Friday 25 April 2014
revolting man plucking dead Orange Breasted Falcon

I have to say that I have always hated reality television. I guess the stuff where a lot of people who have nothing better to do with their lives are put in a house and filmed 24 hours a day is harmless although why anyone with a brain would want to watch them defeats me, however I have always been less tolerant of the ones where you see people doing things that involve anything alive. Now I admit that I am not a great fan of maggots or beetles, but to have people roll about in them seems to be fairly disgusting and show no regard for living things. However the American television have just hit a major low in my book. There is a reality television programme called Naked and Afraid by the Discovery channel and the latest episode shows a singularly unattractive and obviously mentally deficient naked male killing an Orange Breasted Falcon (about the size of a male Kestrel and increasingly rare in the wild), plucking it, skewering it on a stick and eating it. This is in Bolivia, I have not been able (nor have any desire) to see any of the programmes, an enraged American falconer sent me pictures, but I suspect there is more killing of animals, birds and fish to entertain the watching public.
 
Why is the question that any intelligent person would ask, what are they doing it for, what sort of particularly nasty people are they that a) perform in it b)think up the idea c) go and film it and presumably make money out of it. Does television around the world have no morals, no ethical watchdog that controls them - apparently not. Personally I would like to make a television programme with all those involved from the TV company down - with them being eaten by something very large and hungry. Because these people are not starving, they do not have to do this to keep alive, it is gratuitous, mindless exploitation of a living creature for commercial gain. Shame shame shame on the Discovery Channel, the authors, producers, film crew and people involved.
 
While I am annoyed, the washing machines continue to stir me up. Apart from the fact that the Hoover one is a piece of crap, the other one just took from 2.45 until after 5.30 to complete a wash, I could have done each towel by hand, and got them dry in that time. And this is supposed to be washing machines designed to conserve - what exactly are they conserving. The shortest wash I can find is 20 minutes and that is for only 2.5 kilos. And this is technology improving, I don't think so.
 
Sedge is much the same, he likes the Kerdog and races around barking, however his driving leaves a bit to be desired as he tries to corner too tightly and frequently comes to a grinding halt. I found him helping the labs with a rabbit hole yesterday, but he had to have help to come out of the corner he was lodged in!
 
Shasta is extremely pregnant, she is huge!! She is due to have pups on the 6th or 7th, but if she lasts that long I will be surprised, and needless to say the two days prior I am away doing flying demonstrations. We are taking bets on the number she will produce, the top is 13!! I do hope not!
 
Holly and I took the second baby Griffon Vulture up to Duncombe and put it back with the parents, so far so good, although they were unsure to start with. The baby Burrowing Owls are doing well and are manic to feed, one of them fell into the bowl of warm water that we use to warm up the food, he is not a good swimmer. Very sadly the wonderful baby Condor that hatched and was a boy, only survived three days, he was not right from the start and we could not pull him through.
 
Otherwise things continue, My Red Kite really has been flying well, although she did manage to find a dog toy the other day and flew up into a tree with it, refusing to come down until I threw food out on the ground for her!! I then had to race her to it!
 
The Mountain Caracara's laid their first egg...................and ate it! We are waiting for the Striated Caracara's to lay but they are not allowed to have their young back after last year. Our pair of Grey Buzzard Eagles up at Duncombe came back with us on the trip this week and are fertile, which is great because that means we can put together an unrelated pair for the future.
 
Chris Packham is doing a great job publicising the mass slaughter of migrating birds on Malta, don't forget you can help, encourage anyone you know NOT to go on holiday to Malta, hit their economy and things might change.

0 comments:

Hello

I have to say that keeping a weblog can at times become compulsive and at other times a chore. Sometimes I am berrated for not keeping it up and sometimes I get wonderful comments from people who follow the news of the Centre.

It is fun to share the daily goings on here, some good and some bad, some funny and some sad, but all a part of our daily lives.
And as I said before its a pretty cool to be here and it is a great place to visit, you should try coming and watching the birds and meeting the staff and of course the dogs.

An interesting video on Lead

An interesting video on Lead

I find it staggering that people who want to hunt don't see the value in changing their ammunition from lead to a safer product. We have stopped using lead in petrol, in paint, in our water pipes, but they still want to use lead - ah well, apparently eating it not only kills birds but leads to reduced intelligence in humans......................

NO ONE is asking you to stop legal and genuine hunting, they are just asking you to change your ammunition!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHZGQ8i8AwI

HC

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