The Selfish Who Ruin Our Wildlife
With the conviction of Jeffrey Lendrum yesterday, we locked up a dangerous enemy of peregrine falcons. If you think so what, look at this post, where I saw these wonderful birds on the cathedral in Brussels.
But the real criminals weren’t in the dock. These are the middle men and the sheikhs in the Middle East, who feel they need to have our wild falcons for their sport. But it is not all gloom, as breeding programs are starting in places like Qatar.
I am not against falconry by any means, as I have enjoyed demonstrations at country shows and have met men, who use birds of prey to frighten pigeons away from airfields, to increase air safety. Controlling a bird like that is a great skill and it is to be admired.
As a stud owner, you also have to take into account the part that birds of prey play in the control of rats, mice and rabbits. We have a couple of pairs of harriers on the stud and they are fascinating to watch. Sometimes, if you drive the lorry along the narrow lane, you’ll have one flying alongside, waiting for the vibrations to disturb a mouse in the verge. It is a magnificent sight and long may it be admired.
I did not see it, but one of the most amazing stories I heard of, concerned a golden eagle, that had been trained by a falconer. He had been given it, after it had I think been stolen as a chick or something like that. In any case, he had definitely acquired it legally and at the time, he was the only person licenced to fly a golden eagle. Everybody who saw the bird, said they had never seen anything so spectacular.
So the bird after a bad start in life was giving pleasure to many.
You have to add to the selfish in the Middle East, who prey on our falcons, those adherents to Chinese medicine, who feel that rhino horn is a must. It is! But only on the rhino!
I’ve seen rhino in the semi-wild in South Africa, and they are truly wonderful.
But even those in game-parks are now being poached for their horns.
That is disgraceful, as rhino should be here for our grandchildren and their grandchildren. The only solution is to convince the Chinese that some of their traditional medicine is just not acceptable to the rest of the world.
Anyone for Squirrel?
I always refer to squirrels as American tree rats, because of the damage they do to trees and because they chase our native and much better red squirrels away. They were one of the first American cultural imports, like burgers and baseball caps, that we can well do without!
So to see that Budgens are now selling them in Crouch End is good. As they say in Suffolk, “Make the buggers work!” That was originally said by a farmer and horse-coper called Dick Freeman, when I told him that my business partner and his wife, had been offered a local speciality in Geneva; raw donkey meat. They had been horrified as at the time, as they had had a pet one called Robin. Dick hated donkeys with a passion, as they give worms to horses.
Our housekeeper at Debach was partial to squirrel and told me that young ones were very nice if fried in a little butter.
Remember though, I am of an age, who was brought up when meat was rationed in the 1940s and early 1950s. As rabbit was off coupon and my father had a customer, who could get it, we had quite a few rabbit pies in those days.
I still like rabbit and would try squirrel in a decent restaurant. After all it’s gluten-free isn’t it?
I doubt I’ll ever go again due to my health, but on Salina in the Aeolian Islands, rabbit is the local speciality, as rabbits are wild and plentiful. The rabbit at the Hotel Signum is exquisite. It’s an ambition to go again and a goal to aspire to.
Beware of Baboons
Baboons are the hooligans of Africa, and as this story from Cape Town shows they can do a lot of damage to get what they want.
I was first made aware of the habits of baboons in of all places, Penang in Malaysia. C and I were waiting for the cable car, when we met a friendly Canadian couple and their three early teenage children. The couple, who were both teachers, had sold everything and were taking a family trip round the world, staying generally in a couple of dollar a day guesthouses. They had crossed the Sahara in a truck, travelled overland to Kenya by a variety of means and then from Tanzania, they’d crossed to India in a dhow. I asked if they’d had any problems and they said no, except for the baboons. They told of how they could open the most secure of cases and would do anything to steal food. They had had another problem incidentally, when their son had broke his humerus in Nigeria, only for it to be set perfectly, by the local bonesetter.
Ever since that conversation I’ve always been wary of baboons.
I remember an incident at Cape Point, near Cape Town in South Africa. There is a tea bar there and the baboons were all on the roof, trying to steal food, as they always do. But they had found that if they put their backside over the edge of roof and defecated, they could get a lot of laughs and hopefully someone would drop a burger or a sandwich. I have seen some revolting behaviour in my time, but this ranks with the worst.
Their behaviour was little better in Gambia on one of my last holidays with C and in Kenya, they were always looking to create some trouble.
So keep clear of baboons.
I’ll always remember that charming Canadian family and wonder if they ever wrote a book about that adventure of a lifetine.
Cynicism About Organic Foods
I should say before I continue, that I do buy organic foods.
But!
I am always suspicious that they don’t live up to the hype.
Take my supper yesterday. I ate several Jersey Royal potatoes, which were not organic. But they are produced by farmers who care about the quality of their product. They were exquisite.
Take just before Christmas. A farmer brought me some washed supermarket parsnips round, as a favour for his wife using a stable for a pony. They were much better than those you get from Waitrose or Sainbury’s, but that is where they would have ended up. However, that takes a couple of days, whereas they arrived from his field in a couple of hours.
So it seems that how the product is handled after picking is perhaps as important than what goes on before.
I suspect that it is more true with something like meat. After all I’ve kept animals for years and know that the better you treat them the better they perform. Or in the case of food animals, does that mean taste?
So where you know about the provenance of the animal and can trust the farmer are you getting a better and perhaps a more humanely kept product. After all organic means that some drugs used for medicinal purposes are banned. Is that humane?
So when I read this report in The Times yesterday, my cynicism was increased.
This says that a study by Professor Benton of Leeds University has shown that organic farms are not necessarily the best for wildlife.
The research found that organic farms had, on average, 12 per cent more biodiversity in terms of the number and variety of plants, birds, earthworms and insects. But the yield from organic fields was 55 per cent lower than from conventional fields growing similar crops in the same areas. While there were more plants and butterflies on organic farms, there was no difference in the number of bees and there were 30 per cent more hoverflies on conventional farms.
Organic fields contained more magpies and jays but 10 per cent fewer small birds such as yellowhammers, corn buntings, linnets, skylarks and lapwings. The researchers found that the larger birds, which were attracted to organic farms by their denser patches of woodland, were scaring away the smaller birds and preying on their nests.
It is all very interesting.
One point Professor Benton said was that greater benefits were detected where there were clusters of organic farms. That I would understand as in the studlands of Newmarket, there appears to be a much greater diversity than on ordinary agricultural land. That is also because horses are such inefficient grazers and leave lots for hares and deer.
Rubber Horse to the Rescue
This article amused me.
But you can’t knock the fact that training is good for a difficult job.
Chimpanzees Grieve
There have been a lot of reports on the BBC about the death of a female chimpanzee in a safari park.
It shows how closely we are related to them and like us they have feelings too.
The interesting thing is that the chimpanzee who died was probably about sixty. That is older than my late wife.
Loch Ness Monster
The Loch Ness Monster is one of these stories that refuses to go away.
Now, as the tourist season approaches the National Archive of Scotland have released documents to show that there were worries that Nessie would be hunted and shot in the 1930s.
In 1938, the chief constable of Inverness-shire raised concerns about protecting Nessie from hunters.
In a letter he wrote: “That there is some strange creature in Loch Ness now seems beyond doubt.”
I don’t believe that the monster exists.
Loch Ness has been closed off from the sea for many thousands of years, so if a monster exists it is either that number of years old or they have lived and bred happily in the Loch.
The first premise is unlikely, so there must be at least two. But then if there were only that small a number, then they would have so many genetic problems because of in-breeding. So if they were more, then surely they would have provided more evidence.
It’s a myth designed to get tourists to Scotland.
The Demise of the Nightingale
This article in The Independent blames deer for the demise of the nightingale.
Nightingales are disappearing from Britain because deer are eating the woodland undergrowth the birds need for nesting, a new study has shown. It is a significant breakthrough in understanding why numbers of the renowned songbird are rapidly falling.
It just shows that we must get a balanced view on conservation. Deer numbers have increased greatly in recent years and as they have no natural predators, this will continue unless culling is introduced.
A Use for Muntjac
These imported deer are not the cuddly Bambis that some think they are. For a start, they are quite vicious and would give anything that tackled them a good mauling.
But the real reasons I don’t like them is the damage they do to trees is immense and round here in Suffolk, they cause no end of car accidents.
So when Alex James in the Independent says that they are nice to eat, I give a couple of cheers.
The Dickin Medal
The Dickin Medal is the Animals VC and it has just been won by a black labrador, called Treo, in Afghanisthan for finding improvised explosive devices.
To me, two animals who have won the Dickin Medal stand out.
One is Able Seacat Simon, who was the ship’s cat on HMS Amethyst during the Yangtze Incident. I remember the making of the film of the incident at Felixstowe in the 1950s, so it probably sticks in my mind.
The other was Judy, the only dog to be recognised as a prisoner-of-war by the Japanese. I first read about her in the obituary of Len Williams in 2006. CPO Williams was also on the Amethyst, but later had an easier posting on the Royal Yacht Britannia.
Unlike Simon, who died in quarantine at the age of about two, Judy lived to be 14.
The Anonymous Widower 