Looking forward to getting out and about
Hello you and welcome to the View from V2! I’m Milly Luxford, the breakfast presenter at your brand-new local radio station, V2 Radio. It is hard to know where to begin as our journey so far has been an utter whirlwind. Starting with an initial Zoom meeting to discuss the idea of creating a new proper local radio station back in late September, to four months later when we actually launched V2 Radio. It feels like a dream – a totally brilliant dream at that.
One element of this adventure that has been truly humbling is receiving such incredible support from local people, businesses and of course, our fabulous crowd-funders who helped make this whole venture possible.
With that in mind, we really can’t wait to start giving something back.
At V2 Radio we have a strong community ethos, and we are very much looking forward to being able to get into the community and be hands on with local events, the arts and festivals. Things that are plentiful in our glorious county.
Don’t be shy, if you have an event or charity endeavour please do tell us about it so we can help promote it for you on air, online and who knows, we may even turn up in our outside broadcast vehicle – restrictions permitting of course.
I would also like to say a big thank you to the Observer series for all its support, both past and continued.
It is never easy as a start-up business, let alone a start-up business during a global pandemic so it has meant a lot to us.
Our small but perfectly formed team is very excited to be featuring each week through this column.
We will be taking it in turns so you will get to meet the whole team.
Spoiler alert – I do believe that Ian Crouch, otherwise known as Crouchie, will be writing next week’s column, letting you know all about a challenge we have embarked on for a local charity.
Roll on when restrictions are behind us and we can meet at one of the fantastic events that this county is renowned for.
Until then, take care.
V2 Radio is available on DAB, via the V2 app, online at www.v2radio.co.uk and on smart speakers.
The British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) Garden Bird Watch was followed by thousands last month. The campaign to monitor the UK’S garden bird life has now been running for 25 years and maintains an accurate barometer of how successful we are at preserving populations that are otherwise dwindling worldwide.
One of the concerns thrown up by garden bird watchers is the disappearance of dunnocks. These, at number five in the chart, are still among the commoner birds of our gardens it is true. But they have in recent years shown a slow but steady decline that seems unlikely to reverse.
I have two pairs in my garden because I maintain thick untidy hedges, and there are bramble bushes just outside the garden as well. I am lucky to have this option as nobody is going to tut-tut at the sight of this unsightly herbage spoiling the usual geometric lawn and border designs that so fascinate the human race but are of no interest to the rest of the planet’s incumbents.
Dunnocks, to the uninitiated, are LBJS: ’little brown jobs’. That could include most warblers, all sparrows, and a raft of rarities blown off course from Russia or America. Dunnock numbers peak in March in gardens so keep the eyes open now. You may be in luck to see these shufflewings, as Sussex folk of old once called them. Shuffling the wings in spring is exactly what the cock birds think the drab little hens want. Of course the cock birds are also drab little birds but don’t realise that.
The four dunnocks in my garden are at it all the time at the moment. If they didn’t have this daring display they would carry on just looking like lumps of mud, blown leaves, or a vole nibbling a blade of grass. They are in perfect camouflage for life in the overgrown garden, country lane, or woodland thicket. Nightingales and blackcap warblers like those places too, so you see my lack of need for the Pythagorean doctrine in the garden.
Dunnocks are mainly insectivorous, and feed in summer out of sight under the dense bramble bush and – yes – the
three-metre-wide hedge. But when it comes to winter the insects run out. So dunnocks come onto your bird table and pick up all the smallest crumbs. They are not demonstrative and they keep out of everybody’s way. Neither are they demonstrative with their song. At best it is a squeaky little piping, like an unoiled hinge.
BTO’S research shows that the beast from the east in 2018 caused a drop in numbers from the average 1.6 per UK garden to 1.3. By June 2020 this had dropped to 1.2, a record low, hence the concern.
Increasing numbers of wild deer are a serious threat to woodland birds like dunnock as they browse out the understorey of small low shrubs. The invasion of muntjac now appears to be uncontrolled while fallow deer often give the impression that the Serengeti has come to England. This is where big gardens can help with thick, unruly hedges. Nationwide dunnocks live and breed in all corners of the UK but no longer in such great numbers. They are the only members of the otherwise widespread accentor family to live in the Old World. This is why their name used to be hedge accentor, the only name my grandfather used for them a century ago.
Among the rest of the 40 core species recorded by the BTO in their garden watch research and which also shows serious declines are song thrush, greenfinch, chaffinch, starling and tree creeper. I have 26 of these 40 core species in my garden including a tree creeper which nests on my garage wall behind its larch-lap cladding. Most of them appreciate my thick hedges!