As you all know, Taplow is a part of the Chilterns, although not a part of the designated Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) within the Chilterns. Your Society is a group member of the Chiltern Society and two members of your committee are representatives to the Chiltern Society’s Planning Group. From time to time there are items of either general or specific interest affecting Taplow in the "Chiltern News" and occasionally worth repeating in the HTS newsletter. One such article in the Chiltern News entitled “Larks in the Country” written by Tony Marshall caught my eye since this writes of a general issue affecting us all these days. The following is based on that article. Ed.
No, this is not an article about golfing ‘birdies’ but about the real thing. There is an article in the latest issue of Chiltern News titles ‘Larks in the country’ in which Tony Marshall writes about the walk that Robert Louis Stevenson took in 1874 between High Wycombe and Tring, and its worth a comment or two since Tony compares Stevenson’s experience with today and is highly relevant to us all on a personal level.
Not all that long ago my garden was alive with the sound of music; bird song. They were of all kinds and extremely busy with their little lives, paying us little attention unless there was extra food and water available. Something we always made sure of.
This is no longer true since all the Tits, Blackbirds, Sparrows and Dunnocks etc. seem to have disappeared. We used to have a pair of Doves that are no longer to around. Yesterday a solitary Pigeon over flew the garden, seemingly very twitchy about something. We have a solitary and nervous Robin. A kind of silent autumn has descended. My personal take on this situation is that the decision by the RSPB to reintroduce raptors to all parts of the UK, and getting them labelled as a protected species is playing a major role in the loss of songbirds. These raptors have to eat something and what better than the juicy little songbirds?
Compare this situation with 1874.
Stevenson mentions Larks:
‘Overhead there was a wonderful carolling of larks which seemed to follow me as I went. Indeed, during all the time I was in that country the larks did not desert me. The air was alive with them as, day after day, their “shrill delight” fell upon me out of the vacant sky, they began to take such a prominence over other conditions, and form so integral a part of my conception of the country, that I could have baptized it “The Country of the Larks.’
Tony continues:
‘This presents us with a contrast with our own times. Skylarks, like other farmland birds, were massively affected by the ‘agricultural revolution’ of the of the mid 20th century, when widespread use of chemical herbicides and insecticides, and earlier cutting of meadows for green silage instead of dry hay, destroyed much of their food and many nesting places. Twenty years ago you would have been lucky to hear a lark in our area, although the situation has improved thank to stewardship schemes, which paid farmers to manage some part parts of their land for wildlife instead of maximising production. So you can hear larks again over the fields but greatly reduced in numbers… We are (however) much more likely to hear the plaintive mewing of red kites, one of the most successful reintroductions of our vanished wildlife.
Not only have we almost lost that music from the skies, we have also lost the colourful sight of hundreds upon hundreds of various coloured butterflies over flowery meadows, that even the eldest among us can only dimly remember from childhood.’
A bit of look back in time from Stevenson:
‘I could hear the ploughmen shouting to their horses, the uninterrupted carol of larks innumerable overhead, and, from a field where the shepherd was marshalling his flock, a sweet tumultuous tinkle of sheep-bells. The fields were busy with people ploughing and sowing; every here and there a jug of ale stood in the angle of the hedge, and could see man a team wait smoking in the furrow as ploughmen or sower stepped aside for a moment take a draught.’
That may sound unrealistically idyllic, but even if it was really much more of a drudge and the sun did not shine every day, it is still evident that a whole way of life has disappeared forever. Farming now is business, efficiency, machinery and about as rural as a car factory. The roar of the combine harvester has replaced the tinkle of sheep-bells. Farmers must survive, we demand plentiful cheap food – there is no other way.
Fred Russell
