I thought the local Swifts might have left by now but I was transfixed by about thirty of them high in the sky yesterday evening when I stepped outside. The Jackdaws are very much back although in smaller numbers, so are half a dozen Blue Tits (where have they been meanwhile?) and I can still hear but not see Magpies every morning. And the Dunnocks are suddenly back too. Meanwhile the Wood Pigeons are once again busy making baby pigeons in their usual noisy, vigorous, non-stop way.
And now a juvenile Blackbird, whom I struggled to identify. The adult I take to be the father is keeping an eye on things. I thought Blackbird at first but then decided he or she wasn’t – I don’t think I have seen one at this stage before.
And for the first time in a while, a Nuthatch. It is also happening here this morning.
I was recommended this interview with rewilder Derek Gow (passim) whose wildlife centre we visited during the trip to South Devon. The interviewer keeps asking the same question, but Gow is brilliant on farming, farmers and the NFU. In talking of the ancient history of agriculture he points out that farming has always been a war on nature, a taming, and that at this point ‘we’ have indubitably ‘won’. I was especially struck by his simple suggestion of oval fields which would leave plenty of space for nature and wildlife. More beavers would have prevented or at least halted many of the wildfires we are seeing at the moment. And of course bringing back the apex predators we have obliterated would solve many other problems. When asked about unauthorised releases he answered simply that he really doesn’t care any more than the beavers do.
Radical – Britain’s Lost Species: Should We Resurrect Our Extinct Wildlife? (Derek Gow) – BBC Sounds
Burnham is going to be buying firefighting aircraft which does not seem great in terms of reducing consumption and carbon emissions. Like his ban on portable barbecues, this is a knee-jerk and superficial response to a far deeper problem.
I have written a good deal in both books and this blog about Jeremy Clarkson, paticularly here:
Jeremy Clarkson is a damn blasted liar – Animal Wild
He is an apologist for factory farming and, shamefully, pretends that all is well in the UK industry – he is as bad as those advertisements’ portraying happy, singing cows dancing round a field. Good to see Chris Packham publicly echoing just these sentiments:
He describes “most British farms as ‘horrible monocultures’ soaked in ‘deadly chemicals,’ with land ‘pumped full of fertiliser’ and animals kept in crates, ‘crushed and kept in the dark.’” Quite. These figures are approximate but around 85% of all animals farmed in the UK are factory or intensively farmed – for pigs it’s about 94%. Apparently the government only counts farms as factories if they exceed certain capacity thresholds – another whitewash.
An article in yesterday’s paper reveals that “nearly three quarters of rivers along Scotland’s west coast were found to contain wild salmon containing the DNA of escaped farmed fish … Wild Attantic Salmon populations were declared endangered in Britain in 2023.” Hybrid offspring have lower survival rates and there is of course no possible reversal.
Between 2023 and 2026 almost 36 million fish died in Scottish aquaculture cages. 103 welfare violations were recorded last year and more formaldehyde than ever before was discharged into Scottish waters. And what did the industry’s representative body have to say? That it was wrong to blame salmon farming for any decline in numbers and that “Our members work incredibly hard to achieve zero escapes, and the sector has just agreed a new scheme with Fisheries Management Scotland to fund conservation and research when incidents do occur.” I can’t even be bothered to unpick this nonsense.
Deer put down after leaving man with chest injuries in London park
This is sad but I am not sure why the deer was shot. If people took notice of advice and stopped feeding them this would never have happened and it does not sound as though the injuries were terribly serious.
There’s a lovely photo of an adult Mayfly on the cover of British Wildlife Magazine’s June issue, Volume 37, Number 7.
Hannah Bourne-Taylor, effectively addressing the veterinary profession, wonders why when a report on the terrible effect of parasite treatments for pets came out in 2016, governments have done … absolutely nothing. It isn’t just irresponsible owners allowing their dogs to swim wherever they like, but there are other routes including wastewater.
Brett Westwood writes charmingly about those who encouraged and enthused him in his youth, in particular Roger Maskew. I love the sound of his (unsuccessful) clandestine Marsh Fritillary conservation project.
It would be churlish of me not to mention an article about good things happening in Windsor Forest and Great Park so fair play to the Crown Estate for that at least.
The Large Tortoiseshell was once extinct in Britain but is now enjoying a resurgence explains Penny Newton in an encyclopaedic and beautifully illustrated piece. I thought I saw one in South Devon a few weeks ago but became convinced I was mistaken. Not impossible though.
James Robertson waxes lyrical about wildlife in Wales, reminding us of shifting baselines – not always in a bad way, think Red Kites. I especially liked “wildlife never reads the books” and “Nature does not operate in straight lines …”
‘Plants on urban walls in Scotland’ is interesting – a possible habitat for plants easily overlooked. All too often people see them and rip them out for no reason. When we first moved here a couple of neighbours came round to complain about the Leylandii with which I sympathised but one of them came out with “and let’s get rid of all this s***t” by which he meant nature: the ferns, daisies, grasses, hedge and other plants growing along our wall. I did not comply.
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