Nature Tripping

Jo and Cathy meet with Ashar Aslam, a post-doctoral climate researcher at Leeds University who studies tropical storms. They discuss Jo and Ashar’s 2025 collaboration as part of Leeds Cultural Institute’s Creative Labs programme. This brought scientists and artists together to think about climate change: Jo and Ashar decided to explore what happens if you recontextualise the climate as a living entity. How do people respond to this proposition? Is it too hard to imagine, or conversely, could it be a way of engendering more care for the climate, and prompting a shift in thinking that leads to pro-environmental behaviour? We hear about Jo and Ashar’s experiences of discussing this with friends and colleagues, and listen to ‘Climotherapy’ – the sound art piece they made. ‘Climotherapy’ documents responses collected as part of the project, and shares meteorological information on the nature of storm formation. With thanks to those we interviewed including Ronika Cunningham, Diane Greenwood, Katie Jukes, Arundhati Kalyan, Kathryn Loftus, Alison Ruck and Sam Williams.

Jo and Cathy meet Bailey for an introduction to Regenerative Farming and a discussion about the experimental field work he has been doing with the University of Oxford on the impact of different types of grazing management on biodiversity. Three different scenarios - conventionally grazed pasture, mob-grazed pasture, and passive restoration (where land is left untouched) - have been monitored for all sorts of biodiversity, with Bailey’s focus on the life beneath our feet. Soil might look pretty dull, but in fact it’s alive with invertebrates, and is a vital component of ecosystems. Can listening to it provide important information on soil health? If so, what does a robust experimental method for doing that even look like? Bailey has some of the answers… and the sounds.

Jo and Cathy spend this episode with National Trust project officer and ecologist Steve Hindle on the slopes of Calderdale, in what looks like an ordinary field… but isn’t. They discuss the fascinating lives of fungi and their vital but often overlooked role in the ecosystem, not only as decomposers or parasites, but also as symbiotic partners engaged in a range of very sophisticated relationships with plants. Steve’s partner Sarah Flood scours the field for waxcaps, pinkgills, clubs, corals and earthtongues. Each has their own ecological niche, and all are indicators of ‘ancient grassland’, a rare habitat which Calderdale, with its challenging farming conditions, has managed to hold on to. Landowner Liz tells of the sometimes confusing journey her and her partner took to work out the best management options for the field, the steps they are taking to protect it, and of course, her new found passion for fungi!

It’s always a pleasure to hear from our listeners and on occasion people have asked for an episode dedicated purely to nature sounds. This is one such episode. It’s a compilation of ambient field recordings made around the coastline of the Hebridean island of Tiree. Slow radio indeed, and we recommend listening on headphones. This is an energetic and vibrant landscape. You can immerse yourself in the elemental sounds of waves and wind, and experience a wide variety of birdlife. We begin the episode with the faint cry of sea eagles high in the sky, then move back to the seashore, plunging down to listen to the underwater sounds of a limpet steadily munching its way across a rock, and the popping and crackling of a forest of sea kelp. Back on dry land and a little way inshore a fulmar colony prepares for the 2024 breeding season on a small cliff outcrop, in the close company of nearby starlings. We also meet common gulls, oyster catchers and redshank going about daily life on the shore and as darkness falls pay a visit to a grassy shoreline field to hear the night-time activity of snipe and graylag geese, before finally returning to the waves.

What does rewilding in the British Isles mean, how do you start it off, and what happens when you do? In this episode we visit the 3000 acre Broughton Hall estate in Yorkshire with Rewilding Britain’s Alastair Driver to see how nature is bouncing back. A wide range of interventions and actions are now underway on land that was conventionally farmed for sheep and crops until very recently. Whether it’s tree planting, leaky dam construction, the introduction of ecosystem engineers (beavers), or just letting nature do its thing and embracing ‘scruffication’, the benefits for wildlife, the environment, the climate and people are compelling.

In this episode we visit Gronant and Talacre dunes with Mandy Cartwright from the Amphibian and Reptile Conservation Trust to investigate the only Welsh population of Natterjack Toads, re-introduced after the Second World War. The shallow pools (scrapes) and sandy burrows provide a perfect habitat, but development pressures, predation, human activity and climate change mean life for these small, yellow-striped amphibians is precarious. How exactly do Natterjack Toads live, and what are landowners and conservationists doing to ensure they keep croaking long into the night? With thanks also to Yvette Martin (ARC) and Darren Mason (National Trust).

Cathy and Jo join wildlife biologist and hare expert Carlos Bedson on location in the Dark Peak to find out more about the only mountain hares in England. Their ancestors arrived on a train from Scotland! 500 metres up on the moor looking out for ‘white fluffy blobs’ Carlos explains more about the likes and dislikes of this amazing creature, his long-term survey work to map the extent and size of the Peak District population, how to go about seeing one, and what we can do to ensure their continued survival.

“Come, summer visitant, attach to my reed roof your nest of clay”. In this episode Jo and Cathy look back to the Victorian era with poetry scholar Clara Dawson. Clara introduces us to poems by Charlotte Smith, William Wordsworth, Christina Rosetti, Edward Thomas and Thomas Hardy, and the interweaving of human and bird worlds. What is revealed about the poets’ relationships with nature as industrialisation took grip across the country? And how might these poems spark our own imaginations, both in terms of experiencing nature’s previous plenitude, and in forging new relationships with the living world to carry us into an uncertain future? The poems are read by Clara and set to field recordings. This episode was supported by the University of Manchester.

Following on from Episode 15 Jo and Cathy make a return to the peatlands, this time to a lowland raised bog on the outskirts of Manchester and Salford. Little Woolden Moss formed over thousands of years but was almost totally destroyed in the 1990s by peat extraction – it became a barren, lifeless place, swirling with clouds of black dust. Jo and Cathy meet Jenny Bennion from the local Wildlife Trust and Dave Steel, a birdwatcher and bog volunteer, to find out how it's now being brought back to life and becoming a wildlife haven once again.

Jo takes a trip up the west coast to the Inner Hebrides to join Cathy who is helping with the RSPB’s annual corncrake census on the Isle of Tiree. Locating these elusive birds involves listening for calling males in the dead of night. Join Jo and Cathy on a midnight journey to track them down, followed by an in-depth conversation with RSPB officer John Bowler who shares the story of the corncrake, why the Inner Hebrides remains one of the UK’s last strongholds for these birds, and what is being done to look after future generations.

Setting out to explore the River Colne, Jo and Cathy start at its source on the edge of the moors and journey downstream through urban West Yorkshire to its confluence with the River Calder. Their trip takes in weirs, walls, abandoned mills, industrial pollution, combined sewer overflows, liminal space and river life. As well as exploring the historical and present day human impacts on the river, they begin to question more deeply our relationship with rivers and the role they can play in our lives.

In this episode we take the opportunity to meet the warblers, millions of whom travel thousands of miles every year, returning to the UK to breed, and sing - possibly in a tree near you! We then reveal the often overlooked acoustic charm of the long tailed tit. [Timings: Willow Warbler @ 2mins 19secs; Blackcap @ 13mins 45secs; Long tailed Tit @ 25mins 03secs]

This episode is a long field recording of a dawn chorus made at the beginning of April, and accompanies our podcasts on learning birdsong in the coronavirus lockdown. We provide a short spoken introduction, but then just leave the birds to it.