March 2023
Editorial
A Sense of Ecological Wonder
A feeling as old as humanity itself, wonder is assuming new significance thanks to the culture of ecology and the necessity of acting in defence of the planet. LIPU is contributing to the great European project for the renewal of nature and for the protection of the miniature marvels that are birds.
On a night of storms in autumn, Rachel Carson took her 20-month-old great-nephew Roger, and went out of her cottage on the coast of Maine to go down to the beach. ‘Out there – she wrote – just on the edge of where-we-couldn’t-see, big waves were thundering in, dimly seen white shapes that boomed and shouted and threw great handfuls of froth at us. Together we laughed for pure joy – he a baby meeting for the first time the wild tumult of Oceanus, I with the salt of half a lifetime of sea love in me. But I think we felt the same spine-tingling response…’ When he was bigger they would repeat the adventure, as lit by a single torch, Rachel and Roger would walk along the edge of the sea, accompanied by the rumble of the waves, and small set beside a greater and more primordial nature, go looking for other small creatures on the strand line, especially for ghost crabs, ‘without any fear of the singing of the wind, the darkness, or the roaring of the waves’. I am happy here, said Roger to his aunt.
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Contents
- The Ecological Wonder
- Eleonora’s Falcon
- New Breeding Atlas
- Annual appeal