Solos and Chorus

I note that today has been declared International Dawn Chorus Day or so I hear from an item on BBC News. The Wildlife Trusts appear to have initiated this idea and have roped in the BBC as partners. As I can’t see any reference to it on RSPB’s website I’m assuming they are not involved. That’s an interesting sidelight on rivalry within the conservation industry each charity competing for members and always anxious to keep its organisation in the news. The RSPB has its own pet projects such as the annual bird count in January. It is in fact the most important part of the role of any worker within these charities to keep their organisations in the public eye.


On Blacka Moor Sheffield Wildlife Trust organised a dawn chorus walk on Saturday from 5.30 am to 7.30 am. This has become an annual event and they publicise it well, restricting the numbers to 15 and saying that they are usually oversubscribed. In a way not surprising because many people love to try to think they're connecting with a natural world and there is something marvellously appealing about the combination of life force and musicality in this amazing phenomenon. The blackbird who sings from my roof every morning from 5 am might be thought to give the neighbourhood enough of a wake-up, but we shouldn’t complain. His singing is wonderful. Many would pay for the experience. A bit like living next to Pavarotti limbering up for a matinee performance.

The Dawn Chorus surely means, though, a rousing display of diverse voices competing for attention, not just a solo performance. And that’s what I have heard in the best parts of Blacka where most songbirds are to be found. Again for me it’s not about identification but about the blend (and sometimes dissonant clash) of individual voices straining to be heard. At its best it is orchestral with the smaller higher voices heard against the deeper calling of the larger birds and the middle range often providing the most imaginative singing. The perfection that I’ve often heard in Blacka’s secret valley has consisted of many willow warblers and chiff chaffs alongside resident robins, dunnocks and wrens; at another level are the garden warblers and blackcaps and then the blackbirds and thrushes in quite a different style; as a backing group for this there should be a cuckoo and a crow giving the equivalent of the percussion section. Anyone who has heard all of this more or less simultaneously on an otherwise silent (no human activity) morning in an unspoiled part of the landscape in that special acoustic associated with trees will never doubt the value of having places where minimal intervention is the prime rule of management. It is in the best sense restorative. Nobody could fail to benefit from it but, sadly, not enough people get to experience it. It is as good as (better than) anything presented on BBC wildlife programmes. Better because experienced at first hand and without those infuriating self publicising presenters.

So how did the SWT Dawn Chorus go? I went along with them one year but simply saw them from a distance yesterday. I don’t know how the customers found it. Certainly some looked very cold, not surprisingly, and one or two rather disengaged but it was very early in the morning and probably some had been persuaded along by partners or parents. The poster advertising the event invited people to ‘experience the clamouring commotion of the dawn chorus as Blacka Moor wakes up’. Hmm. Well it’s hype and spin that SWT try to specialise in so no surprises.

But I can’t think that’s what the SWT party experienced yesterday. It’s not just that the morning came after one of the coldest May nights for years.There are places on Blacka where you can, if moderately lucky, on the right morning get the kind of magic that I’ve tried to describe above. But that’s not on the route the SWT group took. The purpose of the walk for the leader may have been somewhat different to that of the writer of the poster blurb. For him it’s important when you’ve got a group of people with you to put across the propaganda for heathland management (aka cowpat management). Hence the listening out for the isolated calls of a comparatively restricted range of species who tend to be solo performers. The woods near the car park where they started may have yielded a song thrush and even a warbler or two and when they waited near my bird feeding station they might have been accosted by the odd chaffinch. And the trip through along the main track could have allowed the party to enjoy a skylark’s wonderful individual effort. There is a fine area that’s been untouched by managers for many years to the west of the track and that’s ideal for larks.

But as for a genuine experience of what most people understand as a Dawn Chorus you would need to have been in the secondary woodland of birch and rowan, the secret valley of the hinds which at its best can deliver the ‘clamouring commotion’. But then that’s not on the propaganda schedule that apologists for more management and farm livestock grazing are instructed to keep to. They need to show that the best of nature comes only from human intervention.

Well there’s a surprise.

Fresh Appeal

Nothing new to say about the appeal of the freshness of spring growth and the variety of greens to enjoy. Apart from to point out that farmed and managed heather-clad grouse moors miss out on it all.

Robust

Following on from this post:

According to Sheffield Moors Partnership's website the second of its main aims is to

develop a strategic landscape scale masterplan for the SMP area, through a robust process of stakeholder and community engagement and consultation

This blog will be watching carefully to see if the process that happens could possibly be called robust and will also be examining which elements of it can be described as stakeholder and which community; and also which elements can be called engagement and which consultation.

Now we all know that the middle managers in organisations are given to over use of hype and jargon so will not be surprised to find that this sort of statement is meaningless and considered to tie them down to nothing at all. I got an indication of this at the recent 'Feedback Meeting' when I mentioned that the draft vision claimed that their masterplan would be a model for the uplands in Britain. The NT officer, Nick Sellwood made a sort of gesture that suggested that I might be the only person present who expected those words to actually mean what they said.

Their Valley

Today the cold east wind moved the residents out of their 'Valley of the Hinds' early. For them that part of Blacka has many advantages. It covers a large area but is rarely visited by humans, having no formal paths. The deer tracks are many but they have never become anything else. Long may that continue. One deer track leading down from the bridleway soon becomes one of the best places around to acquire a broken ankle, with boulders of every size well disguised by moss and overhanging bilberry. The hinds' resting place of choice catches early morning sun and is well provided with dry bracken litter. From midsummer the new bracken growing tall makes it is an unbeatable hideaway. Views are also excellent including some of the best water features and an attractive woodland edge. In May music of the highest quality is provided from the trees by visiting performers who make no charge for their services. There are not many days like today with brisk winds from the east but when they come it’s best to move further up the valley and that is what they did. Apart from that the only blot on the landscape is some evidence of tree cutting by SWT on the opposite hillside – the usual business of them insisting on leaving piles of birch branches to show they have been here.

It’s often said that hinds and stags go their separate ways after the October rut with single sex groups being commonly seen. But that’s not always. Here we often see a stag amongst the hinds not just the youngest ones either.

Looking carefully you get to recognise the individuals. One of the hinds has a torn ear while another one has brown markings on her face.

Favoured Corner

There’s an old stone wall at the back. Everything else speaks of nature going its own way self-motivated. Ten years ago the wood sorrel was not so prominent but it’s now rampant, loving the location as do the small birds. The fallen tree, covered with moss, algae and ivy owes nothing to man’s tidying or exploiting habits. A grand corner.

Generational

It’s as clear as a thing could be that SMP have no intention of getting involved in a meaningful consultation. They have now held their feedback session and despite vague assurances made in February that consultation of some kind would follow this we are now in no doubt that they will go ahead and produce their so-called master plan based on their own preferred interpretation of the comments made. We all know that the master plan will then have little chance of being thrown out because the political figures who make the final decision are scared of being shown up as out of their depth in an area they have only a sketchy understanding of. The managers know this well-it's part of what makes them tick.

My regular call for proper debate of the important issues will not be taken up. The only thing that will do is a serious and focused and independently chaired discussion. Even the request for a discussion board was turned down as ‘too expensive’, which is nonsense. In trying to show they are responding they’ve now put themselves up on Facebook. This is fatuous. Facebook may be fine as cliquey facility for college chums but it’s not the place for debate of serious issues between grown-ups.

Is this a declaration of generational warfare?

For what it's worth SMP's facebook page is here:

http://www.facebook.com/SheffieldMoorsPartnership#!/SheffieldMoorsPartnership

Sheffield Moors Partnership - Feedback Session

On Saturday 21st April Sheffield Moors Partnership held a meeting as part of their consultation. This is proving a messy operation and it's hard to be clear about where things are going and what the intentions are. It is of course possible that I'm the only one who's confused but I doubt it. First I'm not sure there has been any consultation at all yet.

Review: The Process So Far

The first three sessions (all the same in different venues) were described as Capturing Your Ideas and we were told specifically they were not consultation meetings. Instead they were an opportunity to put things down on post-it notes under four different headings. Questions were allowed for clarification at the beginning but these were limited and rationed - i.e. anyone asking a lot of questions was sort of discouraged; so no dialogue.
All those post-it note comments from the three meetings and those sent in later were gathered together and put on a document put up on the website  a few days before the recent meeting, not giving much time to digest the wide range of ideas. In fact I got the firm impression that very few of those attending the 21st April meeting had read much or any of the summary of comments. The earlier meetings by the way are now being described as 'workshops' a term that is useful I suppose because it's never been perfectly defined but sounds a good deal more dynamic and interactive than what happened.
The summary sheet of all the comments didn't stay up on the website long. It says that it's still there but when you try to access it an error message comes up and that's been so for several days now. Something like that has already happened with the minutes of the steering group - as I say a messy operation. (The Eastern Moors Partnership also had various problems and misleading claims in a similar way.) I've commented before about these websites. The SMP one was suggested by the SW Community Assembly as something to aid consultation but its achievement in that respect is distinctly patchy. For example I expected to see the comments of other people as they went up so others could respond. Instead there was a simple contact box.

Saturday 21st April

This was a morning meeting billed as a Feedback Session. I counted 25 people, very disappointing and I am guessing that people who were disappointed at the lack of interactivity at the earlier meetings would not have put a high priority on other meetings where public input might be minimal. Also SMP had circulated some people to say you had to book and places were limited. The only poster I saw was one that was emailed as an attachment but officers did say that 70 were distributed. Well....
As it happened there was an element of interactivity but very unsatisfactory from my point of view. We were put in groups with a piece of paper summarising headings that had been identified from the post-it-note comments. We had to score these according to what we wanted to talk about. The chairman, one of the partners, then added them up and we started with the highest score. I was unfortunate enough to be in a group (how were they chosen?) dominated by ladies who were mostly interested in things like signs and interpretation and archaeology. So I said nothing about these things. if I had that would have carried on the discussion well beyond the break - so as it worked out I said nothing at all before the break. The chairperson did not seem to notice my silence even though there were only five of us. After the break I did get in a few comments but on the most important subject (my interpretaion of course but it is the one that has most financial implication) nobody had the will or the knowledge to engage in a discussion. Anyway there was no time.
My main concern now is that SMP will take away the scorings made by these people as to what people wanted to discuss and use them to set the parameters and priorities for any further consultation meetings - if indeed there are going to be any, because their published timescale leaves little room for proper debate.
It needs to be said that this is looking exactly like the Eastern Moors Consultation. There again I wanted to discuss landscape and land management and was put in a group to discuss signage. There again the same lady was present talking for a very long time in a very quiet voice in an acoustic that was challenging even for good clear speakers.

Any consultation that does not encourage an exchange of views and a civilised debate about the key issues is not worthy of being called a consultation. It should also be easy for others to hear and see what is being said.
But do the managers want that? And is that a difficult question?