Wildlife Corner

[Stanley]

Too late to convert me to gardening Peter, I need all my energy and attention to keep me and my life on track inside the house without tending to anything outside!

[Stanley]

See THIS encouraging report......
Blue whales - the largest animals on Earth - are making their home in a part of the Indian Ocean where they were wiped out by whaling decades ago. Researchers and filmmakers in the Seychelles captured footage of the whales in 2020 and 2021. It features in the Imax film Blue Whales 3D. But a year of underwater audio recording revealed the animals spend months in the region. This means they could be breeding there, scientists say.

[Cathy]

That is a good news story Stanley, let’s hope that they are left alone this time.

[Stanley]

What struck me was that the sounds they make are so deep that many sound speakers won't register them......
Amazing creatures.......

[Stanley]

See THIS report on chinstrap penguins....
The meeting drones on, and you feel your eyes getting heavy, your mind drowsy. Suddenly you snap into a very attentive wakefulness—did anyone see me doze off? You’ve fallen into a microsleep, a very brief slip out of consciousness that ends almost as soon as it begins. When you’re trying to be awake and active, these episodes may make you feel anxious or, if they happen behind the steering wheel, justifiably terrified. Microsleeps don’t make us feel rested or restored, like longer periods of uninterrupted slumber would. Yet a study published Thursday in Science shows that nesting chinstrap penguins sleep just this way more than 10,000 times a day. They take a continual series of dozes that last just four seconds but add up to more than 11 hours of slumber. Incredibly, this strange sleep cycle seems to do the birds no obvious harm, despite the common interpretation that fragmented sleep is bad-quality. In fact, the extreme strategy must preserve at least some benefits of sleep, because the flock is fit and successfully reproduces.
So there may be a message for us humans here!

[Cathy]

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When a beekeeper forgot to put the frames back in the hive, the bees built this themselves.
It takes into account airflow and temperature regulation.
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Clever little Bees.

[PanBiker]

Indeed Cathy, the more you learn about bees you start to realise that they are more or less a perfect organism. We lose them at our peril as well which shows how important they are to the planet.

[Tizer]

I think I'll breed some of these mice for our house!...
`Mouse filmed tidying up man's shed every night' BBC

[Cathy]

Oh , love that little mouse. Very smart. It must be advantageous for the mouse.
It would be hard not to leave it a little something to eat, for all its trouble.
(I wouldn’t, of course.)

[Stanley]

I would definitely leave it some food!

[Tizer]

I suppose the mouse is just doing in the shed what it does in the wild - gathers up twigs, leaves, moss etc to make a nest. So it was using whatever was available. It would be interesting to see the finished nest.

[Stanley]

I think it's a Borrower in disguise.....

[PanBiker]

I think I read somewhere that he does feed it and the antics are linked to it burying food for future consumption. Food goes in first then it is buried by the objects which are purposely left around. The larger bits are placed on purpose to see if the little guy can handle them.

[Stanley]

I still think it's a borrower.....

[Stanley]

See THIS heart-warming story about a bear rescued from a zoo in war torn Ukraine.
A bear left injured and traumatised after Russian shelling of a zoo in Ukraine has arrived at his new home in Scotland. Yampil, a 12-year-old Asiatic black bear, was one of the few animals to survive the attack in the Donetsk region. Named after the village where he was found, rescuers initially moved him to an animal sanctuary in Belgium.
He has now been permanently rehomed to the Five Sisters Zoo in West Lothian. Zoo staff told BBC Scotland News that the bear seemed "relaxed" despite the 690-mile trip, and was already enjoying snacking on his favourite food of cucumbers soon after arrival. However he will be closely watched to see if he exhibits any issues similar to post-traumatic stress syndrome (PTSD) after being in a warzone. Yampil was concussed by shellfire when he was discovered in eastern Ukraine in October 2022. Most of the other 200 animals at the zoo had been killed during fierce fighting in the area. He was taken through Poland to the Natuurhulpcentrum animal sanctuary in Belgium, but now has a permanent home in West Calder. Zoo staff are now optimistic the animal will be on the road to recovery, after what they described as a "fairly complicated" journey to Scotland, which saw him travel overnight from Dover. Adam Welsh, the zoo's head of education, told the BBC: "Yampil has been through a lot. He could have arrived and been incredibly nervous about meeting people. We wanted to make sure we were very delicate when he arrived, so there was no loud noises. He's experienced some really horrible things. "Time will tell, but he seems remarkably calm, remarkably chilled out and he's been eating already. He's come out his crate, he's been eating, drinking and relaxing - that's nice to see and we're really hoping that continues."
Just one piece of good news coming out of Ukraine. I wish the bear well.

[Tizer]

`Bee-harming neonicotinoid pesticide has emergency approval again' LINK
The UK government has given emergency approval for the use of a pesticide banned because of the harm it can cause bees, for the fourth year in a row. Permission to use the neonicotinoid on sugar beet seeds has been needed despite a vow by the industry to find an alternative by the end of 2023. The Wildlife Trusts said the decision was a "deathblow" for wildlife...

Apparently the government said it was a "necessary and proportionate measure" to tackle a damaging crop virus spread by aphids. But there wouldn't be an aphid problem if the farmers allowed the wildlife to protect the crop and sowed flowering weed plant species to grow alongside the crop. Birds and insects would thrive on eating the aphids. Instead the framers deliberately create a monoculture which always leads to dependence on chemicals.

[PanBiker]

I picked up on this as well Peter, it's disgusting. I have signed and shared a petition about this very issue on my Facebook page. We loose the bees at our peril.

[Stanley]

Well done both of you. I missed the original item but agree with you.

[Tizer]

Another factor is that farmers complain they're not making enough money yet they give lots of it to agrochemical companies instead of investing it in a better ecosystem for their farm which will benefit them in the long term. Like politicians they're too focused on the short term.

[Stanley]

I agree with you Peter. I first saw that happening on a large scale when, after WW2 it was realised that by top dressing with nitrogen and basic slag, grass on old swards that had been conservatively managed for years with nothing but FYM could be persuaded to grow grass at an astonishing rate. The ICI 'Blue Bag' nitrogen was cheap, easy to apply and literally pumped the old fertility out of the ground. After a decade of this the ground started to get tired and depleted and more and more fertilizer was needed. Eventually the only places where it really worked was where cow claps had laid on the ground the year before and so you got a typically burnt out field of short grass and coarse tussocks. I watched farmers doing this. One in particular I know was hailed as 'the most progressive farmer in the district' when he was pumping grass and milk out of his fields for years using Blue Bag. When I was working for Richard Drinkall he sent me in there one week to bring all the man's cattle back. Richard was repossessing them, he had been farming on credit in more ways than one.
The new method of 'Regenerative Farming' that you hear so much about is simply the old method of putting back in the land what you take out (with a few added bells and whistles.) The old farmers will be laughing their socks off!

[Tizer]

In the last week we've seen a frog active in our pond and the newts are already courting. They were at it even before January ended!

[Stanley]

I love to hear these signs of the year changing! We need an update from Jules in Norfolk!

[PanBiker]

Our Jack went up to check his bees yesterday and was surprised that they were already active and a few scouts were being sent out.

[Stanley]

Keep these signs of Spring coming. They do me a power of good!

[Wendyf]

First curlew of the year for me. Caught it passing by this morning on my bird song app. Sorry I can't share the sound!

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