A necessary use of the Oxford comma in the title there – there are no tigers in Scotland as far as I know.
British Wildlife, Volume 36, Number 1
I have been blessed by visits from a Great Spotted Woodpecker this year, on a daily basis for quite some time, two of them at one point, but have never seen the Lesser Spotted (and a Green Woodpecker only once). From the cover article of British Wildlife it seems this is hardly surprising: a sighting is described as “a rare thrill”. I had wondered if I would be able to tell the difference between the Great and the Lesser, but the latter is apparently hardly bigger than a House Sparrow. The species is in serious decline for reasons which are far from well understood, although at the British Trust for Ornithology they are working on it.
Brett Westwood writes of his joy in finding and learning more about aphids, especially the Giant Oak Aphids, shepherded and symbiotically farmed by ants. Ian D. Rotherham argues powerfully for a “paradigm shift” in our thinking about urban environments and the opportunities for wilding them and Richard Jefferson writes of the surprising biodiversity of limestone scree.
Amy-Jane Beer, whose writing I love, is on the case for public access to nature and the ecological inadequacy (to put it mildly) of our national parks. Wild camping, she points out, is only legal in one place in England: Dartmoor. But landowner Alexander Darwall, who “stocks pheasants next to an SSSI in contravention of Natural England guidance” (which is why these people always want guidance rather than rules, but it is never enough), wants to take that away on entirely spurious grounds, whilst the National Farmers’ Union greatest triumph of the year, according to president Tom Bradshaw, was getting right to roam legislation taken off the Labour manifesto rather than, perhaps, she suggests, “challenging the power of the supermarkets or agrochemicals giants, or the overseas produce undercutting the market … a shortage of labour, or fields falling silent of birdsong and insect hum …, or concern for soil loss or ELM [Environmental Land Management] payments being cut to the bone.” It is a very clever and passionate argument.
The impact of fence collisions on birds is the subject of another piece. Often put in place to exclude deer and rabbits, they can be made more visible for a start, preferably without the use of plastic, but the best solution is an obvious one – once trees have grown sufficiently, take them down. But as I have all too often seen with my own eyes (at disused pheasant pens for example), this rarely happens and even when it does they are usually not properly disposed of. Our countryside and wildlife is far too fragile and precious to be left in the hands of these terrible people, the same people who resist any murmur of the idea of bringing back our apex predators to balance the ecosystem once more.
There are pages of text and images by Clive Walton on the ‘silently disappearing’ Slender Pond Snail at Bavelaw Marsh which must be as delightfully niche as it gets.
Simon Barnes, as feisty as ever, shares my intense irritation that a love for nature and wildlife is so often seen as childlike sentimentality, inspired by Beatrix Potter or Walt Disney, as I wrote in Animal Trust:
It infuriates me when the hunting and shooting brigade blame children’s books and Walt Disney for all of this. It is absurd, insulting and patronising to say that everyone who opposes their activities has not matured into an adult, holds only childlike views.
As Barnes says, sentimentality and sentiment, or compassion, or empathy, are not the same things. They tried to write off Rachel Carson, he says as “hysterically over-emphatic [with] a mystical attachment to the balance of nature”: “not a proper scientist, just a sentimental woman.”
See here:
Barnes also quotes Peter Singer and at the end of the piece Gerald Durrell: “People think I’m trying to look after nice fluffy animals. What I’m really trying to do is stop the human race from committing suicide.”
The regular exhaustive wildlife reports are inspiring, the conservation and wildlife crime news worrying as ever.
Sacred Tiger
I cannot recommend My Tiger Family offered by the BBC enough. It is the story of Valmik Thapar who seems a wise, tough but gentle soul and his decades spent in the company of tigers at the Indian hill fort of Ranthambore. Always in demand for their skins and their bones, the latter for traditional Chinese ‘medicine’, the poaching problem was rarely away for long any more than it is now. As long ago as 2005 he noted, “The future of tigers is bleak, Gold help us”. He also points out that there were once 100,000 tigers in India. Then the Europeans arrived and before so very long there were just 1,800, hunted by the powerful, rich and the royal (including prince Philip of course). But, he insists, tigers are sacred. I understand human greed driving the market but to murder tigers for sport? It is utterly beyond me.
Peacock tails
By one of those odd coincidences, I had been wondering about the evolution of male Peacock tails and it is another subject touched on in the programme. How can it make evolutionary sense for so much energy to be used for what is essentially a display ornament? And there is the age-old question which I have never fully got my head around in spite of Richard Dawkins’ best efforts, why stop there? In the arms race of the natural world, why do horns not just keep getting bigger? It is all to do with balance of course and nature, the selfish gene, will find the perfect equilibrium. The tail puzzled Darwin too and led him to the theory of sexual selection: the genetic advantage (the best tails attract females) outweighs the burdens. Nevertheless it seems this is nature at its most extravagant.
Fox hunting in Scotland (and elsewhere)
I am so tired of writing about this. Although the illegality of snares in Scotland is now enforceable, oh happy day, even though trail hunting and hunting wild animals with more than two dogs are now illegal … they both still go on thanks to legal loopholes by which NatureScot seems happy to issue licenses, and lots of them – forty to be precise, in six months, thirty-one of those allowing the use of more than twenty dogs. Do they know how many were issued to hunts? No, they have no idea. These people, the hunters, the grouse moor and pheasant shooters, will never stop. I don’t even think they could if they wanted to, they are driven by some weird bloodlust for which the rest of us, humans and other animals, continue to pay the awful costs. The notorious Warwickshire Hunt (one persistent MP is still fighting to find out exactly what was the corrupt arrangement they made with a now retired senior police officer which magically transformed a Community Protection notice against the hunt into a ‘gentleman’s agreement’ in their favour the like of which no other exponent of criminal activity would receive, see Animal Wild for details) recently lost control of its hounds on public roads and a housing estate – only the presence of saboteurs, who did manage to call the hounds off, saved the fox’s life.
Wild Justice, or at least definitely Chris Packham, was originally in favour of a licensing system for driven grouse shooting but they have now realised it is hopeless and are calling for a total ban. The rules in Scotland, largely far ahead of us in England in these matters, in theory at least, have already been watered down to the ludicrous extent that landowners can themselves decide which areas of land are to be affected. Meanwhile a Golden Eagle ‘disappeared’ over a grouse moor and an Osprey was shot on the first day of the shooting season. Protect the Wild has boldly announced that they intend to bring the entire bird shooting industry to its knees. It cannot happen soon enough – I can hear the local guns blasting birds out of the sky as I write.
New Scientist
My second issue, 9th November 2024, has much to intrigue, making it harder for me to decide whether to continue to subscribe. Here again are some headline snippets.
In the microgravity of the International Space Station, water does not fall in drops but forms spheres.
There may be an overall “cosmic speed limit on growth” applicable to anything that can be measured, rather like Einstein’s showing that nothing in the universe can exceed the speed of light.
As many as one on twenty Wikipedia pages may now include AI contributions.
Formerly predicted, now discovered, strange particles which have mass when moving in one direction but none in another.
The oldest known tadpole fossil, found in 2020, is 161 million years old.
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