Category: Uncategorized
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Iris
Nothing to say about this, which appeared in the garden today – its strange, stunning beauty speaks for itself.
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An end to live exports at last
A slew of e-mails has arrived over the last couple of days celebrating this massive win for animals in the UK. World Horse Welfare were first, describing it as a historic milestone and a monumental victory (they have been campaigning for this for over a century). PETA and others were not far behind. I couldn’t…
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Oxeye daisies and ladybirds
The oxeye daisies in the garden are just coming into flower. I noticed these tiny ladybirds which turn out to be Sixteen-spot Ladybirds. Not, as I first thought, Twentytwo-spot (sic), being a creamy rather than bright yellow colour. To identify them, I turned to my copy of the folding, laminated WildID guide to ladybirds, which…
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The RSPCA and a king
The tireless Protect the Wild has deplored the appointment (perhaps I should say anointment, the royals seem to like a bit of anointing) of a king, Charles Windsor (i.e. Saxe-Coburg-Gotha) as its new patron, describing him as an animal abuser. It is the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, so I can…
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A much too close encounter with a deer
This photograph is from an altogether happier encounter with a muntjac deer in my garden: An unexpected garden visitor – Animal Wild On my way back from RSPB Pulborough Brooks* however, I and a deer had the nearest of misses. *RSPB Pulborough Brooks Nature Reserve – Animal Wild On a busy dual carriage way, I…
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A Short History of the World in 50 Lies
By Natasha Tidd, illustrated by Emily Feaver, Michael O’Mara Books Limited, 2023. With so much to cover in under 300 pages, beginning with the Achaemenid Persian Empire from 550 BC and ending with the Chernobyl disaster in 1986, this proceeds at a breakneck pace and is necessarily pretty dense. The author’s irreverent wit, knowledge and…
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Motorway gantry signs again
I drove to Blackheath yesterday to see and value another literary archive, which entailed driving for six hours, mostly on the M25 and M4. I have written about being caught out by these gantries before: https://animalwild.blog/2024/03/26/screwed-by-the-government-again/ I commented that I find the patronising platitudes intensely irritating (make sure you carry water on a hot day,…
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A Horse in Full and PETA
I have been watching a recent offering from Netflix, A Man in Full, starring the great Jeff Daniels. The style is somewhat like that of the magnificent Succession – a nasty tale about mostly nasty people with absolutely no redeeming features, and a disturbing subplot or two. The Jeff Daniels character, Charlie Croker is Trump…
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RSPB Pulborough Brooks Nature Reserve
Pulborough Brooks Nature Reserve, West Sussex (rspb.org.uk) This is a lovely place. I visited for the first time last weekend. The volunteers were charming, friendly and informative to a fault. I was off to a head start because one, Janet, is a friend I had met on a safari in Kenya a few years ago.…
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Brian Phelan, Rest in Peace, 1934-2024
Brian Phelan died, at home, two days ago on May 10th. His stepson, Josh, was kind enough to let me know almost straight away. I had seen quite a bit of Brian over the last few months. We first met some twenty years ago. My wife, eldest and then only daughter and I went to…
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Police & Crime Commissioners
The recent elections have made me ask a question, not for the first time. How is it that the candidates for these posts put themselves forward as representatives of political parties? Surely the police are supposed to be entirely apolitical? What am I missing here? It is a job which comes with generous remuneration, plus…
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Pixie Bks
During our firm of booksellers’ centenary last year, I sent out monthly reminiscences and reflections on my time in the trade. The March issue was about Private Presses, where I wrote this: For many years we operated, for two American universities, Brigham Young (under the leadership of Scott Duvall) and Wisconsin-Madison (Yvonne Schofer), a ‘blanket…
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Just a few more garden photos
A first visit to Penwood Nurseries near Highclere made a refreshing change from the overpriced garden centre chains. Staff were friendly and highly knowledgeable and it is all just about the plants. Not a garden gnome in sight, not that I have anything against garden gnomes. This will be my go-to place from now own.…
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A commonplace student’s commonplace book. Part II
All things by immortal powerNear or farHiddenlyTo each other linked areThat thou canst not stir a flowerWithout troubling a star Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch No eternal reward will forgive us now for wasting the dawn From ‘Stoned Immaculate’ by The Doors. Wasn’t looking too good but I was feeling real well From ‘Before They Make Me…
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A commonplace student’s commonplace book. Part I
When I was digging out the poems now published here https://animalwild.blog/2024/05/05/a-poet-called-norrie/ I also came across two notebooks and an envelope file filled with various quotations which I had liked and some occasional writings of my own. Some of it, especially of the latter, is pretty cringeworthy to say the least, even excruciating, but perhaps not…
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Colonialism, the British Empire and the Buggery Act
This is a subject I really feel I should have known a great deal more about, but it is almost entirely new to me. The trigger was a chapter from A Short History of the World in 50 Lies by Natasha Tidd, Michel O’Mara Books Limited, 2023, a book I will come back to later. …
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Fractal ferns
There are around 70 species of fern in the UK and over 10,0000 worldwide that we know about so far. They pre-date the dinosaurs. I am extra careful about hyphenating that word since someone once wrote that as a volunteer at Trindledown Farm I predated most of the staff. This fern is throwing out some…
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A wasp
Every hour or so a solitary wasp finds its way into the summerhouse. I carefully put them outside. There is no doubt that they are annoying, but I was quite pleased with this image. I have an as yet unread whole book about wasps but I admit it is not at the top of the…
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A poet called Norrie
A poet called Norrie, published here for the first time Norrie was from Glasgow. He lived rough on the streets of Manchester but slept overnight in, I think, various hostels. This was a long time ago when I was a student and some of the details are a bit fuzzy. I cannot exactly remember how…
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Creating beauty from brutality. Mulberry Mongoose
This lovely bracelet, ordered from the RSPCA shop, arrived this morning. The inclusion of my favourite animal, an elephant, made it irresistible. It has been suggested that I am somehow anti the RSPCA, but I’m not. They do a lot of good work and get some very unfair bad press. I do feel strongly that…
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Crufts and flat-faced dogs
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) have protested at Crufts, on one occasion being met with physical violence from security people. They are calling for and end to the senseless “canine beauty pageant” and the demeaning behaviours the dogs are forced to perform. In particular they are drawing attention to flat-faced or brachycephalic…
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Royal Pigeons
Members of the royal family are no strangers to the enjoyment of extreme animal cruelty – their patronage of various wildlife organisations is a smokescreen of course. See Animal Trust and Animal Wild. A letter from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) highlights their abuse of pigeons. Three, from King Charles’ Sandringham loft,…
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Right to Roam
I had this to say in Animal Trust and Animal Wild on the subject: We could certainly do with a Right to Roam Act along the lines of the one embodied as a statutory right in Scotland in 2005, which allows everyone access to pretty much all land and inland water. At the October 2023…
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Birdwatch magazine, April & May 2024
I especially enjoyed in the April issue celebration of the rise in Bittern numbers in Britain and the admiration of the sheer beauty of the Garganey duck, otherwise known as the cricket teal. The bird is described as Western Palearctic. I have been seeing the second word quite often lately and was prompted to find…
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Rwanda
Footage released on Youtube shows two of a nationwide series of detentions of migrants bound for Rwanda. I have already posted on this subject:https://animalwild.blog/2024/03/26/screwed-by-the-government-again/ “Meanwhile there are plans to ‘house’ seriously ill child immigrants in shipping containers and as if the entire Rwanda scheme were not diabolical enough, the Home Office has awarded a £6.4m contract to…
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The Garrick Club part II: when luvvies attack
This should ideally be read in the context of my earlier post about the club and its travails. There have been a couple of developments. To take a reactionary, reductio ad absurdum viewpoint for a moment, would this give me the right to object to being judged by a member of the Women’s Institute or…
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Beaver bombs part II
A review of the second part of Black Ops and Beaver Bombing; adventures with Britain’s wild mammals, by Fiona Mathews and Tim Kendall, Oneworld, 2023 The fifth chapter is all about bats and Horseshoe bats in particular. They are the authors’ special passion and that shines through. There are further atrocious puns although they do…
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Nuts & Bolts part II
Nuts & Bolts; Seven Small Inventions That Changed the World (in a Big Way), by Roma Agrawal, Hodder & Stoughton, 2023. This book continued to enlighten and inspire me to the end. There is no banging of drums, but the world view imparted by my Western education at least (and I’m guessing not much has…
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Horses “running amok” in London
Four terrified cavalry horses run through the streets on April 24th and two are badly injured, apparently spooked by builders dropping rubble from some height. The reporting is oddly coy as to what exactly happened and there is typical rabble-rousing use of words like “rampage”, which imply aggressive and deliberately destructive behaviour. There is a…
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Rescued Canada Geese – did they know they could fly?
I write in Animal Wild about how extremely fond I became of the five rescued birds, who were goslings when they were brought in and of the wonderful video of their release. They seemed to know immediately that in the wild and free was where they belonged. It is a fifty-minute journey for me to…
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Secrets of the Elephants
This is a superb four-part television series made by National Geographic and currently available on Disney+, narrated by Natalie Portman and featuring the lovely and highly knowledgeable elephant expert Dr Paula Kahumbu. She is one of those commentators, the best kind, who does not attempt to hide but only wants to share her joyous amazement…
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Garden birds III
Just a few observations and thoughts. I have been watching the pair of Dunnocks, a species described by the British Trust for Ornithology as having an “interesting” sex life, elsewhere as promiscuous, polygamous and indulging in “sneaky mating”. They are rather dismissively described by the BTO as a “little brown bird” and by others as…
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Dogs aren’t stupid
A bizarre article in The Times reports: “A study has suggested that most dogs can link words with familiar objects, The ability had been demonstrated in only a small number of “gifted” canines.” Well no shit, Sherlock. I hate to think how much money is spent on these pointless experiments. Anyone who lives with a…
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Angela Rayner
I’ll keep this short and to the point. So she may have benefited to the tune of £1,500. Possibly it was deliberate. More likely it was inadvertent – perhaps she just made a mistake, was tired or in a hurry, or ticked the wrong box. We have the most complicated tax system in the world.…
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British Wildlife magazine
Volume 35, number 5, April 2024. I have written about the opening article on mink eradication here Beaver bombs part I – Animal Wild. As I have said before, I love that contributors do not shy away from being outspoken, nor extremely niche. There are pages and pages devoted almost entirely to the Speckled Footman…
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Badger survey April 2024
This took place pretty close to home, I won’t be more specific for obvious reasons (we never publicly reveal sett locations). Not much to report but we did find two setts which were new to us, one large and with so much recent digging that it looked like a building site. I saw a muntjac…
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Black & White (& ChatGPT)
I commented in my review of Hilary Mantel’s A Memoir of My Former Self, A Life in Writing, John Murray, 2023, Long Live Dame Hilary Mantel – Animal Wild, that she uses capital case for the words Black and White when they are describing people, which I had not seen before. Then I noticed that Roma…
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Do NOT install Photoshop on Windows 11
At least, not anything other than a very recent version. I am posting this just in case anyone is thinking of doing it. I am no fan of Microsoft to put it mildly, but Adobe has not endeared itself to me this morning either. I had decided to install an admittedly pretty ancient version of…
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Nuts & Bolts
Nuts & Bolts; Seven Small Inventions That Changed the World (in a Big Way), by Roma Agrawal, Hodder & Stoughton, 2023, is a book I asked for and was given on my birthday last year. I was hopeless at physics at school. Our teacher, Mr Baker, seemed to have long since lost interest in the…
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An unexpected garden visitor
This totally made my day. I looked up from my usual morning crossword and coffee to see at 7 am, to my amazement, a male muntjac deer just a few feet from the window of my summerhouse. When I first saw him, I ruled out muntjac on the grounds of size – he seemed enormous.…
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Beaver bombs part I
A review of the first four chapters of Black Ops and Beaver Bombing; adventures with Britain’s wild mammals, by Fiona Mathews and Tim Kendall, Oneworld, 2023 This is a fairly detailed review without, I hope, too many spoilers (although there is so much good stuff it has proved hard to resist some retelling), of the…
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Jeremy Clarkson is a damn blasted liar
Christopher Columbus is a damn blasted liarChristopher Columbus is a damn blasted liarYes, JahAh, he is saying that, ah, he is the first oneWho discover JamaicaI and I say thatWhat about the Arawak Indians and the few Black menWho were ’round here before him? This is a part of the lyrics of a song by…
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Tice’s Meadow Nature Reserve
I was kindly invited to join a tour of this delightful place recently, which hosts a fabulous diversity of habitats and wildlife, by another HART volunteer. It is located on the outskirts of Aldershot, providing what I tend to think of as an essential pair of lungs to an otherwise heavily developed area. We formed…
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Long Live Dame Hilary Mantel
Long Live Hilary Mantel Hilary Mantel writes a great deal about ghosts – not the Scooby-Doo kind – and how the dead live on in our minds, our memories and our bodies. They are not gone but merely invisible to us. I wrote in earlier post about my encounters with her and our handling of…
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Garden Birds II, April 2024
Garden Birds II, April 2024 When my brother and I were young, a highlight of school holidays was a visit to Uncle Fred, our great-uncle on my mother’s side, a retired engineer who was married to her mother’s sister. He lived, alone after her death, in a large house in Pangbourne on the Thames (he…
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Garrick Club – rumblings in the corridors of power, happy memories and a sorry state of affairs
I joined the Garrick Club in 2009 and resigned at the end of 2023. When our bookshop was in Long Acre, Covent Garden, the club was just around the corner. My father was a member long before I was and used to go every Monday for lunch, usually sitting at the publishers’ table where others…
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Pubs, foxes, Jamaica and James Bond, Haile Selassie and C.L.R. James
There’s reason to celebrate – the Fox Inn in Stourton has cancelled a Woodland Hunt’s end of season supper. The owners wouldn’t comment but it is not the first pub to disassociate itself from such organised crime groups. The Anchor in Exebridge no longer hosts the Quantock Staghounds, the Raven Inn in Powys decided not…
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Badgers, hedgehogs and developers
Returning to the discussion as to whether badger predation is the major cause of hedgehog decline as suggested by a friend of one of the HART volunteers, see earlier post, this seems to be a case of someone deciding what was true before even being in possession of the facts, let alone giving them due…
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“All wild animals have to be culled”
This is from a man who seems to be right up there with a couple of the villains in Animal Wild, Lord Seacroft and Lord Sudeley. Feudalism not only lives, it never went away. Reginald Plunkett, 1880-1967, was an Anglo-Irish naval admiral and the younger son of the 17th Baron of Dunsany. His brother Edward…
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Garden birds and others, March 2024
Just a couple so far this month, one of the Dunnocks again and a not brilliant but not too shabby picture of a Jackdaw – they are usually are far too smart to allow themselves to be photographed easily. This one was at least eighty feet away, so not bad without a tripod. RSPB Digital…
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Animal Queens
A spectacular new wildlife series on Disney Plus, Queens is narrated by Angela Bassett. The angle is matriarchs. “There’s a reason she’s called Mother Nature.” There is no flinching from showing nature at its harshest, its reddest in tooth and claw – and frankly shocking family betrayals. The first episode is set in the Ngorongoro…
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Dark Skies
March 2024 See Animal Wild for an account of the wonderful Dark Skies area around Elan Valley in Wales, but I am pleased to see the beginnings of a gentle local campaign which has featured in our parish newsletter, beautifully illustrated by local artist David Thomas. I am hoping to ask him for permission to…
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Protest news in brief March 2024
PETA, I was pleased to see, made their presence known and felt at Crufts, and I saw an image on Facebook of a protestor holding up an Animal Aid banner about the use of the whip in horse racing: “Whipping doesn’t hurt? Come and try it.” Beside him is a dominatrix appropriately clad, in red…
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Fox hunting – a secret deal with the police
This made Channel 4 news on March 4th 2024. It is actually fairly old news (but all credit to C4 for running it) and is extensively covered in Animal Wild, but this is the story of the Warwickshire Hunt who appealed against a Community Protection Notice, a court order, issued in an attempt to mitigate…
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Animal factories
March 2024 Pig factory I have forced myself to watch a fair number of programmes about the horrors of factory farming. This one was Hogwood, on Netflix and elsewhere, the name of a pig ‘farm’ in Warwickshire. Multiple fearless investigations were undertaken by the vegan charity Viva! exposing, as they described it, a vision of…
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Books Old & New: Hilary Mantel
For many years our firm of booksellers handled the sale of Dame Hilary’s archive. During our centenary last year I sent out monthly musings and this was my account of our dealings with her. … Finally, this is the story of the archive of Dame Hilary Mantel. I name her because she fully expected me…
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Books Old & New: The Elephant Whisperer
I am occasionally asked (or just tell people if I’m not) which is my favourite book about wildlife. It is hands down, without any shadow of a doubt The Elephant Whisperer by Lawrence Anthony. I wrote this about it in Animal Trust: “Shortly after Lawrence Anthony’s sudden death from a heart attack, two separate groups…
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Screwed by the government again
HMRC and in particular their VAT division are notorious for the invasive powers they have and because of understaffing, appalling customer service – and we are, after all, customers, and we pay their wages as they should never forget. But it turns out they have found a new way to screw money out of us.…
Animal Wild 