The 2am Fox

Its interesting what goes on in the garden when we are asleep. Here a red fox visits.

(Sorry but you may not be able to view the films on a tablet or smart-phone.)

One big old lady badger is still visiting. She must be thinking about the semi-hibernation that badgers do when the weather gets cold. Now she arrives very late (after 3am) and does not stay very long. We have had a few frosts and it is only going to get colder. At some point she will probably hide away for the winter.

Recent Key Posts on Whaling

As we approach the time when the Japanese whaling fleet is expected to set sail for Antarctica, there have been a number of interesting blogs on whaling.

Jess Kingston, Director of Asian Studies at Temple University recently wrote this in the Japan Times:

Thus, the decision to resume whaling in the Southern Ocean is a major blunder on Japan’s part because it undermines its rule-of-law diplomacy. Japan’s defiance of the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which ruled that its whaling-for-research program in Antarctic waters violates the 1986 moratorium of the International Whaling Commission (IWC), is a major setback because, in doing so, Japan is exempting itself from the same rule of law it otherwise assiduously upholds.

You can see the rest of what he had to say HERE.

These key recent posts include this one from the Humane Society's Mike Markarian focused on the win by HSI-Australia in the Australian courts against Japan and the wider context to whaling.

And here WDC's Chris Butler-Stroud comments on support from some quarters for making a deal with the whaling nations

Considering how whales are portrayed...

... From Moby Dick to the very latest Hollywood blockbuster!

In this new article for the Huffington Post HERE I consider the real nature of whales and their enduring portrayal as monsters!

A monster sperm whale attacks a whale boat - the whale is surfacing upside down with its smaller lower jaw (complete with teeth) to the left.

In the background are whaling mother vessels from the 'yankee whaling period'. This image was an illustration for an article about whaling in a popular magazine (Harper's New Monthly) published in 1874.

Beauty in the Mud

The sun finally chased the rain away down on the canal today.

However, the canal water is still mainly missing and we (the boat and me) are still somewhat in the mud... but as the sun comes out from behind the storm clouds, some magic happens and some unexpectedly complex biology pops up. Here are some images.

First the rain

Then the rainbow

Then the sun picks out glinting in the mud:

something shiny

The shine is provided by the mother of pearl insides of the Swan Mussels 

The swan mussels have a remarkable life cycle. They release their larvae into the water where they latch onto certain fish. They live attached as external blood-sucking parasites before falling to the bottom after a few weeks and then growing into these adult mud-dwelling shell-fish. But the story does not end here. 

Swan mussels normally live buried in the mud apart from their inhalent and exhalent siphon tubes. They are filter feeders and the siphons are used for sucking water in and pushing it back out again so the animal can remove food particles from the water stream, 

Now, one main host for mussel babies is a little fish called the bitterling and the bitterlings females push their eggs into the swan mussel via the inhalent siphon. The male bitterling then does likewise with his sperm and the eggs are fertilised. The eggs  develop inside the swan mussel where they are protected until small fishes hatch and swim away. A remarkably complex little bit of biology and something of a two-way street for the big mollusc and the little fish where both benefit. And all this has been going on down in the mud below the murky canal waters where we cannot see it!.

But something else has also been lurking in the deep....

Zebra mussels in the cracks in the old canal walls

And returning to the 'mystery in the mud'..... the other smaller bivalved molluscs attached to the walls and other hard structures in the canal (and now exposed by the absent water) are zebra mussels (see above and below). 

Unlike the swan mussels these are invaders that arrived in the UK some 180 years ago from the Caspian Sea and sometimes cause problems when they block pipes or conduits. Many are now gaping open - they have died - but they are remarkably tenacious and can survive for some seven days out of water. The female produces a million eggs a year - there is a mass die-off now in my little bit of canal but they will be back. . 

Fat Badgers at Halloween

What happens when a fat badger meets a Halloween Pumpkin?

Night 1:
(I have to admit that I set this up and there are a few tasty morsels inside the pumpkin).

The pumpkin is in the foreground in front of mid-lawn sculpture and if you cannot see the film below you may be trying to view on a hand-held devise and need to use a lap top.

The tentative rolling knocks the lid off and lets the snacks out. In the second piece of film the badger plants herself between the camera and the pumpkin as she hoovers up the snacks - but note the bright eyes watching from the hedgerow behind.

Night 2:

I moved the camera a little closer for a better look at this tubby lady badger:

So, she makes easy work of the first pumpkin. A few minutes later she does the same with the second pumpkin (but she rolls it out of shot).

Interesting how delicate she is in this. She does not rip the pumpkin apart - although she could easily do this, and this seems typical of their foraging. Despite the strong claws they seem to employ a delicate touch.