Hares in the Snow
I have about forty hectares of land by the house and today, I could see how many hares there were.
Hares in the Snow
Note the two brown piles are not hares! They are molehills.
These tracks though were everywhere and as we had had snow last night, these were just the tracks of a single day.
To me, the hare is the most interesting of all of the animals that inhabit our countryside. I say that too with a lot of respect, as for seventeen seasons I hunted with the Easton Harriers in East Suffolk. You get entwined with them and those who are anti-hunting will never understand the respect hunters show.
The snow reminded me of one day at Tannington, where the weather was so cold, that we hunted hounds on foot. Tony Harvey was at one end of an immense field and Jimmy Wickham was at the other with the hounds working between them. It was a memorable day.
There was also the day when I was privileged to follow three packs of hare hounds in one day. Few have done that.
It was at Tannington again, and we started with our own harriers before an alcoholic breakfast. We caught nothing. I remember, I hunted one of my son’s ponies called Bluebell. She was a mare and I always found them a better mount for my skills. In later years, I used to hunt a thoughbred mare called Censella and she never dropped me. But could she go if you asked her!
In the morning it was hunting bassets on foot. It is strenuous work, even if bassets are slow. But once on a hare, they never give up and just keep going. Well some do. My solitary example might follow a scent for twenty metres or so and then it’s time for a snooze or the next meal. She’s never caught anything and we didn’t on that day either with the bassets.
Another alcoholic meal was followed by beagles in the afternoon. Now these were small and angelic beagles, but they were serious too. After perhaps two hours nothing had been caught, although we had seen a few hares.
The day finished with a formal dinner. Tony had suggested that we all go ratting round the stackyard to finish it off, but it was assumed he was joking.
One thing that sums up the day is Tony asking, if we had all had a good day. He got a resounding yes. He then said that is the difference between hunting and shooting and asked how someone would feel if they had gone shooting and hadn’t killed anything!
A Loveliness of Ladybirds
This collective noun came up on BBC Breakfast this morning. It seems that it might be dubious, but after the hoards of Harlequin ladybirds this autumn, that the collective noun may stick.
But I’m not a lover of these Asian imports, which could wipe out a lot of our familiar species. Helen Roy, an expert on ladybirds said this.
“We believe that the negative impacts of the harlequin on Britain will be far-reaching and disruptive, with the potential to affect over a thousand of our native species,” she said. “It’s a big and voracious predator, it will eat lots of different insects, soft fruit and all kinds of things.”
It shows the danger of allowing alien species to be introduced into an environment. Grey squirrels being the worst example in the UK. There’s a full list here in Wikipedia.
I don’t like the name of loveliness for Harlequin ladybirds.
The Only Polar Bear in the UK
It is sad that there is just one polar bear in the UK.
I’m not really in favour of traditional zoos, but where animals are endangered there should be a way of keeping them, so that future generations can know about these animals.
But keeping just one bear is probably not a good idea.
I’m also old enough to remember, when London and Whipsnade Zoos, regularly bred these magnificent creatures.
Conservation is Dangerous
I’m watching Stephen’s Fry program called “The Last Chance to See” on BBC2. One of the people in the program told how six enviromentalists had been killed in Cambodia and hos the Amazon and it’s famed piranhas was much less dangerous.
A couple of tales illustrate this.
Perhaps ten or twelves years ago, my late wife and myself were staying in the Datai on Langkawi. This hotel regularly makes the top two or three in the world and having stayed there for a week, you know why.
The hotel organised tours with two local wildlife experts. One was Malaysian and the other was the son of a British squaddie and his Nepalese wife. To say he had the air of a hard bastard was probably an understatement. But he needed to be as poachers and collectors were always trying to either shoot or dig up something. At the time, they’d just taken on the Malaysian government about preserving the last piece of rainforset on Langkawi. They’d won at the time and my son has confirmed in the last few weeks that it is still there.
So perhaps to get things done, you not only need good economic arguments as they did, but you also need a touch of the Rambos.
It must have been about 1988 and I was in San Francisco. I needed to get to San Jose, so I took a shared limousine as one does. Or did! Hopefully, they’ve built a more affordable rail system. But I doubt it! I hadn’t hired a car as someone was driving me around.
Two of us got in first and like me, the other was something in computers. We were then joined by a tall, slim man about fifty or so, with a long grey ponytail. He had a powerful bearing and looked extremely fit under a linen suit.
I thought for a moment he might be into something like drugs, but he told a tale about how he had been in US Special Forces in Viet Nam. He’d retired as an officer and was now working protecting World Bank projects in the Amazon rainforest. He talked about how if you harvested plants and trees very selectively, you could give the people an income about ten times more than they got from subsistence agriculture where you burned the forest.
But this didn’t work because to do this you needed to built tracks into the jungle, which allowed the cut and burners to do their damage easily and also because by giving the people a good income, you broke the power of the loan sharks who preyed on them.
Hence the need for men like him to protect the projects and those that worked on them.
Just as Stephen Fry’s film showed, to get conservation to work, you must get the economics right and make sure you control those violent men, whose interests you destroy.
Fox at the Oval
I was just watching the preview from the Oval of the Fifth Test, when a fox-like dog trotted across the screen behind the presenter.
It has since been confirmed it was a fox. My foxes must all be in London, as I never see many these days.
Rabbits
Cuddly! Aren’t they? No! Delicious? Yes!
There is a report that they do a lot of damage to crops. As someone who keeps horses they are a nightmare, as what would happen if a horse at speed puts their foot in a rabbit hole and turns over. They don’t do too much damage to my crops as I don’t really have any, but muntjak do eat all my young trees.
The report says that nunbers are increasing and blames the government for removing rules that allow you to complain about your neighbours, who don’t keep rabbits down. And as those neighbours are often nebulous government agencies like highways or large corporations like the railways, it is not easy to complain without a big stick.
That may be the case in some areas, but I’m in the middle of nowhere and all then rabbits round here are either mine or my neighbours.
Rabbit numbers are increasing, but they really haven’t got to pest levels yet. But as they say rabbits breed like well – rabbits!
Could though one of the causes of the increase in rabbits be the ban on hunting?
But you say that you didn’t hunt rabbits with hounds! No, but you hunted foxes and whereas before the hunting ban, you saw lots of foxes round here, now they are very rare indeed. I don’t even smell them like I used to in the gateways, where they marked their territories.
So it’s not rocket science to see that if you have less foxes, you might well have more rabbits.
But why are the foxes declining? The only reason I can think, is that whereas some years ago, if they saw a fox, farmers and gamekeepers would leave him for the hunt, now they make sure he doesn’t get away.
Obviously, it needs a proper study, than just my personal observations.
Another reason for the increase is that years ago, country kids often used to go rabbiting, bring them home and skin them for the pot. I don’t know whether it’s still legal, but parents don’t let their fourteen-year-olds take out the 4-10 these days!
And talking of the pot! Rabbits are delicious and good for you!
So let’s make the farmers problem, someone else’s opportunity. We just need to buy them in the butchers or the supermarket. I’ll get some today in Waitrose for supper tonight.
RSPB and the A11
It now looks like that the RSPB are trying to stop the dualling of the A11. This was reported in yesterday’s East Anglian Daily Times.
Now I like birds, but they are very adaptable creatures and if we make adequate provision, they will move. But the trouble with a lot of bird groups is that birds come first and people and commerce second. Now, who is it that pays for their little feelgood group?
As I indicated in my post Where Have All the Birds Gone, it could be that some of the beliefs of the bird groups, actually reduce such things as song birds. I only say could be, but endless studies never seem to find a problem as to where have all the sparrows gone.
On the other hand, I’m not in favour of shooting either. In one picture, my late wife is pictured with a racing professional, who was shot because a gun was handy. I just don’t like guns and have banned them from my land, except where say a deer, that has been injured by a car, needs to be humanely put-down. They are just too dangerous to be in the hands of a lot of people who own them.
We just need balance between everything, so that people, commerce, farmers, birds and animals all thrive.
But please let’s have the missing link in the A11! And while we’re at it, let’s make the A47 all dual-carriageway from Yarmouth to Peterborough.
It Must Be Cold!
It must have been cold, as the cat has started to sit on the back of the AGA again.
Cat on the AGA
She is actually sitting on the hottest part, just behind the left hob, which you can on the left. I don’t like her to do this, as it means her fur gets in the fan and clogs it up.
Police Stupidity
This blog entry from The Times shows that whatever the Police have these days, they lack good old commonsense.
I have a basset hound and she is beside herself with the heat. All the doors and windows in the house are open and she’s wandering around looking for best place to snooze.
The Anonymous Widower 