New baby lockdown continues and I still haven't been able to do anything but garden birding. Garden year list now on an ultra low carbon 39: HERE. Highlight was a male Blackcap yesterday and with a bit of sun, the raptors were up and had my first Common Buzzard of the year.
Male Blackcap (aboves)
Adult Buzzard- aged by thick black broad band on trailing edge to wing and sub-terminal tail bar
Desperate times call for desperate measures- I'm having this as 'Feral Pigeon/Rock Dove'.
If you follow low carbon birding to it's logical conclusion then ultra low carbon birding (garden birding) is where the most committed devotees should end up. Cycling round on asphalt roads on carbon fibre bikes dressed in lycra (I only found out today that lycra is petrochemicals- silly boy) has a higher carbon footprint than staying in the garden birding (especially if you're not dressed in lycra).
I would rather just look at other areas that make up my carbon footprint and make changes there rather than cutting back on birding experiences and compensate the carbon footprint of those experiences by planting, buying land and rewilding it etc. Here's the global sources of carbon (below chart). Seems like cutting back on my cement which is 3.8% of global emissions is better than cutting back on my flying (1.6%).
Any birders not willing to approach the climate and ecological emergency holistically will probably be compelled to drift towards ultra low carbon birding. Funnily enough I'm actually getting into garden birding more anyway.
2 comments:
I will definitely be taking a long hard look at my cement usage. I had no idea so thanks very much.
Lol! And don’t forget to watch that rice consumption - it’s as bad as air travel
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