It’s dire in the countryside now, but probably only those
living in the rural community really understand what’s happened. At any time of the year now, I can walk
along Gower lanes, through woodlands, or visit Oxwich marsh and find very few
small birds. I’m old enough to
remember hedgerows alive with bird song, the loud buzz of insects, and myriads
of butterflies in wild flower meadows.
Feeding birds in our gardens has become the norm, providing tiny refuges
away from a progressively sanitised world. I suspect that the majority of city dwellers are not aware of
the hush that’s gradually spread into rural life.
It’s crept up on us, and there are many reasons for this
demise. Pesticides, fragmentation of good wildlife habitats and the like, but
at the end of the day it all boils down to big business and farming practices.
I’ve heard it said that we’re lucky on Gower, we don’t have the prairies, which
cover large areas of England, and we have our commons and cliffs, but in
reality wildlife on Gower is nothing like it used to be.
I’m reminded of this once again as I walk the familiar cliff
path between Caswell and Langland.
The cliffs are eerily devoid of birds, no once-familiar stonechats,
linnets, or greenfinches. A couple of rock pipits call from amongst the rocks
down on the shore, and I get excited at a robin and a dunnock by the path. At
Langland Bay, I’m depressed to realise that, apart from a few gulls and feral
pigeons, these were the only birds I encountered along the entire mile or so of
cliff path.
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