So long and thanks for all the skuas

So sad that it should come this...



...It's been fun. Maybe I'll see you again, on a different blog, under some different disguise, some time soon...

Outsiders: Two other approaches to the conservation conversation

John Berger, art critic, intellectual and novelist, has a parable about mice. A man systematically traps and removes them from his house, releasing them unhurt in a field, but as he lets the last one go he feels disappointment. “He had been hoping to see, one more time in his life, a prisoner fly, a prisoner realize his dream of freedom. ”.

(Norfolk Hawker: red listed species with Biodiversity Action Plan)

Freedom, it turns out, has been cost-benefit analysed by economists. Three hundred quid, apparently, is the worth of what I do refracted and rationalised through the spreadsheets of economists. We’ve known for ages now that ecological services underpin the economy to a huge degree, bees for example and their pollination (without which, we’re screwed, and we don’t seem to be unscrewing ourselves any time soon), but now we have a figure, not only for such services but for its psychological effects too. £300 for your mental wellbeing. It doesn’t sound a lot. It sounds rather expendable. Now we have a value, next we can look forward to the boom market. Then the crash. Imagine nature as an asset stripped, recession-struck waste land. Joseph Stalin, say hello the Aral Sea; Chairman Mao, greet my good friend the Tree Sparrow. His sparrowcide was a spectacularly horrible footshooting: the crops failed, harvests decimated and his people starved in the millions. At least Britain has form at fighting against the manipulation of nature for economic reasons. See the mass revulsion at the proposed Forestry Commission sell-off, that lead to a government U-turn. See similar forces at work in the proposed Badger cull. A green economy would of course be a wonderful thing, but what if the numbers go wrong?

Art doesn’t save the environment, people do. Art’s role is different. Art, good art, doesn’t proselytize, but provokes: showing why and the way to new thoughts, not telling how. Good galleries are complicit in this: Smiths Row, Bury St Edmunds, is one such place. A cavernous space in the Market Cross, an old town centre Georgian building, is an oasis from the heat, dust, grime and crowds of the town’s streets. Against a white washed wall, a flock of birds hang, splashed across a three hundred strong swathe of tiles. Stylised and innocently drawn, the birds’ colours are punchy primary reds and yellows, balanced with blacks, green and browns, and dull blues. Taken singularly they don’t stretch much beyond a naïve charm, but ‘in flock’ they’re almost overwhelming; the overlapping edges of individual paintings creates a patchwork type effect, that integrates all the images together. You can take your own meaning of course, I claim no great insight, but for me it’s a wonderfully vivid depiction of how enmeshed the global avifauna is, as well as its beauty and mystery. Take a moment to admire it from the quiet corner in which it restlessly sits.

(Copyright: Rosie Grieve/Smiths Row Gallery)

The opposite wall showed the dichotomy of art. Spread across small slips of paper pinned to the wall, were the stylised tattoo designs of the Ultimate Holding Company. From the obvious Golden and White-tailed Eagle designs, to the esoteric Mole Cricket, tattooing in the name of conservation is not only a very clever idea but a brilliantly original way of bonding person with animal. It’s another one of those all too often occurrences of things I wish I’d found out about; that Scottish Crossbill tattoo (perhaps a play on the traditional Scottish cross tattoo?) would’ve looked good on my arm. Would’ve doubled as a constant reminder to get back to Abernethy, too. There’s more to it than these two works, but they were the standouts for me. I haven’t mentioned the soundscapes, the additional paintings, the touch responsive flower (no really)…

(Copyright: Rosie Grieve/Smiths Row Gallery)

Art goes where photography can’t. Photographs are an everlasting portrait of a moment, art transcends that: the camera might never lie, but the paintbrush or pen tells us more.
I’m not alone in favouring art as a tool for conservation, see The Ghosts of Gone Birds phenomenon, Kurt Jackson taking Cornish hedgerows to the high art establishment, and the proliferation of art inspired nature writing. Where once a book might have been inspired by a series of statistics on the dimensions of a Yellowhammer nest, now we have authors expanding on John Clare, who got there first in a 19th century poem.

It’s a wonderful thing.

“The aesthetic emotion we feel before a man-made object … is a derivative of the emotion we feel before nature” John Berger (The White Bird)

[Smiths Row Gallery: http://www.smithsrow.org/

Is located in Bury St Edmunds town centre, and can be incorporated as part of a day trip to Lackford lakes, West Stow CP, Cavenham Heath, Thetford Forest and Lakenheath Fen. The exhibition runs until Saturday the 2nd of July. On Thursday the 23rd of June, Adrian Parr from the British Dragonfly Society will be doing a free talk, starting at 1:15.pm]

Sandy soil underfoot again, soft, but solid to the footfall. Strange that, despite the flatness, the social coldness, the parched and dying grass, the first thing that got me, that greeted me as being of home, was the soil. No more of the solid/sodden peat bog dynamic, sadly. The second thing, as I walked to the lake, was the sweating air, heaving with humidity, screaming with Swifts, darkening with clouds. Take a deeper breath and you’ll feel no fresher, just lethargic like everything else, waiting on the rain.

It starts to spit as we take positions beside the lake. A Stock Dove barrelled along the nearest hedgerow, a Sedge Warbler scratched out a few chords. Gulls, many, spiralled over the pig fields to the point of appearing like scratches, or tiny cracks in the clouds. Rain sets in, further smearing the coating of Hebridean sea-salt on the scope and splashing into the eyepiece. Lapwings still career around in hot pursuit of the mugging Crows, whilst Shelducks shelter their just-fledged broods. I suppose the rain is needed. A mere 8mm in recent months has browned the surrounding countryside. The crops are choked.

And that was when dad picked it up. The rain hadn’t brought it in; it had been unearthed at 4 minutes past 4 (exactly), as part of the small amount of inland migrating phalaropes. Spinning and swimming, the Red-necked Phalarope was typically hyperactive, picking up insects in gravity defying vortices. A male, we guessed, in it’s faded, battered rendition of the adult female’s stunning summer plumage, though in the weather everything had an insipid cast.

A Breckland gem. It carried on raining. Puddles filled up the pockmarked field edges, to which pigeons flocked to bathe. Darker light saturates the colours of the rape field, a bright banana yellow against Payne’s grey skies, towering high above and stretching to the horizon, whilst sprinkled red poppies fleck the field margins over which Swallows flit. And still the rain came.

From my desk I can see the sky in widescreen. Filtering in through three windows, its saltire-blue stretches of cloud free space fade to white at the edges, by the Wallace monument and the fingers of the strand of still bare trees.
From my desk I can also see my laptop, Microsoft word and a half started, disheartening essay.

Discipline cracked. Not that it takes much anymore.

Over the rugby pitches in a swarm of Sand Martins, fluttered a Swallow. Only one.
Spring had arrived.

The raucous Chiffchaffs agree.

***
The hedge sprouted plastic bags, flowered crushed lager cans and blossomed with bleached prophylactics. Twisted rusting metal lay in the undergrowth, the broken beaten body of a nearby fence co-opted as a lurking tetanus trap for the next unleashed dog gambolling the perimeter hedgerows. And there’s a lot of them about. Discarded tabloids flutter as suburban tumbleweed in this lifeless desert of litter, rusting goal posts slump and burn in the harsh sunlight, whilst a lone Goldeneye floats, perfectly still, on a Boating pond for several minutes, meditating with the bobbing waves on the unbearableness of being a Bucephala. And being here. Meadow Pipits orbit galaxies of tiny blue plants, shot through with asteroids of daises and supernovae of dandelions on the short-cropped grass as I passed, pursued by canine hordes after the remains of my bacon sandwich.

It’s a collision. A car crash of worlds, with nature festering away in the shadow of post-industrial Scotland.

It seems contrarian to the prevailing narrative of tacky tartan and golf-course-defiled wilderness that despite the huge swathes of this country left as the great British wilderness, the best site we can do for birding is this scrap of land and sea, nestled three-way between Leith, Musselburgh (‘the honest toun’), and Cockenzie’s power station. That at least would explain why, for a bustling urban nature reserve by the biggest town in East Lothian and capital satellite, there are approximately three notice boards. Top marks for existing but a fail for the worthy environmental evangelism we’re reminded permanently to be a part of.

And yet a Hail Mary pass of the scope over the sea revealed quite why Musselburgh has the reputation it has. The Firth was coated in Velvet Scoter, surfing the black waves from here to Fife’s Forth coast; black ducks anchored like buoys over the shallow beds of mussels - though apparently any mollusc will do - periodically rearing up to flash those curious white secondaries in their wings. But you don’t need to see that to identify them, they’re close enough that the white guyliner or industrial strength bill in regulatory high-viz orange will suffice. And it’s not just them. Standing under a procession of passage Sand Martins and Swallows; two Long-tailed Ducks float offshore with raffish Red-breasted Mergansers and a handful of Eider. It turns out that despite everything, this place aint half bad at all.




***

Slipped into hypnogogia, she lay in an alcove, in the lee of the wind and stretched out on a flat rock in felineesque felicity. I took my time. Perched on a higher rock and buffeted by the Berwick wind, I combed with the scope over the stretch of sand, seaweed and sea. Late afternoon bought respite from the harsh sunlight of midday, and with the temperature in the low-teens; it too was tempting to drift away… White and black. Shaking myself to, Eider, Gannet, gulls dotted the scenery in minimalist colours. Oystercatchers too, piercing calls reverberating off the rocks. Bass Rock in the distant haze seems snow capped with the naked eye, guano capped at 20x and crawling with an ant-like mass of Gannets at 60. Blimey there’s Gannets. From the Fife bank and back, left to right, the sky and sea is covered in the shearing and elegant marvels of evolutionary insanity. It’s not just the five-foot wing span, though that’s impressive in itself. It’s the death cheating, high velocity diving action; plummeting from-
The Oystercatchers erupted. Shot in low, a silver-grey raptor flushed them into a cloud of fluttering wings and piping calls. Too slow on the offensive; it pulls up and lands on the offshore island. A Sparrowhawk, strangely, one of the biggest females I’ve seen, expanding its diet beyond the town’s population of its namesake.

As the afternoon slipped into evening, I woke her up and showed her a Ringed Plover. She giggled, enjoying its clockwork toy running motion. I postulate that they look diligent and humble; she bats it back as intelligent and that it’s her favourite bird of the day. Anti-spectacle too, could a birdwatcher have been born?

North Berwick is the bourgeoisie wildlife experience: the Scottish home of the fluffy Puffin key ring, overpriced fish and chips on the beach and the self-important pink polo-shirted dog walker. It exists, so it seems, through the rose tints of the twee upper-class tourist, wildlife at its most mediated, paid for and predictable. At least Musselburgh contained the element of surprise and, if not in its most spectacular surroundings, one of natures more surprising locales.

***

Perthshire does different surprises. The road snakes through rolling green countryside, Lapwings career across hedges in the throes of passion and bubbling Curlews cant down to the dale-bottom burn. Then the car crests the apex of the valley and drops down into a miniature Glencoe of claustrophobic, vertiginous Gneiss walls, and carpets of heather studded with grouse topped boulders. The car window frames it, a shelterbelt blocks it. The road dog-legs round and the view reappears as a pink rolling sea of heather. Surfing the nearest wave to the verge, a round-winged, black tipped, Short-eared Owl, appears and disappears as its sulphuric eyes clock the car.

Two days prior earlier and the first summer worthy weather of the year had hidden the hills in a veneer of haze. Three flicks of Dave’s sweepnet and the peace was obliterated with Bloody hell, it’s a Capniidae. He’d have hours of fun with this. Sweeping a net back and through the boggy margins, netting countless mayflies, hoppers, craneflies and, most importantly, stoneflies. I was concentrating in not slipping off a mossy hummock and filling a boot full of the fresh Scottish mountain loch water that people pay to drink from bottles. Pipits on the fences were distracting me until I looked up and Dave, DAVE, Osprey.

I’d forgotten how big they are, all six foot of those wings, gently drooping at the tips and sharply drawn at the rear, giving that characteristic languid glide. Despite appearing out of nowhere it was almost above me when I clocked it, and it flew right over my head. The subconscious screamed Osprey, but I dragged out the process, enjoying every second of being reunited with a glamour species away from the visitor centre mediated experience.

Upon a high Tayside moor, amidst a collage of greens, browns, crags and grey skies; tumbling Lapwings and shrill Redshanks, chattering Swallows and flashing Wheatears, and the exposed ears of a (non-mountain) hare receding into a depression. Surprisingly lush, not the expected ascetic experience of being high up above the tree line. Caught in the sweeping movement of my binoculars, a distant flash of grey grazed the grass of the moor. Catching up to it, I expected a Wheatear and found a male Merlin, scything through the Swallows, before vanishing off to the distance. Merlins, masters of the five-second fly-through, remain, to me at least, the most enigmatic of British breeding falcons; it’s a classic falcon, yet like no other falcon to be found. They fly flat, fast and low and haunt these bleak lands, and for 364 days, 23 hours, 59 minutes and 55 seconds, of a year remain exist in complete invisibility

I headed off the hill in happiness.

But my absolute favourite place in Perthshire is the little visited SWT reserve Balnaguard Glen. Juniper, an inept conifer that resembles Broom and Gorse, proliferates here, on a stream addled formerly grazed hillside. Pristine is the Scottish landscape cliché, and a misleading one too, but here if you ignore the history and focus instead on the glacial scars, the landslip exposed boulder clay, the tiny path winding down the steep slope to the burn bending its way through riparian woodland and the juniper, matted and enmeshed into a piecemeal spiky carpet covering the boggy upper-slopes that you have to fight your way through; it feels pristine. It feels that it gets a dog walker per week. You can feel alone, sat in an island of grass, surrounded by juniper, and an orchestra of Willow Warblers, one in every bush, whilst admiring Violet, coltsfoot, Cuckooflower and its erratic attendant, the Orangetip. And it wasn’t amazing for birds, as a Pheasant slowly dying under a log rather explicitly pointed out, but that’s not the point. The point is in the pugnacious Green Hairstreaks, the botany, the bumblebees, and the juxtaposition of such life, with the ‘partridge and gulls’ agri-desert downslope. The reason for the vibrant life was shown when Dave changed the alcohol bottle on his malaise trap. Insect soup he said.

(A stonefly, the Latin name of which I have forgotten).
***

And despite my best efforts, occasionally the real-birders birds get in my way. At the blustery Esk mouth, as the mud crawled with Godwits, Turnstone, Dunlins etc, each a copy of the repetitions of the congener that preceded it, a Crow caught my eye as it drifted down to the rocks. I clocked it as a hoody, a glint of grey as it came across the light. The scope revealed what was ostensibly a Hooded Crow: clean cut grey back and black gorget extending in the right shape to the upper breast. But, those cursed black under-tail coverts. 80% is the estimate of others.
At a car park on the River Tay by Dunkeld, one Carrion Crow caught my eye, for in the correct light having a very dark grey upper back and upper breast, with a clearly demarcated black line on its upper-breast where the glossy black gorget lay. 90% Carrion? How far back in this Corvus’s genetic history did its corone become diluted with cornix? Complicating the issue are the amount of hybrids that get seen in Lothian in winter, and the apparent southward spread of Hooded Crow this year. I was without binoculars at the time but I’m fairly sure there was a pure cornix, or at the very least, purer than the Musselburgh bird, present in fields near Balnaguard, where they disappeared a decade ago (I’m told, I’ve also been told they’ve spread further into Speyside this year).

(Musselburgh)
***

Desecrated Daffodils lay dead in the woodland. Bluebells and flowering wild garlic took over the florae flooring of the campus woods. Commas flitted from the bushes in which Blackcaps sang of summer. Still a single male Goosander kicks back with the Mallards on the grass bank of the loch, waiting for the Warburtons, whilst Scotland sizzles under 15 degrees Celsius.
I guess this is Scotland’s week of summer then. To celebrate? The second batch of essays please…


(Nocturne Swans)

The Moths of March

Moths are magnetically drawn to my kitchen. It's either the smell of the mould-coated floor, the bins erupting with rubbish or the flatmates that always leave every window open and light on...

Common Quaker (I think)

March Moth (I hope)

Hebrew Character (Probably)

Ruff Reprise

This is a Ruff.

More specifically it’s a satellite male Ruff, in at least its 7th calendar year of existence.

Yep, it’s those colour rings that are the give away, and it was rung at Oosterlittens, Weakens; in Friesland, The Netherlands.
In July, a month after it was rung, it was seen near Great Yarmouth. It disappeared for two years before being seen in February at Thornham; repeating this trick again, before finally being seen over December and January at Titchwell. Strangely, for such a distinctive and unique bird, there have been hardly any controls from it, and only ever in Norfolk.

Ruffs are culturally famous of course, for bequeathing the idea of having silly, frilly fringe around the necks to the monarchy and fashionable, status conscious upper echelons of 16th-17th century society.

The University of Groningen (the most northerly mainland Dutch province) is running the study, and they have six aims:
1. What is the size of the passage population using Fryslân and how does that relate to the global population size?
2. How long is the stopover period of an individual Ruff? And what habitats do Ruffs use whilst staging?
3. Where does the Frisian passage population breed? Is it confined to Western Europe or do parts of the population continue eastwards, and breed maybe as far as eastern Russia?
4. What is the annual survival and are there differences between males and females in survival?
5. Do Ruffs segregate into genetically distinguishable populations? The Ruff has a vast distribution range. Other waders with similar distributions in the arctic show genetic population structuring.
6. What is the reproductive strategy of the faeder? Ruff males come in three types: the dominant (independent) male, the satellite male and the faeder, a female mimic on which discovery we reported in the 2004 Newsletter.

More information can be found at their website which I thoroughly recommend you to look at.