Ingham’s W RLD
UNABLE to sleep the other morning I rose with the larks, staggered downstairs to be greeted by a flurry of tail-wagging from my dog, and set off into one of the most beautiful spring days yet. Forty minutes and 26 bird species later I had forgotten the lost sleep and was rejuvenated.
All the usual suspects were up as the dawn chorus went up a gear from its late winter warm-up: wrens, robins, song thrushes, dunnocks, blue, great and coal tits in full voice, with magpies, crows, jackdaws and jays chipping in with guttural calls.
Nuthatches were piping away, chaffinches belting out their cascading trill, great woodpeckers drumming and green ones saying hello with their manic laugh. Goldfinches were performing their wind-chime song, greenfinches all but purring and the blackbirds opting for lazy fluting.
A treecreeper – a mouse-like bird with a curved beak that likes to spiral up tree trunks in search of bugs – was singing while a heron flapped slowly over the North Downs with goldfish on his mind.
A yickering call announced a little grebe and then came a real prize: the two-note song of a chiffchaff, a little warbler newly arrived from the Med, my first summer visitor of the year.
I felt very happy – and for a good reason. A new book, The Nature Fix, extols the virtues of immersing yourself in the natural world.
It cites research from Finland which is often highly ranked on global scales of happiness.
That country boasts vast expanses of forest and lakes, islands and rocky coasts and has made communing with nature after a sauna into an art form.
Researchers there discovered that spending five hours a month in natural settings is enough to provide an emotional boost. Raise it to 10 hours and the benefits keep growing. The more time people spend in a green area, the better they feel.
Various studies suggest enjoying parks brings lower pulse rates, lower blood pressure and feelings of peace and wellbeing.
It doesn’t work for everyone. One in five people just don’t get it. These townies are much better off with concrete than conifers.
But as modern life exacts a toll of stress and depression, a regular walk in the woods offers the prospect of cost-free healthcare that the NHS must dream about.
So next time I can’t sleep, I’ll be back out with my dog and the birds. Maybe next time I’ll actually find some larks. The Nature Fix by Florence Williams (WW Norton, £20). USED toner cartridges are being turned into tarmac Down Under. The firm Downer is trialling the surface in Queensland and Canberra and says it lasts longer than the average road. Every mile uses around 10,240 recycled toner cartridges and 232 car tyres – so no need for them to rot for centuries in landfill. A RARE sea creature has been given a lifeline by St Andrews University researchers. With an international team they deployed 300 echolocators across the Baltic – even drilling through sea ice – and counted 500 Baltic porpoises. The Swedish government then created a 4,000square-mile conservation area. It covers the main breeding zone so hopefully 500 will become 1,000. GREEN TIP: Help bees and butterflies by planting spring nectar plants such as aubretia, primrose and grape hyacinth. For summer try lavender and buddleia. WHAT would Darwin say? Invasive species have slashed numbers of mangrove finches to 100 on the Galapagos Islands where the great man developed his Theory Of Evolution. But captive breeding by the Galapagos Conservation Trust has returned 36 to the wild in three years. It’s not survival of the fittest but who cares? MOBILE phones make people forget the world around them. On a train the other day a girl decided to have a conference call and sang like a canary for 30 minutes about her firm’s launch strategy. She clearly thought she was being very important but won’t her bosses be thrilled that she leaked what they’re planning?