There is no particular reason for the bird pictures in this post other than as decoration but it was good to see the stunning Nuthatch and two Blue Tits on a feeder at the same time. The Sparrowhawk is still around – as usual I only saw her from the corner of my eye but there was no doubt. The commotion alone was enough.
Bull riding
I am truly shocked by a piece about bull riding in The Sunday Times colour supplement. The headline is “Big Bucks”. “Wall Street investors and the owners of WWE wrestling want to turn bull riding into the next big sport on TV. Can the honourable old ways of the West survive?” I can only hope not. Honourable? Really? Says one practitioner, chief marketing officer of the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association: “We believe in God and we’re proud of our flag … You respect God’s land and animals. That’s the cowboy way.” Good Lord. There is no respect for the poor bulls of course who suffer fear and stress, often sustain injuries and endure cruel training methods. There is little regulation. The flank straps alone can cause discomfort and distress.
It’s not the worst form of animal abuse by a long shot, but rodeo generally is brutal and demeaning. Horse riders rope running calves. PETA confirms: “Cattle and horses may be zapped with electric “hot shots” so that they’ll charge out of the chute, calves’ necks are twisted as they’re violently slammed onto the ground, and horses are viciously spurred into bucking. The Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association (PRCA) rules allow the shocking of horses who are slow to come out of the chute—participants call them “stallers”. “I could hit them with a stick or poke them—I could poke holes in ’em, but that would hurt ’em. Or, I could just touch ’em with the Hot-Shot.” – Rodeo participant on how to “encourage” horses to leave the chute.
They use drugs too – this is not allowed but not for the animals’ benefit, it’s just for when they become meat for human consumption.
More from PETA: “The late Dr. C.G. Haber, a veterinarian who spent 30 years as a federal meat inspector, saw many animals from rodeos sold to the slaughterhouses he inspected. He described seeing animals “with six to eight ribs broken from the spine and, at times, puncturing the lungs,” in addition to “as much as two to three gallons of free blood accumulated under the detached skin.” ”
“Mexican rodeos, called charreadas, are particularly egregious. Two of the events involve deliberately tripping horses, including the manganas a pie, in which three mounted charros (riders) chase a wild mare while one tries to rope her by the front legs and cause her to trip and fall, and the piales en lienzo, in which a rider on horseback ropes and trips a wild mare by the hind legs … Unsanctioned charreadas, also called coleaderos (because steer tailing is the most common event), take place in rural areas all over the Southwest. If there’s some open land and no authorities are around, coleaderos are often set up. Word spreads through social media, and there are no rules.”
But there is no hint of a mention of any of this in The Sunday Times. I find that utterly astonishing in what should be more enlightened times of more responsible journalism. In some of the pictures used to illustrate the piece, you can see the fear in the animals’ eyes.
I am sad too to see the return of the dreadful I’m a Celebrity …, another spectacle of animal abuse for human entertainment. And wonder why animals are still being used in Christmas events – reindeer are wild animals, wholly unsuited to captivity and the environments in which they are placed.
Our money going to fox hunts and Big Pharma
To continue the capitalism gone wrong theme begun on my last post, here are a couple of numbers. Taxpayer’s money handed over to the hunting industry since the ban: £2,451,885.32. Billions given in tax breaks to Big Pharma. GlaxoSmithKline alone: £3.4 billion. Whilst the company cut jobs and moved manufacturing abroad.
As recently as November 8th, horrific footage was captured by sabs who are increasingly finding drones a very useful tool. Protect the Wild with estimable optimism believes we are finally about to witness the end of hunting, ‘trail’ or otherwise, and have produced a truly excellent booklet: Witness-the-end-of-Hunting-Booklet.pdf. In this instance of psychopathic cruelty and blatant law-breaking we see a group calling themselves the Coniston Hounds at work. First, a poor terrier, wearing a locator collar, is sent underground to where the fox has taken refuge. Men then dig out the area and pull the fox out with the terrier clinging to it. Not long after, the fox is thrown to the hounds to be torn apart.
Even the BHSA has felt the need to suspend them and the police are looking into it.
On the very same day a huntsman from the South Durham was filmed hitting his horse firstly with a branch and then with the handle of his whip, with venom, on his or her head.
Fergus The Silent
I have finally finished reading this novel and I recommend it highly. No spoilers here since the big reveal is on the front cover, but it remains a real page-turner with well-drawn characters, by no means all of them likeable, and it’s a sobering reminder of the destructive nature of our species. “Dreich” is a new Scottish word for me meaning dreary or bleak, and so is “loral” meaning, in the context of birds, the space between eyes and bill. Also “sphenisicid” which refers to the penguin family, as opposed to “alcid” for the auks. The author is an environmental journalist and this is his first novel. He is especially good at descriptions of land and seascapes and the horrors of the deaths of birds as a result of oil spills.
There’s an interesting digression on an old debate – was mankind, rather than climate change, responsible for the extinction of megafauna over the past 50,000 years? Scientists are increasingly coming to this view. We seem to hate and wish to eliminate large wildlife particularly, even now, so it would not be too surprising.
Kingdom
I have often said that I am no fan of David Attenborough. Apart from anything else, his voice, to me, is like fingernails on a blackboard, unbearably patronising and pompous. But I thought, given the subject matter, the stories of families of Lions, Leopards, Hyenas and Wild Dogs, I might be able to put up with the commentary for the sake of the filming. I assume Attenborough himself did not spend years in Zambia to make this, although you would think he had from his opening words. I lasted just under two minutes. It wasn’t just his voice, it was the music which redefines the word intrusive and that what was unfolding was more like a soap opera than a serious wildlife documentary. There’s often a fair bit of economy with the actualité with Attenborough and this did not look as though it was going to be an exception. I wish it were not the case since I have missed a great deal of programming which I would otherwise love. But I just can’t do it.
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