‘A break from scrolling’: how Gen Z fell in love with birding
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What alarming trend regarding bird populations is highlighted in this episode?
This is The Guardian.
That's the dawn chorus, taken by Science Weekly producer Ellie Sands in Bristol earlier this year. When spring awakens, so do the birds. As the sun approaches the horizon in the early hours of the morning, birds begin to sing and call to each other, creating a cacophony of sound. Except in a lot of places today, the dawn chorus isn't very loud at all anymore. Take the UK. Since the 1970s, we've lost 73 million birds. Species like the turtle dove, the nightingale and the cuckoo have suffered precipitous declines.
How does shifting baseline syndrome affect our perception of nature?
It's hard to remember or imagine what it was like before. In fact, it's so difficult, the phenomenon has a name, shifting baseline syndrome. The sights and sounds of a degraded natural world feel normal to us, and we forget how it used to be. So, based on data provided by the British Trust for Ornithology, we decided to shift our baselines back and rebuild the dawn chorus. this is what you might have heard 20 years ago if you'd opened your bedroom window at 4.30am.
Back in 1986.
And here's what could have been waking you up before the alarm clock in 1966.
Why is birdwatching experiencing a resurgence among Gen Z?
What with habitat loss, pesticides, disease, cats and now the climate crisis, there are fewer birds around us than ever before. But spotting them is growing ever more popular, especially among Gen Z. We want to reconnect back with nature. This is a really nice way to do it. So today, as birds continue to disappear, why is birding making a comeback? From The Guardian, I'm Madeleine Finlay and this is Science Weekly.
Award-winning nature writer Robert McFarlane has recently published a new book with illustrator Jackie Morris, The Book of Birds, a compendium of 49 bird species under threat in Britain. In its foreword, Rob writes about shifting baseline syndrome. So when we sat down to chat, I asked him why he felt it was important.
I've become increasingly fascinated by this SBS, Shifting Baseline Syndrome, generational amnesia, it's sometimes also called. And the kind of absolute numbers of the thinning are that around 600 million birds have gone from Europe since 1980, actually.
What role does technology play in modern birding practices?
And that's a BTO, RSPB and a Czech collaboration on that shocking figure, 3 billion birds. in North America. And this is simply the number of birds that are no longer present in our skies. And so our dawns and springs are quieter and our skies are thinner. But we sort of don't notice. I mean, birders do. Scientists do. But shifting baseline syndrome is this enormously powerful and I think very pernicious psychological mechanism whereby each new generation measures loss from the degraded baseline that it grew up into.
And is it something that you personally reflect on in your own life? I mean, do you have experience in your life of feeling this loss of birds?
How do young people describe their experiences with birdwatching?
Yeah, I do. I mean, it's partly there in literature. And this is where I think writing and art have a role. It's a sort of activist role almost. Early in the book, I quote Richard Jeffries, a 19th century naturalist. And he has a book called Nature Near London from the 1880s. And he describes coming in on the train from Twickenham. And he says, every bush, every twig, every clod had its songster. There was just, to us now, unimaginable abundance. And another North American naturalist, A.S.
What impact does social media have on the popularity of birding?
Packard in the 1860s, describes seeing a curlew flock a mile long and almost a mile wide. Our brains cannot comprehend this, right? If we see a two or three curlew, my heart lifts, but my heart also breaks.
Today, a flock a mile long seems preposterous. But that's nothing. Take the now extinct passenger pigeon. In the 1800s, there were so many of them in North America, they would darken the skies overhead for days as they migrated. The fact that this sounds like something out of a fantasy novel, that's shifting baseline syndrome. And as well as losing the birds themselves, what also ends up happening is our chance to connect with nature on a regular daily basis. Rob.
How can birdwatching contribute to mental well-being?
I sometimes think of it like this, that we have this imagination of ourselves as like these human individuals walking around with this brain in a box on the top of a machine, and that that's where our self begins and ends.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What alarming trend regarding bird populations is highlighted in this episode?
0:00–1:02
2
How does shifting baseline syndrome affect our perception of nature?
1:02–2:02
3
Why is birdwatching experiencing a resurgence among Gen Z?
2:02–3:23
4
What role does technology play in modern birding practices?
3:23–4:06
5
How do young people describe their experiences with birdwatching?
4:06–4:36
6
What impact does social media have on the popularity of birding?
4:36–5:30
7
How can birdwatching contribute to mental well-being?
5:30–6:26
8
What future does the podcast envision for bird conservation efforts?
6:26–16:37
Speakers
5 identifiedMore from Science Weekly
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