Can birdwatching make us more passionate about the environment?

Social media didn’t just turn Matthew Stadlen into a photographer. It turned him into a twitcher too. Now he’s on a mission to turn our eyes to the skies, not just to raise awareness for our feathered friends, but to inspire an environmental movement

A white-tailed eagle off the coast of Mull (Photography by Matthew Stadlen)

If you’re not someone who picks a fight with science, you’ll agree that our world is in trouble and we’re running out of time. How we force ourselves to change, whether it is driven from the top down by governments or from the bottom up by citizens – or both – is the defining question of our age. However we get there, though, it can surely only be a good thing to take a greater interest in the natural beauty all around us. If we pay attention to the wildlife on our doorstep, we are more likely to want to preserve the ecosystems that support not just the animals and birds with which we share our world, but also ourselves.

Birdwatching and photography can open your eyes to the everyday beauty that may be passing you by, whether you live in deepest countryside or innermost city. And, in turn, the inalienable duty we have to protect our environment, locally and globally.

We tend to overlook many of the treasures to which we have surprisingly easy access in our busy daily schedules. As Martin Harper, the global conservation director of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB), puts it in his foreword to my new book, How to See Birds: “There are some things we take for granted: the passing of the seasons, the rising and the setting of the sun and even the wildlife that we often ignore as we carry on with our hectic lives.” But, he goes on: “If we only took time to stop for a few moments and look up, we would be reminded of the majesty of the natural world, the beauty of bird song and the artistry of flight.”