counting coots

While we are on the subject of Springwatch, I have to get something else of my chest. I may come across as some kind of Springwatch hater, but it is not intentional and I’m not. Blubells. Protected species yes? Illegal to uproot or offer for sale under the auspices of the Wildlife and Countryside act of 1981. So why, when trying to show how acidic the formic acid coming from an ant’s nest is, use a bluebell? And then ask why one would need litmus paper when you have bluebells? What kind of lunacy is this? What the presenters seem to forgetting is that there are a lot of children watching this programme (by design), and if children think that something is cool they will copy it. Getting bluebells to change colour over an ants nest is cool, but it would have made much more sense to use some bloody litmus paper and keep the bluebell info under the radar rather than having the possibility of loads of kids finding bluebells, pulling them up and then running around to find ants to wave them at. C’mon guys, it’s a great programme but do have a think about what you are broadcasting!

I reckon that the Goldfinches that were assumed to be nesting on the Fulham side have fledged as it is all very quiet.  During the course of the day you were almost guaranteed to hear lots of chattering and singing but it's all gone quiet, which I am taking as a good sign.

I still haven't seen any House Martins in the patch yet.  Not that I see many, but that's not the point.

There was a pair of Canada Goose with two goslings on the Thames yesterday.  Gawd knows where they came from.

A pair of Gadwall are still on the Wandle!  What the...  On Tuesday I thought that only the male was there and the female might be on a nest or something.  It wasnt, it was hiding behind some mallard.

A Trumpeter Finch was at Cley recently, Mr GREvans issued an email (that anyone can subscribe to- other rare bird alerts are available) saying that it had been flushed enough and that it shouldn't be disturbed - but is this not what is supposed to happen anyway?

With the recent addition of Silvery Y and The Engrailed, my list of self found and identified moths has now broken the 15 mark.  No, I didn't miss a digit out.  The Engrailed, what a name.

Kate Humble said on telly the other night that the second world war was "fairly appalling". Fairly appalling? Stunning.

On the topic of Mr GREvans, on the Londonbirders group, there is the annual talk (rightly so) of not going public on Schedule 1 species.  So how does Mr GREvans get away with his book about where and when to find rare birds?  I don't know, but if anyone buys it for me for my birthday later in the year, I won't mind.

That's hypocrisy isn't it?

Doesn't matter, nobody will have read this far down such an enormous post, once they've seen the picture of the gosling, everyone will go 'aaaaah' and go somewhere else.  Hypocrisy?  I'll probably get away with it...

Yesterday, I received an e-mail from Birdlife, which was nice.  So I read it, and it turns out that it wasn't. 

For those that haven't recieved it or don't know what it's about, here it is, verbatim.

Dear Bird Blogger,

Today we announced that Alaotra Grebe is officially extinct on the Red List.

The Dodo is the undoubted ‘celebrity’ among extinct species with its depiction in books, cartoons and the well-used expression ‘Dead as a Dodo’. Less well known about the Dodo is that it heads up a group of single island flightless birds that became extinct either at the hands of man, or by the introduction of predators that came along with the arrival of people to their islands. More than 130 species of birds have become extinct since AD 1500, mostly because of human actions...


When BirdLife publicises news of threat or extinction the first question posed by the media will be: “Why should we care?”

We're asking you to tell us why species matter. Do you care?

Please encourage your website visitors to leave comments on this page:http://www.birdlife.org/community/2010/05/alaotra-grebe-extinction-do-you-care/


To read the full story, click here: http://www.birdlife.org/news/news/2010/05/red-list-for-birds-2010.html


Thank you for your support.

Nick Askew

Although many of us will not have heard of the Alaotra Grebe, it's extinction is symbolic not just because it is a bird.  Because it is a bird, it produces headline news and is treated with more significance but in the time that it has taken for this bird species to have been eradicated there have been hundreds if not thousands of other lifeforms that are gone.  Extinct.  For ever.  Extinction is a bit like pregnancy, you cannot be a bit pregnant, nor can you be a bit extinct.  For the Alaotra Grebe, that's it.  And we did it.  Shame on you.

Click on the links up there.  Read the story.  Put your name on the list.  Show, at the very least, that you care.

I find it a little ironic that less than a week after a scientist announces the creation of the first synthetic life form we have the announcement about extinction.  Would it not make more sense, on the whole, to try and keep hold of what we've got?

I’ve just finished a book about Peregrines. You may have heard of it, it is called On The Wing by Alan Tennant. I don’t know why (and I’ve tried to work it out) but I found it incredibly hard going. The subject matter (two blokes following tagged Peregrines in a beat up Cessna) was interesting but I just couldn’t get on with the style of the writing, and for once it was a relief when the book was finished. The author can write and as I will show below has no problem connecting with nature and describing it with some merit, but the whole I found bitty. As I paid full whack for it though I felt that I should finish the damned thing. The Glasgow Herald is quoted on the cover as saying that it is an 'Ornithologist’s On The Road'. Why? Because it was hurried? Because the author bumbled about and around the subject? Becuase there are two blokes in it?  Because the follow up (The Dharma Falcons perhaps) was absolute drivel? I don’t know.


The previous post on here was regarding Swifts and their return, and I found a passage in the book that evoked similar feelings when the author talks about cranes.

Instead, I’d yearned to live out there on the vital, scary edge of the lives they led. Lives larger, older, more vital than those of the people I know, and during years when the northers [sic] held off past when the leaves had changed, and the sandhills were slow in coming I worried. But then, on some ordinary sunny day I’d hear what no one else heard – a faint, musical bugle drifting down 2,000 feet. Looking up, I’d pick out ten or twelve gray specks dotted against the blue and feel my heart clench, and soar, and make me yearn not just to go with the cranes but to be one.

...makes jack a dull boy.

Just to close off the excitement regarding the lack of planes and nice blue sky, here is the same bit of sky that I posted last week.

With no volcano related restrictions.

At last there is a sensible response to the very daft idea of introducing White-tailed Sea Eagles to East Anglia.  At a recent meeting of the Norfolk Wildlife Trust (NW Norfolk branch) in Hunstanton a vote was taken and the members overwhelmingly rejected the plan.  Good on them.  One member is quoted as saying...

“You've done a wonderful Max Clifford job on the eagle, my fear is in some ways, the RSPB is punting them like Katie Price, like Jordan - the big birds are what brings the punters in, the tourists.”

A little peurile perhaps, but pretty bang on I think.

Unfortunately it still might go ahead, even though not many people think it is a good idea.  A representative of the Country Land and Business Association said... 

“We are dismayed of the continued stance of both the RSPB and Natural England that the introduction will go ahead, with dates for licences and releases being stated when they are still supposedly in consultation with farmers and landowners.”

Insert dismayed swearing here........................................

Have a picture.

I have misidentified gulls.  I think most (if not all) birders have misidentified gulls.  Now if you do happen to have a manky Black-headed on your patch that you have told everyone is a Bonaparte's (just for example) then you can blame your misidentification on radioactive waste.  No really.

Europe's most contaminated industrial site is in Cumbria.  It is called Sellafield. You may know this.   Being near the coast, there are a fair few seabirds around, and being a nuclear installation they produce waste.  Unfortunately these two things combine.  The waste goes into open pools of water for storage, and the gulls go and sit in the pools (because it's what they do) and then they die.  The people at Sellafield then have to store the carcasses as nuclear waste - they are described as 'putrescent', which I like.  They currently have about 350 animal carcasses in a special freezer on site (which I assume is a long way from the catering facilities) which will eventually be put into landfill on site.  What I don't understand about all this is that they haven't covered the pools with some chicken wire or something.  I've done science and stuff and I know that the wire over the pool is not going to glow or dissolve or anything like that, so why not replace the very expensive pest control company with some preventitive measure?

Stick with it dear reader, I'm getting somewhere.   Now I can only assume that not every gull that lands in said pools dies instantly (radiation doesn't work like that) which means that it may have been able to leave the pool, fly off, and if it escapes the hands of the pest controllers it can enter the wider population.  It is here that exposure to radiation can take effect if it breeds as it's progeny might then produce strangeness due to corruption of mytochondria or sperm or ova or whatever else.  What could the effects be?  Primaries without the expected P5 tongue?  Beady eyes? Abnormal carpal bars?  Beaks that are straighter than you might expect? An absence of a prominent gonys?  Yellowy legs?  Super long tibia? 

You get the picture.  Remember this the next time you tell someone that you have found a cracking Larid and are told that it is not a cracking Larid at all and that you are very silly indeed.  It's probably a radioactive bird you can say - you'll be able to get away with anything.  You heard it here first.

Before I stop for today, the the Thing household was in a state of Ren & Stimpy like joy last night as Mrs Thing got some degree results yesterday, and was awarded 80% in her scientific dissertation.  Eighty bloody per cent.  That's officially outstanding.  Good on you kiddo.

This post is going to be a bit sweary.  Don't say I didn't warn you.

Honestly, really sweary.  If you don't like bad language click on one of the other blogs, on the right of this page.  Go the new one, it's got some excellent pictures of Mandarins and Herons and Coots, and he (Fraser Simpson) doesn't seem to swear much.

Otherwise scroll the fuck on down.





Take a look at these fucking fuckwits.

Viewed from the other side of the bank on Wednesday,  I took a photo of them (regardless of the implications of Section 44 cos I'm rock hard me) as the situation looked a bit poncy to me, and I reckon I'm right.  They are fuckwits.  But you say, am I being too harsh too early?  Too judgemental, too world weary.  Let's see shall we?

Basically, here are two floppy haired  sixth form art student twats that have decided that it would be really cool to make some kind of comment on the state of the worlds climate (cos it's all topical and in the news and everything) by doing some kind of 'installation' or whatever they are fucking taught in school these days.  The said 'installation' is a model of a cute polar bear, sittting on a pretend sheet of ice looking all sorrowful and sad-eyed because mankind has properly fucked up the planet.  The pretend last-ice-sheet-in-the-world-ever is made from a polystyrene sheet that is three inches thick.  The whole thing was then set afloat in the Thames while they take pictures of the sad little polar bear, poorliddlepolarbear. 

But I gave them the benefit of the doubt.  I am an ageing pessimistic cynic. They are young and optimisitic.  I was like that once upon a time.  They are trying to highlight an issue that matters to them in one of the few ways that they know how.  By floating a silly bit of plastic with a fluffy toy on top of it in the fucking Thames.  I moved on. 

Yesterday I was again in my new patch within a patch when I saw something on the far bank.  It looked like it might be a dead swan.  A bank of tightly roosting egrets perhaps.  An albino bustard sunbathing?  I lined up the optics and had a look.



Yes, that is what you think it is.  A six foot by three foot lump of bloody polystyrene with straps on to hold a fluffy toy.

Thats right - the floppy haired twats had gone through the motions of taking their oh so important pictures for their poxy fucking art project that was focussing on how shite the world was because we pollute so much and we are all so bad and the prettyliddlepolarbears are all adrift in the big fucking ocean because everything like sucks yeah and we need to fix it like now and then gone and finished off their work by DUMPING THE PLASTIC IN THE FUCKING RIVER!

You stupid fucking idiots.  The level of hypocrisy and sheer fucking stupidity that I have witnessed just beggars belief.  Why do this?  Why pretend that you have any kind of green concerns and/or credentials and then go and pollute and litter so gratuitously? Shame on you, whoever you are.

Rather than sit in my ivory blog tower and rant about it, I borrowed a van and removed the plastic.  Idiots.

Rant over.  Unless something incredible happens today, this blog will shortly be discussing Pintail.

Take a moment to ponder the following...

Fact.  During the last inter-glacial period (approximately 125,000 years ago) the global temperature was 1.7 degrees higher than it is now. At that time the sea levels were 4-6 meters higher than we have presently.

In July, the G8 bloc of industrialised countries and some major developing countries adopted a target of keeping the global average temperature rise since pre-industrial times to 2C. However, small island states think this would cause serious climate impacts from rising sea levels, and have been arguing for a lower target of 1.5C. A number of African nations also back the lower target.

In  a letter to the Times yesterday, seven Fellows of the Royal Society (all professors in their field) state that "if there is no global agreement in Copenhagen, or soon after, to limit greenhouse gas emissions, the chances of the global warming by the end of this century being much less than 4C would seem to be very small".

Eek.

On the front of the Daily Mirror yesterday there was the inevitable tabloid reaction to a comment by Chris Packham "LET THE PANDAS DIE OUT" it screamed.  Subsequently it seems that he has half heartedly retracted the statement, but not really.  David Bellamy was one of the people that also came out to support the idea.  Lots of folk are saying that he shouldn't have said it and that he is irresponsible.  Yes he should, and no it isn't.

Obviously the intention was stir up debate, but there is good and valid logic inside the argument and largely pragmatic it is too I reckon.  The Panda is evidently the flagship species for conservation, the nonpareil of big endangered animals and thus should never be allowed to become extinct.  Ever.  Even though there isn't enough space for it any more.  It's pretty much doomed.  The same applies to the Tiger I guess.  Yes, there is no space for them anymore because of human activity and I'm not saying that humans have first dibs on everything but by our nature if we just run around breeding with a trail of destruction scattered all around us - there is a certain inevitability to the extinction of many many species.

The problem with conservation now is that the big organisations are based on 50 year old ideologies and tokenistic gestures that started the organisations, but the world has changed.  A lot.  Conservation bodies should be (as Packham says) focus on biodiversity hotspots, as biodiversity as a whole is far more important on a large scale than the protection of some dumb ass bear in China.  They don't have to do anything with the land, but buying it and stopping it being built on is good enough isn't it?

I doubt very much if this whole argument will change anything in the short term, the sun has yet to set on the wild Panda that much is sure.  But give it a decade or two and the consensus will be that we should have spent the money on rainforest instead.