Tag: Wildlife rescue
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The Last Elephants, part III
The Last Elephants, compiled by Don Pinnock and Colin Bell, Hardie Grant Books, 2019. The photographs are again from Tanzania. Before returning to the book, some more about the extraordinary, diminutive Lek Chailert and her Elephant Nature Park in Northern Thailand as can be seen in the video below. 🐘 Sanctuary – Elephant Nature Park (2022)…
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Birds and a squirrel, more from ‘Pretty girl in crimson rose (8)’, travels in Sweden and Turkey and an alarming plane stopover in Russia, wildlife art, the monster across the pond
The Grey Squirrel has been at the feeder for ages this morning, really feasting on the peanuts. As I headed to the summerhouse I suddenly realised he or she was wonderfully close to me and had not heard me coming. When awareness of my presence did come, there was no panic or rush to get…
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British Wildlife Magazine November 2025 and Labour’s animal welfare proposals
Volume 37 number 2 Cath Jeffs opens this issue asking whether European Wildcats might return to south-west England. They were declared functionally extinct in the UK in 2019 but there are ongoing efforts to restore a population in Scotland. They are a different species from Domestic Cats. They are larger, have thicker fur, a banded,…
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Empathy and gratitude; foxes, raptors, swans, cows, deer, legal matters and more
The Kennet & Avon Canal played a large role in my year and my enjoyment of the summer in particular. The photo above and two of those below were taken in the cold winter of 2010 when the canal partly froze over. Wildlife rescue in the face of wildlife persecution A World We No Longer…
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Ivy flowers, WordPress nags, a canal journalist, chuckwallahs, Wild Justice, planning, autumn leaves, penguins in prison, a butterfly healer, Hamza Yassin, Hitchens and Fry on the Catholic church, and first fungi of the year
I have often read that ivy is a superb food source for pollinators late in the year but never really witnessed it. But the ivy in the garden this year is absolutely bursting with flowers and literally abuzz with insect life. I think these are mostly hoverflies. There was a white-tailed bee too. I haven’t…
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Birdwatch magazine September 2025 – and my animal rescue volunteering comes to an end
Oxfordshire Wildlife Rescue was due no volunteers at all on Monday afternoon so I went in. Usually it’s Wednesdays for me. But from now on it will be not at all. As I wrote recently I have been volunteering for well over a decade. I left Trindledown and HART for a variety of reasons (more…
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A Robin in the Summerhouse; a Drunken Wasp; Birds, Beasts & Bedlam (book review) and a bit of Star Trek
It’s hardly the first time I have fished a wasp out of a pint of lager. They do, apparently, become intoxicated by alcohol (not the case for all animals). I fetched a spoon, fished him out and tipped him onto the table as gently as possible. He seemed to stagger around for a bit, giving…
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Fledgling
The young birds in the garden are doing really well. Yesterday there were as many as six little Blue Tits on the feeders or at the bird bath at once. There’s just one Great Tit now, there are not so many sparrows, even the Jackdaws are fewer in number, as is to be expected at…
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The Birmingham Bull
The safe capture of a bull on the loose in Birmingham has received a lot of media coverage. The Express newspaper is predictably, reliably hysterical in its tabloid reporting, talking of “carnage” and the bull’s “rampaging” through either a suburb or Birmingham city centre depending on which part of the report you believe. No carnage,…
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Gifts of Nature: The Return of the Starlings; A Wren’s Nest; Other Birds, a Ladybird and Flowers
Flowers Vibrant carpets of Buttercups and Oxeye Daisies: The alliums have gifted generously this year too. This is strikingly coloured Honey Garlic, or Sicilian Honey Garlic, Allium siculum. These are Drumstick Allium or Round-headed Garlic, Allium Sphaerocephalon: The colours couldn’t complement each other better it seems to me. Here they are just a day later:…
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Being a gosling chauffeur; Tumuli and White Horses; Birdwatch magazine and Lucky Dube vs Keir Starmer
I have wanted to visit Swan Lifeline for a long time. On Saturday the perfect opportunity presented itself: a Canadian Gosling needed to be taken there from HART Wildlife Rescue, otherwise there would be just one lonely recuperating gosling at each rescue. The one pictured above was a HART rescue from a couple of years…
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Collared Dove
An adult pair were regular visitors earlier in the year as usual, but I haven’t seen them for weeks. Then two appeared this morning, but something was different and not just in their slightly fluffy appearance. They were shy and reticent, staying in the tree. I think they are juveniles and like to think the…
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British Wildlife magazine February 2025 on lead shot; fox hunting and more protest news
Volume 36, Number 4 There is invariably a superb photo on the cover, but this issue also has the text “An End in Sight for lead Ammunition?”, which is the opening editorial piece by Ruth Cromie. We have known about the toxicity of lead for over 2,000 years and its very severe effects on wildlife…
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Farmoor Reservoir
This was a recommendation from another volunteer at HART Wildlife Rescue. At HART a female Mallard has been taken in having been found impaled and immobilised by two fishing hooks (one with three prongs), the line wrapped around or somehow attached to a tree. Some anglers think nothing of abandoning their gear like this, used…
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A Kinkajou and mostly good news for wildlife
The illustration above is from Dictionnaire Universel d’Histoire Naturelle by Alcide d’Orbigny, first published in 1849 and which runs to sixteen volumes. D’Orbigny travelled extensively in South America and was a correspondent with Darwin. Not for the first time, messages from my friend volunteering at an animal rescue in Costa Rica have sparked my interest. He sent…
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A Christmas wildlife miscellany
The picture above was taken in in January 2010 when the Kennet & Avon canal which runs through our village was partly iced over. No decent snow this year though. Newsletter 139 from the Binfield Badger Group is an excellent issue, not just because they have partly reproduced my account of our last survey, for…
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Good news for wildlife
In part at least. I thought I would follow Protect the Wild’s lead – they have just made a video recording some of the happier recent stories. It’s a reminder not to feel completely helpless and even desperate. I repeat the stories here. Snares are finally properly illegal in Scotland. I do wonder about enforcement…
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A Swan, a Badger, a Gyrfalcon, a Fox, and Squirrel and Songbird theatre
A first for me at HART Wildlife Rescue this week. Whilst others worked inside with the hedgehogs, I was assigned the Collared and Stock Doves and Feral Pigeons outside, which I am used to, and a Mute Swan, which I am not. The columbines flapped about a fair bit in the aviary but soon calmed…
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Wildlife crime and protest
Illustrated, for no particular reason, with photos from a recent short walk along the canal at Hungerford, showing a few common hybrid Mallards and a Moorhen. A new report from the RSPB on the illegal killing of birds of prey, protected by law under the Wildlife and Countryside Act of 1981, uses data collected over…
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Wildlife rescue and protest round-up
At HART Wildlife Rescue the busy season has just peaked. Monday was a relatively easy morning with eight volunteers in (six is really the minimum needed, sometimes there are only two) and most of the ducks and geese released or about to be. There are still plenty of hedgehogs though, foxes, fledglings and nestlings and…
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Seagulls, Jackdaws and a House Martin
Having attended the BTO’s online seabird ecology course Seabird ecology, seabird decline – and a Wren and a House Martin – Animal Wild during which we learnt of the dire state of play, that Kittiwakes and Herring Gulls are red listed and a further five species of gull are amber listed, it made my blood…
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HART Wildlife Rescue
Another Monday, another morning at this wonderful place which does so much for wildlife. We are phenomenally busy at this time of year, the phone rings non-stop, people turn up with animals (including, yesterday, a young Kestrel) in cardboard boxes in a steady stream, and we were very short of volunteers. So it was that…
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A Blackbird in the house, more lilies and some very pretty notebooks
My son Zak came in to the room at the weekend: “Dad, I need your help, there’s a bird in the house.” He had, incidentally, made me this charming card for Father’s Day. This female Blackbird had flown inside, through the house and then upstairs with our cat and Zak in hot pursuit. Zak managed…
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Restore Nature Now and my local Lib Dem candidate
Yesterday morning I sent this e-mail to our local Lib Dem candidate. For more on the march, see: Restore Nature Now – Animal Wild Dear Mr Dillon, Thank you for your various newsletters, leaflets and hand-written letter. Anything but a repeat of (any of) the last 14 years is the main thing. My natural instincts…
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Cull of the Wild
A review of Cull of the Wild, Killing in the Name of Conservation, by Hugh Warwick, Bloomsbury, 2024. Rarely has a book made me as angry as this one. It is not generally the aim of this blog to do a hatchet job on anyone else’s books, but I am making an exception. I have…
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Wildlife notes
I spotted this beautiful scarlet tiger moth this morning. This insect photo was taken not with my microscope camera gadget this time but just with my phone, incredibly. Two of these ducklings were taken to our local vet and the other four brought in the following day. I drove them down to HART Wildlife Rescue…
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HART Wildlife Rescue news
It is really busy at the rescue now, with an endless stream of animals being brought in or needing collection. Many Mallard ducklings, including the one above which I collected from our local vets (I had given them my details for such an occasion when I last took our cats in), goslings (Greylag and Canada),…
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Birdwatch & BirdGuides May/June 2024
I include bird photographs from my trip to Kenya. I have tried very hard but cannot be 100% sure of all of the species but these are my best guesses. Immediately above and below are images of African Tawny Eagles, I think. There has been a lot of news from Birdwatch and BirdGuides, especially of…
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Wildlife rescue – news from HART January / February 2024
Please consider a donation to HART if you enjoy this content – visit hartwildlife.org.uk and click on Donate January / February 2024 Meanwhile it has been business as usual at HART, the wildlife rescue in Hampshire where I volunteer. Except that there is not really any such thing as usual business – there are always…
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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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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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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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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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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: 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.…
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BirdGuides newsletter round-up March 2024
I have chosen one issue more or less randomly – there is so much information to try to take in. Raptor on raptor – a Goshawk is recorded, for the first time, predating Gyr Falcon chicks in Norway. Wonderful plans / hopes for a nature reserve in Rutland, including the reintroduction of brown bears, lynxes…
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Hunt Saboteurs Association. Howl!
Another spring newsletter, from the HSA, Howl. The content just keeps on getting better and better. There are reports on hare hunts, badger cull sabotage and stag hunts, the demise of the Oakley Hunt, a review of what sounds like a terrible pro-hunting book, the usual pages and pages of news from the many individual…
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The most dangerous phrase in the language?
I stayed overnight at Moor Hall in Cookham, where I used to live, home of the Chartered Institute of Marketing and conference centre. A strange venue for me but it suited the purposes of a friend and me who were attending the slightly odd occasion of a combined birthday party and wake. After breakfast I…
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Otters and ducks
In an earlier post I wrote that “there seem to be have been very few ducks for some time on the Kennet & Avon Canal which runs through our village. An impromptu conversation with a barge resident in the village shop told me something I didn’t know – otters eat ducks, and perhaps they are…
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Books Old & New: Dr Dolittle
These are two extracts from Animal Trust. “Hugh Lofting’s Dr Dolittle books were important. I have a lovely set of first English editions in delightful, colourful dust-wrappers. It was only on re-reading them decades later that I realised what a profound impact they had had. It wasn’t the good doctor’s ability to talk to animals…
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Elephant attack, the Cheltenham Festival and cyanide bombs
March 2024 Elephant attack At Amer Fort near Jaipur in India, a tourist is attacked by one of the elephants used to ferry visitors up and down. Chained, beaten and abused, it is hardly surprising that they can become aggressive. The tourist’s injuries were quite serious, but this particular elephant had attacked before. One can…
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Animal Wild January / February 2024
Animal Wild Simply enter your e-mail address above if you would like to be notified of new posts. Subscription is free (but please consider a donation to HART if you enjoy the content – visit hartwildlife.org.uk and click on Donate). Photographs throughout the blog are mine unless stated otherwise. Comments and feedback welcome. January /…
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Books Old & New January / February 2024
Books Old & New January / February 2024 Two welcome additions to a four feet high pile of books waiting to be read arrive in the post. One is Hamza Yassin’s How to Be a Birder, the joy of birdwatching and how to get started, Gaia, 2023, decorated with the author’s own charming illustrations. The…
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Greetings cards
We are excited to launch a range of A5 greetings cards using my own photographs from the books (Animal Wild and Animal Trust) and elsewhere, printed at high resolution on premium glossy card at £4 each including envelopes. E-mail julian.rota@hotmail.com to order. The insides are left blank for your own message. Discounts available as follows:…