Warsaw - Patriotism and Brides

Late on Friday afternoon a small lorry enters Palace Square. Its sides fold down to form a stage and an audience appears from somewhere. About a thousand people gather. Youngsters sell flags and badges and soon a thousand voices join the band in celebrating Poland. To one song with an especially catchy refrain the crowd also raises hands in the air in a two-fingered salute.

And elsewhere - Brides, complete with Groom and photographer seeks the best light and artful angles to celebrate their nuptials:

Balloon over Warsaw

Some pictures of the Old Town part of Warsaw, Poland's capital. I am attending the Advisory Committee of ASCOBANS (the dolphin and small whale agreement that covers the Baltic and North East Atlantic) and staying here in the Old Town.

Given that Warsaw has been destroyed many times in its history (most recently and thoroughly by the Nazis during World War Two, when it was literally decimated) an amazing rebuilding program has successfully reconstructed this district.Old photographs and the paintings of Canaletto were used and now tourists and locals happily mill here and judging from my brief transits between hostel and meeting place, many wedding parties celebrate their ceremonies here too.


The balloon is tethered near the football stadium and forms one of the viewing platforms above the mainly low lying city. The Old Town sits on a hill and also has its own view point (below).

The symbol of the city - Mermaid plus sword

The Cathedral

Could this be a whale? Its a adornment on the corner of a block but there is definitely a blow and a tail.

Wildlife in the City

Northern Crow

There are few animals in the Old Town - some European sparrows, a few feral pigeons and the occasional northern form of the crow (with neat grey waist-coat). The one in the pictures was chatting away to itself in a fine specimen-tree in a quiet square of Old Town.

The Royal Castle i(Zamek Krolewski) n Pl. Zamkowy

The Royal Palace is the 'pride of Warsaw' and was reconstructed from a pile of rubble between 1971 and 1984 with money from mainly exiled Poles. The castle has been the seat of kings and then parliaments since the 14th century. Like so much of Warsaw (an estimated 85%)  it was levelled by the Nazis in World War II. Further to their resistance, Hitler said that he would turn Warsaw into a 'lake'. Inside in the fine  Palace courtyard is a display of photographs from those desperate days, showing the haunting faces of the dispossessed. 

Across the square from the Palace are other fine and reconstructed buildings, many now hosting cafes on their ground floors.


The buildings are decorated with reconstructions of their original ornamentation, including statues and ironwork monsters.

The 'whale' is perched on the corner of the gable to the right. 

A great bell that was shattered and now stands reconstructed but  silent in a small square.
(The bell is on the right.) 

Old Town Reflections.

A tourist trap

Those haunting faces

22m about the Palace square stands King Sigismund.
He made Warsaw the capital of Poland. The original column was destroyed by bombardment and it lies in huge fractured sections by the Palace wall. The figure of Sigismund survived and in 1949 he and his column were replaced.

And one happy lady - below, Heidi Frisch the Secretary of ASCOBANS after the meeting has ended celebrating with an exquisite Lody.

Heidrun Frisch and her celebratory ice cream

The Day of thre Sparrow Hawk Part Two

Sorry where was I…

So, looking out the window where a sparrow hawk has pinned a starling (one of ‘my starlings’) to the ground!

And I am caught up in a confusion of thoughts about whether to intervene or not. Meanwhile, I somewhat intuitively reach for my camera as I often do. This is nature – and the sparrowhawk is a stunning animal, and I should perhaps record it, but I don’t take any pictures.

Long minutes pass by. The bird of prey still stands on the starling. The starling still calls plaintively to a flock that is far away and I peer out of the window. This I taking too long!

Then I run downstairs and out into the garden, arms waving. The sparrowhawk looks at me with its huge remarkable yellow eyes. As I approach it nonchalantly hops off the starling and flies up onto a metal ball sculture than stands mid-lawn about a metre and half high. The starling immediately shoots into the hedgerow, leaving me facing those big yellow-eyes.

Something about this whole situation suggests to me that the bird of prey is a youngster. He (or she) did not finish the starling off swiftly. It had worked out how to catch but was still working on how to kill. After a while, still in no hurry, it unfurls its great wings and flies off over the hedgerow and away.

Should I have intervened? Did the starling survive? I will never know. It certainly flew off strongly enough. Many I am sure will say I should have let nature take its course; but please bear in mind I had been nurturing this little flock of starling all through the preceding long cold winter.

This scene was – in fact - last year. This year during the middle days of August, the starlings are jittery again; very nervous and although I have not seen a sparrow hawk, I think one is around. The starling flock has returned to feed in the mornings but they barely touch down before bouncing back on masse into the trees, and the happy chattering nursery has been replaced by a group that visits swiftly to feed and then leaves as quickly as it can.

I hope they will calm down again (although it is good that they are vigilant) and I hope that whatever is preying on them moves away. We shall see.

And just before I leave the starling topic: you may recall ‘Stumpy’, the young starling who lost his tail (perhaps to cat) and who struggled to keep up with the flock. One of the juveniles now showing a belly of adult plumage has a reduced tail. I think this is Stumpy with new feathers now replacing those he lost. I think he has probably survived. 

The day of the sparrowhawk.

So I am minding my own business upstairs early one morning. (Actually I am still slumbering in my bed and not entirely awake.) I hear this strange calling in the garden and immediately it comes to my slow mind that a starling is screaming.

So I open the curtains and peer out. In the shadow of the ancient hedgerow that still survives between rows of house, and which forms the back boundary of the garden, stands a large golden brown bird. Pinned beneath the large feet of this distinctly leggy bird of prey and struggling for its life and, indeed, screaming is a juvenile starling. All the other flock members have long departed.

The sparrowhawk seems in no hurry. The starling is firmly held. 

What should I do?

Many thoughts go through my mind all revolving around the issue of whether or not I should intervene. This is nature. It may be a starling from ‘my’ small flock which I have nurtured and fed and tried to guard from the local cats, but the sparrowhawk has as much right to food as the starling. The starling may already be badly hurt (the sparrowhawk has very long sharp talons on its big feet) better it is dispatched quickly, than I make some addled attempt to save it which might cause more suffering.   

[more tomorrow]

Something strange in the garden

 The starling flock has been very nervy recently.

Over the last few days, the forty or so birds in the flock have scarcely settled to feed without suddenly retreating into the trees at the slightest sound or movement.

And they may have cause, as I suspect they are being very watchful for a predator that is a specialist in powering through a hedgerow (like the one at the back of the garden used as a temporary roost by the starling gang whilst they are plundering the food put out mainly for them) - the sparrow hawk.


This morning, quite early,  the starlings arrived and had hardly touched down when they suddenly all retreated into the trees and bushes again and then exited in haste back over the roof tops. The garden has since been strangely quiet. Even the young blackbirds and robins have maintained a low profile. The food has remained on the lawn largely uneaten. One young magpie made repeated visits in the absence of the starling hoard but much food remains on the grass at nightfall.

I don't think the badgers will mind, but will the starlings return and is there a sparrow-hawk in play or is something else going on?

Both photos show juvenile starlings - this years first brood, both now showing some adult speckling.

A Summer of Babies REV

There seem to be a lot of babies about this summer.


Most famously there is a new heir to the British throne - one Prince George; my friends Pine and Nino (you may recall them from the last picture on this blog) successfully produced a little girl Quinn Lilly (see end for a picture).

And in the garden and on the canal the birds are now well into raising their second broods.

Most notably, there are starlings that are now starting to show some of their adult plumage (making them half brown and half black and spotted) and also a second new set of wholly brown (and somewhat silly) starling juveniles.

Then there are skinny young robins with their new red breasts and their younger siblings still in their baby coats. Out on the canal there seems to be a new set of cygnets too!

 

Here are the two generations of juvenile robins side by side

 Note the slight speckling still in the red breast.

 

An 'in between starling' - adult specking on tummy.

 A young blackbird

And the mute swans - 

This particular proud parent believes her chick will get more tit-bits if he attacks the boat's paintwork! He is quite wrong in this belief.

Pine and Quinn Lilly

Marine Mammal News Summer 2013 - REV

So far this summer, like many that went before it, has been a mixed bag for dolphins and their kin.

The summer started badly in this part of the world with what seems to have been the first death of a dolphin caused directly by a boat strike in the UK and resulting from people harassing a small school of dolphins that came close inshore in Cornwall.

There are some more details here  in the Huffington Post. There are photos of the body in existence (which seems to have been a juvenile) - but the body has not been retrieved and no culprit found, despite a reward being offered.

This must never happen again.

People need to appreciate that dolphins cannot get away from fast moving boats. There is some misunderstanding and I often hear people say something like 'if they did not like it they would leave'. In fact they have no choice, they need to come to the surface every few minutes to breath and young dolphins are especially vulnerable as they do not swim as well as adults. A large group of boat driving around a school must be a nightmare - a bit like you and the family being surrounded by thugs on a lonely road and the kids that you have with you mean any hope you have of running away is lost.

Please just watch them from a distance - if they come to your boat to bow-ride that is different; it is their choice but they do not always want to do this.

The summer has also been marred by Iceland's resumption of fin whale killing and a new threat from there that they might resume scientific whaling but this time focus on humpback whales. There is also a running debate there about feeding the world's poor with whale meat - here is a link to the rebuttal to this from within Iceland itself.

More positively, the USA has maintained its record of recent years of not importing any cetaceans after NOAA Fisheries denied an application to import 18 beluga whales for public display to the USA

See NOAA's press release HERE and the reaction from the Humane Society of the US HERE..


SUMMER LATEST 

We are now in August and here in the UK the weather continues to be pleasantly summer-like.

But ... a very large number of pilot whales and white-sided dolphins have been killed in the Faroes Islands this summer. A coalition of groups has written to the Prime Minister of the Faroes Islands and other officials there in response - see article HERE

Elsewhere, and rather remarkably, a new terrestrial mammal has been discovered. It has been named olinguito and is the first new species of carnivore to be identified in the Western hemisphere in 35 years.
Story HERE.

AUGUST NEWS: RISSO'S DOLPHINS

Risso's dolphins finally make the news: after several years of painstaking research, Marijke de Boer and colleagues have published a paper giving the first ever population estimate for Risso's dolphins in the Irish Sea. The paper also shows that these illusive abimals regularly use the waters off Bardsey Island on the northern edge of Cardigan Bay as a breeding ground. Some of the news coverage can be seen here and here and the original paper is free online HERE.

The research also shows how relatively low cost research maintained over the years can be important. 
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