Wednesday, 26 December 2012
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| Won't it be nice if she breed this year! |
Its Boxing day, I have full charge of all
livestock, dogs, horse, birds! So most of the mornings are taken up with
feeding checking and so on. This is the first time I have done it in a long
time, Simon never seemed to go much for Christmas and so he would feed the
birds in the morning on Christmas day, shoot off to see family and be back by
the evening, but he left working here on Christmas Eve, so I have got the job.
Actually I like it, it means I can check things, probably why no one likes me
to do it. I already have a list of things to be fixed or put right and I have
found some interesting things on the studwork in the corridors, we certainly
have a good mixture of screws!!! And eggs!!! I did not dare drop any of them as
I suspect there would have been a loud bang and a very bad smell. Still never
mind, new regime in place as of Jan 2nd 2013, which I am praying
will be a drought year!!! There can’t be more rain after New Year – can there??!!
I had my Christmas party on Christmas Eve,
for friends and locals, it is the third year and it seems to be popular, but
what a difference from two years ago when it was freezing cold, snow on the
ground and ice all over the car park, this year I had to open doors as the
fires in the sitting room and my office had made the house too warm!!! The
trees looked lovely, the house lends itself to entertaining – although I only
do it once a year! Most of the food went and everyone seemed to have a good
time – same time same place next year!!
We finished our last two owl evenings on
Fri and Sat and amazingly got away with the weather which I did not think was
possible looking at the forecast. One audience was great the other was not!!
The birds did very well and the lights just about held out, but only just with
the wet ground. We are going to have to do something about them before
February. The owls are now off duty until the last week in Jan when they all
need to get going again for opening on February 1st.
We will tackle the flats at the start of
January, as well as getting the last of the major cleaning done, we are close
to being ready for the breeding season already. I had a look in the flats
today, there is a fair bit to do to get them back to how they were in early
2009! Out with the magnolia paint I think, I was disappointed to see that
someone has painted the nice pine stairs and banisters, that is a great shame,
and difficult to undo.
The weather yesterday, although wet to
start with turned lovely as I fed round, the sun came out and birds began to
sing, it was a real treat after all this grey dull light that we have lived
with for weeks now. Now sadly we are back to rain again, what a surprise. I do
feel so sorry for those poor people living close to water and watching it rise
to threaten or flood their homes.
Ah well, better take the dogs out for a run,
which means putting Leaf on a lead, I think I am going to have to find a good
home for her, because out with the pack she is pretty difficult to manage.
Holly has taken her home for a weekend occasionally and she is so much better
on her own, she is also chasing birds, which is not good news for us here.
All the birds up at Duncombe are settled
and doing well and the birds that we have moved around here are also settled,
even the new Golden Eagles seem to have settled and the White-backed Vultures
as well. Here is praying for a dry 2013!
Monday, 10 December 2012
Written by a good friend of mine - it appears that Grouse Moor owners and their keepers have gone back to the Victorian times and are happy to shoot everything they consider a threat regardless of the law and the desire of the rest of the country.
DEATH OF BOWLAND
BETH
Bowland Beth, a first year
female Hen harrier has been shot and recovered from a Yorkshire grouse moor.
I visited The
Forest of Bowland in Lancashire towards
the end of May in 2012. Bowland had once been the stronghold of breeding Hen
harriers in England. In the late 1980s and early 1990s there had been 20+
pairs. Then there’d been a decline which was reversed from 2003 to 2008
followed by a severe decline to none in 2012.
I was told that
at the moment the outlook for Hen harriers in England was dire. Perhaps this was
going to be the year when Bowland would lose its breeders, they were down to
single pair and that was in the north of England. Maybe I would be lucky and see Bowland Beth – named after the character
Bet Lynch in the TV soap opera Coronation Street. She was a female fledged at Bowland in
2011 and she had been fitted with a satellite transmitter. Satellite tracking
has revolutionised our knowledge of the Hen harriers comings and goings. From them
it may be possible to evolve a strategy to protect harriers. I’d already seen
the video recording made at that nest and I knew she was the most precocious of
the four chicks, the first to fledge.
I was shown a
print out from the satellite tracking Beth’s
journeys. On 23rd July
last year she left The Forest of Bowland and flew to the Yorkshire Dales
spending the autumn and early part of the winter on a grouse moor Bethween
Grassington and Pateley Bridge. Did she have some ancestral map in her brain
that enabled her pin point the best foraging areas but also the best places to
roost? She returned to Bowland on 2nd February 2012. In mid-March she again headed back to the
grouse moors in Yorkshire before returning to Bowland. In April she returned to
the grouse moors in Yorkshire and to my amazement, within the next ten days,
she travelled 450 kilometres to a point just north of Inverness. What racial
memory pulled her in that direction, were her ancestral ties linked to the
Orkneys? Anyway two days later she was
back in Bowland. I marvelled at the
mobility of this fine bird. I was told
that RSPB staff had seen her ‘skydancing’
and ripping up bits of heather so it looked like she is about to breed if she
can find a mate.
She had no luck
finding a mate, so on 1st May she left Bowland heading for
Drumnadrochit, passed through Forsinard in the flow country – that would have
been a good place to stay - and reached Thurso on 8th May. An epic
journey of 510 kms.
Over the next
twelve days she wended her way back south again and was in the Grampian
mountains by 20th May. What an adventurous, feisty lady she was and
no sign of a mate yet.
I had endless discussions
with conservationists and a grouse moor owner about what was being done to save
the Hen harrier from extinction in England. As long ago as 2006 The Environment
Council set up a Hen Harrier Stakeholders
Committee to try and resolve the conflict between the conservationists and
the owners of the grouse moors. At the moment there isn’t any conflict because
there aren’t any Hen harriers on grouse moors in England
If Hen harriers
were ever allowed to breed undisturbed and numbers increased sufficiently a
scheme has been discussed in which a quota of surplus Hen harrier chicks would
be translocated from grouse moors, reared artificially and then re-located back
to their original sites in the autumn. This has the potential to allow for Hen harriers
and driven grouse shooting to exist side-by-side. At the moment the status of
the Hen harrier as a breeding bird in England hangs by a thread and is
threatened by extinction. The government
have now made a commitment that there will be no extinction of English wildlife
by 2020. If they act immediately the Hen harrier can be saved as a breeding
bird in England.
Unbeknown to me
as I left to catch my train home, Bowland
Beth was homing in on the Forest of Bowland. When I’d last heard of her she
was in the Grampian Mountains. Now she was back in Bowland and quite close to
the nest site where she fledged in 2011. I missed her by about 5 hours.
She stayed at
Bowland for a couple of days and then on 25th May headed north-east
using the prevailing wind to settle on the grouse moors around Pateley Bridge.
This is where she had spent her last autumn and winter. It seemed as though she
had found a good billet for the summer. Her immediate future was secure.
When I got back
there was a message telling me that on June 3rd Beth was still near Pateley Bridge and letting me know that she was
fine.
Another fix on
11th June showed that Beth
had contracted her foraging range to the grouse moors around Nidderdale and
Colsterdale. This was probably due to
several days of prolonged rain. It was one of the wettest Junes in living
memory. Heavy cloud cover meant that for several days there was no accurate fix
on her. On about 14th June I was becoming concerned for her. Maybe
the transmitter had failed. The manufacturers were contacted and asked whether
the last fixes were reliable. I now felt sure that something had happened to Beth sometime between 8th and
11th June. Beth’s approximate
position on a map was known. The landowner
was contacted. He couldn’t have been more co-operative and arranged for the
head keeper to help in the search. Using a hand-held scanner Beth was located at 11 am on 5th
July. She was lying face down in a patch of heather and blueberry. The
satellite tag was plainly visible. A post-mortem showed that she had been shot.
A pellet had broken her leg and nicked the femoral artery. Tests showed really
good traces of lead embedded in the bone. Beth
probably would have been able to fly a few miles before she bled out and
collapsed onto the grouse moor where she was found.
Bowland Beth was a beautiful bird, an amazing bird. Her story is remarkable. We
should be celebrating her life now and her becoming a parent and tracking her
sons and daughters.
We will probably
never know what happened. Perhaps this fearless, naive bird went a wing beat
too far and had to run the gauntlet to regain the grouse moor which she knew as
home. We grieve that, illegally, she was cut down in the prime of life. I hope
she has not died in vain.
Saturday, 8 December 2012
You know it would be so nice if all
these damn websites would let you buy stuff without having to sign up, or
register, particularly if you are able to pay with PayPal. It’s so annoying and
frustrating, a very few have the option to just buy without all that crap – good on
you guys, it is much easier and much pleasanter.
Talking of good on you, which is sort of Australian, puts me in mind of the news today, what a
dreadful shame about the nurse who had the unfortunate experience of picking up
the phone to those Australian morons who thought it was clever to try and imitate
the queen. What should be a wonderful time for the Royal family spoilt by
idiots who obviously don’t have a brain cell, and how miserable for the nurse’s
family, I really feel for her and for them. Personally I hope the perpetrators never get a job again, they don’t deserve one. I
have never been one for practical jokes, I think they are mindless, stupid, unpleasant
and can be, as we have seen, incredibly hurtful. I also think that while we are
on the subject of TV and Radio Chat shows and the press – yes please - lets
have some laws to control them, because they sure as hell will not control
themselves and anyone who thinks they will is sadly mistaken.
I bought a couple of tins of soup
last week because the café is now closed, they were so awful that I went out
and bought a book on how to make soup – 400 recipes,. Well that was a waste of time and money, not one of them is
normal soup!!! I can have mushroom and pear, or chicken and lime or Chorizo
(which I loath) and a ton of things, but is there any bog standard nice ordinary
soup, nope, not one!! So if anyone wants a book on lots of fancy soups, I have one you
can have!!
The weather was glorious today, I
went for a lovely ride, got some work done, opened another day on my Jacqui
Lawson Advent Calendar – they are wonderful!! Took the dogs for all walk and in
a minute will get ready for the Owl Evening – only five to go!!
The aviary cleaning goes on
apace, and we had a major workshop tidy as well, its always a good thing to do
as for about a week you can actually find things again, until chaos re ensues!!
Its Adam last few days next week, he finishes on Wednesday! Then by the end of
the week I think he is off to Dubai. Simon finishes just before Christmas, so
over the Christmas period it will be very quiet, and I get to look after all
the birds, so I will be busy. John is continuing to do an amazing job on the
enclosures, I can’t believe how much up to speed we are. We should get the
worst of it done by Christmas at this rate, with only the Owl Courtyard and the
Small Falcons to get redone in January.
The forecast for next week is
back to cold, although I think people are forgetting how cold it was three
winters ago now, when we had five days of hoar frost and temperatures below -16
here – that was cold!!!
Monday, 3 December 2012
The rain is back!! But only temporarily I
hope. I am cooking three joints of lamb for an Owl Evening this evening. We are
putting it on in support of the village Church, the wall of the churchyard is
in imminent danger of collapsing and we will raise over £1000 for it tonight.
However the downside is that I have to cook the lamb that has been donated by
the Credland’s, and we know what I feel about cooking!!! Hope it survives!
The last two Owl Evenings went very well,
it was clear and bright with an almost full moon which always means that if the
sky is good, Cool Ground, the Snowy Owl looks just wonderful as you can see him
without our lights.
We are now closed although I think we
probably should have stayed open for this last weekend, but one can never tell,
certainly next year as Dec 1st lands on a Sunday, we will open and
close on the 2nd. Talking of which I bought myself and some family
and friends an Advent Calendar by Jacquie Lawson, you should get one, they are
tremendous fun. A really cheap way to have a lovely run up to Christmas, I have
decorated the tree in the calendar, and built a snowman, it’s very interactive
and wonderful to do. Just google Jacquie Lawson and it will come up, her cards
are superb anyway, as an e-card they are unbeatable.
The aviary cleaning and moving of birds
around moves on apace, and John is doing an amazing job of getting it all
organised, we are all very impressed and it may for once all be close to being
done before Christmas, which will make my job of looking after it all between
Christmas and New Year all the easier. Simon is back from the States, not sure
what is happening there, although I am told there are all sorts of innuendos on
FaceBook, but I still struggle with FaceBook I have to say. And I am not sure
why you would want to put everything on there!!
Mike and I, well OK mainly Mike, have
hopefully fixed the roof, but it looks like we are going to have to go for a
complete re roof next year, the tiles that are on there are far too large and
don’t work, so we have to go back to the kind that were on there before all
14280 of them!!! I have no idea how we are going to afford to do it, but we plan
on doing it ourselves which will cut the cost down, and if we save the old
tiles that will make some funds towards the new ones. I am really looking forward
to that as you can imagine!!!
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| Art with furry ears! |
I rode out both days at the weekend, it was
great fun, and lovely but cold weather, I had a good time, although I am not
sure Art did, I hope so. I did have a job to put my riding boot on as my toe is
not right, I went to the Dilk hospital on Friday, hoping to get it X-rayed, but
the X-ray people were not there, which was a drag. Ah well I am sure it will
get better over time, it probably needs resting and putting up – no chance of
that happening!
We took the Range-Rover into Buckland’s,
and as a precaution I untaxed and uninsured it afterwards, because I suspect it
may never come home again. It’s a great shame as I have had Range Rovers since
the 1980’s, and I love them, but needs must at this point, and I certainly can’t
afford to fix it if there is something major wrong, nor buy another one.
Although even if I was very rich (which would be lovely!) I would not buy one
of the new ones, they are hideous!! They look like someone has dropped
something really heavy on them, they are NOT a proper Range Rover!!!
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