods. And I used to walk through them a lot. People didn't go in the woods. You know, in the 60s and 70s, people ignored the woods, you know, and and as kids, it was our playground. Nobody else was there. Whereas now there's permanently cars park there. you know, people walking. In fact, that's where Christina and I often meet up in the woods. And people from that point of view, people are appreciating, I think, nature a lot more than they did before. and we just need to get all of those people really thinking what they can do to further improve it, rather than by being there, sometimes actually destroy it. You know, it's it's that balance. So for example, in the woods, sometimes it's almost overused. Now there are so many people there and cyclists who go in every corner of it and things like the, you know, the deer almost have no where the corners of the woods that I knew about that nobody ever went to there’s somebody there.

ED: Yeah, yeah. No. And there's, there's a, there's 2 or 3 things that you've picked up on which I think are really interesting compared to the 1950s. We've got many, many more deer than we had in the 1950s. They tend to over browse woodlands and that, that removes, the herb and shrub layer that's important for birds. Recreation, so, you know, I see this a lot in other places, such as in Bristol on the Clifton, and Durden Downs, where there's a huge number of people going on there. And I think that compared to 100 years ago, there was a lot more birdlife on the downs. I think part of that is due to disturbance and just, you know, there could be skylarks there, for example, on their aren’t, and I think it's because of over disturbance with people. But the other thing you've talked about there, the cow sheds and again, all these things happened subtly over the decades. But again, those cow sheds would have been you would have had nesting house sparrows in them and no nesting swallows in them that were being flies around the cows and the cow poo and all that sort of stuff. And so now that's converted, it’s a building, but it's no longer going to probably house sparrows in the same way. It's not going to house swallows in the same way. So little by little you get these little pockets that change, whether it's the deer, whether it's the people walking, whether it's the cowshed that be converted. And so, you know, that's where alongside things such as the pesticides, etc., you get this, this, all these little contributing factors that then affect the birds and things like that. So it's not, you know, as I say, I don't want to just blame one, one area. I think it's really important to acknowledge that that actually it's a combination of different things. But I think going back to our discussion on insects, I think certainly insecticide pesticides are a huge, big one of the reasons, but they're not the only reason.

CHRISTINA: We need to be think about our purchasing power too, we need to think about not buying food which uses those methods and maybe supporting growers that don’t us insecticides and pesticides, and use more regenerative agricultural methods. And we’re going to be talking to farmers later in these podcasts who do that in our own area. 

Now Harry’s and my dawn chorus recordings will be added to the Green collection at the archives, but you’ve also made recordings too Ed, which will also be added, can you tell me more  about those? 

ED: So back in the first lockdown in April 2020 I think a little bit of May 2020 as well. I put a recorder special sound recorder out in the garden overnight so that it would record, birds migrating over the garden. So I picked up a few things like coot, moor hen, curlew, but also displaying woodcock, which is a nationally declining bird but still common here in the Forest of Dean. And it also recorded the dawn chorus as well, really intensely, because the recorders, literally at the top of the garden so its all sorts of blackbirds, robins, wrens, black caps, things like that. 

I've got some recordings of cuckoo, wood warbler and also nightingale, and those are all species that obviously are declining here in the Forest Dean or the nightingale from Highnam Woods. So again, they're they're kind of important recordings because if those species aren't here in ten years time, then actually those are valuable recordings of those species here in, in Gloucestershire, really, whether it's in the forest or at Highnam Woods. 

And I think that's really important because again, in 40 years time, there might be somebody else here talking about the same thing, you know, using the recordings that I've taken.

CHRISTINA: That really is a fabulous recording. So that's the Nightingale at 4:30 a.m. in May 2024 in Highnam Woods. And as you said, the populations almost gone. There's just 2 to 3 males this year. So this recording over the next few years may be the very last for this area, but we really hope not. But I am grateful to you, Ed, for contributing this to the archive.

How can people engage with you and find out what it is you're doing?

I've got a website which is EdDrewitt.co.uk - And I've got information there on if I'm doing a dawn chorus walk or any wildlife walks in the Forest of Dean, I sometimes do a little bit on the Cotswolds as well. On some of the farmland there with some nice rewilding projects, encouraging things like skylarks to to thrive. So yeah, but the websites, the main way of of finding out about what I'm doing.

CHRISTINA:  How can people get hold of the the CD that you've made, the beautiful CD that you've made?

HUGO: Well, the easiest way is probably to come to Wotton and go to the Heritage centre in the Chipping car park. go online and find out what days it's open. It's open four days a week. and you can buy it. It's only £10. Includes an eight page booklet, double CD, two hours of of recordings and extras. And there's even Bob Monkhouse on it. So what more would you want? the other way you can get it is if you go online, and you go to a website called Bandcamp. So bandcamp.com and you just search for either Hugo Grimes or Wotton under Edge, you'll find all these recordings and you can actually listen to them for free. But please then pay the you pay for the licence to download them and, and listen to them whenever. But that's the digital version

CHRISTINA: Thank you so much. It's been fascinating to talk with you both. So to finish, we're going to hear a wonderful story of times gone by from Harry. And then just a few of my reflections after the recording of the dawn chorus.

HARRY: The other great interest was to capture either a jackdaw or a magpie and, when they were young and bring them up and, particularly with, magpies and jackdaws, you could teach them to say a few words and, it'd be quite amusing to have, these birds that could say Maggie and hello or some some odd phrase. I remember my brother John. He had, he had one, that he, trained very well. And in fact, he let it out. And, I remember the story that this magpie, although usually come back into the, into the box that he lived in, he flew over at Bradley Street and there was some dear old soul up in her bedroom, sort of polishing or something , and he, she looks out and there's a magpie sat on the tree outside, and she said hello to him, and lo and behold, he said hello back again. laughter

CHRISTINA: It’s just gone six. It's been very beautiful experience. I've been here for about an hour and a half.  I've watched the sunrise. I've watched goldcrest flit through the branches of a purple plum. Wood pigeons. I've seen wood pigeons breakfasting on the ash tree leaves. A big ash tree right next to me. Even saw red kite, it just silently slipped across the sky. A think it was being ushered away by a crow. Been thinking about how different it may have been for Harry sitting here compared to me, I have seen and heard quite a few aeroplanes leaving their vapour trails behind.

I feel very lucky to live in Wotton Under edge. It's a really beautiful place. And I just want us to protect it. I want us to,  a bit like with the red kite, do what it takes to bring things back from the brink. Because our springs are becoming more silent, and we need to think about throwing everything at it to not let that happen.

Thank you for listening to the Green Pledge podcast, which has been made possible by the Heritage Lottery Fund. 

If you're interested in coming to the archives to do your own research, you can find out how through the website dot gloucestershire.gov.uk/archives. In the next episode, I'll be talking to Gail Brooke, who lives in Stroud and is a co-founder of Extinction Rebellion. Gail talks about her childhood memories and being devastated by the loss of a much loved local habitat and the loss of the humble sparrow, and how this influenced her life as an activist and campaigner for nature. So do please join me again and share these podcasts with others.

Thank you both so much for talking with me today. It’s been fascinating, and I’ve learnt so much.   I’m sure people will want to know how to get hold of the CD Hugo and also about how they can catch up with your work Ed, I’ll put links on the website, but can you just tell people how to do that. 

Really wonderful. Thank you, and to finish – I’m going to play a little bit more of my recording and we’ll finish with a few words from Harry. 

Thank you for listening to the Green Pledge Podcast, which has been made possible by the heritage lottery fund. 

If you are interested in coming along to do your own research at the archives you will 

In the next episode I’ll be talking to Gail Bradbrook, who lives in Stroud, and is one of the founders of Extinction Rebellion. Gail talks aobut her early childhood memories, and how she first fell in love with nature, which is pertinent to this episode.as she was first struck by the loss of a much loved local habitat and the humble sparrow. 

So please do listen and share our podcast with others. Thank you.