It always helps if the birding is easy. My eldest(7) is really looking forward to seeing the Puffins on Skomer on Saturday.
Rich
Rich
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Birding, nature and kids (1 Viewer)
- Thread starter tittletattler
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IAN JAMES THOMPSON
Well-known member
I'm a member of an RSPB Local Group from Newcastle Upon Tyne and the youngest active member is 16 years of age and be volunteers to lead some of the Local Groups Birdwatching field trips and he's won awards for some of his wildlife photography and I believe he's volunteering also to protect the Hen Harriers. I find it very sad some of the posts in this thread about younger people involving in watching birds and other forms of wildlife and the anti attitude to noisy younger people. I'm all for encouraging younger people to be involved in protecting birds and other forms of wildlife. And just to say I'm 62 years of age and I've been interested in birds and other forms of wildlife continuishly since I was about 5 years old continuing right through my teenage years and I'm also now a Life Fellow of the RSPB which I became after being an annual member since the 1960's and 3 years ago I changed my membership to a Life Fellow.
Ian.
Ian.
Farnboro John
Well-known member
Its splendid to hear about a good lad like yours, but the fact remains that taken in the round, todays yoof are less disciplined and more inclined to be noisy and anti.
Perhaps I'm unusual (I'm sure I'll get told in a minute!) but I and my friends, as youngsters, weren't into wildlife but were still usually quiet in the countryside - where we went at every possible moment, we were outdoor kids.
This was partly because we spent a fair amount of time trespassing one place or another and didn't want to get caught, but also because many of our games in legitimate places required silence for success - hide and seek, tag with airguns and so on (we replaced pellets with short lengths of plastic washing line - lower velocity but still stung!) We learnt self-discipline and fieldcraft.
We didn't give lip to adults and we never had that deliberate spoiling attitude that e.g. makes drivers toot their horns wildly when they see a crowd of birders by the road.
I will happily engage with any young person showing any interest but I do also wish I was free to take action e.g. with an electric cattle prod, with the other kind.
John
Nutcracker
Stop Brexit!
Drivers along the A178 outside RSPB Saltholme are particularly bad for that :storm: wish I was free to take action with one of those 'stinger' gadgets the police use 3
I am often invited as a "birding expert" when kids are taken to nature trips around the city. It is important to NOT make it an "everybody MUST come" event for a school class (and do not schedule it on a school day as you will get dozens of kids who are there just to skip classes). Schedule it in a way that kids first contact the organizer person and inform teachers that they may take their most interested students. Then everyone who was not really into taking a nature trip will stay home asleep or play with their buddies instead of disrupting those who want to see/hear something.
Our urban kids are pretty high-strung and constantly busy so you must adapt your explanations to their style of functioning. It is almost impossible to gather them all at one spot to show them a butterfly or a snail or a bird - they are already spread along the trail in smaller groups. I leave all decisions to the organizer person and concentrate on explaining nature stuff.
Our urban kids are pretty high-strung and constantly busy so you must adapt your explanations to their style of functioning. It is almost impossible to gather them all at one spot to show them a butterfly or a snail or a bird - they are already spread along the trail in smaller groups. I leave all decisions to the organizer person and concentrate on explaining nature stuff.
IAN JAMES THOMPSON
Well-known member
I'm afraid I disagree with you, that the youth are less disciplined than they used to be. A lot of people seem to think the good old days where far better than the present time.. But it's no different today than it was say 50-60 years ago. I find it very sad that so many people have so many criticism of youths today, and today's youths behave no differently than when I was in my teens during the early 1960's. I was probably the same then as well and I know it. It's just like certain people saying that the British summers used to be better, hotter and warmer as well back in the good old days and the Met Office records disprove that. In my opinion the RSPB is doing the correct thing in getting more young people to go to observe Birdwatching and other forms of wildlife. Because they are the future for all forms of conservation of wildlife and the protection of the countryside.
Ian.
Nutcracker
Stop Brexit!
Didn't Socrates or someone else back then say something almost exactly the same 2500 years ago? :-O
It is of course not true. The vast majority of today's kids are decent, pleasant, and kind to all comers.
Farnboro John
Well-known member
The RSPB has always had a youth arm and I am sure its reach is actually better than it used to be. However I must entirely disagree with your view of youth in general, and I attribute it entirely to: the demise of the tools of discipline especially in school but also outside where it is no longer permissible when a horrible little oik whom you do not know gives you lip, to clip them round the ear, and the utter failure of modern parenting both among the hoi polloi and Guardian readers.
This of course is not to say that some parents do not keep doggedly on and produce results; but the worst are worse than they were, and there are far too many children that know they can get away with far too much, with no consequences at all.
Something else that there is far too much of is an assumption that somebody [else, usually government] is responsible for sorting out the ills, when it is entirely the responsibility of parents. This includes, for instance, kids getting themselves run over on the road. If they haven't been taught road-crossing; if their parents haven't established in them the discipline to wait for a safe gap whatever the temptation across the road; if they are in fact not old enough to be out on their own - then the parents are responsible for whatever happens to them, not the hapless driver whether within the speed limit or not who kills them. The reason I include speeders is that whether or not it is safe to cross is the judgement of the pedestrian, and it is the parent's responsibility to ensure they are fit to make that judgement in all circumstances before they are released onto roads occupied by imbecilic teenagers in hot hatches with stupid little lights all over them. But nobody will ever point that entirely legitimate finger where it should be pointed.
You may think that is an extreme example, but actually its a key one: parents who won't take that responsibility are never going to accept that anything less should be down to them.
John
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IAN JAMES THOMPSON
Well-known member
I completely disagree with you completely, youths are no better or worse than when I was young in the 1950's and 1960's and my Father who sadly died in 2001 said the same to me about the 1920's and 1930's as well. You ideas about that era are very rose tinted about the younger generation then. But it's no different today than yesteryear. There was no golden era I'm afraid.
Ian.
Farnboro John
Well-known member
Knife crime and drugs. Its worse. It may not have been golden but it wasn't the crap we have now.
John
Nutcracker
Stop Brexit!
Knife crime?? Been around for millennia, and it was worse then than now. Look at Julius Caesar :t:
Hitchhikers with chains, Mods and rockers fighting on the beach front, football hooligans, and thats just the teenagers. There were football gangs in my school, when I was six I got four teeth kicked out by a 12 year old. In the Highlands, its a sport for the youth to visit other villages on a friday and saturday for a fight. But not all were like it then and they are not today either. It hardly ever made the news back then, but with the media today, its more in your face. Borstels were probably fuller "back in the day", now the bleeding hearts blame it on heavy paper rounds and the get a slap on the wrist, not literally, heaven forbid, thats no longer allowed, even by their own parents. Not all children in the sixties were polite either. Equally many children today are polite.
I was heartened yesterday to see around half-a-dozen local kids doing some makeshift pond-dipping on the newly constructed ponds here in Torry. They seemed to be doing so entirely unsupervised by adults. It's perhaps worth noting that this area is one of the more deprived ones in the city.
This, for me, is the best sort of way for children to learn about the world around them. Whilst it's perhaps foolish to generalise too much, in my experience (both as child and adult) they much prefer doing stuff to being told stuff, as others on this thread have noted. I think people can argue all sorts of nonsense about how great things were in 'the old days' but there has certainly been a shift indoors for kids during my life time and also to outdoor activities being much more heavily supervised by grown ups. This shift is a bit troubling in my view and actually seems to be most accentuated in more 'well to do' neighbourhoods where kids either seem to be indoors or are involved in some sort of heavily regulated 'outdoor activities'.
This, for me, is the best sort of way for children to learn about the world around them. Whilst it's perhaps foolish to generalise too much, in my experience (both as child and adult) they much prefer doing stuff to being told stuff, as others on this thread have noted. I think people can argue all sorts of nonsense about how great things were in 'the old days' but there has certainly been a shift indoors for kids during my life time and also to outdoor activities being much more heavily supervised by grown ups. This shift is a bit troubling in my view and actually seems to be most accentuated in more 'well to do' neighbourhoods where kids either seem to be indoors or are involved in some sort of heavily regulated 'outdoor activities'.
JWN Andrewes
Poor Judge of Pasta.
Well, I'm pleased to report that my two (fast approaching 5 & 7 yo) have been captivated by Springwatch, and even have a list going (38 and counting, we're building it slowly so as to a) not overwhelm them, and b) so they can become properly familiar with each new one before moving on). Cuckoozilla was a particular hit, they're well up for going to see Avocet some time, are desperate to get up to Scotland for a crack at Golden Eagle, and have been totally unfazed by all the one-sided corvid vs lagomorph carnage.
James
James
Farnboro John
Well-known member
I was at Thursley yesterday and I am happy to report numerous families out looking at wildlife with the kids demonstrating interest, knowledge and common sense - with the exception of the only child escorted by his mother who was trying ever so hard to catch lizards on the boardwalk. We didn't comment because (a) he wasn't having any success and (b) his mother was hot.
John
John
IAN JAMES THOMPSON
Well-known member
There has always been knife crime and drugs. It not crap today and it wasn't crap then. There's always been bad and good. As an earlier post in this thread said, there's more news and media available via 24 hour news and of course the Internet now, which is why you hear about it alot more than you did 50 or 60 years ago.. But it's always been like this bad and good.
Ian.
Farnboro John
Well-known member
Of course its always been bad and good. However, the bad is worse (I've been in my share of fights behind the bike sheds, I'm ginger, but we stuck to fists, not knives or nine-mils!) and the good is rarer.
The bit in the middle is appreciably nearer the wrong side and drifting the wrong way; and the tales of family badness are no longer situations of desperation in the face of impossible conditions but of dead-eyed slobbishness and belief that someone else will provide, from people with no moral compass whatever (last word not used as these people use it.)
I know lots of good people, because I don't hang around with bad people. Being a birder gives me a head start in that respect. But I don't live in a dreamworld and the evil that used to be confined to the extremes of society minorities (mods and rockers being a good example) has spread considerably.
John
John
IAN JAMES THOMPSON
Well-known member
Im afraid your wrong again, knifes have always been used in about the same amount and I'm afraid your absolutely wrong about this matter and the bad is not worse, as people get older they imagine that the past was a utopia and the evil that you talk about, has not spread at all and that it's no different and it's just a few minorities that have knifes and guns.
Ian.
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John has a point, when kids got in fight when I was younger, if one kid went down the fight was over, nowadays they stomp on his head. The inner cities were always rough to the country lad, but the razor gangs of yesteryear have been replaced by gun toting nutters that don't think twice about using them.
IAN JAMES THOMPSON
Well-known member
As people get older, they always think the present time is worse than the past. People often would think Summers where warmer and hotter then, but the Met Office records prove otherwise and they think violence is worse now. People will still think 50 or 60 years from now that today was better than the time they will live in then. It's always happened and always will. As many teenagers used knives 50 or 60 ago as use them now. In 60 years time after I'm gone, people will think that this period was better. And there has always been guns used as much back then by youths, as there is now.
Ian.
