MY COUNTRY PASSION
Mya-rose Craig grew up being mesmerised by the fascinating behaviour of birds. She now runs camps encouraging young people to engage with nature
Gazing skywards, Mya-rose Craig is fascinated by feathered friends that visit the UK, and enjoys encouraging others to share her passion for bird-watching
I’ve grown up in a bird-watching family. My earliest memory is from a holiday to Madeira when I was three, going out on a boat looking for seabirds. I knew even then it was what I loved and wanted to do. The fact that these tiny little things can fly thousands of miles, from America or Siberia, is mesmerising. When I was 11, I started my blog birdgirluk.com, which got a lot of attention.
Where I live in Chew Valley, Bristol, overlooks Chew Valley Lake. The Mendips are nearby and there is woodland behind my house, which is amazing for birds, we can spot rare great white egrets.
In the UK my two favourite birds are kingfishers and puffins. Kingfishers are so bright and you can watch them dive and catch fish, while puffins look like funny little clowns and burrow underground into cliffs.
Winter thrushes such as redwing and mistle thrushes, as well as winter ducks, are good to look out for at this time of year. I get up as early as I can, as there is more activity in the morning.
The autumn evenings are great for starling murmurations, they happen over the Somerset Levels as well as over Chew Valley Lake, but you can find them all over the country.
Beyond your own garden, lakes are a good place to see birds, because they spend a lot of time sitting there and you can pick out lots of different species. We take the people on our camps to the lake. A telescope is great in that setting but you can also make out closer birds with binoculars or even just looking without any equipment, you don’t always need loads of gear.
The camps I run for young, minority ethnic people are important to me. They focus on nature and getting people connected with it. I also think it’s important to see more minority ethnic people in the media, to give young people role models.
I’ve been campaigning about environmental issues since I was a child and it’s been exciting to see activists my age getting spotlighted in the media. But I began to realise that the people being highlighted were mostly white and from Western countries. When I got the opportunity to write a children’s book, I knew I wanted to highlight other voices that weren’t being heard.
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Meet more young climate activists in Mya-rose’s book, We Have a Dream, (£12.99, Magic Cat Publishing) @birdgirluk