My version of the carol would have to depart from that of 1780 as early as day two, St. Stephen’s Day.  Saint Stephen, the first Christian martyr was said to have been betrayed by a loudly singing wren while hiding from his enemies.  Boxing Day was for centuries commemorated by Hunting the Wren, when boys set off to catch the bird and parade it around town, as described in the traditional "Wren Song". The Wren, the Wren, the king of all birds, St. Stephen's day was caught in the furze. Although he is little, his family's great, I pray you, good landlady, give us a treat. This almost certainly springs from a pre-Christian tradition, when wren feathers were given out before a voyage, to ward off disaster at sea.  In the Isle of Man Hunting the Wren persisted in some form into the 1930s, while in parts of France it continues today.

But perhaps the turtle dove should remain in the song for, whatever it may have symbolised in the past, it is now a symbol of something unattainable.  These days you’re hardly more likely to see this once common bird during the months it should be with us – April to August – than at Christmas.

It has been argued that the five gold rings once referred to pheasants, who bear a ring of white, not gold, feathers round their necks.  But the oldest known published version of 1780 illustrates the lyric with five rings and no pheasants.  The new BBC list goes for goldfinches at this point, and why not? From then on Radio 4 favours ornithological interest over any regard for a composer trying to set the lyrics: 

Six white-fronted geese a-laying
Seven mute swans a-swimming
Eight nightjars a-milking....

Come again?  Of course!  The old superstition that the night-flying, wide-gaped nightjar stole our goats’ milk from the very udder.  Clever.

Nine Andean cock-of-the-rock a-dancing
Ten manakin a-leaping
Eleven sandpipers piping....

Which just leaves my favourite – and I’ll explain why in a special Twelfth Night Re:Tweet – Twelve snipe a-drumming.

It took just two months from the first meeting to the full programme - surely a record for a week-long festival of any kind!  In early October, my RSPB colleague, poet Matt Howard, and I sat round a table with other organisations to gauge interest in a festival celebrating the cultural ties that connect us to nature.  Earlier in the summer Mark Cocker, Matt and I had shared a few beers, bemoaning what seemed like a progressive unravelling of these historic links.  Mark phoned around and found plenty of takers for a meeting to discuss what we might do about it.

It was thanks to Dr. Al Cormack and his colleagues at Gresham's School, Holt, that what started as a tentative idea for 2016 will be a reality as early as February 2015!  Each February since 2011 Gresham's have run a festival, which in the past couple of years has focused on nature.  At the October meeting Al offered to open the programme to the group, and within a few days each organisation had come up with an event they will present in this, the first Norfolk Festival of Nature.  Click on the Festival logo or visit the NATURAL LIGHT What's On page for full details.

In the programme are a number of high-profile artists and authors including writers Patrick Barkham and Mark Cocker, illustrator Sheila Tilmouth and audio-visual artist Kathy Hinde, whose work with the RSPB we featured here in September.  Patrick Barkham will team up with the National Trust's Matthew Oates to present the Festival Lecture exploring Spirit of Place.  The RSPB presents a concert of nature-inspired music, an evening of audio visual responses to nature, and poetry readings.  The Hawk and Owl Trust, Norfolk Castle Museum and Art Gallery and  Norfolk Wildlife Trust are contributing talks on subjects as diverse as birds of prey, landscape and nature painting and the future of nature itself.

Educational activities will include a schools' haiku competition sponsored by Festival partner Bray's Cottage and a nature writing workshop in the woodland environment of Gresham's.

Later in 2015 the Festival partners hope to present further activities throughout the county, so keep in touch for regular updates.

Kathy Hinde presenting Piano Migrations at TEDx Aldeburgh.  Kathy will team up with RSPB North Norfolk Manager and NATURAL LIGHT editor Laurence Rose to present an evening of musical and audio-visual responses to nature.

The Norfolk Festival of Nature is in association with Bray’s Cottage, Gresham’s School, Mark Cocker, Hawk and Owl Trust, The National Trust, Norfolk Wildlife Trust, Norwich Castle Museum, Rialto Magazine, The RSPB, Wild Anglia and Writers’ Centre Norwich.

As the two organisations point out in their publicity to get young poets writing about nature, this is the time of year in which Tennyson’s phrase “Nature, red in tooth and claw” seems more than usually apt. 

The challenge is for poets aged 25 and under to write a poem about birds – anything to do with them. The YPN and RSPB suggest entrants read a 2009 article by Adam O’Riordan, about the enduring importance of birds to poets.

O’Riordan provides a succinct survey starting with The Seafarer, the Anglo-Saxon poem of spiritual longing and exile.  In it, birds become “astringent emblems of solitude” as earthly pleasures are traded for the "the gannet's noise and the voice of the curlew" while the laughter of men is replaced by "the singing gull".

In the Sixties, Ted Hughes found in birds the symbols of his own concerns, first in the shining, terrible, power of The Hawk in the Rain whose "wings hold all creation in a weightless quiet" and later going as far as to forge his own gospel story in Crow. 

Olivia Sprinkel is studying at Royal Holloway College for an MA in Creative Writing: Place, Environment and Writing taught by Andrew Motion, Jo Shapcott and Sara Wheeler.  When she heard about NATURAL LIGHT’s campaign she got in touch:  “I first read about the OJD removing nature words in a book called Towards Re-enchantment: Place and its meaning in an essay by Robert Macfarlane.  I was moved to write a poem which includes [in italics below] some of the words added and some of the words deleted, to highlight what is happening to children's childhoods.”

The Committee for Childhood has decreed by Olivia Sprinkel

Young people of today,
the Committee for Childhood has decreed
the following words are hereby deemed
superflous to your youthful need:

No longer do you need to know
the onomatopoeia of babbling brooks,
or recognise the glint of minnows as they dart.

Henceforth, no longer will earthy beetroot
or hedgerow blackberry stain your little fingers,
let’s keep them clean! Our official stamp
obliterates the porpoises who arc
between crystal sea and sky,
the heron standing proud and still.
The conk of a conker being conquered
or the lonely belly-deep bray of a donkey
from across fields far away -
you will not miss these sounds.

It is but childish to hold a buttercup
to a friend’s chin to see gold glow.
And why do you need to know
it is from acorns that oak trees grow?
We will provide.

Instead, we decree,
these are the frames
for what you see:
bungee-jumping celebrity
is, of course, compulsory.
Your souls will be formed
through attachments
to block graphs and databases.

The Committee welcomes you
to your citizenship of this world! 

Remembering the fallen in the centenary of the outbreak of the Great War needed a stunning and unforgettable piece of contemporary art. Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red by Paul Cummins and Tom Piper certainly met that need.  The poppy as a symbol of remembrance arises from another work of art, whose centenary is next year.  In Flanders Fields was written by Canadian army physician Lt. Col. John McCrae (1872-1918), on May 3 2015.  

In the third and final pre-Christmas blog of this campaign, we look at some more words - poppy among them - that must be put back in the OJD, and hear from more people with recommendations for alternative books for children.  But first, a new poem.

The list of words removed from the Oxford Junior Dictionary two editions ago includes thirty of our best loved plants and animals, and a host of others relating to the countryside, farming and food.  The list of ins and outs is here.  As we pointed out in previous blogs, a generation ago, 40% of children regularly played in natural areas, now only 10% do so, while another 40% never play anywhere outdoors.  The physical fitness of children is declining by 9% per decade, according to Public Health England. There is no single reason why childhood has changed so radically in barely a generation;  if there were, it would be illegal:  it would simply not be permitted to consign children to a lower life expectancy than their parents as, for the first time in recorded history, we now have.

In a ground-breaking initiative the RSPB and the Wildlife Trusts are calling for a Nature and Wellbeing Act in England to strengthen legislation for the creation of accessible green space, more resilient protected areas and an education system that reconnects society with nature as a matter of duty.

What has that got to do with a few words removed from a dictionary?  The toll of lost words will come as a surprise to anyone who still regards connecting with nature a vital part of growing up.  Sounding the death knell for outdoor play by axing some of the words most associated with it is to be part of a problem society cannot afford to just accept with an impotent shrug.

So to my final recommendations for alternative children's books this Christmas.  My RSPB colleague Suzanne Welch has worked in young people’s social development and learning for a range of different organisations from social care to environmental education centres.  “I am a firm believer that many young people learn and develop as individuals more effectively through experiential opportunities within the natural environment” says Suzanne. 

"I think The Beginner’s Guide to Being Outside by Gill Hatcher is lovely.  And one of my all time favourites is Everybody Needs a Rock by Byrd Baylor with pictures by Peter Parnall. The beautiful illustrations and reflective process of finding the perfect rock for you is different and compelling."

Mark Sears is Director of the Wild Network, which brings together organisations dedicated to reconnecting children with nature.  “I have been lucky enough to get hold of any early copy of Learning With Nature by Marina Robb, Anna Richardson and Victoria Mew.  It’s aimed at adults who want to get their children learning outdoors.”  The official publication date is end of January 2015 but you can place orders now via the link.

Mark says: “it is beautifully set out with hundreds of awesome things to do with your wild one.  Whether its making flower fairies (a particular favourite of my 4-year old and me) or learning how to make shelters and fire safely, its all in this book in a really easy to read and digest way.  Every wild thing needs one in their rucksack.”

Two weeks ago Chris Packham presented the Indian cuckoo on Tweet of the Day.  To hear the programme again, click the button below.  Last week Somerset-based Alan Balmer sent NATURAL LIGHT a new piece of music composed, and performed, in response to Chris Packham's cuckoo Tweet.  Alan says:

"I was so impressed by the ‘riff’ like phrase of the common Indian cuckoo's song on Tweet of The Day, I was inspired to compose this short piece based on the song. Starting with the the bird’s ‘riff’, I layered up other sounds including violin, thumping of the arm of a sofa, mouth sounds and bass and acoustic guitars. I was also impressed by the bird’s perfect pitch - none of the instruments needed re-tuning from concert pitch. I thought the bird’s phrase quite cheery and uplifting and hope I have reflected this in the music."

And to hear Alan's musical Re:Tweet click on the SoundCloud link below

At the weekend, NATURAL LIGHT launched a Christmas campaign to persuade the Oxford University Press to reinstate some of the nature words previously culled from the Oxford Junior Dictionary.  About thirty nature words, including some infused with cultural significance, had been removed in favour of words that reflected the increasingly solitary, interior world too many children inhabit today.

I spoke to Elaine McQuade of Oxford University Press who had earlier sent me a one-page statement in response to Sunday’s blog.  

As it happens, Elaine was in the process of commissioning some work for Oxford Owl, the OUP's website for promoting children's learning at school and at home.  “I've asked a children’s books expert to create lists of her favourite stories from all publishers to help parents find new books to suggest to their children. I requested favourite animal stories but I will now widen this to include stories set in a natural environment.” Good news!  

Elaine was clearly enthusiastic about the many books OUP has commissioned about nature and the environment:  "for example Sky Hawk by debut author Gill Lewis - I love it!"  From the reviews I have read, it sounds great.  We got on to the trickier subject of dictionaries and Elaine was keen to stress that another OUP dictionary, the Primary, is more comprehensive and contains all the words removed from the Junior.

In the end, we had a friendly agreement to disagree.  I feel OUP did not consider the cultural signal being sent out in removing what for me seems a disproportionate number of nature words.  The specific choices seem to include some of the words most symbolic of the relationship between childhood and nature and, therefore, culture and heritage, as this blog will show over the coming days.

The National Trust has discovered, in time for National Tree Week, that its Hughenden Estate in Buckinghamshire is home to the biggest example of the one tree we can all remember from our outdoor childhoods, assuming we had one:  the horse chestnut.

Growing up in Kent, we used to go to another Trust property, Knowle House, for our annual conker collecting. Happily, Woodlands School in my home county have created a website for sharing all sorts of useful information, including the rules of conkers.  Conker and horse chestnut are two of the terms I'll definitely be asking the OJD to reinstate.

I contacted Jeanette Heard of the National Trust to ask for her suggestion for a great book for kids and she asked around.  Her colleague Helen Meech loves A First Book of Nature for the under 5s and 50 Things to do before you’re 11¾ which I’m guessing is for the under 12s.  Tom Seaward, who helps run their Natural Childhood campaign, says The Stick Book by Fiona Danks and Jo Schofield "is fast becoming a classic."

...or, for that matter, The Wind in the ******s.  Imagine TV bleeps where the words should be.  If we can't have all our trees back in the OJD, can we at least have these ones?  That would still leave ash, beech, hazel and sycamore on the log pile.   

The Woodland Trust's Hollie Anderson (please let there be an Ivy there as well...) likes Outdoor Wonderland: The kids’ guide to being outside by Josie Jeffrey (illustrated by Alice Lickens). According to Hollie “this book is the perfect way to make stay-at-home kids into intrepid explorers. There’s things to do and see in the park, woods and garden – but also specific activities for rainy days, windy days and on the street.”


Next time, great book ideas from the RSPB, and some more words no dictionary should be without.

In October BASCA announced the 35 works shortlisted for the 2014 British Composer Awards. The winners were unveiled at a ceremony at Goldsmiths’ Hall, London on Tuesday 2 December and will be broadcast on BBC Radio 3’s Hear and Now at 10pm on Saturday 6 December.

Congratulations to two composers featured on these pages in recent weeks.  Harrison Birtwistle, whose Moth Requiem launched NATURAL LIGHT back in July, when we celebrated all things moths, won the award in the Vocal category for Songs from the Same Earth.

And Kerry Andrew, interviewed here last month about her involvement in the NORTH project won two awards! Chamber Opera Woodwose, the tale of a wild man of the woods,won in the Community/Educational category, and Dart's Love, a music theatre piece celebrating wild swimming, won in the theatre category.

Click on the button to see the full list of winners.