Wildlife Corner

[Stanley]

Peter, yes I've been following the stories about the phosphate run-off into the rivers.
It reminds me of the 1960s when Joe and Edgar Dickinson put their grand plan into operation at Longley Farm, Holmfirth. They were going to buy in whole milk in Bulk to supplement their herd of Jersey cattle and separate the milk to make Jersey cream which they would distribute directly to retail shops by van. The clever bit was that they were going to feed the skim milk left over after separating o pigs in a large fattening unit. The pig muck from the unit would be piped out direct on to the land around them, both their own and neighbouring farmers. This fertilising of the fields would be free and as it was moor land it would stand a lot of feeding. What could possibly go wrong.
What happened was that they were quite right about the land benefiting from the nutrients but what they hadn't realised was that the pig muck also built up levels of Boron in the soil and this blocked the action of lime so that in effect the pig muck eventually poisoned the land it was spread on.
I don't know how they solved the problem but they must have done because they survived and are still in business.....

[Tizer]

People never learn. In the 1980s when I was working on cereal science my colleague was in charge of protein research. He started a joint project with the Plant Breeding Institute at Cambridge to study why their newest wheat varieties were not performing well in milling and baking tests. They found it was nothing to do with the new varieties - all the wheats were under-performing. The reason was found to be a change in the gluten protein which is responsible for baking quality. Farmers knew that putting extra nitrogen fertiliser on their fields gave a higher protein content in the wheat, and the price millers paid them was based on protein content of the grain. So they kept on adding more and more fertiliser and expected higher protein contents. But the `strength' of gluten in baking depends on cross-linking of sulphydryl (-SH) bonds between protein chains and gluten is rich in these bonds. The farmers were dumping on more and more nitrogen but no extra sulphur - the result was poor performing gluten and pollution of rivers with excess fertiliser run-off.

[Stanley]

It's complicated i9sn't it Peter. In the days when ICI 'blue bag' pure nitrogen fertilizer became available at an economic price farmers found that the more they put on the more grass they grew. Things were made worse by the fact that the Min of Ag saw this as 'A Good Thing' and subsidised it. Two things eventually became clear, the grass was structurally much weaker than 'normal'. And itt later became obvious that what the extra nitrogen was doing was pumping out the nutrients that had been stored in the soil over the years by traditional methods of dressing the land with farmyard manure. Eventually the only place where there were nutrients to unlock was where an animal had defecated and the result was bad general response but isolated tussocks of coarse grass at these sites.
Some of us have said for years that this was why 'old fashioned' mixed farming was the best way to look after the land's nutrient levels and structure. It is becoming popular again but is called 'regenerative farming'.
(That may seem to be off piste but in fact isn't because the artificial fertilizers did nothing for the wildlife...)

[Tripps]

Just saw the next fly since my observation above.

Not quite as dozy as the others but he offered little in the way of escape effort, and he's a dead fly now.

Something's afoot.

[Stanley]

I've noticed the first scouts of the summer invasion by insects..... (But this sneaky east wind is holding them back!)

[plaques]

More entomology. Each winter our house is host to swarms of ladybirds. These are not isolated ladybirds but whole gangs of them hiding in corners and behind pictures etc. If their life span is only one year do they automatically wake up or do they die and not know it?
So when is it the best time to clear them out?

[PanBiker]

The Queen in Jacks hive has sent scouts out and he says that on his last visit they were a bit angry after their winter slow down. The fondant supplied still has surplus so it has seen them well through the cold seasons. It remains to be seen if the present Queen is still up to the job of producing all the workers required for this year. If not she will be quietly retired, (actually, suffocated) and a new Queen will be produced to keep the colony viable. Time will tell on that one. Jack says he may look to install a second hive this year. It was his birthday yesterday and we got him a limited edition original watercolour of a bee doing it's job on a flower.

[Stanley]

Ken, perhaps there isn't a 'best time'. It may be that you just have to leave them to decide when to leave via the windows you have left open!
David, I thought about you yesterday afternoon when I watered my front garden with the watering can to encourage my 'bee-friendly' seeds. A cloud of small insects rose up as the water hit the Salad Burnet!

[Stanley]

See THIS BBC report on the sleeping habits of the Northern Elephant Seal.
Northern elephant seals sleep while drifting hundreds of metres below the sea surface - at depths where their predators do not usually lurk. US researchers tracked the animals, recording their brain activity as the seals swam for thousands of kilometres. The mammals, which reach depths of up to 2,500ft (760m), sleep for only two hours per day in what the researchers describe as "nap-like sleeping dives". The findings are published in the journal Science.
I found this quite astonishing. first because they reach those depths and second that they can sleep for so long without breathing. Nature is truly astonishing!

[Tizer]

`How 'rewiggling' Swindale Beck brought its fish back' LINK

This is so obvious but very difficult to get over to farmers, water companies and politicians. Anybody with a smattering of ecology and basic geomorphology knows that `canalising' rivers and streams destroys the wildlife and causes flooding downstream.

[Stanley]

I saw that as well Peter. I also saw this report on the decision to gaol the perpetrator of this act of vandalism. (LINK)

[PanBiker]

Our Jack has been very busy with his bees this weekend. He has had to get another empty hive as his existing one was showing signs of swarming, (it is the season). He has taken half the frames including one with a Queen cell and installed them in the new hive. The bees in there will detect a lack of pheromones and feed up the Queen cell to make a new matriarch for the new hive.

The existing Queen has been left in the old hive. In Jacks words, they should have an "oh sh..t" moment and the Queen will go into overdrive to repopulate her hive. All very clever stuff and without any help from AI.

[Tripps]

Our Jack has been very busy with his bees this weekend

Not just your Jack ! Look who else has done the same. . . .

kate buzzing.jpg

[PanBiker]

Is that your good self David?

Just seen, seconds later the title on the jpeg Kates Buzzing?

[Tripps]

Is that your good self David?

No 'fraid not - easy mistake to make though - it's actually the Princess of Wales.

[PanBiker]

Ha, our Jack uses polystyrene hives which give better insulation for our northern climate.

I suppose money is no object in Kate's position. Having said that Jacks hives still cost a few hundred. The poly hives are better at temperature regulation both in summer and winter.

[Tizer]

I wonder how many folk realise that double-flowered varieties of plants might look prettier than the original single-flowered plants but they are bad for wildlife? This explains it well:
`Double Flowers: Bad News for Pollinators' Laidback Gardener

[Stanley]

I saw a report on that somewhere but can't remember where. As in so many things, nature prefers to keep it simple.
The insects are enjoying the jungle in my front garden. I am beginning to realise how many flowers there are in there but they are not the ones we have bred. The wild flowers are so dull and uninteresting to the human eye, even the colours are boring but that report reminded me that bees and other insects see them totally differently.
(How do scientists know that?)

[Tizer]

The wild flowers are so dull and uninteresting to the human eye, even the colours are boring..

Whoa! Wild flowers dull, uninteresting and boring? They're beautiful and spectacular. Look at the photo below that I took on the cliffs in Cornwall a week ago. Mounds of sea thrift on the walls, and a covering of buttercups in the meadow behind. There many other colourful species too.

[Stanley]

I was talking about the flowers in my wild garden Peter!

[Stanley]

The wild garden continues to expand. The tall grasses are over six feet tall now and over the last few days I have seen a lot of bees and butterflies. It may not be the tidiest garden on the street but it's up there in terms of popularity with the wild life!

[Cathy]

Stanley, and all those bees and butterflies will be helping all the other gardens in your street too.

[Stanley]

Yes Cathy. Visually it's not very striking, the flowers are very small and mostly purple. But in terms of activity, it's buzzing!

[Cathy]

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A Rainbow Lorikeet in its winter colours, in my garden today. There’s a lot around at the moment.
They dazzle in summer.

[Cathy]

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We have quite a few pretty Galah’s around at the moment.
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The farmers hate them, but they are fine in suburban area’s