Podcasts about Wicken Fen

Hello! And welcome to Wilder Skies the podcast… The place where we talk Birds, Wildlife and all the hard hitting Conservation topics on the top of everyone's minds…Okay guys here's a freshly edited episode of ‘Wilder Skies the Podcast' for your ears!...This one was recorded a while back, with the epic Ajay Tegala…. Where we discuss his life as a wetland ranger (and his publications to go with!), his endless passion for fenland natural history, disturbance in nature, race and conservation, amongst many other topics…I must apoloigse first and foremost as was rather ill during this recording, and my asthma quite lared up, so my side of the chat sounds horrendous and very laboured. But hopefully listening to this chat you can get a grasp of how incredible Ajay and his work is, and pick up his infectious passion for what he does. What an amazing human being…Hope you enjoy it, Ajay's side anyways! Cheers guys…

This week we return to our visit to the Global Birdfair in Rutland. In the second Plodcast interview of the festival, Plodcast host Fergus met wildlife expert, writer and TV presenter Ajay Tegala to talk about his extraordinary life as a wildlife ranger at legendary Wicken Fen nature reserve. Later join the Plodcast team for a round up of listener emails and messages – and updates on the latest wildlife news. Ajay's latest book Ranger Life and Rewildling Wicken Fen, published by The History Press, is out now in paperback. Special thanks to Charlie Bingham for organising the podcasting at the Birdfair and to Oscar Henderson for the onsite production. The Countryfile Magazine Plodcast is the Publishers Podcast Awards Special Interest Podcast of the Year 2024 and the PPA Podcast of the Year 2022. If you've enjoyed the plodcast, don't forget to leave likes and positive reviews. Contact the Plodcast team and send your sound recordings of the countryside to: theplodcast@countryfile.com. If your letter, email or message is read out on the show, you could WIN a Plodcast Postbag prize of a wildlife- or countryside-themed book chosen by the team. The Plodcast is produced by Jack Bateman and Lewis Dobbs. The theme music was written and performed by Blair Dunlop. Visit the Countryfile Magazine website: countryfile.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The National Trust Nature Reserve at Wicken Fen has fledged its first crane chick. A pair began breeding on Wicken Fen in 2019, although their eggs have usually hatched, this […]

Hear about the big issues facing the English countryside from and Chair of Natural England, Tony Juniper. The conservationist and environmental campaigner reveals the actions being taken to protect our landscapes and wildlife – and some of the challenges we all face in the coming years. Rob Yorke asks the questions – at Wicken Fen in Cambridgeshire See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

A plodcast special – in two parts. Rob Yorke meets conservationist, environmental compaigner and now Chair of Natural England Tony Juniper at Wicken Fen in Cambridgeshire to talk about how England's wildlife and landscape can be better protected and enhanced in the face of development and pressure from agriculture. Enjoy part one of this special interview. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

“Recorded only recently after the last lockdown ended on a baking hot summer's day at Wicken Fen, Cambridgeshire, crouching behind the cow parsley with flies buzzing lazily around me. Listening […]

Should we consider nature economically, socially, spiritually or culturally? What is the financial worth of bees? And do whales value each other? Dr Rupert Read and Professor Steve Waters explore how humans value nature and how that can impact climate change, whether that's setting a play in a nature reserve, or considering the fact that whales go on holiday. Dr Rupert Read is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of East Anglia, and a climate and environmental campaigner. You can find out about Rupert's work, including his blog posts, videos and upcoming public events, here: https://rupertread.net/ Professor Steve Waters is a Professor of Scriptwriting at the University of East Anglia, and has written numerous plays on climate change and human relationships with nature. He is also an AHRC Leadership fellow working on the project, ‘The Song of the Reeds: Dramatising Conservation' in collaboration with Wicken Fen and Strumpshaw Fen nature reserves. You can listen to his seasonal drama, ‘Song of the Reeds', which was produced in four parts for Radio 4 and features Sophie Okonedo and Mark Rylance, here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000x6pk Professor Des Fitzgerald is a New Generation Thinker based at the University of Exeter. You can find the podcast series Green Thinking: 26 episodes 26 minutes long in the run up to COP26 made in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council, part of UKRI, exploring the latest research and ideas around understanding and tackling the climate and nature emergency. New Generation Thinkers Des Fitzgerald and Eleanor Barraclough will be in conversation with researchers on a wide-range of subjects from cryptocurrencies and finance to eco poetry and fast fashion. The podcasts are all available from the Arts & Ideas podcast feed - and collected on the Free Thinking website under Green Thinking where you can also find programmes on mushrooms, forests, rivers, eco-criticism and soil. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p07zg0r2 For more information about the research the AHRC's supports around climate change and the natural world you can visit: Responding to climate change – UKRI or follow @ahrcpress on twitter. To join the discussion about the research covered in this podcast and the series please use the hashtag #GreenThinkingPodcast. Producer: Sofie Vilcins

Three years after her first visit to Wicken Fen, Ranger Kate Martin catches up with wildlife photographer Richard Nicoll, for whom lockdown has presented some unique photographic opportunities.

In this episode, Megan Shersby heads to the East of England to one of Britain's oldest nature reserves, the wetland wonder of Wicken Fen in Cambridgeshire. Here she meets Professor Nick Davies of Cambridge University, an expert on the lives of cuckoos, to talk about these remarkable birds and how they use foster parents to raise their young. Later, Megan joins the regular plodcast team to talk cuckoos, sounds of the week and other nature news. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This week we're back in the UK talking to countryside ranger and wildlife presenter, Ajay Tegala. Ajay has a degree in Environmental Conservation and nine years' experience working in nature conservation. He was a ranger on Britain's first coastal reserve, Blakeney Point for many years and currently works at Wicken Fen, Britain's oldest and very first nature reserve (1899); alongside 100 Konik ponies and 50 Highland cattle! Growing up in East Anglia, Ajay became interested in wetland birds. Through his career in nature conservation, he went on to work with seabirds, in particular terns; monitoring their breeding behaviour and contributing to national monitoring programmes. He has managed and studied England's largest Grey Seal rookery, off the Norfolk coast. Ajay champions and monitors the success of habitat creation for nature, which partners well with his great love for the fenland landscape, and is passionate about its restoration. Ajay has promoted beach cleans in East Anglia, gardening for wildlife and clothing for Cotswold Outdoor, appearing in shop windows across the UK. Ajay has chalked-up over 15 appearances across the five main channels, including the popular BBC nature documentaries ‘Countryfile', ‘Coast' and ‘Winterwatch' plus a live appearance on ‘Springwatch: Unsprung' and many, many more! He is currently undertaking a talent development placement with the BBC Natural History Unit working on Springwatch 2021. You can follow Ajay on his social to see what he does.YouTube: Ajay TegalaTwitter: @AjayTegalaInstagram: ajaytegala

In 2014 Helen Macdonald published H is for Hawk, an extraordinary memoir that somehow tethered together her grief following the death of her father, the story of the naturalist
 TH White, and her experience training a goshawk named Mabel. It won her many prestigious awards and became a worldwide bestseller. Today she is at work on a collection of essays, a new book about albatrosses, and remains an Affiliated Research Scholar at the University of Cambridge. We join Helen on Wicken Fen, the National Trust’s oldest nature reserve, to spot wigeons, coots and hen harriers, and to talk about the odd course of her life, her presiding love for the natural world, and the experience of unanticipated success. This episode is part of our second podcast series, The Unknown Path, following the writer and broadcaster Laura Barton as she journeys across the country to meet six authors, actors and naturalists. Taken to places from their past and present, we learn about the various, and often unexpected, routes their lives have taken. This episode is part of our second podcast series, The Unknown Path, following the writer and broadcaster Laura Barton as she journeys across the country to meet six authors, actors and naturalists. Taken to places from their past and present, we learn about the various, and often unexpected, routes their lives have taken.

Although Carry Akroyd, who is is President of the John Clare Society, grew up in the countryside, as a child she was never shown or taught anything of the natural world around her. It was not until adulthood that a revelatory moment occurred. Walking one day in Wicken Fen, that she heard an unfamiliar noise above her, which she discovered was the drumming flight of an overhead snipe, a bird whose long bill the peasant poet John Clare described as "...of rude unseemly length" . Carry has chosen 5 episodes from the back catalogue to share with you, which you can hear Monday to Friday and in the Tweet of the Week Omnibus. Producer Andrew Dawes

In this mini episode we follow the wild ponies that roam Wicken Fen. Introduced to the fen 100 years ago, these hardy animals graze the land, enabling plants and wildlife to thrive. Later we investigate the smaller creatures that call this ancient landscape home, including dragonflies and water voles.

We’re at Wicken Fen in East Anglia for a walk through the National Trust’s oldest nature reserve. We’ll set off on foot, exploring the multi-use trails that allow easy access to this other-worldly landscape, before venturing down the narrow waterways on boat. Along the way, we’ll discover how a place created thousands of years ago is still providing a crucial home for thousands of animals, birds and plants today.

Nick Davies is professor of behavioural ecology at the University of Cambridge and an expert on cuckoos. Based at Wicken Fen, the National Trust reserve in Cambridgeshire, Davies has unravelled some of the key mysteries of this trickster of the bird world using stuffed cuckoos and dummy birds eggs. Cuckoos are so swift in laying their eggs (only one is laid per nest and the process is over in as little as 10 seconds), and so clever at disguising their eggs, that host birds are often uncertain whether an odd egg in the clutch is a cuckoo egg or one of their own. Cuckoo - Cheating By Nature by Nick Davies is published by Bloomsbury. Patricia Rozario OBE is an opera singer who is starring in Clocks 1888: the greener which is based on the true histories of ayahs or nannies in India who were employed by British colonials to look after their children and sometimes brought back to England. Born in Mumbai, Patricia studied at the Guildhall School of Music and at the National Opera Studio. She has enjoyed a wide-ranging career in opera, concert work, recording and broadcasting. Her voice has inspired many of the world's leading composers to collaborate with her, notably Arvo Pärt and Sir John Tavener, who alone wrote over 30 works for her. Clocks 1888: the greener is on tour. Lachlan Goudie is an artist whose late father was the Scottish figurative painter, Alexander Goudie. Distinguished as a portrait painter, Alexander painted the Queen, lord chancellors and celebrities including Billy Connolly. He was also notorious for a series of nude self-portraits in which he took on the guise of mythical figures including Bacchus and Neptune. A retrospective of his work is being exhibited at London's Mall Galleries. An artist in his own right, Lachlan spent five years at the Govan shipyard in Glasgow recording the construction of Britain's new aircraft carrier the Queen Elizabeth. Alexander Goudie RP RGI - A Retrospective is at Mall Galleries Sita Brand is a storyteller and founder and director of Settle Stories which runs the annual Settle Stories Festival in Yorkshire. Born in India, she moved to the UK as a teenager. She learned her love of storytelling from her mother, a school librarian, and her father who was a refugee in World War 2. She is passionate about using stories to promote understanding between people and their cultures. She performs Down the Rabbit Hole at the Settle Stories Festival 2016.

In 1985, a dragonfly landed on Ruary Mackenzie Dodds. Up until this time, he had never had much interest in insects, but so astonished and bewitched was he by "this beautiful" insect which had landed on his shirt, that he decided to find out more about dragonflies and in time that led to the founding of The Dragonfly Project to enthuse and educate people about dragonflies. In August 2013, Ruary 'handed over the baton' of the Dragonfly Project to The British Dragonfly Society who will continue this work alongside their own work to conserve dragonflies and their wetland habitats, but Ruary's eagerness to share his enthusiasm for these insects continues "I don't know what it is about dragonflies ... they absolutely electrify me ... I get so excited when I see them in the air". In this programme, Ruary searches for dragonflies and their larvae amongst the reeds and watery places of Wicken Fen in Cambridgeshire and offers a fascinating insight into their lives. Producer Sarah Blunt

The power of the wild is an idea that has been important in western thought as a place of refuge or separation where we can feel the power of nature. It is a place where humans are not in control and their power is limited. Using nature as a category of power creates a dichotomy between humans and nature, which is problematic because humans are very much part of eco-systems in which we live. Is it then valid for historians to invoke models of power dynamics to study past interactions between humans and nature? This was one of the questions considered at a workshop held at Wicken Fen in Cambridgeshire, England in April 2013. The participants of the workshop also examined if a nature reserve like Wicken Fen can be made wild again, a process called re-wilding. In episode 53 of this podcast series Dolly Jorgensen argued that no re-wilding is needed but that the wild is all around us, even in urban settings. In this episode of the podcast Paul Warde, reader in history at the University of East Anglia, argues that the experience of the wild is hard to find in an urban environment, even an urban park or in a nature reserve in densely populated England. The question is then if rewilding of an heavily dominated human landscape like Wicken Fen is possible and can be returned to a "wild state". This desire of rewilding Wicken Fen also led to the question whether such a rewilded area would be truly wild. Music credits: Truth and Fact (Orchestral) by Zapac, available from ccMixter. Into The Garden by Loveshadow, available from ccMixter. Etincelle by Oursvince, available from Jamendo

It is undeniable that human influence is now felt in almost every ecosystem, region and ocean of the world. As a result wilderness or wild nature is becoming less abundant. In response to this less wild world, landscape and ecosystem restorations are undertaken all over the globe. One of these places is the wetland area of Wicken Fen in Cambridgeshire, England, where the National Trust is attempting a landscape scale restoration. This programme is not just about restoring but also rewilding the landscape. A big part of the Wicken Fen restoration involves the introduction of large grazers: Konik ponies and Highland cattle. In April a workshop was held at Wicken Fen entitled: Desire for the Wild, Wild Desires? Re-wilding in a world of social, environmental and climate change. This workshop considered what wild and rewilding of nature means and what history can contribute to efforts to rewild and restore landscapes and ecosystems. The guest on this podcast is is Dolly Jorgensen, a historian of Science and the Environment based at Umea University in Sweden. Dolly presented a paper at the workshop on how rewilding has been an argument meaning different things to different academic sub-groups, all with a different historical notion of when was wild. Dolly deconstructs the different meanings of rewilding, and also follows the trail to find wildness all around us. This podcast is the first of two episodes exploring the Desire for the Wild, Wild Desires? workshop. Music credits: Where You Are Now by Zapac and Cm 105 bpm by Admiral Bob. Available from ccMixter.

This week in the Planet Earth Podcast - the cunning tricks the cuckoo uses to get another bird to do the parenting, why researchers are studying snow in Sweden, and how an improved radiocarbon dating technique may put a few scientists' noses out of joint.

This week in the Planet Earth Podcast - the cunning tricks the cuckoo uses to get another bird to do the parenting, why researchers are studying snow in Sweden, and how an improved radiocarbon dating technique may put a few scientists' noses out of joint. Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

This week in the Planet Earth Podcast - the cunning tricks the cuckoo uses to get another bird to do the parenting, why researchers are studying snow in Sweden, and how an improved radiocarbon dating technique may put a few scientists' noses out of joint. Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

Wetlands were once common over a large part of eastern England. Of these so-called fens only two percent survives today and most of it is now situated in nature reserves. One of these reserves is Wicken Fen in Cambridgeshire. Today Wicken Fen is the focus of a controversial proposal to radically expand the area of managed wetland around the reserve and to return arable land to its former wetland condition. On this podcast we interview Stuart Warrington, Nature Conservation Advisor for the National Trust at Wicken Fen, about these proposed changes and the role of history in recreating the wetlands. The second half of the podcast is devoted to a talk delivered by Ian Rotherham of Sheffield Hallam University. In his talk Ian analyses the attitudes towards the fens over the centuries and how these influenced the desire to drain thousands of square kilometres of wetland. He also considers the rich wild life in these wetlands and what a rich resources these provided for its inhabitants. Music credit: Mechanics in Love (Cue 3) flac Stems by boomaga, available from ccMixter.

What is biodiversity? Assessing the role of conservation in maintaining Britain's oldest nature reserve.

Transcript -- What is biodiversity? Assessing the role of conservation in maintaining Britain's oldest nature reserve.

Experts analyse and compare habitats, identifying the 7,000 species that thrive at Wicken Fen.

Transcript -- Experts analyse and compare habitats, identifying the 7,000 species that thrive at Wicken Fen.

The different threats conservationists face and the methods used to preserve biodiversity.

Human impact on the Fen - a walk through the managed conservation areas.

Transcript -- The different threats conservationists face and the methods used to preserve biodiversity.

Transcript -- Human impact on the Fen - a walk through the managed conservation areas.

Transcript -- The different threats conservationists face and the methods used to preserve biodiversity.

The different threats conservationists face and the methods used to preserve biodiversity.

Transcript -- Human impact on the Fen - a walk through the managed conservation areas.

Transcript -- Experts analyse and compare habitats, identifying the 7,000 species that thrive at Wicken Fen.

Experts analyse and compare habitats, identifying the 7,000 species that thrive at Wicken Fen.

Transcript -- What is biodiversity? Assessing the role of conservation in maintaining Britain's oldest nature reserve.

What is biodiversity? Assessing the role of conservation in maintaining Britain's oldest nature reserve.

Human impact on the Fen - a walk through the managed conservation areas.