Big Garden Birdwatch

-

 There aren't very anything's these days that make me proud to be British, but the annual bit of citizen science (nearly 8 million people participated last year) that is the RSPB big bird count.

The idea is that you sit for an hour in your garden and count the most of each species that are visible at the same time.


These are our results this year . A disappointing showing but it did start to snow half way through. If we had done it yesterday we would have had Great Spotted Woodpecker and Long Tailed Tits as well.
The boys as far as I was concerned was that we saw a red squirrel and a visiting stoat whilst we were watching which made it even more worthwhile.


Diary Notes
I made a complete mess of my camera traps last night. One showed nothing but rabbits and wood pigeon and the other I failed to switch on!
I heard on the radio this morning that the Govt in England (Agriculture being an issue devolved to the various home nations) has decided to abandon its controversial badger cull. - but not until 2023! Is this a case of the Govt finally agreeing to follow the science rather than chasing the votes?
The issue is to do with bovine Tuberculosis (bTB). Farmers are losing a lot of money each year because cattle that contract bTB have to be culled to prevent the disease getting into our food chain. Badgers also carry TB and it is claimed ( without much in the way of evidence) that the cattle are infected by the badgers. Since 2013 the Govt has licensed farmers in some areas to shoot badgers with a death toll of about 35,00 per annum. Not only is there little evidence that it is the badgers "fault" that cattle get TB, there is plenty of evidence that shooting badgers in one area just leads to badgers moving in from adjacent areas. The English ministers have caved into pressure from farmers to allow an expensive and some would say ineffective cull. If it doesn't work why let it run until 2023?! Its exasperating but given the way the Govt has handled Covid following the science doesn't come easily to them!


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Dunnock

-
Image
 When I was a boy my first bird book described "hedge sparrows" but at some time in the last 50 years this name has all but disappeared and these birds are now called dunnocks (as they are not closely related to House and Tree Sparrows) Its easy to miss a dunnock! They are little brown birds and they tend to feed on the ground and keep to the cover of vegetation if they can. The males are territorial and the birds pair up in the spring. The pair are not strictly monogamous and the female will mate with another male if she gets the chance. DNA testing reveals that a brood often has more than one father. The male dunnocks are alert to this possibility and can sometimes be seen pecking at the cloacal opening of the female in an attempt to get her to expel the sperm of the competitor. The sexes look alike and these birds are common and widespread in Britain. The males get involved in feeding young according to their breeding success so it is common to find two males and one femal...
Read more

White Clawed Crayfish

-
Image
 I went for a walk yesterday that took me along the Scandal Beck (a tributary of the River Eden). On the banks of the river was a stone that had obviously been used as a picnic table by an otter and the remains of his meal were strewn about. A recognisable part of the leftovers is shown below. It's clear that this claw comes from a white clawed crayfish. These animals are not common in the UK as they need the water to be rich in calcium. This requirement is fulfilled in the Eden valley by the limestone substrate. I think that the River Eden is as far North as theses animals get. I know that there are crayfish in this part of the system because for a number of years I have volunteered with the Eden Rivers Trust to survey them. It was not uncommon to find a couple of hundred animals in a 300m stretch of river. The following images give an indication of scale. In recent years the population of the native white clawed crayfish has been threatened by the arrival of the invasive signal (...
Read more

Otters

-
 Well another Covid lockdown! As I am confined to the local area I have been having a closer look at the local wildlife. I treated myself to a trail cam and started to see what I could find. After a couple of experimental sessions to get to know the kit I set the camera along a fence line by an old railway track. On the first night I was astonished to get footage of an otter carrying a rabbit! The site is at least 500m from a watercourse which is a drainage ditch that eventually flows into a tiny tributary of the River Eden I hadn't realised that otters eat anything other than fish but apparently they do. I wonder why the otter was carrying the rabbit rather than eating it where it was found. Perhaps it was feeding young? Apparently ottters have young throughout the year. I have only seen an otter near the house once before and that was a late night encounter in the car headlights.
Read more