Monday, 29 October 2007

At the Birth of a New Day


While a lot of people that I talk to say that they would love to see wildlife, most of them are not willing to make the effort, or have the patients to wait and watch. I do understand that people have busy lives, but the rewards garnered from just sitting quietly can be so rewarding. That is perhaps why so many people see my watching of wildlife as being so eccentric. I have been told to my face that I am weird, yet equally complete strangers will tell me of their encounters with the natural world.

Often the greatest obstacles to getting people to share the experience is getting them up and out of bed early, and then getting them to keep quiet. In the past I have taken people to see wildlife, but as is often the case, you may not see what you hope to see. However, there will always be something that you will see, even if it’s a frequently seen bird, just sitting waiting and watching can be rewarding.

Where I can agree that I am different is that I am prepared to wait out in the cold and often damp conditions during the night. With the waxing moon, or the full moon, there is surprisingly a lot of light to see by. Obviously this depends upon cloud cover, as the clouds can and frequently do cut off this illumination. But having cloudless skies does mean that the nights are colder. However, whatever the conditions, watching wildlife in the dark is never easy. It’s often your other senses that tell you what’s there.

Watching Badgers will frequently lead you to encounters with foxes, but it is often owls that are your most frequent companions in the night. Only the other night while sitting up a tree over looking one of the entrances to a particular Badger sett, I had the indignity of having a tawny owl regurgitate its pellet down on to my head. Had it not fallen on to my lap I may not have realised exactly what it was. However, it’s normally their calls that alert me to their presence. Just as it is the sounds that tell me when the mice and voles are about.

One strange noise that I have been hearing I have now discerned what was causing it. I had been hearing sounds of something moving earth or digging, but it was not the badgers, as on more than one occasion it was so close that had it been a Badger, Fox or even a rabbit I would have seen it. I had already made a good working hypothesis that it was a mole, but I needed to be sure. Then last night I saw in a clearly in a pool of moonlight, a mole poking its head out of the ground. That solved that mystery but proved that no matter how much experience any of us has, there is more to learn and much more to delight us.

While the night is teaming with movement and sounds, it is when new day nears that the song of dawn really delights the ears. It’s normally the Robin that is the first to sing, followed by the ubiquitous blackbird and chaffinch, while the tits provide the backing vocals.

As the sun lifts it light the woodland stage of a new day. That’s what makes the eccentricity of spending my nights uncomfortably perched so worthwhile
.





Sunday, 28 October 2007

21st Century Fox

Here is the video of the Fox that I filmed yesterday morning. As you can see it finally realises I am there just at the moment I spotted two Roe Deer.





Saturday, 27 October 2007

An Inspiration to Watch Wildlife


For the last week this Mouse has been spending his nights out in the countryside watching Badgers with the cold as my only constant companion. I have been planning to do this for a while, and it has only been a change of circumstance that has enabled me the time to start what will now be a year long project. Part of the reason for needing to watch the badgers is simply that there are people out there who are intent on doing them harm. Then, as I wrote about just a day after starting this project, the government’s chief scientist starts calling on the government to cull badgers in an attempt to reduce the problems of TB in cattle.

Apart from the fact that this is bad science, but it also sends out the wrong message to the type of people who are involved in badger digging, badger baiting and dog fighting. Already I have seen strangers abroad in the night looking for the Badger sets, following the coverage in the media. On my previous nights out over the last few months that was something that was not occurring. It could be that it is just coincidence but I suspect that these people think that they can get away with harming badgers if the government is planning to kill them anyway.

Locally, I don’t actually think that Tuberculosis is much of a problem, at least not from talking to two cattle farmers in the local environs. But the increased activity is worrying.

The Badgers themselves appear to be doing quite well and while cautious seem not to be effected by the men out with dogs and lamps. However, it does make it difficult for me to observe natural behaviour, other than seeing the badgers disappearing at the sent, sight and sound of these men.

I myself am quite well hidden, and while I still have not devised a way of photographing the Badgers at night, I have had the chance of seeing Foxes and Deer as well. In fact this morning I was so busy taking pictures of a fox that I nearly missed seeing two Roe Deer. If I had not been filming the fox, I would have been able to get some great pictures of the Deer. They were only thirty meters away from me, but I risked disturbing all the wildlife in the vicinity had I not remained calm. Difficult when I am so excited to see all this natural history so close.

I do have a clip of video of the fox that I hope to place on this Blog if I can ever work out how to do it.

As I said part of my reason for wanting to watch the badgers was to ensure that they are protected. My experience of Badger watching stems from reading a book, A Forest By Night, which I found in my local library as a child. It was about the author’s experiences of Watching Badgers in what was my then local wood, Epping Forest. This inspired me to go out and watch the same Sett’s and what must have been the offspring of his Badgers. Although I never met Fred Speakman, I owe him a lot.

Only recently have I been able to buy a copy of this book, and rereading it gave me an idea of doing my own. I even have two publishers that are willing to read the manuscript once it is written. That doesn’t mean it will ever get published, and apart from anything else I still have to write the book. However, it does give me a justification for spending my nights out in the dark while my peanuts get frosted.




Friday, 26 October 2007

A Planet fit To Live On

I am well aware that most people think that this mouse is being alarmist by talking of the complete destruction of our planet and of the human race, but this new report by the UN Environmental Programme (UNEP), demonstrates that this is a reality and not some doom leaden fantasy.

We are stripping our home world of resources faster than they can be renewed naturally and we seem hell bent upon despoiling what we leave behind. If we take water as the key resource, which it is, humans seem to have lost the understanding that we need to keep our water clean.

Globally we are pumping out billions of tonnes of Carbon Dioxide into our atmosphere, plants will absorb some, and some will be absorbed by the oceans and seas. But in doing so, the seas change their ph value and become more acid. If you dissolve CO2 in water you get Carbonic Acid. Quite simple school level science, as has been discovered recently, our oceans are now saturated with CO2, they are not absorbing any more by natural means. Therefore, we have polluted our seas so much that the fresh water they release, in the form of clouds and rain is no longer pure.

As well as speeding up the degradation of our environments, it makes it much more expensive to purify the water. In the Western developed world we can at least throw money at the problem and produce clean water, but in the developing world we are condemning these people to illness and disease.

Not just directly from contaminated water, but impure water will effect the ability of the crops to grow thus reducing yield for peoples that are eking out a subsistence level of living anyway.

This is why this mouse doesn’t like the idea of crops being flown around the world. Its not because of the carbon footprint they leave, but because a water rich west is importing water from water poor areas. As vegetables are mainly water, each crate of vegetables is taking water away from the people who most need it. This is all speeding desertification especially in Africa.

It is the individual choices that we all make that add to this global disaster. None of us seem to be prepared to make do with what we have we all seem to want more and more. But beyond being well fed, adequately housed and warm, we don’t need most of the consumer goods we buy. While I hate to mention it, Christmas will soon be upon us, an orgy of consumerism and I can guarantee that in the rubbish of most homes will be last years must have items.

The more we consume, especially in the developed world, the more damage we do to our environment. But what use will any of those toys be when we no longer have a planet fit enough to live on?


Wednesday, 24 October 2007

Mass Extinction and Climate Change

When I saw the headline of this story on the BBC web site, I thought this is not news, the IPCC (International Panel on Climate Change) have already reported that we will have up to a forty percent loss of species as a direct result of this man made pollution we call climate change. However, this research is new and marks an important change in the attitude of scientists. Previously the language used “Hedged the Bets” and spoke of what was theoretically possible rather than what was actually happening.

Part of the problem in dealing with the man made pollution that is climate change, is a psychological one. In the past we have seen pollution as localised, and no matter how bad it got, when action was finally taken, the environment improved and the problem dissipated. Even with acid rain as that was a regional problem, in Europe for example, when Europeans acted collectively the situation reversed. And while there still is some sulphur pollution that is causing acid rain, it is relatively negligible.

With Climate Change, we can not see (or at least some can) that there is anything we can do, as we psychologically assume that there is no point as China or India or what ever other country we want to use as an excuse, are not doing the same. What is needed is leadership, and that should be coming from America and Europe. As the USA is the biggest polluter, producing 24 tonnes of CO2 per head of population they should be taking the lead here.

But the problem is that everyone is hoping for that technological fix, that mythical grail of pollution free energy. As a planet we have squandered our energy resources. We have allowed a culture that is so reliant upon oil to develop that we are prepared to fight wars for access to it, and allowed our whole way of life to become dominated by the automobile. The problem is that to power our way of life we are burning billions of tonnes of oil and releasing all the carbon dioxide that the planet sequestrated away back into the atmosphere.

What this new research shows is that while climate change has naturally occurred in the past, and effected the biodiversity of our planet, our current man made driven warming of the globe could wipe out most of the life on our home world. That as I am sick of having to point out includes us.

If we lost important pollinators like bees how long would we last? That’s not a rhetorical question, but fortunately minds far better than mine have already done the research and tell us that we would last only six years. We would loose our ability to grow over ninety percent of our food. That is what mass extinction will do to us.

Even now when there are clear signs of the effects of Climate Change in the forest fires in California, we still do nothing. Unless we act now, if we survive, we will become the most hated generation of humans within our children’s history.

Osprey Migration

Not that far from where this mouse lives is Derwent Reservoir. As well as being an important water resource it is also important as a trout fishery and a nature reserve. It is somewhere that I want to make time to visit but that will have to wait until I have more time. However, today I was close by, I had an appointment to attend, and I was frustrated as I was not really able to take my camera with me, especially as I was seeing Herons in the air. However, while I was waiting for the bus home, I saw a bird of prey that was unusual to my eyes. It was a distance away but it looked like it might be a Buzzard, but that looked wrong. I wracked my brain, and in the end I thought that it could be an Osprey. Now I cannot say for certain that is what I saw but it does appear that the Scottish ospreys do travel via this route on their migration to Africa so all the behaviour traits fit.

If it was an Osprey, it just shows that keeping your eyes open can provide rewards.



Tuesday, 23 October 2007

A call for a Badger Cull



Having been out on the last two nights watching badgers, it was very disheartening to hear that Sir David King the UK Governments chief scientist is calling for a cull of badgers.

The reason for this cull is to stop the spread of bovine tuberculosis within cattle in the UK. And while it is true that badgers are part of the reason why tuberculosis is spreading this cull will not do anything to prevent it remaining in the cattle and returning at much higher levels of infection in years to come.

Following the foot and mouth outbreak, when farmers were restocking, areas that had previously been free of bovine tuberculosis became infected. This was because simply that the cattle that introduced had the disease. Further, this restocking proved a long held theory that it was the cattle that were infecting the badgers first and not the other way round.

The real problem is one of intensive farming, the larger the heard the faster that any disease will spread. With herds of two and three hundred cows, it takes no time at all before something like tuberculosis becomes a latent infection within that population. Further, because of the size of the heard, it becomes impossible to isolate any infected or suspected animals.

In the past when a stockman had only a heard of fifty cows, he (or she) knew the individual beasts well and were better able to spot any problems earlier. Now it can take days before a stockman has the time to notice any change. This is not neglect, it is just that the more mechanised and intensive a farm is, the fewer people there are to watch and spot a change.

For example in a dairy heard one of the biggest problems is mastitis, where an udder becomes infected, this raises the bacterial count in the milk. In the old days it was via good hygiene and management that this would be spotted. Now there is reliance upon laboratory tests to show what is know as the Cell Count. This is why it is technology, mechanisation and intensification that are causing problems like tuberculosis in cattle. The cure is not killing off large populations of wildlife but reducing the heard sizes and ensuring infected and suspect animals are properly isolated.

This call for a Badger cull is not a scientific solution, but an economic one based upon politics.

Monday, 22 October 2007

A Day Watching Wildlife

When I bought my new digital camera, a second hand one off of the Internet, it was very much with wildlife photography in mind. While I am still a fan of old fashioned film, I had grown to see the real advantages derived from digital. Therefore I decided I would head off and put the camera through its paces yesterday and headed off to a hide to try and photograph some small birds.

As with any public hides, you do have to put up with “the experts” who always seem to know better and will always tell you what you have just missed. Yesterday was no exception and the moment I was through the door I was being told I had just missed seeing a Yellowhammer. Now there is a great community sprit among wildlife watchers, and I know that my enthusiasm for what I have seen can create a blurred fog in the eyes of strangers. Yet often some of my fellow wildlife watchers don’t seem to know when to just observe. Sometimes it cam be like listening to a bad commentary on an otherwise great wildlife documentary.

Although, many pairs of eyes can mean that you get to see more as we are all looking in different directions. Therefore, even with one person pontificating about what they can see, its normally the person with the most expensive gear, there is a great shared experience gained from using public hides.

This one in Thornley Wood is set up specifically to allow the observation of small birds. Many you will see in the English garden, but on a much more grand scale. There are feeders and simple bird tables set up around a small pond, and you can see the tits and a myriad other birds flitting on and off the tables and feeders. Some you will only get a brief look at, others will stay a while longer, but all relatively close. In fact at this hide you often don’t need binoculars to watch the birds. That can encourage children and young people to start watching Birds and wildlife in general.

However, I knew that yesterday was going to be a good day as on my way to the hide I saw two Red Kites while on the bus. I had wanted to get off and photograph them but as it was a Sunday I knew I would have a long wait for the next bus, so I just enjoyed watching them.

At the hide there were several people with big expensive cameras, in the past I perhaps would have been just like them, except that I always felt self continuous about appearing flashy or pretentious, and to be quite honest conversations about equipment drive me mad. Therefore I was grateful that my little camera doesn’t make my look as if I have a problem with the size of my phallus. As for me it’s about seeing and if I can photograph what I do see.

Also, while I do enjoy seeing the rare and less common species, its not about ticking it off some list, I see sighting something less common as a good indication that we are doing something right with and about our environment. Therefore, I am always happy to see birds like the Blue Tit, Great Tit or the Chaffinch, picture above.




However seeing birds like the Great spotted Woodpecker (see image) or the Yellowhammer is a treat too, and one that I had yesterday. What also made the day rather special was a brief glance of a Deer, a roe deer I think, and a fox that came trotting through the clearing.

I would loved to have stayed longer among the strangers there, but the chatter of the expert was driving me mad so I left early and went for a walk. It is somewhere I will be returning to as apart from being a beautiful place it is rich with wildlife.

Friday, 19 October 2007

Autumn Colours


As a good friend and fellow keeper of an online journal keeps on posting pictures of the autumn colours over in Maine, I thought I would do the same and show that our trees are not slacking.




Thursday, 18 October 2007

Moorhen


Watching wildlife can be very therapeutic, and yesterday as I had a lot on my mind, I decided that I would visit one of the public hides at one of the nature reserves near to me. When I headed out, my main intention was to get some shopping, but it was not until I was nearing my destination that in my minds eye, I could see my Cash card sitting on the table waiting for me to pick it up. Therefore, I decided I would change my plan and visit the hide instead. I didn’t have my binoculars but as I always carry my camera, I knew that I might be able to see something.

When I arrived the hide was occupied by to elderly gentlemen, they were saying I hope you have brought some wildlife with you. Therefore I was expecting it to be a poor observation day. They had big spotting scopes and they were looking over the other side of this large pond. And recording numbers of Snipe, Lapwing and Teal, all this I know because of the conversation they were having over my head. They seemed to be the Birders who are just interested in the numbers of less common birds they can see. However even while they were talking loudly above and behind me, I was seeing much more than that. Coot, Moorhen, Teal, Artic Turns, Mallard, Grey Heron, Snipe and Lapwing.

One thing that became obvious to me though was that their loud voices were keeping the birds away. I was just thinking of moving on myself when they decided that they would drive back to their home(s) because of the football. Apparently some England match, we probably lost, but as I have no interest I just don’t care. Almost as soon as they left, the birds started coming in closer. While it is up to each individual how they carry out their ornithology, the fact that the birds started coming closer to the hide as soon as they stopped making so much noise, would have been a lesson to them but as they had gone by then it was one they will not learn. Further it probably explains why they both had such large scopes.

Left in peace and quite, I was able to fully relax and enjoy the majesty of these birds. I do enjoy watching the birds on the water and will probably keep on returning throughout the coming winter. As I left the hide and locked up, something caught my eye and I saw a Kestrel hovering in the sky. I tried to get nearer so that I could take a picture that would be a grey blur, as it dived. I think it must have been successful as it flew away after this, a magnificent sight to see.





Tuesday, 16 October 2007

Learning Lessons from the Great Storm

When the Great Storm of 1987 hit the UK, my now ex-wife and I had not long moved up to the Northeast. It troubled us greatly as both our families were down in the area devastated by the hurricane and of course the telephones were out of order. Fortunately, none of our kin were hurt in the storm, but with reports of deaths it was an anxious wait for news.

For me though the most memorable part of the events of that time was that it was the first time that I was able to have a sensible discussion with “Non Environmentalists” about global warming. Until that event, everyone I ever spoke to always dismissed it by saying “Great we get better Weather” or some other nonsense.

While that particular storm may not have been caused directly by climate change, the simple principal of a warmer planet does mean that there is more energy put into the atmosphere to drive the weather systems. This brings me to an article on the BBC web site talking about the lessons that the met office learned from the storm, and the improvements that new and improved technology now plays in more accurate forecasting.

You can read the article here
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7044050.stm

However, it’s a quote from Ewen McCallum that really caught my attention.

"It is like if we have a big storm tomorrow, you'll get the same answer out of places like the Met Office, where they will say that it certainly fits with the [future] scenarios, but to blame any one event on climate change is facile.

"It is only when you look back over time and you look at global trends, can you make comments like that."

While what he says is scientifically accurate, the greatest obstacles to persuading people to stop polluting our planet is the lack of leadership from people like him, who could get people to take notice. The science is now clear that Climate Change is happening and that it is man made. Therefore with that extra energy in the atmosphere, the changing climate must be substantially at the root of any dramatic weather occurrences.

The trouble is that there are still far to many people, politicians and scientists among them, that are looking for that magic single bit of data, that single event that can only have happened because of Climate Change, before they will commit themselves. Yet if we wait for that single event proof, we will already have destroyed our home world and our species will be facing extinction.

Even if we stop burning all fossil fuel tomorrow, it will take more than one millennia for our planet to get back into equilibrium.





Monday, 15 October 2007

Stopping fly tipping

As my regular reader will know, back in the spring the Friends of Chopwell Wood had its annual spring clean. Its unfortunately true of any area of the countryside, that small minority just doesn’t care about the litter, rubbish or trash they leave behind when they visit an area of beauty. Thus the FoCW along with the Forestry Commission carry out an annual spring clean to try to remove some of the rubbish that has just been dumped in the wood. Rubbish removal is not just confined to then, the first time I met the Ranger she was collecting rubbish, and others do it on a regular basis, but on this day a concerted effort is made to clear out what is mostly discarded drinks can, bottles and sweet wrappers etc. However, the other problem is that of fly tipping. To explain for my overseas reader, that is where rubbish is illegally dumped, sometimes by individuals but often by companies that are trying to avoid paying landfill tax.

It is probably the greatest single gift that the Friends of Chopwell Wood provided for the Community was to pay for a series of barriers that are in place on the Fire Roads (Dirt or stone tracks that enable Fire fighters to access the woods), thus preventing the fly tipping that used to occur on a grand scale. It still happens, but nowhere near as much as it did in the past. But following the last Spring Clean, a suggestion was made by our Earth Skills supremeo, that we asked the local authority if a skip could be placed near a particular entrance to the wood, so that instead of people dumping rubbish in the wood, it could at least be skipped and help reduce the costs of clearing such items illegally dumped.

Because I was already in contact with some of the local councillors, I was asked to place the idea before them. Latter I discovered that this had been asked for several times in the past but to no avail. Therefore, I was not totally confident that it would happen. But with the persistence of naivety, eventually a compromise solution was reached, and a Skip has been placed in the park very close to the entrance to the wood were most of the rubbish dumping occurs.

It has been there for some time now, and while I wanted to report the good news sooner, there was some concern that we would have further incidents of the skip being set alight. It was the concerns about a pyromaniac setting the skip on fire that prevented it from being sited right at the entrance to the forest as any fire in the skip would have set the wood ablaze too.

The real test of if this has worked will be if there is less rubbish to collect next year. I doubt that it will reduce the volume but it will allow the volunteers to go further a field and expand the area of the forest we are able to make free of rubbish.

While I hope that I will not have to talk rubbish again, well I know that some think that’s all this mouse does, until every one takes responsibility for their waste, I guess that it will come up as a theme again.




Sunday, 14 October 2007

Mallard


While one of the most common birds in Britain, and the most common duck, the Mallard Anas platyrhynchos is a beautiful bird.





A Judge provides legal ruling on science!

Back in 1977, I read a book that was a scientific critique of the then Common Market and European Food and Farming Policy. It explained the reasons why following the Second World War we in Europe needed to greatly expand food production and how we got ourselves on to an economic tread mill. Unfortunately, the vested interests still remain in force and are increasingly damaging our environment.

However, it was one tiny part of this book that highlighted a practice that alarmed me and because of this practice, I became a vegetarian. The two authors talked about the way that cattle were being feed the remains of dead sheep to boost protein in the cattle feeds. They quite rightly argued that the dead sheep used for this would not be anywhere near the prime stock, but the diseased animals that could not lawfully go into the human food chain. As an example they chose the disease Scrapeie, as this was at the time the most common killer of sheep. They argued that using these diseased carcasses to feed cattle was a really bad idea, as we had no way on knowing what the consequences would be for human health.

It was this head in the sand attitude of we will deal with that problem latter that made me decide to become vegetarian, as I didn’t know what the providence was of any of the meat I was eating. Therefore I was not surprised when a new disease emerged, that was Mad Cow disease or to give it its true name, Bovine Spongiform Encoplepathy BSE.

What was even more alarming was that when this practice of feeding cattle dead diseased sheep was introduced, regulations were drawn up to try and prevent disease transfer or transmission. Thus, governments knew there was a serious risk but still allowed it to happen. The problem was that it was seen as an economic solution to keeping food cheep and disposing of fallen livestock.

That was a bad idea and if people had known of it I suspect that people would not have wanted it to occur. When I tried to talk about it then, I was told I was talking rubbish, well I was told I was talking out of the wrong orifice, or other less polite comments.

The same attitude was there then if I ever spoke of Climate Change. Here though the reaction was very different, as within peoples living memory they could remember colder winters, more snow, but had the attitude that it must be a good thing as we would have better weather.

It has taken a long time to even get Climate Change on the agenda, but even now the economic vested interests are not so much keeping their heads in the sand, but using their economic muscle to try and stifle education of the facts and consequences of Climate Change. Here in the UK, we have just had the ridiculous situation of a Judge in a law court, making a ruling about the validity of scientific evidence.

To update those that don’t know, the documentary film the Inconvenient Truth, is to be shown to all schools in England and Wales, to educate the coming generations of the effects and impacts of Climate Change. However, one individual, backed by money from mining companies, oil companies etc decided that this was political indoctrination and took the government to court to try and stop the film being shown.

While it has now been decided the film can be shown, the judge also states that the film has nine errors. However it is the judge who is factually wrong.

U.K. Judge Rules Gore's Climate Film Has 9 Errors [Washington Post]

But he also said Gore makes nine statements in the film that are not supported by current mainstream scientific consensus. Teachers, Burton concluded, could show the film but must alert students to what the judge called errors.

The judge said that, for instance, Gore's script implies that Greenland or West Antarctica might melt in the near future; creating a sea level rise of up to 20 feet that would cause devastation from San Francisco to the Netherlands to Bangladesh. The judge called this "distinctly alarmist" and said the consensus view is that, if indeed Greenland melted, it would release this amount of water, "but only after, and over, millennia."

Burton also said Gore contends that inhabitants of low-lying Pacific atolls have had to evacuate to New Zealand because of global warming. "But there is no such evidence of any such evacuation," the judge said.

Another error, according to the judge, is that Gore says, "A new scientific study shows that for the first time they are finding polar bears that have actually drowned swimming long distances up to 60 miles to find ice." Burton said that perhaps in the future polar bears will drown "by regression of pack-ice" but that the only study found on drowned polar bears attributed four deaths to a storm.

The most recent data from the artic about the sea ice shows that the rate of loss of the sea ice is accelerating. Once below a critical mass the warmer sea temperatures will encourage and speed the melting of the Greenland Ice shelf. Even the most conservative scientific predictions say that this will happen in a century not millennia, as the judge asserts. This is not alarmist, as the Greenland Ice sheet is already starting to melt and we already have 30 centimetres of sea level rise as a result of Climate Change.

Also the assertion that judge made that loss of sea ice and the loss of Polar bears was in error is plain stupid and ill informed. If we destroy any habitat, the flora and fauna that is specially adapted to that habitat will be lost too.

From my perspective it was like the Judge trying to make ruling that the laws of gravity have no place in his court.

At least the coming generations will at least know who to blame for the mess that we have left our home planet in.

The timing of this hearing was apposite as it came in the same week that Al Gore has been awarded, with the UN IPCC, the Nobel Peace Prize.

Fighting Climate Change is actually far more important than any war, or other political or economic considerations. In a friends on line Journal, after posting a link from Al Gores Web site, she asks when Al Gore calls for the US Government to enact legislation to cut greenhouse gases by 90 percent what does he know that we don’t? The answer, and my answer is nothing new, it is just that he can see what the science is telling us.

Just as BSE could have been prevented if we had not done stupid things for economic reasons, then Climate Change and the destruction of our home would not have occurred if we had not been driven by greed.

The next five years are critical, this will be the last generation that will have material wealth, as once the seas do rise we will be forced to live in harmony with the land that remains.




Friday, 12 October 2007

The Mushroom Hunter

On Sunday was the annual fungal Foray organised by the Friends of Chopwell Wood. The chap who acts as our guide is extremely knowledgeable as well as being entertaining.

Personally I learnt a lot, for example that all fungi are edible, but some only once!

While that is a humorist quote, it does emphasise just how careful we all need to be when harvesting wild foods. There are some that I can recognise and know are safe to eat. Further, I have come back from many a walk with a few for a meal in my pocket. But I will only eat what I am sure of and only harvest a little. Unfortunately there are some people who will totally strip a site. In the summer I found a place that was full of chanterelles, but the following day they were gone. That has the effect of not allowing any new spores to be released and while there is lightly to be another flourish there will be less and less if that type of unsustainable harvesting were to continue.

This year there are far fewer fungi around, the wet summer and the warm dry autumn has made this year a poor year for fungi but as we have around one hundred and sixty species of them in Chopwell Wood we are not in any danger of loosing them just yet.


The Top picture is of Gordon, the mushroom hunter.



Russula nigricans Blackening Russula, it is edible but not worth eating.



Russula fellea Geranium-scented russula, edible when cooked but best avoided (Unless you like eating rubber that is)



Piptoporus betulinus Birch Polypore, Not poisonous or Edible and is better used to strop a knife than for anything culinary


Mycena vitilis


Cavatia excipuliformis Edible when young and firm


A difficult week and encounters with Deer


This has been a rather eventful and stressful week for this mouse. Unfortunately on Sunday I received a telephone call from my brother that my other brother had died. While it was not unexpected, he has been ill with cancer for several years now, it is still a shock. However, because of other things going on, I was not able just drop everything and get down for the funeral. I will however make that trip back down to London soon.

It will be strange as it will give me the chance to revisit Epping Forest, the place that inspired my awe and wonder for the natural world. And if that is not strange enough, at the weekend on Ebay, I bought a copy of a book that first made me realise that I was not unique in my love of the forest and started me going off to watch wildlife. In this book about one mans nights of badger watching, as well as watching other wildlife, was a map that showed where the badger sets were. As this book was published in 1966, there were not the same concerns about revealing the locations of animal homes, as there would be today. That enabled me to go looking for badgers; my parents would have done their nut, if they had ever found out.

It was on one of these illicit trips out that I saw my first deer, although I didn’t know that was what I had seen. I was quite nervous of what were then strange sounds emanating from the woodland. Then while looking across the entrance to the sett where I was awaiting the return of the badgers, I saw a shadow. It was darker than the surrounding darkness, and it appeared to be a large bush that was walking towards me. I was perched in a tree so that my scent could not be detected, but it was clear that what ever it was could smell something as I was hearing a snuffling sniffing. It was not like the badgers, that I was getting used to hearing and starting to recognise. But this was different, I had torch with me but I was reluctant to use it. I had followed the guidance that I had read of placing red cellophane over the beam to make it invisible to animals, but that had not worked at all and using the torch just alerted the badgers to me thus far. But I wanted to know what it was that was by now nearly beneath me. I tried to be quiet as I pulled the torch out of my pocket but I must have made a noise as the animal below my perch snorted and galloped off, it was only as it did that was I able to discern the outline of a fully horned stag Fallow deer.

I was shaking with fright and excitement, something I will never forget. Even this week, on Tuesday, when I was out with two of the Friends’ when we saw Deer in the wood in broad daylight, I felt that same thrill, but this time I was not likely to fall out of a tree.

The one person who knew that I was going out illicitly was my brother who has just died, I am so grateful that he never let the cat out of the bag as I would have lost out on so many life shaping experiences.

The picture is of a pair of jackdaws that I saw the other day.




Saturday, 6 October 2007

Many hands make light work

Today for me every thing has turned full circle. Last year I went out and helped collect some of the acorns from the wood. I rather rashly agreed to look after them in the back yard of my house. And in spite of hoards of ravenous corvidae a good number survived.

It was in fact the third activity I had carried out with the Friends of Chopwell Wood, and it makes me realise just what a remarkable year it has been for me. Last year I would never have expected to be elected to a committee position nor to have re-found my link with the natural world, all this because of a small wood that happens to be right on my doorstep.

Today quite literally I was able to give something back to that wood, in the form of baby oak trees. Fortunately I was not alone as we had a good number of volunteers arrived from Newcastle University Conservation club. The majority were planted and those that were not can be planted as two-year-old trees next year.

It was remarkable that the place chosen for the planting was clear felled about eight years ago, but remarkably it is regenerating quite well anyway and with oak too. That actually made it quite challenging to find the space to plant our seedlings the four to five metres apart we were aiming for. But I must say that the volunteers did a fantastic job and at least two thirds of the trees were planted and we did it without loosing a single volunteer. What is even more remarkable is that they want to come back.

So from the Mouse in the Wood;





Three cheers for Newcastle University Conservation Club.







Speckled Wood Butterfly


I was nearing home on my way back from walking in the woods when I saw a butterfly on the wing fluttering from flower to flower in a bramble thicket. The fact that in October we still have wild blackberries trying to flower is a sure sign of climate change, but I was more interested in the butterfly. While I was in need of getting home, I stopped and watched until I could get a good clear observance of the butterfly. As you can see from the photograph it was a Female Speckled Wood Pararge aegeria. tircis



Tree Creeper


While out the other day I noticed a little flash of white, I instantly knew what it was as the flight and behaviour of the tree creeper is quite distinctive. This rather illusive bird is present in significant numbers but unless you are lucky or observant, usually both, you may not even know that they are there. As most small birds have developed quick movements and rapid flight so that they can avoid predators, even seeing small birds can be difficult let alone trying to photograph them. So I was thrilled to get this image at all.


Friday, 5 October 2007

Well you can tell that autumn is here.





Something of Interest

It is not often these days that I have the time to go looking on the internet just to discover what’s out there. Today, as I had some time to spare while waiting for someone to call round, I went off browsing and I found this.

I was floored by the spectacular images here so take a look yourself and it will show you just how beautiful our planet is.

Thursday, 4 October 2007

To Intervene or not to Intervene that is the question…


The anonymous person that made the comment that they feel that in conservation they would like to see a landscape untouched raises an important point. I too would prefer that the land is not touched unnecessarily. However, in the UK there is not a single part of our country that does not show the hand of man upon it. Therefore, ironically to get back to a natural landscape we actually need to intervene and manage the regeneration.

Chopwell Wood is a tiny remnant of ancient woodland; we are in fact one acre short of a thousand acres now, when the original wood was over one million acres. Now there is no way that I can see, that we could even think of expanding the wood beyond its current boundaries. Therefore we need to manage the wood very carefully so we keep what’s good, and improve the rest. We could just rely upon natural regeneration, and allow the sun lovers such as Beach, Birch, fir Pine and Spruce to grow from the latent seed bank. That’s the dormant seeds in the soil already, and if we had even a quarter of the land the old wood used to occupy then that would be the right way to move forward. However, we have only less than one percent of the land occupied by the ancient woodland and if we let nature take its course we risk loosing the gene pool from the ancient trees long before the forest has the chance to regenerate.

In recent history, the last hundred years, the wood has constantly been devastated as wood and timber was harvested to supply the war machine of the two world wars. Going back even further, the wood was destroyed by Charles the first to build his flagship, so warfare has been the greatest environmental devastator of our woods here than anything else.

It is on the steep and inaccessible valley sides that retain the remnants of the ancient woodland. People tell me that the Oaks there are about three hundred years old, but as many of the trees are rooted into the stones of a cliff face, the standard measure of age based upon girth and height are inaccurate and some of these trees could be five or even six hundred years old. And that’s using data from Kew gardens.

Further, because in the North East of England we are loosing our ancient woodland, if we did not intervening positively, we could loose what little we do have. Additionally if we just allowed natural regeneration the small population of endangered or threatened species that we already have in the wood, would be at risk of dying out before we had recreated the habitat for them.

Any landscape management is and has to be a long-term project, even more so when we are dealing with woodlands, as a truly healthy wood requires various stages of decay and re-growth. Therefore, keeping dead wood is vital. Often the greatest difficulty is overcoming ignorance of what constitutes a healthy landscape. Some people want to see the countryside as a nice and tidy place just like a garden. But as anyone who gardens with wildlife in mind will tell you there needs to be some mess; those piles of logs, the nettle patch etc.

Add into that equation the need to ensure that the paths, tracks and bridal ways are safe from falling dead branches, and the balance becomes even more delicate.

While I know that some people don’t like other people using our woodland, it is only people that will protect it in the end. Therefore, while all this regeneration work is being done for the wildlife, ultimately it is for the benefit of all the people who use the woods.

The landscape is a living, breathing place, and just as a rotten apple needs to be removed from a bushel, we need to tend the forest to maintain its health.





Tuesday, 2 October 2007

Oh this is Humiliating

Yesterday while walking through the woods carrying a tray of oak saplings I was stopped or at least spoken to by everyone I encountered. Today I was hoping that I would be able to enjoy a quiet walk and while I am far from unfriendly I was not expecting to get recognised. But in the space of less than an hour two people out walking their dogs stopped me and said that they had seen me in the paper.

Well as I wanted to get into the quieter parts of the wood, I headed for the heart of the wood. It was great to just be out enjoying the forest as a beautiful place and not having to do anything. I got to see quite a number of small birds and it was great to just have the sounds of the natural world in my ears too.

However, I had to contact the Friends’ chairman about the tree-planting task this weekend, as I need help transporting all these oak seedlings back to the wood for replanting on the 6th of October. It was then that I discovered that the Rangers boss, Alex, had emailed details of my visage to all and sundry, as well as the important folks in the wood. So now I am the laughing stock of the Forestry Commission.


I may as well make my humiliation complete and here the link:

The Offending Article

Monday, 1 October 2007

Taking the Trees for a Walk

Your friendly neighbourhood Wood Mouse will be appearing in the local paper soon. The reason for this is my obsessive-compulsive behaviour of growing Oak Trees.

It all started when I was first out walking in the wood and I first encountered the ranger. She told me that the forest had a friends group and they carried out practical work in the wood. So I decided I would become an acquaintance of the Friends of Chopwell Wood.

Well you know how these things can escalate; I was foolish enough to offer to plant up the acorns that were gathered during last year’s tree seed collections. If only I had realised that there were nearly six hundred of them. I then had to go out, on the scrounge, to garner enough pots together to put them in. Fortunately the local community helped and soon I had all the pots I needed.

It was not easy, as I had to fight off all manner of birds, mainly the jackdaws but also the odd Jay and several magpies as they were constantly trying to eat their future perches. Eventually in the spring my compulsive, others would say eccentric, behaviour paid off and about two hundred and fifty baby oaks emerged.

It was as a result of doing this that this morning I had to take some of the trees back into the wood so that the Press Officer from the Forestry Commission could take some pictures of me with these trees. Now while I know that some people love performing in front of the camera, I don’t relish it, as I am very much like an oil painting, an old master in fact, cracked and flaking! However I did my duty, I don’t know how the images came out, as I haven’t seen them, but I felt a complete idiot standing there holding pots of trees in contrived poses. Even the Dog walkers were laughing at me, I think even the dogs were too.

Well there was I thinking that this is just for the staff magazine or some obscure place where no one would see them, like my Blog, then I get a call from the biggest paper in the region and it’s the environment editor, and before I know it, I will be in the local paper.

Well at least it will not be saying “Don’t Approach this Mouse” I just wish that the Ranger had not beguiled me when I first met her. It’s all her fault really.

All joking aside there is a serious point to all this, as these trees will be planted so that we can regenerate the ancient wood here in Chopwell. In doing so we can directly aid over one hundred species that are on the UK at risk list of flora and fauna. The reason for the publicity is so that we can encourage other people to become actively involved in collecting seed, helping to plant the trees and do their little bit.

As it was such a great morning it was worth, well almost, the humiliation of having my visage captured on film.

I got my own back by snapping this picture of the photographer!