Chris Packham’s T-Shirt Designs 2012

BirdFix – When they are all gone, you’ll have to make your own

Our sub-Saharan migrants are in very serious decline and our farmland birds are in terrible peril. Once familiar waders are going, going and in many places – gone. In many cases we have a very good idea why, in others we know why and yet our efforts to stem their inevitable disappearance often seem lamentably absent or hopelessly slow. We allow ourselves to be preoccupied with minor sideshow successes and distracted by unsustainable short term fixes. Well, there’s nothing wrong with celebrating good news but not at the expense of taking our eyes off the bigger picture – which is not a happy one. If we shy away from tackling it . . . then one day perhaps we will help our kids make ‘old birds’ like my father helped me stick together Spitfires and a 1:180 scale model of HMS Victory.

Even Better than the Real Thing!

Nature is dynamic, constantly updating in a continual process of attempted perfection. And because everything is involved this state is never attained. What we see as species are in fact organisms in flux, some will disappear – become extinct, others evolve into different forms. Ours is just a snapshot in the course of their existence. I often wonder what things will become in time, should they hopefully survive. Well here is my outrageous imagined future for the already overdressed Goldfinch and that Versace dandy the European Kingfisher.

My preparatory sketches have been beautifully transformed by Ian Lewington, the world renowned bird illustrator whose skills have greatly contributed to the Handbook of Birds of the World series. For more of his amazing work depicting contemporary species visit www.ian-lewington.co.uk

The Linnean Society of London is 200 years old and are driven by a desire to promote ‘the cultivation of the science of natural history in all its branches’. I’m not sure what Carl would make of my future birds . . . Visit www.linnean.org

When I Sleep I Dream of Birds

Well, it’s true. And other animals too. The most dreamed about species throughout my life would be Tyrannosaurus rex and when it comes to avians in recent times Swallows, Lapwings and Smew have all featured a lot. Normally not in a ‘birding’ context, that is I’m not out with my bins’ looking for things, they dash across my dreamscapes in rapid fractures from any narrative, they rather violently punctuate the progress and very often they are not realistic in their entirety, too big, exaggerated features, indoors . . . Only Swallows seem to be harbingers of any solace but even then they are always in fast swerving flight. Don’t analyse this!