Memo to Natural England: Stop trying to bend nature and try harder to save it!

Mr Warde spells out some home truths to NE

                                                  

A SUSSEX man has rapped the Natural England's emerging policy of allowing nature to be manipulated so that it does not 'get in the way' of commercial interests.

Simon Warde, of Bognor Regis, was dismayed to  read of the organisation's 'bizarre' proposals for 'credits' to be sold to developers who destroy habitats - so much so  that he wrote to the Sunday Telegraph (October 8, 2023) to protest.

"Creatures can't move house, and will be eliminated," he warns.

"Natural England's job should be to protect, conserve and enhance nature."  

In the previous week's edition of the same newspaper, NE's chief executive, Marian Spain, had written: "For the past year, we have worked with the Government and councils on a mitigation scheme that helps developers offset damage by purchasing credits for environmental improvement projects such as wetlands."

The letter from NE's chief executive that sparked the Sussex man's consternation 

RSPB chief executive Beccy Speight: 'Give farmers a fair deal and the support they need'

                                       

Beccy Speight - peace pipe

FARMERS and the RSPB have long regarded each other with suspicion, but the latter's chief executive, Beccy Speight, believes the time has now come to bury the hatchet.

In the autumn edition of the RSPB Magazine, published this month, she writes: "Farmers need the certainty that the necessary policies and financial support are in place if they are to produce  healthy food while helping to reverse wildlife declines.

"Ultimately we all want our countryside to be a vibrant and healthy place with robust local economies where farmers get a fair deal and the support they need.

"If we can achieve this, then Nature will return across the UK, expand and grow into the place it once was.

"Without the help of farmers and the land that they manage, the task of bringing back nature will be nigh impossible."                                           

Yellowhammer - one of many species being lost on farmland

The Wryneck says: The National Farmers' Union will be delighted with this piece of commentary from Ms Speight. Perhaps she will now consider writing something similarly appreciative  on behalf of the agrochemical  industry whose insecticides, herbicides and fungicides have wreaked such havoc on farmland wildlife since the 1950s and earlier. In the meantime, it will be interesting to see if the chief executive of the NFU might  now choose to write an article pleading farmers to give wildlife "a fair deal and the support it needs".  Somehow that seems unlikely. 

Fears that giant illuminated sphere entertainment venue could confuse night-migrating birds over London

Controversy surrounds a  giant  sphere-shaped entertainment venue that is being proposed for the Stratford area of East London. Because it would reach 336ft into the sky and be brightly illuminated at night, there are concerns that it could disorientate night-migrating songbirds or create a collision risk. The deputy leader of the Green Party, Zack Polanski, is one of those campaigning against the project. The application, submitted by MSG Sphere London, is currently under consideration by city planners. 

Thousands of night-migrating birds dead after catastrophic collision event in Chicago

 

Birder Daryl Coldren has taken this distressing photo of some of the thousands of migrant warblers, ovenbirds and other species that perished after colliding with skyscrapers in Chicago on Wednesday night. It has long been known that birds, such as these, which migrate by night, regularly become disorientated by tall illuminated structures such as lighthouses and office blocks. American conservation organisations have issued a renewed plea for non-essential lights to be turned off to reduce the chance of further casualties. Species found dead or dying this week include Tennessee, palm, myrtle and magnolia warblers. 

Iain Grahame - confidant of President Idi Amin and expert on Ugandan birds, pheasants of all species and butterflies

Iain Grahame (left) penned a fascinating account of his times with Idi Amin 

THE death, aged 91, has occurred of Iain Grahame, ornithologist and world authority on the pheasant family.

A lifelong naturalist, Major Grahame was also an expert on the birds of Uganda with which he became acquainted while serving with a battalion of the King’s African Rifles in the 1950s.

He was commanding officer of Idi Amin, later to become ruthless president of the country.

The two men maintained contact, and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office would sometimes  dispatch Grahame to Kampala in the hope that he could use his influence to deflect Amin from some of his more eccentric actions.

It was he who secured the release of British lecturer Denis Hills, who, while in Uganda, had been sentenced to death by firing squad, after referring to the president in the draft of an unpublished book as a 'village tyrant'.

Grahame is said to have achieved the reprieve partly  by the offer of a pair to of white peacocks - regarded by Amin as prestigious -  that he had bred in an aviary at his home on the Suffolk-Essex border.

Grahame, who lost his mother to a German bomb when he was aged just 11, had an adventurous life which included playing polo, climbing Mount Kilimanjaro and discovering new species of butterfly, of which one, Charaxes grahamei, was named after him.

His father, Lewis Gretton Grahame-Wigan, was an Olympic equestrian rider, painter and London-based police constable who had been discharged as an officer from the 13th/18th Hussars during the 1914-18 war for failing to conform to Army discipline when he refused, perhaps through claustrophobia, to enter a tank.

Instead, he had insisted into going into battle armed only with a bow and arrow with which he transfixed the first German he saw.

In the 1970s, Grahame was successful in breeding in confinement a pair of an endangered species, the Himalayan blood pheasant, which he managed to bring back to England after two dangerous trips to the slopes of Everest and Kanchenjunga in Nepal.

In 1975, he and his second wife, Didy, co-founded the World Pheasant Association, a research organisation which thrives to this day.

His third wife, Carolyn 'Bunny' Campione, who survives him, has been a regular presenter  on BBC-TV's  Antiques Roadshow since 1985.

American black-and-white warbler was sensation in birding world but failed to 'score' with Premier League club

 

The 'tweet' that was posted on Sunday

THE staff at Bardsey Island observatory were so delighted at the arrival of a mega-rare black-and-white warbler, a vagrant from America, that  they decided to share the news with fans of Newcastle United Football Club.

The Premier League side play in black and white striped shirts - hence the link (albeit tenuous).

The club's manager, Eddie Howe, was copied into the post which was put out on X - still widely known known as Twitter.

As yet, there has been no response from the club, nor Mr Howe, perhaps because Newcastle already have an association with another bird species - the club has long been nicknamed The Magpies.

However, there have been a few other replies - for instance, with some pointing out that Grimsby Town FC, Notts County FC and Italian side Juventus also play in black and white shirts.

After a few days on Bardsey, the bird - also known as the 'mint humbug warbler' - has now transferred itself to pastures new.

    

Hitching a ride - did exhausted American vagrants take a breather on giant Atlantic-crossing oil tankers?

Bay-breasted warbler - Ramsey Island sighting 

                       

DID most - if not all - of the flurry of recent vagrant American warblers hitch a ride on a ship?

This is inevitably one of the theories that surrounds the extraordinary influx that characterised the last fortnight of September, 2023

They were among a tally of more than than 70 individual passerines of no fewer than 18 different species that were reported.

They would most likely have been migrating to Central and South America when Hurricane Lee struck the East Coast of North America.

The strong westerlies that ensued would have blown them, probably exhausted, further out over the Atlantic than normal.

Inevitably, any passing ship would have been seen as providing  a precious, if temporary, refuge until land came into view.

At all times of year there is a procession of fuel-carrying cargo vessels wending their way to and from the port at Milford Haven which is located in Pembrokeshire on the south-west coast of Wales.

Many of them are oil tankers - some as long as 50 metres.

Noticeable is how many of the rarities were first detected  near to Britain's third largest port, some in Pembrokeshire itself.

These included: 

* Canada Warbler

* Bay-breasted Warbler 

* Magnolia Warbler 

* Black-and-white Warbler 

* Bobolink 

The birds may have stayed on board all the way to dockside, but it is just as feasible that they resumed flight when land came into view - perhaps thinking Bermuda had been reached.

Does it matter to birders whether the American vagrants were ship-assisted? Probably not.

It makes for just as romantic a story as if they had flown all the way from Boston, Massachusetts, or wherever.

What next for the birds? After resting and feeding, some of the warblers seemed, judging by the photographs and video clips, to be in remarkably fine fettle.

It is unlikely they will have the strength of stamina to return whence they came, but those that survive - and temperatures here have remained benign - will probably continue their journeys south.

The north coast of counties such as Cornwall or Devon  beckon, but only time will tell.                                                    

                

Milford Haven - Britain's third largest port and a notable tanker ship destination

The Marianne is only 17 metres  - some other tankers  are three times that length