Last Saturday, 10th February 2018, I was busy revising for my GCSE exams. The weather was pretty bad and so Dad and I had not gone to the ringing station.
Dad had put some foods out in a trap, as usual, to see if he could catch something. I hadn’t been hopeful.
At 11 am, Dad ran into the house and straight up the stairs to my room. He was really excited and told me that he had caught a Wood Pigeon.
I had ringed a young bird in the nest before at Chew Valley Lake but never ringed an adult.
Mya-Rose Birdgirl Craig ringing a Wood Pigeon on 10 February 2018 Photograph copyright Mya-Rose Craig
Once I had it in a tight grip, it was really calm and so a lovely bird to ring. It was also actually really beautiful.
About The Author
Hi, I’m Dr. Mya-Rose Craig. I am a 19-year-old prominent British-Bangladeshi ornithologist, environmentalist, diversity activist as well as an author, speaker and broadcaster. At age 11 I started the popular blog Birdgirl, and at age 17 I became the youngest person to see half of the birds in the world.
Lyrical, poignant and insightful.’ - Margaret Atwood
This is my story; a journey defined by my love for these extraordinary creatures. Because large or small, brown, patterned or jewelled, there is something about birds that makes us, even for just moments at a time, lift our eyes away from our lives and up to the skies.
Lyrical, poignant and insightful.’ - Margaret Atwood
This is my story; a journey defined by my love for these extraordinary creatures. Because large or small, brown, patterned or jewelled, there is something about birds that makes us, even for just moments at a time, lift our eyes away from our lives and up to the skies.
The dark side to John Muir – Mendip AONB Young Rangers at Chew Valley Ringing Station
In June 2015, I signed up for the Mendip Area of Outstanding Beauty (AONB) Young Rangers programme. I found out about it the previous year at the Chew Valley Bird-fair, but they only recruited every two years and so I had to wait for the next intake.
Blackdown, Mendip Hills Copyright Mendip AONB
We started in September 2015 for the two-year conservation programme based on the Mendip Hills, not far from where I live in the Chew Valley, South of Bristol.
Everyone who started was either 12 or 13 years old and we all lived in places on or around the Mendip Hills. Quite a few of the others lived in Cheddar, so it was good for me to meet young people from new places. It is a two-year course, where you have to attend once each month and try something different each time. A lot of the focus is on the Mendip Hills and on its conservation. Some months we visit somewhere to learn about the history of the place, like Wells Museum, and other times we visit places like a local quarry.
Mendip AONB Young Rangers, Navigating Session, Mendip Hills (Mya-Rose Birdgirl Craig 3rd from left) Copyright Mendip AONB
At the end of the two years, we get the John Muir Gold Award for Conservation. That is fantastic, but there is a bit of me that feels uncomfortable with that. John Muir was a Scottish American conservationist living in the USA who did a lot for conservation, lobbying for the formation of Yosemite NP, California in 1864. We visited the park last summer and it is really, really beautiful. However, there is a lot more to John Muir, and a lot that is very unpalatable to me. This blog post in Scientific American is essential reading http://bit.ly/2pyDEez:
“I was raised in the mountains of Northern California and walked the trails near the site of this [native american] massacre as a child. But I had never heard of John Savage nor the terrible events that lay behind the formation of Yosemite National Park, a picturesque symbol of the conservation movement and a vacation resort for millions. Rather it was John Muir, that storied wanderer and founder of the Sierra Club, whose name was synonymous with this national treasure. When my brothers and I climbed out of the family station wagon to witness the majesty of this glacier-carved valley, it was Muir’s name that adorned the signs along the manicured trails and the celebrated volumes in the gift shop. If the indigenous population was mentioned in any of the brochures or trail guides I have no memory of it and I left with no indication that the region had once been inhabited. The impression I received was that Yosemite had always been a pristine wilderness, as sparse and pure as the Ansel Adams portraits that hung on my family’s wall for years afterwards.
It was this skewed interpretation of U.S. wilderness that John Muir had successfully promoted, a vision that has haunted the conservation movement ever since. In his famous nineteenth-century travel writings in the Sierra Nevada Mountains Muir described Yosemite not just as a picturesque marvel of nature, but as something divine that was beyond human frailties. The landscape of the “Sierra Cathedral Mountains” was a “temple lighted from above. But no temple made with hands can compare with Yosemite,” he wrote. It was a place that was “pure wildness” and where “no mark of a man is visible upon it.”
[T]he main canyons widen into spacious valleys or parks of charming beauty, level and flowery and diversified like landscape gardens with meadows and groves and thickets of blooming bushes, while the lofty walls, infinitely varied in form, are fringed with ferns, flowering plants, shrubs of many species, and tall evergreens and oaks.
It’s not that Muir didn’t encounter native peoples in his travels. He did, but he found them to be “most ugly, and some of them altogether hideous.” For a wilderness as pure as his holy Yosemite, “they seemed to have no right place in the landscape, and I was glad to see them fading out of sight down the pass.” But, ironically, these “strange creatures” as Muir described them were the ones responsible for many of the features that gave Yosemite Valley its park-like appearance, the “landscape gardens” that Muir so valued. It is this forgotten legacy that has undermined many of the successes in the U.S. and even the global conservation movement today, one that traces directly back to John Savage and John Muir and the first protected wilderness site that later became the model followed around the world.”
I am not sure whether to accept my John Muir Gold Award or not; I have worked hard for it and it is recognised highly here. I think not, though I might refer in my CV to being entitled to receive it. For those who have been involved in race issues, what is your advice?
Of the twenty young people who started the course with me, two have dropped out, but the rest of us are good friends.
On 18 March 2017, Mendip AONB Young Rangers visited Chew Valley Ringing Station which was organised by me and my Dad, Chris Craig who is Treasurer. My trainer, Mike Bailey, gave a talk about the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) and why we do ringing (banding), about the SSRI and the types of nets and traps we use. I then helped give a bird ringing demonstration, led a tour of the site and did some birdwatching. After that, we spent the rest of the day taking part in coppicing to create a new net lane. That was lots of fun and I think that everyone had a good time.
Mendip AONB Young Rangers – Ringing Session, Mendip Hills (Chris Craig 2nd from left) Copyright Mendip AONB
Mendip AONB Young Rangers – Ringing Session, Mendip Hills (Chris Craig 4th from right) Young Birder Mya-Rose Birdgirl Craig 2nd from left Copyright Mendip AONB
It was great to organise a session that connected the group to nature as so much of the conservation work we have done doesn’t actually involve that. Much of the Mendips is overgrazed with little vegetation or trees, so it would be good for it to be re-wilded, but we haven’t learnt anything contentious like this.
Hi, I’m Dr. Mya-Rose Craig. I am a 19-year-old prominent British-Bangladeshi ornithologist, environmentalist, diversity activist as well as an author, speaker and broadcaster. At age 11 I started the popular blog Birdgirl, and at age 17 I became the youngest person to see half of the birds in the world.
Lyrical, poignant and insightful.’ - Margaret Atwood
This is my story; a journey defined by my love for these extraordinary creatures. Because large or small, brown, patterned or jewelled, there is something about birds that makes us, even for just moments at a time, lift our eyes away from our lives and up to the skies.
Lyrical, poignant and insightful.’ - Margaret Atwood
This is my story; a journey defined by my love for these extraordinary creatures. Because large or small, brown, patterned or jewelled, there is something about birds that makes us, even for just moments at a time, lift our eyes away from our lives and up to the skies.
Being the Friends of the Earth Magazine Earth Matters’ Front Cover
Last December, Friends of the Earth UK asked me if I would be interviewed for their magazine. I do quite a few interviews so said yes, thinking nothing of it.
The following week, Friends of the Earth asked if their photographer could come down to Bristol and take a few photographs. They wanted photographs of me ringing, so I fixed for him to come the following Saturday morning to Chew Valley Ringing Station.
The morning went like this:
8.30 am BBC Points West News camera crew and reporter Alice Bouverie to film about Black2 Nature
9.30 am Andrew McGibbon Friends of the Earth UK photographer with assistant
10.45 am Quick change of clothes from birding gear to trendy city clothes
11.30 am Shopping with my friend in Bristol’s Cabot Circus
With my trainer Mike Bailey and BBC Points West film crew
When Andrew arrived, he told me that he was shooting for the front cover of their magazine. That didn’t phase me, as I thought he meant that I was going to be in a little box on the front cover with the other people being interviewed.
With Andrew McGibbon from Friends of the Earth
In January the magazine editor e-mailed my mum. She said that she just wanted to check a fact. I had said that I had been taken on my first twitch when I was 9 days old and she was just checking if it was meant to read 9 weeks or 9 months. Mum had to e-mail back to say that I was right, they had taken me to the Isles of Scilly when I was only 9 days old to see a Lesser Kestrel!
I didn’t hear anything more until the end of January when Andrew tweeted me with a photograph of the front cover of the Friends of the Earth members magazine, “Earth Matters”. I was stunned and embarrassed to see my face on the front of the magazine with my quote “beauty all around me”. Was that really me?
This was at a time when there were unpleasant things going on for me on Twitter, so this was amazing and made me feel above it all. The magazine hasn’t been posted out yet though so all I had seen was this photograph.
The whole of that was unreal in itself, but the next thing was even more unbelievable.
A couple of weeks later, I had a previously arranged meeting at the Friends of the Earth Head office in London with Paul De Zylva who is very senior there, to talk about Black2Nature and the environmental sector. First, I got to look around their fantastic and trendy offices which are in old printworks, with an igloo and treehouse for quiet and creative working. I definitely would like to work there and try it all out.
As we walked around the office, everywhere I looked there were 4-5 magazines spread out on desks and tables, all with my face on them, starting in the reception. There were also huge TV screens around the office, all with my face across them. As we wandered around, staff did a double-take as they recognised my face but maybe didn’t know where from initially. I also got to see Andrew, which was lovely. He said he was really proud of my cover and the full-page photograph of my inside and said that he thought it was probably the best Earth Matters cover ever! As a teenager, I was of course hugely embarrassed, but when I actually picked the magazine up and saw it in real life, I suddenly felt really proud.
I doubt very much that I will be the front cover of a magazine like that again, but even if I am, there is no way I’ll ever have the experience of walking around the Friends of the Earth offices like that and seeing my face everywhere. That was an incredible experience. Thank you Friends of the Earth and I would encourage you all to join up.
A couple of weeks later, the magazine was posted out to Friends of the Earth members and I started hearing from people I knew as they received their magazine. My image was the full size on the A4 envelopes sending out the magazines. A teacher at school brought in the magazine and put it up on the staff notice board. It was great that so many people I knew were members of Friends of the Earth.
This is a link to an on-line shortened version of the magazine bit.ly/2mFMfYt.
About The Author
Hi, I’m Dr. Mya-Rose Craig. I am a 19-year-old prominent British-Bangladeshi ornithologist, environmentalist, diversity activist as well as an author, speaker and broadcaster. At age 11 I started the popular blog Birdgirl, and at age 17 I became the youngest person to see half of the birds in the world.
Lyrical, poignant and insightful.’ - Margaret Atwood
This is my story; a journey defined by my love for these extraordinary creatures. Because large or small, brown, patterned or jewelled, there is something about birds that makes us, even for just moments at a time, lift our eyes away from our lives and up to the skies.
Lyrical, poignant and insightful.’ - Margaret Atwood
This is my story; a journey defined by my love for these extraordinary creatures. Because large or small, brown, patterned or jewelled, there is something about birds that makes us, even for just moments at a time, lift our eyes away from our lives and up to the skies.
