The Rainbow in a Starling's Wing

I love my starlings.

I love the babbling noise that they make in the mornings hidden up in the tall hawthorn at the bottom of my garden. I love the enthusiasm with which the fledglings take to the birdbath on a sunny day. I love the fact that they form one of the great wonders of nature - the murmuration - a whirling, swirling ever-changing abstract shape in the sky made of hundreds of individuals. I love the fine speckled adult winter plumage against the snow and the way over the summer months that the plumage of the juveniles morphs from their innocent brown to an adult coat of many colours.

And I love the rainbow in their wings when the sunshine hits them just right.



In some other places in the world the starling is seen as a pest species. Here in the UK it is in inexplicable decline. The second blood of fledglings is now visiting the garden and the flock I think is healthy.

Parent attends to young fledgling back in May

A juvenile shows off an adult 'waistcoat'

Battle of the badgers - oh no!

The night before last, the neighborhood was woken up by badger loudly 'snickering' and screaming.It was about 11.30, which means I would have been asleep for at least an hour.

I shone my torch out of the window to see what was happening and to try to break it up, and the badgers which had been fighting on my lawn retreated to the hedgerow behind. However, the fighting, judging from the noise, continued for some time, growing fainter as they moved away.

Earlier - before I went to sleep - a badger cub had been quietly feeding on the lawn.

The first short film shows two badgers fighting - but silently.

The second does not show very much as by this point they are in the hedgerow but you can hear the extraordinary sounds.

My guess from the literature is that this is a territorial battle and a new badger was trying to move in.

Badger fights can result in terrible injuries and even death.

Last night no badgers came into the garden - the first time this has happened since the Spring and all the snacks and drinks were untouched.

A red-legged Shieldbug

This strange little animal is a red-legged shieldbug. It's about 1 cm across and this is an adult found down by the canal where it was artfully sitting on the top of a thistle. The adults like fruit but are also partly predatory preying on other insects.  

The Whale That Asked For Help

Here's something that made me think. A southern right whale approaches a boat and asks for some nasty marine debris to be removed from its mouth.

See Huffington Post account: HERE

What happens when cat meets badger?

So, the neighbours' cats have not been slow to appreciate there may be a few snacks to be found on the lawn that may appeal to them. I have discussed this with the cats, stressing that they are for the badgers but the cats remain equally convinced that they are for them. 

So here is what happened when the first badger of the evening meets a cat (the one shown above) in the snack zone:

So as you can see in the short video above - what happened was not much! I witnessed the whole interaction and the cat looked up at the badger when it arrived and the badger (being poor of vision) went about its business until it scented the cat. It then raised its head and sniffed in that direction. The cat neither hissed nor arched its back but, after a while, nipped off. It may be that it sensed that more badgers were on their way, as indeed you will see in the second clip. In fact cats and badgers clearly coexist here with no problem.

I think generally speaking there is little chance of confrontation. The cats have better vision and are far more agile and can easily stay out of the way of the badgers. The badgers also seem very risk-averse and rather timid,


A taxi driver was telling me the other evening about his view of badgers. 'They can kill any dog', he insisted. I said that I doubted they would attack dogs and he firmly stated that he knew this to be true and he and his dog were 'attacked' by one.

They were out walking and this badger came 'charging' up the path at them. He threw his beer bottle in its path where it exploded. This,he added, stopped the badger and it turned around and ran off back down the path. He was pleased with this result.

Poor badger! I think what probably happened was that the badger was running away from something else and did not see or smell the taxi-man and dog in its panic, but when the bottle exploded it was minded - not surprisingly - to go the other way. But it is a good example of a likely misinterpretation exacerbated because the taxi man knew that badgers were famously fierce when dogs are deliberately set on them (something he later revealed in conversation) and he thought there was risk and reacted.

Postcard from the Isle of Wight - Limpetland

On a high tide the flat rocks of the Bembridge Ledge reveal many fine large conical limpets.

The Bembridge Ledge looking towards St Helen's harbour on the Isle of Wight

Bembridge Lifeboat Station

View from The Duver looking across the old tidal mill pond to the Harbour.

The Summer Fox

Here he is the scourge of the British countryside - on a quiet night out in a suburban garden somewhere in the south of England. 

A cheeky youngster I think - long of legs and tail, and with neat black booties.

In which I appear at the Edinburgh Festival!

No really... 

But not the Edinburgh Fringe (which opens shortly), but the Edinburgh Arts Festival!

I was honoured to join in an event with the Mexican artist, Arial Guzik, organised by the Arts Catayst. 

Arial designs and produces mechanisms and instruments 'to enquire into the various languages of nature' and has long been interested in cetaceans. He is also a musician, draftsman and illustrator and director of the Nature Expression and Resonance Research Laboratory in Mexico, an organisation which explores natural resonance, mechanics, electricity and magnetism and how these phenomena can be applied to music and sound experiments.

Arial was exhibiting an underwater resonance instrument designed to communicate with whales and dolphins in the deep seas.

My role was to contribute to a discussion with Arial about cetaceans and their abilities to communicate and perceive the world around them, and the problems that we are creating by adding our noise to the oceans. Arial's work is helping to draw attention to all these issues..

 More about Arial's Holoturian which is on display until August 30th HERE
And the Arts Catalyst HERE

Arial Guzik

And here some images of the great grey grim (and magnificent) city of Edinburgh.

Adverts for the Edinburgh Fringe abound:
Here's some

And here is some more -

More about the Fringe Festival HERE

Grumpy little mystery bird

I came across this strange little fledgling down by the canal. At first I thought it might be a young robin that had recently left the nest.

Then it turned its grumpy face to the front and showed a strongly speckled breast.

Clearly a fledgling - note wispy 'chick' feathers

This is mum (or dad) complete with a large caterpillar:

Mystery solved by the presence of attentive parents: they are song thrushes.

Common when I was growing up .... now only rarely seen. This will be their second brood of the year. Lots of juicy insects along the canal sides to feed the brood.

Birds of the Summer

So far it has been a good summer for birds here in the southwest of the UK. The weather has been mainly mellow.

My starling flock is now into its second brood. Here are some pictures of them (a species in decline in the UK) and other birdy spectaculars from the last few months.

Once fledged the young brown starlings follow the adults around begging for food.

Young starlings with mum (or dad) in the Hawthorn tree.

Starling and Honeysuckle

On the canal the mallards have been raising their young.

Mallard chicks

Spot the odd one out

Here's how they look some weeks later - with proud mum

Grey heron at the canal

Young blackbird (at the badger drinking trough

 Back to the starlings -

a fine fledgling

One adult shows the way

Then the whole family joins in.

 And finally -

The rare marsh tit - at the canal side

Badger Summer Update

By vast popular demand - here is the cub. Caught staring quizzically at my camera which had a small flashing LED on it (and which was being operated remotely from the hide that is my house).

He charges around the garden occasionally bumping very deliberately into the older badgers who typically move much more sedately.

The group seem to be doing well. I wonder where they normally drink during these dry summer months. They now often empty my two small bird baths... but there is always the small garden pond for that special tipple.

On several nights the smallest adult female, Twobar, has arrived first (long before the others) eaten most of the snacks then left. She then returns again later with one or more of the others. I think she has worked out there are better snacks the earlier you come to the party.

The early day light arrival of the cub above was even more surprising. He is already about two thirds the size of the adults and seems very independent. Maybe that's just the way it is with with young badgers.

Badger Extra:

Food is hidden under a plastic lid with a pebble on top: watch what happens:

four adults and the cub (top right)

Resume fox hunting? Not in my name!

It has just been announced that the vote originally scheduled for tomorrow in the UK House of Commons on hunting with hounds has been delayed.

Readers will probably not be surprised to know that I personally strongly oppose a return to fox hunting. The ban was hard fought more than a decade ago and Britain became a better place for it.

Howver, I see little kids chasing and kicking out at pigeons on the street whilst their parents look on, people throwing stones at ducks on the canal, and there are still stories here of badger baiting and dog fighting (both of which are illegal). There are many other example of callous or deliberately unkind treatment of animals in my country and how can we tell people that such things are wrong if we again license a sport for the rich that has animal cruelty at its core?

If you are British, making your opposition known to your member of parliament on this topic remains important (there is evidence that the vast majority of British people oppose this retrograde step) and you can do this via the Humane Society International/UK link HERE  (Click on the wording under 'Tell your MP')

Whaling deal looms!

It may seem all quiet on the whaling-front - no big meetings, no obvious developments, no action at sea but this period of seeming peacefulness is deceptive.... 

See my latest in the Huffington Post HERE.

Little house in the ferns [Spider image warning]

I know some people are really freaked out by the sight of spiders, so please go no further with this blog if you are! 

Looking down onto curled fronds and a shiny roof 

Something has very carefully curled up some of the fronds of one of the ferns in my garden.

Something has created a water-proof roof of the finest transparent silk over the curled fronds. (It has been raining this summer Sunday afternoon and little drops of water glisten on the roof.)

Under the roof is a capsule made of webbing and safe inside are some tiny - pin head-sized - animated, multi-legged dark bodies.

This is a spider nursery and nearby, ready to defend her numerous young is 'mom' - a beautiful adult female Nursery Web Spider.

She will do guard duty for just a few days and then the little ones moult and leave their nursery.

Side-view: the little black specks (middle right) are the spiderlets

Here's mom - she is 13 mm across (about half an inch.)

Independence Day Special

Here's a little something special for my 'merican readers.

The American Museum in Bath staged a reenactment of the American war of Independence with some worthy souls turning out in the rain to show the costumes and weapons favoured by the losing British side.



Here are some images.

Regrettably rain stopped play!

the watching crowd

Tea time for the red coats

I have a theory that the bright red coats and interesting head-ware may not have been viable camouflage.