Eden Wild Goose Nature
Nature notes from the Focus Magazine March 2022
Nature's Prescription
Some years ago, I went through hard times. We’d recently moved house to a new area, I felt lonely and we had some major bereavements. On top of this, the house move meant I’d had to leave my previous employment and I had too much time on my hands. I felt, as you might say, blue.
What to do? One day, relative stranger as I was to our new area, I ventured to a nearby, small RSPB nature reserve and noticed they were looking for volunteers. Despite having negligible bird knowledge, I decided to sign up and see what I could do. Before long, I was working a shift a week as a ‘welcomer’ which rather unglamorously meant standing in a shed in a carpark in the usually bitter cold for some hours and saying hello, taking money and informing the punters, expert or novice, what birds might be seen. To say I felt a bit of a fraud posing as an RSPB kind of person would be an understatement. Anyway, long story short, I fell in love with the place, spent my spare time in the shed with my nose in the bird books, listened with interest to the knowledgeable people who visited, and little by little, learnt on the job.
My time there also coincided with the reserve being enlarged and facilities improved, and after some cold shed/carpark years I was able to carry on my modest front facing role in the rather more commodious surroundings of a properly heated visitor centre. Now I enjoyed access to coffee and snacks, great views of the wetlands, the Dee Estuary, the Welsh hills and all the birds, resident or passing through. The experts continued to visit, and I stuck close, finding them (usually) willing to share their enthusiasm. Result!
It did me good- I was out in the fresh air, learning, meeting new people, busy- and came home with stories to tell of what I’d seen and heard. That is my personal experience, anecdotal.
Meanwhile, more recently, researchers based in the Shetlands and in more urban areas around Edinburgh have been hard at work, in partnership with their local GP practices, collecting evidence of how ‘nature prescriptions’ benefit all sorts of people with all sorts of needs, in all sorts of ways. The chief researcher comments how our ancestors would be shocked, even appalled at the idea that we need to collect evidence to prove that nature is good for us, as that fact should be obvious and beyond dispute. These days however, everything needs to be proved by research-based evidence to be of value before any investment of time or money can be made, even those things you would imagine are self-evident. Happily, the results of the pilot projects are so positive that it is hoped similar schemes will be set up across Scotland.
It is great news that the benefits of nature are now being assessed and analysed and its value to all of us more clearly understood, as the outcome might be that access to our surroundings, urban or rural, may become more widely available to all, especially those who feel ‘nature is not for them’. Anything that makes our society value nature more has to be positive at this critical time in our history. Here at Eden Wild Goose, we will continue, in the smallest of small ways, to do our bit to help any who want to, to connect with the nature on their doorstep to benefit their physical, emotional and spiritual wellbeing and increase all-round enjoyment of life.
Philippa Skinner
If you’re interested to know more,
information can be found at
rspb.org.uk/natureprescriptions