大象传媒

3. Sewage. When Brett Westwood began a wildlife diary at the age of 15, little did he think that he'd still be writing notes, nearly 40 years later about the same local patch in North Worcestershire.
In this series Brett returns, diaries in hand, to different areas of his local patch and compares notes from the past with the landscape and wildlife of today. There are genuine shocks and revelations.
In this programme, Brett visits a farm at Whittington. When he was a teenager, sewage was pumped out onto an area of about a square mile where cattle were grazed. In icy winters the fields did not freeze owing to the warmth provided by the sewage and the life breeding in it! Unusual for the West Midlands in winter, a regular flock of up to 200 curlews were joined by a pink-footed goose, pintails, wigeon, and in winter 1976 two spotted redshanks. These waders are very rare inland in winter and Brett, as a novice bird watcher at the time wasn't believed by the traditional and older birders. However once the record was accepted by the West Midlands Bird Club, the record spurred Brett on and his passion for wildlife and bird watching continues to this day. The old methods of spreading sewage stopped in the 1980s and the curlew flocks have gone but Brett still visits the area, and in recent years has been rewarded with sightings of barn owls and buzzards.

The series underlines the importance of keeping a diary like Brett's not just for personal notes but as a valuable document of change which is measurable from decade to decade.

Wildlife sound recordist: Chris Watson, Producer: Sarah Blunt.