Often I think people rely too heavily on sight.
There are things that are really hard to see that you just –
You might hear but if you don't know it's there then you won't even look for it.
Being able to kind of listen to other things and
fill my head with sound is always something I've loved to do.
Sometimes I often feel like people judge me for who I am,
maybe that's just because I like nature,
but nature doesn't really care if I like it or not.
That's where the peace comes
and for me it's come through bird sound.
When there's a rare black kite here, it's a subspecies of an Indian pariah kite.
If you often watch things like cricket matches in India,
under the floodlights you'll see hundreds of kites and things
circling and sweeping onto the pitch.
I've never been abroad.
The migratory birds are just amazing because they fly such long distances every year.
They must see so much,
going over the Sahara and vast expanses of land.
I'd love to visit some of the places that I thought, wow, I'd just love to see the birds there.
I just find it very stressful to be around loads of people.
It's like a battle sometimes in my mind,
to be able to do things and go places,
by thinking what might happen and what could –
it's all what could happen.
At home it's my mum and just us two.
She's not particularly interested in birds,
I remember her always telling me that she thought there were just brown and black birds,
but she's quite dedicated I think, because she gets up at like silly times in the morning
to take me places like bird ringing.
A lot of people are saying that they're not catching juveniles yet, especially the migrants
and certainly the breeding season is late.
Great thanks.
That's a turtle dove isn't it, purring?
Very faintly .
Too faintly for me.
Unless I imagined it.
I got ...
71.
Does it give you any indication in the picture?
Oh.
Black tip not included.
Right, OK.
So the outside is supposed to cover ...
There's one, two, three, four, five, six.
So is it suggesting that six is a young bird and seven –
It's says seven to nine space black bars is juvenile,
post juvenile nine to twelve.
Having recently turned 18,
I'm completing my A levels and I hope to go to university to study geography
at the end of the year.
I'm currently a volunteer for the National Trust and have been since I was 14
and as I'll go on to say a little bit later on,
that's where, kind of my spark for conservation specifically got initiated.
Welcome everybody I'm Dr Anjana Khatwa,
I am the engagement lead for Wessex museums
and I'm delighted to introduce our speaker this evening.
Arjan is an 18 year old nature lover from South London,
much of his work revolves around making nature more accessible for young people.
If the future is going to be any brighter than it is now, more young people need to care
and need to realise that what they're doing is making a difference
and what they're doing is actually making the world a better place,
because humans and nature are all part of the same world
I mean like it or not I think we're all part of the same world here,
but a lot of people forget that we are,
a lot of people think they're almost better than nature
and it's just another bird it's just another kind of beast or something it's –
We're still all part of the big same thing here, so
the future of our planet really is in our own hands.
This is the best bit of advice I can give you for your presentation today,
you are the one going in with the knowledge.
So the main thing is to get your headspace in the right position,
so that when you go in, you can just be yourself,
because as soon as you're yourself with this, you will be absolutely fine.
So red listing is a bird species which has been categorised
as in need of the most urgent conservation work
due to its decline in numbers.
So for example house sparrow, as pictured here,
had a 70% decrease in population in England since the 1960s,
so for me that was quite shocking, as I thought these were common.
So it was quite sad.
It is, Tasha!
Oh my God.
Oh, it is.
It is, it is, it is.
I can't deal.
Was that actually them over there?
Yeah.
It looks like him.
They look too young.
No it's not.
Okay.
I remember when I looked over here when it was fireworks.
It's nice.
It's nice to be able to see that I've developed
and I think from what people have said, grown in confidence.
Oh yeah.
It helps if I'm with my close friends.
I need to message to see if she's coming.
And I'm so passionate about wildlife conservation.
The list of things Mya Bambrick does is astonishing,
she's a birder, a wildlife photographer, a trainee bird ringer,
a blogger, a vlogger, she's a council member of the SOS
and somehow she's managed to find time to design a wildlife garden for her school.
Given what Mya is achieving at the age of 18,
it is with huge respect and admiration
that I hand over to Mya for yet another of her wonderful talks,
Mya over to you.
Thank you very much that was a very nice introduction.
Well before we start, since I can hear my favourite bird,
can you hear the birds screaming above us?
Yeah.
Does anyone know what those are?
Go on, yeah.
I think they might be swifts.
They are swifts.
Oh we've got an expert in the group, you're gonna be better than me by the end of this.
But yeah so we've got some swifts above us, that's the best place to start
since swifts are my favourite birds.
that was a good fact for you to remember, I might quiz you on some of these questions
about me at the end, just to see who's actually listening.
If you all want to go into pairs,
I'll just give these out and you can have a look at some of the birds
that we might see.
Yeah.
It looks a bit like an owl / eagle.
It's probably a hybrid between them.
You need to click that twice and then it would start recording
and then if you want to stop recording you can put it off again.
Cool, yeah?
Right, let's carry on walking guys.
And because the skylarks are very loud,
what they do is these big display flights, they'll go really high up
and then as they come back down to earth they can be recorded.
If you see this bush in front of us, the one coming at slight right angle,
the tallest tree at the back, if you look right at the top of there,
I'm pretty sure there's a common whitethroat just sat up there.
Yep there is, I can hear it singing.
Got it, I got sight of it.
Oh wait, look over there.
That's good, that's the whitethroat.
Yeah, yeah.
What kind of environments do skylarks like to live in?
This is basically perfect for skylarks which is great,
because you've got quite high grass which means they can nest deep down in there
without foxes getting in.
And at the same time you've got these little hedges
and random little trees that they can set up and perch on.
That's true I've got to raise all of it because no one else will.
Well you will now as well.
Your going to have to lead the club after I've gone.
All right.
And look what we have straight above us as the last bird of the day as well.
It's a swift.
It is a swift, about 10 of them.