Badger's back!

The 'fridge was full and I had some nice cheese that I could not squeeze in ....so, I left it in the garden over night (where it was suitably cold). It was 'safely' sealed in a plastic box.

Something broke the box open and ate it all! No a crumb left!

'My badgers' - featured in this blog last year - have been missing for many months. I think my neighbours might have accidentally blocked their route in but the cheese-theft-indicated something was happening. So I set up my camera trap and over the last few nights a lone badger (up to four visited last year together) has come into the garden several times each night. He (and I think it is a male) comes as early as 20.30pm and as late as 04.00am.

However, he is not alone .... and he may not be the cheese thief. Here is what the camera-trap caught:

badger - facing right

badger - facing left

There is some pet cat action through the night too:

But what is this?

Here's a better shot of the same animal:

It's a red fox.

What makes this all the more surprising is that there has been no sign of foxes here previously.(Including never being caught before on the camera trap). This may be a roving youngster looking to set up his own territory.


Meanwhile, it is breeding time for the badgers.The cubs are born in the dens this month but will not be seen above ground until the Spring.

Welcome back Badger!

Oh clever little rats! (Rev)

Oh clever little rats!

First nuthatch of the year

So I am quietly working, whilst just outside my window the bird feeder is attracting the usual range of small birds (and the occasional nuthatch, which is the first time that I have seen them this year).

Something grey-brown and furry falling through the air attracts my eye. Is it a bird, is it a plane…? No it is a member of the small local rat colony in swift descent.

Now the rats for some time have been clearly interested in the bird feeders and have been benefiting from the odd dropped seed shaken out as the small birds feed. They have clambered up the old willow tree (as described in earlier posts) that the feeders hang from on long wires and considered them from every angle. They have stretched out towards the feeders, but they are just out of ratty reach. (This is of course deliberate on my part.)

There are two standard tubular bird feeders, one contains seeds and the other, which is slightly further from the trunk, balls of fat.

What the rats have worked out is that if they climb high enough in the tree they can drop down a foot or so to land on the flat top (about 2.5 inches across) of the seed feeder, but they are not really interested in the seeds.

This feeder is close enough to the fat feeder for them to stretch across to it. They then use those excellent little gripping ‘hands’ and ‘feet’ to manoeuvre around the feeder to gnaw on the fat. Once satiated they drop (about four and a half feet or 9 rat-lengths) to the ground. And it is not just one that one can do it… it seems that they all can!

stretching from the seed feeder to the juicy fat-feeder, with a robin looking on

I will have to re-position the feeders. (It is not that I am unsympathetic to the ratty ingenuity but that I am sure my neighbours will be less than delighted it they think I am feeding and attracting the rodents).

more ratrobatics.... and success!

Here is a diagram to explain further (the rats are 2-3 times life-size):

A pigeon called Stumpy

One of the byproducts of trying to grow your own starling flock in a small back garden (by dint of providing water - including bird baths - and lots of suitable food), is that you may of course attract other animals (this does not include the rats described in this blog, they are elsewhere, but it does include the badgers). Hence, we now host a significant flock of feral pigeons. Some thirty come to feed each day.

This is another species that is not universally liked and for some is viewed simply as flying vermin, because pigeons foul buildings and so forth. I quite like them but what always strikes me when I see them (and at one point I used to teach a course on urban ecology that included some consideration of the variety of pigeons) is how many have problems with their feet. Many are lame to varying degrees, many have lost toes or get stuff stuck on their feet that they cannot remove. Most of ours have two good legs but back in the summer one arrived with a very badly damaged leg. 

The leg looked like it had been caught in something sticky and had been broken and pulled backwards. I tried to catch her thinking I might be able to splint the leg but whilst she had only one leg to hop on, she had two good wings and quick reactions, and I had to give up.

Since then she has been a regular visitor to the garden. She compensates for her disability by putting her left wing (it is her left leg that does not work) down to the ground from time to time to help her balance. She got the name of Stumpy - which is silly because the leg is still there, (pointing backwards and useless) - and she behaves slightly differently to the rest of her flock. She is also less inclined to fly off if someone is in the garden |(meaning she often gets some extra food) and when the rest are in a scrum on the lawn she makes for the bird table where there is usually a good concentration of food. This gets her away from the jostling of the others, a compensating behavior that she has surely learnt.

This is Stumpy sitting down -on the lawn  she spends more tine sitting than the rest of her flock

A typical pose - using her wings to help balance

Stumpy- a handsome bird, here with a crop full of food

It is apparent from the attention of the other pigeons that Stumpy is a girl. She has survived the snow and the rain,  the strong winds and many sub zero nights of winter so far. I don't know where she roosts and sometimes her undercarriage looks a little more bedraggled than that of the others but somehow  she is managing.

I saw a starling collecting some dry grass a couple of days ago; Spring is coming! Can a one-legged pigeon possibly raise a brood. My guess is that she will try.

I guess that the reason that so many have foot problems is that they wonder around in all the effluvia that we leave all over the streets and if they get entangled they cannot get the material off. They suffer from the infection bumble-foot also seen in domestic fowl.


There is a lovely story HERE about a flock of crows who show their appreciation for being regularly fed by rewarding the little girls concerned with small gifts.

Small whaling update

Sadly Japan is moving forward on whaling again.

Not only are the preparations for its return to what it regards as 'scientific whaling' in the Southern Ocean being progressed but it is a also avidly promoting what it calls 'Small Type Coastal Whaling'.

I have tried to briefly summarise these developments in an article here on the Huffington Post: Whaling - Japan ask the Questions,

Here'a reminder of the tremendous media interests around Japan at the last meeting of the IWC where they announced they would restart their Antarctic whaling:

Media scrum at IWC 65

Conservation issues are rarely simple and here is a link to something that I wrote a few years back with Frank Cipriano and which was published on the WDC website: Can you save everything?

Where Churchill rests.

Winston S Churchill was given many awards by grateful people from all around the world. Yet his grave is remarkably unpretentious - especially after the baroque indulgence of Blenheim Palace which is a few miles away.

His awards included:

Companion of Honour (CM) -          1922
Order of Merit (OM) -                     1946
Nobel Prize for Literature -             1953
Knight of the Garter (KB) -             1953
Crois de le Liberation -                   1958        
Honorary American Citizenship -     1953

St Martin's Bladon - a modest churchyard

Churchill's grave, where Clemmie rests too.

The Spencer-Churchill family plot includes the grave of Winston's father -
Ramdolph Churchill - marked by the large cross

And inside the little church is an art display by the local school marking the 50th anniversary of Churchill's funeral includes this image: 

Be of good cheer. 
The hour of your deliverance will come.
The soul of freedom is deathless.
It cannot and will not perish

Winston Churchill

Broadcast, London,
11th September 1940

On the trail of Churchill Again - Romance at Blenheim

The gate to the Palace

A little north of Oxford sits one of the most remarkable stately piles of Britain: Blenheim Palace - home of the Dukes of Marlborough and also the birthplace and wooing-ground of Winston Churchill. 

Blenheim was the gift of Queen Anne to the first Duke, John Churchill in recognition of his military success against the French in 1704, thereby thwarting the ambition of Louis XIV to rule the whole of Europe. (Any of this sound weirdly familiar: a Churchill defeats someone trying to run Europe?)

I mentioned previously that Winston Churchill was nobly born and he was, in fact, born at Blenheim Palace (when his mother went into labour prematurely there during a social visit) and he spent much of his childhood there. It was also the place that he proposed to the lady who became his wife.

Blenheim Palace

A decorative English lion mauls a French cockerel

The story goes that Churchill rose late and almost missed his chance with 'Clemmie'. He had to be roused and sent on his mission by his cousin, and good friend, the ninth Duke.

Finally, he and Clemmie sit secluded in the pavilion just beyond the formal garden and with a view of the lake. He is still slow to make his proposal and she was watching a beetle cross the floor and had decided that if it reached a particular crack before he made his move, she would leave.

Fortunately, Churchill beat the beetle!

the 'pavilion' or Tmeple of Diana 

They married in 1908 and Clementine remained his faithful wife and wise councilor until he died in 1965.

View from the pavilion

More About Galapagos Tortoises!

Some good news from the islands - please see HERE

It's not the end for the Galapagos Giant Tortoises

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London Calling - Churchill Remembered

Trafalgar Square

Happy February! I was on London today and made a short pilgrimage away from other business to pay my respects at the statue of Sir Winston Churchill which stands in Parliament Square and looks across the busy road towards the Houses of Parliament.

We have been remembering Churchill here in the UK this last week because it marks fifty years since his death and state funeral - an event which included  a procession of his coffin through the London streets on a gun carriage, a formal  service in Westminster Abby and then his body traveled on barge and by train to his final modest grave. The cranes along the river (which are no longer there) famously bowed when he passed by, and all along the route that his body took people turned out in their thousands to show their respect.

The Churchill statue on Parliament Square 

What did he do to deserve this unusual recognition by the State and adulation by the 'common people'? Who was he?

I will try to be succinct:

• he was nobly-born (perhaps he would not have succeeded in politics in that time if this had not been the case), even though he later became known as a man-of-the-people;
• he was not a academic success at school;
• when a young man, he was a bold solider - sometimes writing up his adventures for the newspapers;
• eventually he became a remarkably well paid-journalist; 
• he wrote many books;
• he was a massive self-promoter; 
• he was a long-standing and crafty member of parliament, not always representing the same party;
• he was a great orator - in this matter he has been compared with Abraham Lincoln and that comparison goes deep both are perhaps the greatest statesmen of their countries;

Lincoln's statue which is also on Parliament Square

• Churchill was also the person who decided that the UK would go to war with Nazi Germany (others in the government would have sought appeasement and we would now be living in a different world if they had prevailed); 
• as British Prime Minister he then led the UK through what became World War Two, making brave decisions and pushing innovative technologies that eventually led to success and changed the world for ever;
• he was a dedicated bon viveur  (the cigars are well known about the nightly bottles of champagne less well so, although it seems even after a heavy meal and significant imbibement, he was able to carry on writing and working);
• he had many fierce opponents in government (not everyone liked him);
• he was a keen painter and recreational brick-layer;
• he suffered from depression (his 'black dog') and 
• he did not request a state funeral or a special grave (no grand mausoleum for him) and after all the pomp and ceremony his body was interred in a simple grave next to that of his father Randolph. 

I was a small boy when he died. I have no direct memory of him either as an elderly man or the great state funeral. However, I can claim a link (apart from the fact that I grew up in free country). On his death, the nation decided to establish the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust to make a living legacy for him. Every year the Trust provides grants to British people to travel  to try to broaden their horizons, further their interests (different topics are chosen each year) and improve international relations. In my twenties I was fortunate enough to win one of these fellowships and went to South Africa. I did not emerge unchanged from this (which is partly the point); South Africa was still under the awful thrall of apartheid at this time, but this is another story.  Meanwhile I am pleased that we still remember Winston well and I am proud to be a Churchill Fellow. 

More about the Trust and the Fellowships HERE.