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Original poster

Nature experiences our kids will miss out on..

15 replies

Abelard40 · 04/06/2023 18:46

I am still ruminating on the Wild Isles programme.. made me think about things I experienced as a child that are missing / will be missing from my children’s reference points:

  • murmurations - I loved seeing these massive flocks of starlings in the sky on the journey to my nans..
  • Diversity of roadkill - always been lead to believe it’s an indicator of diversity - where are the roadkill hedgehogs these days?
  • holidaying in the med (when my parents had a bit more money and we were older..) - the fish! So many, so colourful… went again in 2019 and it was a completely different landscape from the same Greek island…

I could go on.. someone rescue me from this depressing line of thought!

OP posts:
CMOTDibbler · 04/06/2023 18:51

We get the most amazing murmurations locally to me, so def not gone and neither has the roadkill. Roadkill is a bit seasonal I find and we'll have a phase of one thing or another being dominant but certainly plenty of it

PuttingDownRoots · 04/06/2023 18:53

Wide variation of roadkill on A1... pheasant, fox, badger and deer.

BigglyBee · 04/06/2023 18:54

My kids can see murmurations, and a diversity of roadkill (including hedgehogs, which aren't actually native to this area but were introduced years ago).
We don't fly for environmental reasons, so they will have to live without seeing the lack of fish in the Med, but I'm sure they'll cope.

PuttingDownRoots · 04/06/2023 18:54

Also with roadkill... I noticed a lot more post lockdowns. My hypothesis was the animals lost road sense when the roads were quieter.

Monkmeister · 04/06/2023 18:54

I caught five minutes of a radio show the other day where some expert was talking about the lack of insects being splatted on car windscreens these days. I hadn't noticed, but when I think about it, there were definitely more windscreen bugs as a kid.

PuffinMcStuffin · 04/06/2023 18:55

I guess it depends where you are, we have lot of 'nature experiences' where I am - if you live in a city there will be less to experience.

Missingmyusername · 04/06/2023 18:57

“but I'm sure they'll cope.” Yeah that’s our answer to everything rather than think, yup we’re buggered!!

I think life will be like a AI existence, after a war over resources! 😂🙈 bleak! Very bleak!

Original poster
Abelard40 · 04/06/2023 19:02

Yes - I flip between the ‘they’ll cope’ and the apocalyptic vision of the future for them.. I know every generation feels it is going through unprecedented times and I do try to keep that in my head..

But another one - I looked at a little video I took of our lavender (trails a path down the length of our garden) 5 years ago and there is no way we attract the sane number of bees now.. you used to hear them from our kitchen.

OP posts:
TheHateIsNotGood · 04/06/2023 19:18

Streams - so very few now, even less clean ones, and hardly any are easily accessible now.

No playing with sticks and leaves, no gentle paddling anymore; the days of taking a net to attempt to catch little fish, eels and tadpoles pretty much died out since my childhood unless you're one of the lucky few.

Pave it all over, contain the streams in tunnels underground; build a pond, grow your plants in pots and let all the surface water run-off be wasted as it enters our archaic dual use - sewage plus waste water system - to be discharged into our waterways.

Lift those slabs, uncover the dirt beneath your landscaping and let the water into the ground so less enters the overloaded discharge/cleansing systems. We can't wait for the Water Companies to get their act together, so lift a slab and make a patch, rather than wait for others to provide the solution, even though they really should.

Cupcakegirl13 · 04/06/2023 19:37

We have murmurations and diverse road kill too here !
No holidays in the med mind 🤣

Cattenberg · 04/06/2023 21:50

I never see hedgehogs anymore. We had plenty visiting our garden when I was young.

We still see murmurations of starlings sometimes. And we still have frogs and tadpoles in our ponds. Ours have just grown their back legs.

We now have plenty of newts in our pond too - they appeared in the last few years. Also, our neighbourhood always had the occasional grey squirrel, but now there are loads of them.

disappointed101 · 04/06/2023 21:54

I saw lots of roadkill on my journey the other day, so much so, that I commented to my husband. Have had lots of bees buzzing in my garden this past week and recently had some goldfinch in my garden, which I have never seen since moving in 13 years ago. I have also seen a massive variety of bugs in the garden; some I couldn’t even identify. This is in suburbia. The only thing I haven’t seen much of yet are butterflies.

OnMyWayToSenility · 04/06/2023 21:58

I know what you mean about greece.. it's not the same as when I was a kid! It's all huge hotels now.. but those places are still there it just takes a leap of faith to find them.

I take my kids camping to find the beauty I'm a simple life and see nature for what it is

Bluerg · 04/06/2023 21:59

No playing with sticks and leaves??

I find it hard to compare as I grew up in the countryside and now live in London. Still plenty of sticks and leaves though!

SelkieSeal · 04/06/2023 22:04

Plenty of roadkill hedgehogs here.

My kids grew up playing "roadkill bingo". 5 points for a pheasant or rabbit or squirrel, 10 for a fox or badger, 25 for a deer or wild boar. 1 point if it's so dead you can't tell what it was.

Perhaps that's not the lovely sort of nature experience you had in mind though...

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