Blogger: Aggie Rothon, Communications Officer
Apparently we as a nation put on, on average, five pounds over Christmas. That’s quite impressive, even taking in to account the super size me tins of Quality Street sold everywhere pre-Christmas. The BBC seems to have taken this bit of information to heart as the New Year has brought with it an unusually large number of ‘get fit’ programmes. Catching the beginnings of one of these last night, I heard the voiceover man report that over a third of us take out gym memberships as New Year resolutions with ninety per cent giving up after the first three months.
We had a bit of banter about New Year’s resolutions in the office today. Two of my colleagues couldn’t even remember if they had taken up resolutions or not and we’re only a few days in to January! On the back of this, it doesn’t seem sensible to try to persuade you to make a resolution for nature this January. With the track record New Year’s resolutions seem to have nature would benefit for three months max. Imagine all those empty bird feeders come the end of March!
What we need to do instead is take nature to our hearts. Make the birds and the badgers and the bumblebees part of our everyday existence rather than a fleeting thought post-Christmas. And as any relationship agony aunt will tell you, taking something or someone to your heart takes time.
Start slowly and you’ll be surprised that you don’t even have to go out and look for nature, it will come to you. Contemplate the moth clinging to your kitchen window at night time, the patterns of geese honking overhead as you stand in the supermarket car park, the wrinkled hats of fungi clinging to the bottom of your garden fence. When you start to notice the behaviour of nature, how the seasons turn and what happens as they do, I reckon you’ll start naturally to look out for nature. Maybe you’ll build a log pile to see if you get any more of those strange coloured mushrooms, buy some mealworms to tempt the local robin to a feeder, help your grandchildren pick out a nature story at the library. Then who knows where nature can take you! You’ll be fundraising for your local green space in no time.
Perhaps that’s what the fat fighters of this year’s resolutions need to do instead. Rather than unhappily pounding it out in the gym to get fit quick, they need to start slow instead. Ease their way in to exercise and make it part of their world.
There are plenty of places to make nature part of your world in 2012. Why not visit your local nature reserve? To find out where go to www.rspb.org.uk/reserves.
Erica, RSPB Communications Team, East