Midwinter: don't forget the little guys!

It's cold. Much of the UK has a blanket of snow. Out in the cold tiny little bundles of feathers are currently trying to survive in sub-zero temperatures. The smallest birds need to find in the region of a third of their own body weight each day to stay alive. They also need to drink.

So, especially if you usually put food out for the birds, don't stop: keep the feeders topped up and, from time to time, break the ice on your bird baths or melt it by adding some warm tap water.

Birds also cannot find food under snow, so brush it off bird tables and feeders and you may like to consider putting food out on the ground on top of the snow on old tray, bread board or similar to help them find it. This is especially helpful to the birds that usually forage on the ground.

Many of our once common birds are now in decline. Let's help them along a little especially through the very cold periods.

(All images show long-tailed tits - below left with great tit and right with blue tit.)

A Festive Mid-winter Roost

Bath Weir in the early evening

In the busiest part of the new Southgate Shopping Centre in Bath - and right next to where Santa's grotto was until very recently - stands a slim tree adorned with lights and silver baubles. The lights are tuned off but something still shimmers in the branches as night overtakes the late afternoon. More than a hundred little birds have chosen to make this their communal roost. They could not have found a busier part of town.

The little birds are pied wagtails. They are famous for their communal roosting in towns (and at Heathrow airport) and this is the first time that they have added to the Bath town decorations. High in the tree they are reasinably safe from the shoppers (and for the revelers who will come later this Saturday night) and the high building around will give some respite from the strong winds that have been blowing. It will also be a little warmer in the Southgate square than the surrounding countryside to which the robust little birds will disperse in the daytime.

Here they are:

Here is the tree.

And here is Bath Abbey 

Favourite Blogs and Such of 2015

Not sure why I started this short annual review-type thing, but given the growing breadth of means by which people now update themselves on issues, I have broadened it for 2015 to look at some other means of communication too.

The most redoubtable of wildlife authors is Erich Hoytt. HERE he is writing in Hakai online magazine and giving a view that only he can on the evolution and role of photo-iD work in marine mammal research and conservation. It's an excellent piece.

Here is an excerpt:

"If photo-ID has led to an understanding of cultural behavior in whales and to the quest for whale rights, part of that may also be due to certain shifts in human culture that began 40 years ago. A new generation of scientists started paddling out to see whales, to take photos and share information, and to develop ocean-wide photo-ID catalogs of various whale species that have become the cornerstone for much of what we’re learning about whales. Like the transmission of whale culture, there has been a transmission of whale researchers’ culture as these scientists pieced together the stories of whale societies literally one photograph at a time."

The media coverage of the recent departure of the Japanese whaling fleet for Antarctica was, in my view, very poorly done (Japanese whalers may have a different view). This might, in part, be because the departure coincided with the big Paris Climate Conference, where all the experienced environment journalists were (well almost all). Coincidence? No I don't think so.

However, there remains one journalist writing about whaling who can always be relied upon to report accurately and with excellent interpretation and he is Andrew Darby. HERE is a link to some of his contributions for the Sydney Morning Herald.

In addition here is Wayne Parcelle, the CEO of HSUS, talking about the positive aftermath to the shooting of Cecil the Lion. (One UK TV end-of-year-quiz rated poor Cecil as the second most talked about 'person' of 2015). HERE Wayne explains changes in US laws that will push back against the trophy hunting that led to Cecil's killing. HERE he reflects on the whaling issue back in October.
A theme further explored more recently by his colleague Michael Markarian (Chief Program & Policy Officer of The HSUS) HERE.

And not forgetting Naomi Rose's increasingly famous 2015 TED talk on the issue of cetacean captivity. You can find Let's Throw Shamu a Retirment Party HERE.

Finally, my personal prize for the most moving piece of animal-related campaigning this year goes to the Humane Society International-UK's little film about glue traps. In this the trapped and dying mouse is given a voice - the voice of a child - and it still haunts me weeks after I last viewed it, so please proceed with caution. Is this anthropomorphism? Yes. But does it provide us an insight into how the poor trapped and slowly dying mouse might feel. Yes.

Stuck to Death can be viewed HERE 

My own blogs on the Huffington Post can be found HERE.

That's enough - 2015 is put to bed!