I chat to Mya-Rose Craig, aka Birdgirl, about her love of birding touching upon birdsong and the mysteries of migration. We discuss accessibilty to nature, activism what in birding terms is a “lifer” and how to “pish”.

There’s a transcript ( unedited) below and a link to a podcast version of this chat, plus links to topics we talk about. Links:

Black2Nature, Charity fighting for equal access to nature for Visible Minority Ethnic people.

Mya-Rose Craig’s website.

Get Birding, podcast.

Ben Yeoh:

Hi, everyone. I'm super happy to welcome Mya-Rose Craig. She is one of the youngest British people to be awarded an honorary doctorate, an activist and a campaigner. She founded black to nature focusing on minority communities. She's currently hosting a podcast, Get Birding, on no surprises here on birding, with a host of celebrities and conservationists. And we're here to talk about birding, her life and what is happening in the world. So thank you. Welcome.

Mya Rose Craig:

Hi, thank you for having me.

Ben Yeoh:

Great. So I'm a real city dweller and I kind of think in this maze that is London, we have some birds, these green spaces. But I think it's kind of not the same necessarily as getting out into the countryside in nature. I was wondering, could you give us a sense of the joy of watching birds in the wild, particularly for those of us who maybe haven't experienced it before, or how it kind of came to be that you became so passionate about this area of nature?

Mya Rose Craig:

So I think nature's always played a very important part in my life. My parents are birdwatchers and my older sister was a birdwatcher and they've always taken me outdoors. And I live in the countryside but I'm also half Bangladeshi and as I got older, I really started becoming aware that there was just no one that looked like me in the countryside out in nature. And that was really upsetting. And that's kind of why I started doing activism, it was because of that magical feeling that I had when out in nature. So when I was little, it was always very fun and very exciting and my parents were very good about making it into a treasure hunt for me or something like that, where we were going to go and find the next bird. But I think as I've gotten older, I've really, really gained an appreciation for just sort of the peace that you get when you're outside. Cause you're separate from the stress of everyday life. You're separate from sort of the hustle and bustle of everything. It's just you and the outdoors. And I think that that's a really unique feeling that everyone should be able to appreciate.

Ben Yeoh:

I guess, in popular culture, there's been a strand of thinking that kind of makes fun of birdwatching or birding. And I guess there's been the sense that you mentioned it that has been very kind of old white man dominated and maybe a bit anoraks. I mean, what do you might say to those who might want to experience this joy you described earlier, but maybe the sense that this is not a community for them?

Mya Rose Craig:

I mean the funny thing is that the stereotypes aren't entirely wrong and I can think of like a hundred people off the top of my head who completely slot into that. But that's just like one tiny, probably quite fanatical subsection of a really large group of people. And they are the ones that would go out and say, I am a bird watcher, but there are lots of people who would never really think of themselves that way, who are in fact, bird watchers. Like if you have some bird feeders up in your garden that you like watching sometimes, you're a bird watcher. If you notice the birds flying over as you walk to work, you're a bird watcher. And I think for me, well, like the word birder really means is just someone who is aware of and appreciating the nature around them. And I think that that's something that a lot of people enjoy when you peel that label away.

Ben Yeoh:

So your suggestion is actually we're much closer to it in everyday life than we might actually think.

Mya Rose Craig:

Definitely. But I also think that stereotype does make people feel like they aren't green enough if that makes sense. Like one of the reasons I started my podcast was just because a lot of people said that they felt a bit too intimidated to get into bird watching because everyone seemed to know like they knew everything and they didn't even know where to start. Well, I've always stuck more with the viewpoint that like, you don't need to know the names or the Latin names or the calls of by heart. You just need to go out and appreciate it. But I also think there are so many different ways of enjoying nature and the outdoors that we don't really traditionally think about in the UK.

So I guess that typical way of engaging with nature is putting your binoculars on, putting your anorak on, going down to the local nature and staring at some small brown birds for a few hours. And I'm not going to lie personally, I do enjoy that, but there are a lot of people who don't. And one of the big things that my organization, back to nature does, is just sort of widen that perspective of what engaging with nature is in the first place. If you're playing football with your friends in the park, you're in the green space, you're still engaging with nature. If you're feeding the pigeons during your lunch hour, you know, we might not think of them as nature, but they are other animals and that's still nature. And I think as soon as you broaden that perspective, it takes the stress off and it makes you appreciate just how much nature there is around you, basically.

Ben Yeoh:

Yeah. I had a moment like that earlier this year, where was on the banks of the River Thames, which not in London, you don't sort of think about that, but you can walk on the foreshore and there's all sorts of nature around that, even in the middle of the city. I was wondering, do you have any favourite, I guess, birding moments or experiences, something which you kind of feel was kind of pivotal in finding your enjoyment here?

Mya Rose Craig:

I mean, I think that they've almost been like, this is very corny, sorry, but genuinely, I think they've already been like a countless amount of moments that I have loved over the years that I think when I was a child, there was a real just wonder still when looking at everything. I loved watching (Inaudible 06:23) that flown across from America as much as I enjoyed watching the ducks hanging out in my garden. And I think that that was just really magical because everything about birds and nature was exciting to me. My charity, back to nature, we run nature camps for kids from minority, I think backgrounds and we're bringing them out into nature quite often for the first time ever. And I think as someone who's always spent time outdoors and always spend time in nature, I think that really opened my eyes as to what an amazing experience that is for people to be experiencing the countryside for the first time. Cause a lot of these kids are having such a good time and they're again, filled with that sort of wonder that you are when you're a kid. And I think being able to relive that sort of childhood magic of being outdoors over and over and over with all of the kids that I work with is really special.

Ben Yeoh:

That sounds amazing. I've noted the same in some business people who I meet with where if they do reconnect with nature in some way, it often kind of changes the way they view things and you see the impact of what we do or our companies and things have on the world. And you can see that through reconnecting with those elements around us. So I learned some specific birding words recently, which I didn't know existed or what they were. And I was wondering whether you could tell me from your point of view. So one is a kind of technical thing, which is, tell me about ringing because I believe this is something that you are qualified to do from quite early on. And what is it? Why is it important?

Mya Rose Craig:

Yeah, so ringing or banding in America is basically a scientific study. So what licensed ringers do is they catch the birds in some shape or form. They take lots of different measurements from them, like weights, like how much fat they have on them, how much muscle, how long their wings are, how old they are, stuff like that. And they log all of that data and then they put a ring, a metal band around the leg of this bird. And it has a unique number on that. And that means that when another ringer catches the bird, at some point, there'll be able to access all the data that we've logged about it before. So basically, we're building up this massive database on information about birds and we learn all sorts of interesting things about loads of different species.

For example, it's been really important just in terms of figuring out where birds go when they migrate, which we know a lot less about than people think we do. But personally, I started it when I was very young. I was nine when I first started going and just sort of watching and wanting to take part. And the personal appeal for me was just being able to physically handle wild animals and just see birds at a completely different perspective. Cause obviously, we're not hurting them or even particularly stressing them out when we're catching them. But it means just for like five minutes or less, I'm able to sort of look a wild bird in the eye and it's very special. I really loved it. So in the UK, you can get your license when you're 16. So as soon as I was 16, I got my ringing license. And I've been doing lots of ringing since. This morning I was actually doing Raven ringing. I ringed, I think five different Raven chicks this morning and it was really nice.

Ben Yeoh:

Excellent. So what can you tell us about migration or what I guess ringing has told us about that? Is there some unsolved mystery that you would think, you know what, it would be really great if someone solved this, did you know that we don't know where these birds go or how they fly?

Mya Rose Craig:

Migration is just a bit weirder than people think it is. So for example, well, things that we would have thought historically that seemed very obvious have actually been disproved. So if we talk about black caps, for example, there are relatively common UK birds, you get them in hedges and gardens and just in the countryside and you get ones that you get in the winter. And the assumption would be, Oh, just like lots of other birds in the UK, they're here in the winter, they stay, they breed, they live here year-round, but it turns out that there is a population of blackcaps that migrate to the UK every winter and then they leave. And there is a separate population, the black caps that migrate to the UK every summer. So you've got weird things like that going on that we just never would have realised otherwise, but they're also were just genuine mysteries. So for example, the cookoo, which is like a very famous spring bird in the UK, for a very long time, we just had no idea where it was migrating to, what its migration route was. And it was probably only 10 or 15 years ago that we finally found out that they're migrating to the Congo of all places. And again, like we're discovering all of these things because of ringing.

Ben Yeoh:

That's amazing. I recall reading somewhere that we're not sure how birds do their complex navigation because you have birds who, they know where to go back nesting and they've never been there before. Like if in their first year of life. And you can partially confuse them if you move them from their nest and things. And we're still discovering things about that. I don't know if you know anything about that.

Mya Rose Craig:

I don't know. I'm not an expert or anything, but I do know that birds navigation or just birds, in general, are really interesting. I think it's sort of a very normal like human thing, but there's always a human assumption that we are the cleverest [ ] But birds can do so many fantastic things and there are loads of different hypotheses. So for example, people were trying to figure out if birds literally just using landmarks to figure out where they're going. Some people think that it might be like magnetic forces that basically creating like a little compass inside their head so they know where they're going. Whether it's just like a generational thing they're showing each other the journey. We're not a hundred percent sure there's loads of great ideas. They might all be true.

Ben Yeoh:

Yeah, I was reading, I think just this week there was a paper out showing that the crows, Crow family, has human-like intelligence is just, we need to ask them the right kind of questions. We don't have to speak in their language, so to speak

Mya Rose Craig:

You know, I love that take cause for various reasons, I ended up like researching quite a lot about Ravens last spring and it was so interesting and it was partially because that was a raven nest near my house that suddenly popped up during lockdown. I was suddenly very interested about Ravens. And there were so many fun facts where I was like, these birds are so, so smart. Like for example, even just the fact that Ravens have fun. Like they do things purely for enjoyment. I love that. Or they're sort of social, the way that they interact with each other socially. But the thing I found most interesting is the fact that Ravens have been proven to use tools which is interesting just because sort of tools is one of the ways that we as humans and maybe like chimps differentiate ourselves from other animals in terms of intelligence. So I don't know. I just thought that was really interesting, but Corvettes brilliant, they're great birds.

Ben Yeoh:

Yeah. It's really fascinating. And so I'm going to put you on the spot here as well. Cause I don't know necessarily you're going to know anything about this, but I realized I knew nothing really about Birdsong. So I was wondering whether, I know birdsong, sometimes they kind of use kind of for social learning and also kind of communication. And is also one of the things that we hear around. What would you have me know about birdsong and why it happens or anything about it?

Mya Rose Craig:

I also didn't know anything about birdsong until I did an episode on my podcast about it.

Ben Yeoh:

So we should all listen to that.

Mya Rose Craig:

But genuinely, I didn't know that much before. I've never been like a bird song person. I only knew a few songs. But I was talking to someone who is a Birdsong person, called Lucy Lapwing. And she was saying that a lot of the times, especially during springtime, what we hear as being very beautiful bird song is really a very sort of macho display from various birds as they all try to prove that they are the strongest and the most resilient and they're the ones that the female should go with. And they can get very, very territorial about it all. And it's the same with the Dawn chorus, which again, we're like, Oh, the Dawn chorus is so beautiful, but all of these birds are like shouting over each other. Again, trying to prove that they've made it through the fight. They're the loudest. They were strong enough to last through the cold and they're here to survive the next day. But one thing I did read about recently, which I thought was really interesting was just talking about how scientists were measuring birds brainwaves while they were sleeping and how the brainwaves were doing the same as what they do when they are singing, basically. And these birds were dreaming about the songs that they sing or their calls that they make during the day, which I thought was pretty interesting.

Ben Yeoh:

Okay, great. So I've got two more birding phrases or nouns I've heard about. So what is it, the expression “lifer” mean?  

Mya Rose Craig:

So for lots of birders, birding is all about list, not that it's all about the list, but it gets very competitive and they keep lists of what they've seen and they're aware of what they haven't seen. Then you keep like country list, local area list, the world list. And like I said, it's all very competitive. And so a lifer is basically just a bird that you have never before seen in your life, a new bird in your life, I guess. But the sort of undercurrent tool that is like, yes, got another bird on my list.

Ben Yeoh:

Great. And then the last phrase I had or read about was “pish”, which I believe is a kind of sounds that some birders can make to attract birds or something like that.

Mya Rose Craig:

Yeah. I would love to know where you've heard that cause I've never even seen that word written down.

Ben Yeoh:

I may have made it up, during my research on birding. Maybe it's a myth, is it a myth?

Mya Rose Craig:

Oh, no, it's a real thing, but I can't even do it very well. So this is going to be very embarrassing, but pishing is basically, birders making a funny sound that makes the birds around you go, what's that funny sound. So they hop out into the open to try and figure out what that funny sound is. And weirdly there are not many sounds that do this, pitching is one of the few that pretty much always works, at least with lots of birds. And this is going to be very embarrassing now, but it's basically like a, pshh,pshh,pshh like over and over louder and quieter. And for some reason that always gets the birds out.

Ben Yeoh:

There's a scientific paper on that. Why are the sounds of... Maybe that's like the proto bird language that we haven't understood yet and is one of the things, he's like, Oh, they're asking us about the meaning of life. That's interesting. I'm going to find out about that.

Mya Rose Craig:

Yeah, it's funny because pishing is a very like age-old birding tactic. Like people would be doing it in like the sixties to try and get birds to hop out with bushes even back then.

Ben Yeoh:

That's the other thing about, I guess there's some thought about birding being a particular kind of British occupational, though I've seen that there's global birders. And there's been quite a long tradition that goes back this century, but it seems to go back even further in kind of nature writing, but it's kind of this long tradition of being close to nature and things. And I guess there's also been a tradition of nature writing in this country continued by the likes of, I guess Robert MacFarlane now and sketching back I think we've had people like Roger Deakin talking about wild swimming and things like that. Are there any particular books or works that have inspired you? Cause I know you're somewhat of a writer yourself.

Mya Rose Craig:

Yeah. I think Steven Moss, who is a nature writer wrote a very interesting column in the gauzy in maybe a year or two ago about nature writing and the British legacy of nature writing. Because he was basically asking, in the UK, we have this very, almost important tradition of nature writing, but is that now outdated? And do we need something better to represent the British public? Which I thought was very interesting but in terms of.

Ben Yeoh:

Nature YouTubing.

Mya Rose Craig:

Yeah. but I think a really good example of that new type of nature is Doris book, diary of a young actress, which obviously everyone adores but with good reason, it's a really good book and it's really beautiful. And I think most importantly sort of touching on what Stephen Moss was talking about is also really accessible. It helps you to understand why he loves nature so much without the assumption that you are also an expert in nature, or you have also spent your childhood wandering through the idyllic countryside and I think that's where things are going in the future. I also really love Stephen Moses writing. But yeah, you're right. I think nature plays an unusually strong role in sort of our sense of place and our sense of national identity within the UK compared to most other countries. And that's a very historical thing. Like not to go slightly off piece, but during my A levels, I had to study various Victorian poets and things like that. And that was one like it was someone who was living in India and he had painted this beautiful idyllic picture of the English countryside with the country manners and the rolling green fields. And I was like, that's what people think of when they think of the UK. That image is so strong within how we identify ourselves, I guess, even for people that never even been to the countryside. Which I don't really know why. It's definitely a thing.

Ben Yeoh:

And I think, I mean, talking about connecting to current and future generations, you know, through writing or through some new forms of writing is definitely, I think one way we could do that. So definitely recommend those books. But I think you've helped edit or collate a book yourself recently with a lot of other kinds of young voices connected to nature. Do you want to tell me a little bit about that?

Mya Rose Craig:

So I have a book coming out in September called we have a dream and it was something I actually really loved writing. It was very special to me. And the idea was essentially, there are so many amazing young activists around the world, especially young activists of colour or young indigenous activist that are just not getting the platform and the promotion that they deserve for the amazing work that they do. And I wanted to, I suppose, give them the opportunity to talk about the work that they were doing, and there was amazing range of the types of things. And there were people from literally all over the world. And so I spent about six months interviewing all of these different people and it was fantastic. And you went from really great grassroots, or what was once a very grassroots project that has become very big. Like there's a boy tackling deforestation via football in Kenya to have a very broad sort of system changing projects, like Alton Peltier in Canada, who's fighting for indigenous people's rights, especially to do with water. And I don't know, it was just amazing to speak to all of these young people about what they're doing because they're all so inspirational. And a lot of them are younger than me. It was fantastic

Ben Yeoh:

Now you know how other people feel when they look at you and you're younger than all of these others. That said, there's always kind of someone younger than you and there's always someone who kind of knows more than you, but that's okay. That's all good too. So do you have a particular maybe process as a writer, what does kind of a good writing day look for you?

Mya Rose Craig:

I think honestly like writing, cause I'm also writing another book at the moment, which is much more of a traditional book, but writing this book, we have a dream, was actually a very pleasant experience. And it was very structured and I was literally just recording Zoom interviews with people. Cause you know, we're living in the age of COVID, recording these Zoom interviews with people and typing up a profile about them afterwards. And I guess the most difficult thing really was like reducing these amazing conversations down to like

Ben Yeoh:

A few hundred words.

Mya Rose Craig:

Yes. Cause these people were fantastic. But I think in terms of what a day in life, like in terms of writing looks like, very messy, very disorganized writing whenever I have the time or the energy basically, which can be all over the pace. I have, actually just once, but I have jumped out of bed one morning thinking like I'm going to write now. But more common I've also stayed up very late suddenly with the energy to write. So it's, I don't know, it's been a really nice experience, very different.

Ben Yeoh:

Great. And then on non-writing days, I guess, what does a typical kind of birding day look for you, you sort of get out and then you've got a place to go to and some birds on a list or idea of what to spot and are you out there for a few hours with binoculars on eyes and things and how does one of those days look?

Mya Rose Craig:

I think it's totally flexible depending on what the goal is. Like not to be annoying, but I think, so quite often in lockdown, I've been doing a lot more like birdwatching. So just going out on a walk for half an hour for a few hours just walking through the fields and woods and stuff, seeing whatever birds I happen to stumble across. Which I didn't do that as much before lockdown. I think that that's definitely something that I've grown sort of an enjoyment of a patience of much more than before. And I think that's more what I'm talking about when I'm saying how I feel like nature is very meditative and how it was very peaceful and things like that. But there are also certain occasions where a very rare bird has turned up in the UK. Those are not peaceful days when my parents are getting up like at like three o'clock

Ben Yeoh:

To go a hundred miles this way

Mya Rose Craig:

Drive across the country to catch this bird just as the sun is rising. And hopefully to see it immediately and to celebrate seeing this new bird. And that can take between a few hours, to days. There are occasions where we've gone back over and over try and see a bird until we finally have.

Ben Yeoh:

Like famous celebrities, spotting, famous celebrity, bird spotting.

Mya Rose Craig:

Yeah. Basically.

Ben Yeoh:

And you've had some great travel adventures, cause I think you've seen like loads of birds around the world. I think I was reading, did you go to East Malaysia Borneo once, did you spot any birds there or I can't remember whether I misread that.

Mya Rose Craig:

No, you did. I'm very lucky, I've been to all sorts of countries. I've travelled quite a lot for birds, which we travel for birds to see birds and anything else we do along the way is just an extra. So when I went to Borneo Malaysia I did see an awful lot of birds, actually, it was a wonderful trip. And it was actually one of the, except Bangladesh, it was the first time I'd ever bird watched in Asia as well, or ever really been to Asia. And yeah, it was a really special experience. It was very different. But yeah, more importantly, the birds were fantastic. There were so much birds there.

Ben Yeoh:

I asked because it's one of the places that I've been to, but when I was in Borneo, I think they probably were sort of birds in the jungle. And I remember one and two, but it's not an element that I particularly paid super attention to. And I kind of now wish that maybe I did. I do remember seeing, it must've been some sort of bird of prey. I don't even know which one, but fly across and catch a fish in the river in front of us. And that was quite a moment. But it was also one of the trips for me that really understood how lucky I was, you know, having grown up in this country because passing through particularly, I was in some of the pristine jungle and around Kinabalu and places like that, just incredibly poor. And I can, in that time, this was over 20 years ago, you know, there was no running water and you camped where you were sort of camping. And that was kind of quite a revelation for me. I was a late teen. I was probably about your age, a late teenager seeing that. I don't know how you feel having experience with that and talking with sort of activists around the world and any observation on your kind of global travels there?

Mya Rose Craig:

I think, again, sorry, slightly off piece, but important. Something that was very important in terms of the creation of back to nature, was definitely like travelling and going to other countries because it gave me a much broader, much more international perspective in terms of getting people into nature, how British people think about nature, why people aren't getting into nature. And something that was particularly significant to me was that I went on a trip to Bangladesh. And I met so many Bangladeshi birders, naturalists, environmentalist, campaigners, who all really loved and cared about nature and the environment. And there wasn't a single one in the UK. And that was the moment where I realized that this wasn't like an international issue, Bangladeshi people don't just magically not care about nature. There is something very broad and very systemic going on within the UK or within Europe. 

And I think that that was definitely a massive turning point for me in terms of going about setting up Black's nature. And I think more on the general point that international perspective almost always comes into play when I'm talking about the issues that I care about. Like one thing within the UK that I'm very aware of is biodiversity loss. Purely because I have been lucky enough to go to other countries and it has absolutely put into perspective how little by diversity and how little we have left in the UK, which is one of the reasons that I personally feel like biodiversity loss is such an extreme issue. I also talk quite a lot about indigenous people's rights and indigenous... I'm trying to amplify indigenous people's voices in terms of the climate change movement and the environmental movement and conservation. Partially because again, I have been lucky enough to go and visit these places and go and see their projects in action. And I've actually, I became an ambassador for the organization, survival international, which advocates for indigenous people's rights against conservation organizations, because that is such a big issue, in and of itself

Ben Yeoh:

Yeah, I was reading, there's a big project called project drawdown, which looks at some of the world's climate solutions and they sort of list sort of 50 or a hundred of them of which one of the most important is actually defending indigenous land rights. If indigenous people look after their land and have done much better than usually other owners of land. So by giving them back their land rights, that's actually a huge positive climate solution that we could look towards. So maybe the final question also, wrapping up is what other projects for the year or looking forward that you're kind of excited about. So we have your book, we have your podcast, we have another book coming up and you're an ambassador for various things. Anything else you'd like to highlight?

Mya Rose Craig:

I think genuinely the most, well, I guess there are two things, firstly Black's nature is going really well. We've gotten loads of funding to run camps this summer, partially because of coronavirus and lockdown and the effect that's had on people. We're going to be running so many camps this summer and I'm very excited about it. So I think that that's going to be great. Like we're going to be working with kids from London for the first time and things like that. And running longer camps. But I think on a more personal level, the thing I'm most excited for this year is genuinely just going to university in the autumn. Cause I've been in the gap year this year and I've been doing lots of work and stuff. But you know, same as everyone I've been in locked down. And then I'm just really excited to go off and study and to live in a new place and all that sort of thing. And that's in October so yeah, lots look forward to this year.

Ben Yeoh:

Great. That sounds amazing. So do everyone lookout for her book, we'll put links below, black to nature as well. If you're interested in any of the work that Maya's doing around that and get birding for the podcast as well if you want to find out any more about birds. So this just leaves me to thank you very much. It was really great to speak to you and I wish you all the best in all your future endeavours.

Mya Rose Craig:

Thank you so much. It was lovely to speak.

Ben Yeoh:

Great. Thanks, bye.