Save Mr Brock

As any reader of this blog will know I am vociferously against the ongoing Badger cull in the UK. I have highlighted my scientific concerns many times. 

This year plans were put in place to extend the cull to 8 new regions in Low-Risk Areas, which is set to include my home turf, Warwickshire. As you may recall I have both emailed and written to the Secretary of State for the Environment, Micheal Gove and my local MP, Matt Western.

I sent the last letters on the 22nd April and so far haven't received a single reply, a sad indictment on our political situation. My local MP has lost my vote in the future. 

Letters aside I was horrified to read an article stating that approval of the new areas is a done deal and that to encourage shooting squads that every badger killed will net them £50 (Telegraph). All hope isn't lost yet, two legal challenges are due in July but given the success of previous cases, this is nothing but a tenuous hope, as DEFRA have already posted their guidance to Natural England regarding cull licencing (Natural England).

I worry about the setts near me. I worry about my badgers the ones I am slowly getting to know and identify. I find it so hard to rationalise the image presented by DEFRA and the reality. Take for instance their main web page ( See below)

DEFRA splash page 28th May 2018 (https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/department-for-environment-food-rural-affairs)

The six lead articles are inspiring and uplifting. Action taken across the globe to protect the environment and species and yet at the same time, the same organisation is implementing a vendetta against a species on a political whim rather than a scientific one.

So what is there to do... well there's not much I can suggest, write to everyone you can you may have more luck than me. Talk to your friends and colleagues, maybe boycott UK milk and beef, help fund local action groups or donate to the Wildlife Trust or Badger Trust. I do not advocate any illegal action in any form, there is always an alternative to such actions. 

Links:

Badger Trust

Wildlife Trust

Warwickshire Badger Group

Nature, red in tooth and claw

The cycle of life was brought into sharp relief yesterday when a Sparrowhawk caught a juvenile Starling in the garden. 

The young starlings have been quite prolific this year and there are several noisy families on the estate. Starlings once a common sight in gardens is actually in decline nationally even though locally they still seem to be doing well. The species have been red-listed by the IUCN and are a local biodiversity action plan listed.

Sparrowhawks, on the other hand, have a favourable conservation status and in the UK have increased in number considerably since 1974. This is partly due to reduced persecution and increased brood sizes.

The individual show in the picture is a female, no doubt catching food for some nestlings somewhere. You can tell it's a sparrowhawk rather than another raptor or falcon by the distinctive thin 'knitting-needle-like' legs. You can tell it is a female from the brownier plumage and lack of yellowish buff neck and front.

Consider the duck - a philosophical musing

Although the bridge is still out of action I still go and have a drink down the mill, read a book and watch the world go by. Last week I watched a Heron hunting and this week a lone male Mallard caught my eye. He was comfortably paddling amongst the reeds oblivious to those of us on the terrace sipping drinks or finishing of a platter of breakfast.

Mallard Drake (c) M. Smith

He swam slowly, almost leisurely between the vegetation pausing to dip his head down to sample the food below. Finding a good spot he would upend in the traditional fashion un self consciously showing everyone his white rear end as his neck delved below.

As I watched his antics I consider how his life varied from mine and what that meant. I placed myself in his webbed feet. Were our roles reversed my life would revolve around basically food and sex, not bad you might say but dig a little deeper. Most of his day would be taken up foraging for food just to make it to another day. During my degree I explored Optimal Foraging Theory; this is the delicate balance species have to make between expending energy in gaining energy. It is no good expending 300 calories of effort to get only 200 calories of reward. In the wild this seemingly complicated mathematical analysis is innate, get it wrong and you die, get it right and for time being you get to live. It is a concept now being exploited in computer games, the survivor genre is often accompanied by zombies or the apocalypse as in State of Decay 2 or Metal Gear Survive but the ingredients are the same, get food, water, medicine first or you won’t survive long enough to turn back the zombie horde or to build the best outpost.

Balancing life and death decisions on this level is something we are remote from. Consider the duck again; he will forage for as long as he is able. He must find a suitably safe roosting spot and in the long term find a mate with which to procreate. The basics of being an organism, I, however, had just paid for someone to give me a cola and if I so wished would have brought me food. In 5 minutes my sustenance needs were met, I had a home for shelter and even more food and drink waiting for me there and I was able to spend the next hour just sat reading a book. Okay the money I used had to be earned and I spend 5 out of 7 days achieving that but what leisure time did the duck have and what did it do with it?

The critical point for mankind was the development of farming, the minute we could produce more food than we needed daily we became something new. Free time was invented when we did not need to spend all day hunting and gathering when we could build houses and walled towns to protect ourselves. Free time is what allowed the development of civilisation. That free time allowed for hobbies, tools and weapons didn’t need to be merely functional; they could be intricate and beautiful. Time spent drawing, painting; singing no longer interfered with the basics of staying alive. Art for art’s sake, for pleasure, was possible. Humankind was able to begin its dominance over the world. But let us not forget that we are still one species amongst many, that our roots are the same as a dog or monkey.

Do animals do things for pleasure? This is a more complex issue than I wish to address today but let’s look at an animal further along the scale, say a cat. Domestic cats have their meals provided and have a shelter so what do they do with their spare time. Well, like all good followers of optimal foraging theory they conserve energy, they sleep, but they also go out and hold territories, they don’t need them but they still do it. They hunt, they don’t need to but they still do. They play, they don’t need to hone their skills to hunt, but they still play. Are these innate hold over’s from a pre-domestication time. Has the passage of time not been long enough for basic urges to be overcome as they seem to have been in man or perhaps the cat has chosen to do these things with its free time? Are we then in thousands of year’s time to see the art and civilisation of animals we have raised up or as David Brin may have put it – uplifted?

And yet the duck keep paddling about until I have finished my drink and I have decided to go home and make myself a sandwich.

Pellet Analysis

Last month I discovered a large batch of 31 owl pellets beneath a tree not far from where my trail cam was in operation.

The dark pellets belong to a Tawny Owl that I believe uses the tree as a roost site. Tawny Owls are occasionally seen on the site, I have been lucky enough to see a young owl a few years back and last, June was fortunate enough to catch a failed kill on camera.

As you can imagine dissecting the pellets took some time. I used a dry method waiting until the pellets were completely dry before working on them by teasing them open with gloved bare hands.

Each pellets length and width was measured and its weight recorded. I then separated out the bones and reweighed it giving me a bone mass and a fur mass. I used skulls and jaws as my main counting method to determine the number of prey per pellet.

The results were very interesting I was amazed at the high number of Shrew prey in the pellet, far more than I ever expected. It is unclear how long a time period these pellets represent and until the bridge reopens and I can collect any new pellets the timeframe is unknown.

What is interesting is the amount of available small mammals in the area. I regularly record Wood Mice on the trail cams, Bank Voles I see if baited out in the late afternoon and Shrews can be seen or heard in the summer, but bear in mind that the Tawny Owl isn't the only predator in the area, I have recorded Weasel, Stoat, Fox, Kestrel, Buzzard and Grey Heron on the site, all of whom would prey on these mammals.

I hope to supplement these observations with some small mammal trapping and follow up pellet analyses ( if the same tree is still being used).

The main data: