My friend Robin?

 There are few birds as fixed in the national psyche than the Robin in the United Kingdom. It is a ubiquitous species with 7.4 million pairs across the country. The folklore is rich surrounding Robins, and they are inextricably linked to Christmas, although this is more to do with the old uniform of the postman rather than the bird itself.

I am sitting writing this in the garden with a Robin perched on the chair next to me and another pottering about on the lawn. They come down each time I am out. They are, I think most would agree, the friendliest birds. They are easily spotted and very recognizable. They are also one of the easiest to tame and with some small effort can be encouraged to feed from the hand. This is a trick that I take great pleasure in teaching students in my eco-schools club, many of whom have had very little connection to nature.

Robins have a long association with man. and especially the gardener. Any gardener can tell you that whist digging the flower beds and turning the soil that they will be quickly joined by a Robin who follows them about feasting on the worms and insects revealed by the spade or fork. How Robins are faring in the new era of no-dig is anyone’s guess. This particular behaviour is a holdover from pre-agricultural times when Robins would follow wild boar herds, feasting on the food disturbed as they rooted around the forest floor

This kind of behaviour is a form of mutualism, where two species benefit from a relationship. The Robin gains access to invertebrates the boars naturally expose as they root through the soil looking for roots and tubers and the boars get an extra pair of eyes to watch out for predators.

Over the past few years, I have struck up a friendship with a pair of robins. This year they paired up early in the season and have stuck around ever since. Each time I sit outside one or both will fly down to sit on the table beside me or perch in the nearby tree watching me attentively. Inevitably I feed then, putting out a few pieces of suet. They soon established a nest next door and each day I noticed how much more ragged their appearance became as they struggled to feed both themselves and their young chicks. They still came down for the suet but instead of gorging only on this they now hopped about the lawn pulling out small worms or flitting around the patio furniture catching spiders to feed their young. Suet is a high energy food very much appreciated by many birds. The high fat content is especially welcome during the winter, but in the breeding season it ensures that the adults have enough energy to spend more time foraging for their offspring.

The pair, Bob and Roberta, as I coined them successfully raised three young that once they had fledged were brought to our garden, where upon I was able to watch the adults feed them in the undergrowth. These juvenile birds have now left, dispersed to new territories of their own and Bob and Roberta have started to squabble, a sure sign that autumn is approaching.

 If I don’t put out some suet out, they will sit in plain site until I do so, very much in the same way our Cocker Spaniel would sit in front of the TV we were watching at 5pm each night to ensure we didn’t forget to get him his dinner. If I'm sitting in the conservatory they will come stand on the step or even an occasion entering the conservatory and perch on the seat beside me, their demeanour one of quiet impatience, almost as if they were stood cross armed one foot tapping, ‘come on human, you know what I want’.

Yesterday I was sat reading when the Robin came down once more and in a pavlovian response I got up, got the suet pot and put some out on the table. It struck me at that moment that there was more nuance to this relationship than I thought. I loved this pair of Robins, I fed then, watched them, cared for then. I worried when I didn't see them. I considered them my friends but was that friendship reciprocated? The more I thought about it the more I doubted it. I was demonstrating altruism to this Robin, I fed it out of my own goodwill and whilst the Robin no doubt appreciated this easy meal several times a day, would the Robin do the same? If I were hungry, would it fly down and cook my tea, would it even offer one of its tiny worms to satiate my need? I very much doubt it. Our friendship is one-sided and very much to the benefit of the Robin. There are stories of animals being altruistic to humans, dolphins that have helped injured surfers, but these tend to be the exception rather than the rule and almost always involve animals considered to have higher levels of intelligence.

Animal intelligence is a complex topic in and of itself and one that I have only just dipped my toes into; part of this year’s summer reading includes ‘The Emotional Lives of Animals’ by Marc Bekoff and I have only just finished the introduction. The way sciences view animals inner lives is changing and is much more nuanced than my university days when even then anthropomorphism was viewed with deep skepticism.

I get that, anthropomorphism is in many ways the wrong way to view animal consciousness and emotions but its not wholly wrong. Anthropomorphism presupposes that man is distinct from animals, that we are above them, and there is no way they can have the same emotional range. This of course misses the point that we are animals, we are part of that ecosystem, maybe we are more complex, have a greater degree of social interactions but we are just a smart ape, the current leader in evolutions intelligence race (although that’s a whole other debate, there are ‘lower intelligence’ animals that have remained unchanged for millennia and existed long before todays human evolved, arent they winners in the evolution game?).

 

So how much of the Robins ‘friendship’ with me is genuine, is it  just  purely transactional? It trusts me it will sit beside me to take the suet, but does that only illustrate that its desire for food outweigh the risk it perceives I am to it? On the scale of animal life on the planet I think we can infer that the Robin has a complex social structure and a cognitive understanding that outweighs many species, its brain, although structurally different is close enough to ours that they too could have evolved  similar patterns of thought and emotion at a different level. However their lived experiences are so very different from my own that how could we have similar priorities or understanding. Their perspective is no doubt essentially alien to me but still based on the same principles that we are constructed on, the drive to find shelter, food and a suitable mate to reproduce, the latter of which the Robin is doing far better at than me.

Bob and Roberta have highlighted to me the complexities of animal intelligence and my personal interaction with nature. As I mull these ideas over I can also recall other relationships I have had, my dog Henry, we definitely shared a bond, the first pair of swans I monitored, ZTG and ZOT, Half tail the Fox on my patch as well as the Roe Deer family which became habituated to me. With all these individuals of species very different to me I made a connection. A connection that I realised wasn’t one sided. Far from it, the gain I received from them was a deep pleasure for being allowed to be within their world.

The robins are the same, they are never going to cook me dinner but they make me happy. I viscerally enjoy watching them. I can appreciate their beauty and trusting nature, the scientist in me is intrigued by their activities and they are excellent prompts for deeper thinking. We both get something out of the relationship, their benefit maybe food and an increased chance of survival and mine is a sense of wellbeing and peace. A fair trade in my books.

Cull of the Wild by Hugh Warwick: A book review

 

It is rare for me to find time to devour a good non-fiction book. Away from work, I like to consume historical epics and high-concept science fiction, but this Easter I put aside my Conn Iggulden and Stephen Baxter to indulge myself in controversy. Whilst not employed as such I am at heart an ecologist, one admittedly with a zoological bent, but one who revels in the complexity of nature and enjoys exploring the intricacies of what lives where, how, and why. Inevitably, my assorted studies and thoughts have led me down some treacherous paths and forced me to address some thorny issues. Culling in the name of conservation is one such polarising issue and is adroitly addressed in Hugh Warwick's latest book, ‘Cull of the Wild - Killing in the Name of Conservation’ out now from Bloomsbury.

Many readers and wildlife enthusiasts may be familiar with Hugh's extensive work with hedgehogs, it was his popular book ‘A Prickly Affair’ that elevated his fame as a wildlife writer, but his environmental credentials extend much further than just our humble hedgehog. Hugh has degrees in Science and the Environment and Wildlife Management and has been part of both academic and grassroots research. As a researcher and science communicator, he has a wealth of contacts and can boast many luminaries among those that he can call upon. Were Hugh not down to earth one may take some of his references in his book as salacious name-dropping of those in the conservation world.

Previously Hugh’s work has focused on his beloved Hedgehog, biogeography, and the connection between people and animals this time however he has spread his wings into a more controversial area. In ‘Cull of the Wild’ he skilfully explores with great nuance the polarising problem of culling one species to save another. Through his exploration of a wide range of case studies, Hugh identifies the core issues and viewpoints and identifies the wider implications and concerns for nature conservation as a whole.

It is easy to assume from the outset that Hugh is an anti-culler someone opposed to such 'evil' machinations but as an author and an explorer he displays a fair-minded approach to understanding the issues and problems at hand even when the intended targets are his beloved hedgehogs. I would have to characterise Hughs's approach as one of caution, an awareness of the need but an uncomfortableness of the methods.

To tackle the issue of culling in its breadth Hugh takes us around the world identifying conflicts, tragedies, and most inspiringly hope. He examines the plight of nesting birds whose eggs are devoured by rats, stoats, and hedgehogs. He explores the decline of the red squirrel in the UK due to its US cousin invasion and on a larger scale, the ecosystem-shifting introductions of mammals to New Zealand, a place where no such taxa evolved. Each chapter is based on a particular problem and how culling is being employed to fix that problem and he questions those running the culling programs and those who are opposed, non-judgementally with a desire to understand. Hugh uses his own confusion and apprehensions over the rights and wrongs to have meaningful conversations about conservation.

Hugh writes boldly and with an abundance of charm, his prose, whilst simple are functional and informative, with little hyperbole. He quickly highlights a point, provides the evidence, and attacks it from multiple angles with an uncluttered open mind. His work is eminently accessible, he defers from excessive technical language and where it is employed it is defined clearly. Like any good popular science book this is one that you do not need your own degree in science to understand or enjoy, if enjoy is the right word. The books heavily morbid focus is self-referenced several times, this is not a light read but it is fascinating, and it is a discussion we need to have.

I have written about culling issues myself, like Hugh I am torn by the practicalities and the morals. I know mink are not endemic be the UK. I know they decimate water voles, and I know that if I were ever to hope to see 'Ratty' on my patch then the resident black mink would need to die. I am also abundantly aware that the black mink I see on my trail cams has its own intrinsic right to life, and that its behaviour is fascinating and enjoyable to watch. It is not his fault he is in the UK; he is just doing what mink do, survive.

The same is true of the Grey Squirrel, it poses an existential risk to the native red squirrel. I have seen red squirrels in Scotland, they are endearing and wonderful and feel quintessentially British. Their grey squirrel is like the stereotypical American is loud and brash, confident, and bold. It is easy to imagine this invader bullying our native shy ‘Squirrel Nutkin’ into obsolescence, but this is not the case, it is the squirrel pox that the grey carries that is the problem. Perhaps, this virus should be the true target of a cull? It is in this section that Hugh highlights a key point in this debate, for many their neighbourhood squirrel that visits their garden or lives in their park is the only mammal most are likely to see or interact with. British wildlife, given how we treat them, tends to be shy and secretive and without regular contact with nature how can we expect the public to invest in species and habitat protection. Here lies the rub, how do we quantify the benefits and costs of such measures? Can you put a cost on a person’s interaction with a wild animal?

In another section Hugh sensitively tackles the issues surrounding trophy hunting and other such measures that generate income for conservation. Conservation has often been forced into biting the bullet and stretching its morals to get the job done. The phrase ‘poacher turned gamekeeper’ is particularly apt. Poaching of lions is illegal and risks the species survival but in areas where lions are over abundant, they allow trophy killing and use the money to fund conservation in areas where they are struggling, a devil’s bargain or a necessary evil? His examination of these thorny topics opens a whole can of worms and raises questions that I am not sure we have answers to or even willing to admit that we need to have the debate.

Is it morally right to ever all a species? Does one species have more right to exist to than another? Who decides and how what a native fauna looks like? Throughout the took Hugh explores these questions. I would not say he fully answers these but perhaps asking them is enough for now.

It has triggered in me deep thought over the issue of culling and challenging my own morals. My general view is one of regret, a weak response I know. Sometimes it is necessary to cull and rightly this leaves a bad taste in my mouth, but Hugh’s book has challenged why I think that way and crucially highlighted to me a much bigger problem with nature conservation. Change is a natural part of life. Ecology is fundamentally a complex web of change, evolution, adaption, and balance. Life exists in a dynamic equilibrium, a term I leaned in my first university lecture by my ecology professor. Conservation at least in the UK seems to be more about stasis, ring fencing and protection, enshrining a pre-industrial ecology. It is necessary but ignores the nature of ecosystems and how species change and adapt over time. The problem is that this change, human led change is faster than the natural mechanisms can cope with. Extinction is natural, species come and go, thousand of species prior to mans arrival lived and went extinct or in many cases evolved into new species its just that our effects on the environment are so great and fast. Conservationists recognise this and want to mitigate this effect but is it a fight we can win?

What the book stirred in me is the wider implications of conservation and the existential issue of where humans sit in the hierarchy of life. All too often we place ourselves in the superior position, by dint of our dominance, self-awareness, and brain power. We decide how this world should be organised and run. We do this because we are the dominant species of this time and have the ability. Should our intelligence give us carte blanche to ride roughshod over fellow species, fellow mammals, fellow apes! This is heavy stuff and whilst Hugh touches on this philosophical angle he is more focused on the practical aspects and wrapping morality into that.

The last gem that I drew form the book was that culling was rarely the root problem, it was a technique that was employed to tackle a single issue, sometimes to protect a single species. As you read though Hughs accounts of the various case studies it becomes abundantly clear that may of the problems is rooted in habitat loss and fragmentation. The biggest issue facing the target species is primarily loss of its home. By forcing species in to smaller and smaller patches that are other overly fragmented means that they become more sensitive and vulnerable to the danger presented by other species that then need culling. Ultimately, we need to treat man as part of the ecosystem not apart from it, understand what that means and stop moving species around the planet no matter how good an idea it might seem to be at the time.

In the end ‘Cull of the Wild’ is a thought provoking and necessary book that I would urge all conservationists and those with an interest in wildlife to read if only to understand the complexities of conservation in the modern world, it should be on the curriculum of every conservation course. Only through understanding and asking the hard questions can we as a body move forward, long may Hugh present us with such cogent analysis and at the end of it all is culling justified – I just don’t know, my confidence is shaken but there is hope for a more holistic way of doing things but that needs more than just conservationists, it requires us all to understand, sacrifice and prioritise.

 Cull of the Wild is available from all good bookshops.

 

 

 

The Blink of an Eye

 The lifespan of a human is perhaps 80-90 years and increasing with every generation. That's a lot of living for an organism. It's easy to forget that for most species life is much shorter and much harder. There is a rough rule of thumb that the larger the organism the longer the lifespan the graphic below illustrates this quite neatly.

There are complex ecological reasons for this involving life history strategies and energy flow but in essence, species generally exhibit one of two life strategies. Complex large animals have longer lives than smaller less complex ones. These strategies reflect two extreme modes of reproduction and survivability and can explain why and how different species behave the way that they do.

The two strategies are r and K. r/K selection was developed in the 1960s as part of MacArthur and Wilson's famous theories on Island Biogeography. The theory dictates that species have either an r or a K reproductive strategy. r-strategists are related to the rate of production of a species and so these species produce large numbers of offspring, have short lifespans, and have a low probability of survival. 

K-strategists are dictated by the carrying capacity of an ecosystem, these species have fewer young and live longer. Offspring develop slower and they tend to have higher greater parental care and therefore greater chance of survival.

All this information is pertinent at this time of year as the country erupts in a reproductive fever. Everywhere organisms are mating and having young and it is in this month that one of the organisms that typifies r-selection is abundant.

May is the time in which Mayflies emerge from our rivers in great clouds of dancing pixies. On some rivers, this display of flying mayflies is awe-inspiring but on my patch, it is somewhat subdued. It is still fascinating and this year has been particularly good. There are in fact 51 species of mayfly in the UK and they play an important role in the ecology of a river. They provide food for fish of many species as well as birds given the huge mouthfuls I saw the local Great Spotted Woodpecker taking into its nest.

On my stretch, I managed to identify two species, the Common, or Green Drake Mayfly (Ephemera danica) pictured below and Drake Mackerel Mayfly (Ephemera vulgata). These mayflies have hindwings and three tails. These species may be simple but they are an ancient species, mayflies were around before the dinosaurs, and they are a very successful species.

Most mayflies live but a few hours some as much as a day. I say mayflies, what I actually mean are the adult forms. They emerge from the water in mid-may as dull-winged insects, they then fly into undergrowth and moult again into a much brighter mating form.

The males dance above the water with females darting into the cloud to select a mate where they mate on the wing before the female descends to the water below. She will lay her eggs in the water and then exhausted collapse.

We tend to pity the mayfly's short lifespan but that is only the adult form. The eggs hatch into larvae which will spend up to two years developing on the river bed feeding on algae and vegetation. So feel a little less sorry for the mayfly, yes their appearance to us is fleeting but they in fact have a reasonable life out of sight. The paternal sacrifice of the adults feeds the bellies of fish and birds in a complexly balanced ecosystem. 

And to be philosophical for a moment a two-year lifespan may seem like a blink of an eye to us but this species has lived on earth for perhaps 300 million years whilst Homo sapiens has existed a mere 300,000 years, now who lives in a blink of an eye.

Harmony in nature?

 My long-term camera trapping project whilst giving me fascinating glimpses into animals' private lives also highlights interesting species interactions.

It is surprisingly uncommon for more than one species to appear on camera at the same time. Birds are much more tolerant of each other and so different species can be seen together but mammals are much more wary and when two species do meet it is interesting to see what happens.

For the last few weeks, I thought I had identified two different foxes using the site based on ear patterns. I had 'Speckles' who had orangey specks to the backs of their ears and 'Black-Ears' an individual with completely black ears. It turns out this wasn't as good an identifier as I thought. Two foxes were sighted this week, both with black ears. The interaction between the two was interesting, the last interaction was a post-aggression bout of gekkering but these two individuals seemed much more comfortable with each other.

What was more interesting was the presence of a male muntjac. This youngish male is missing one antler and is present whilst these two foxes are. It seems unconcerned by them but was still wary, you can see it keeps an eye on where they are but is relaxed enough to settle into some grooming. 

This may seem like unusual behaviour for predator and prey but in actual fact, it is unlikely that any fox would actively hunt an adult muntjac. The risk of injury would be too great for a fox to risk, one wrong move and its ability to hunt later could be impaired. Unlike wolves, foxes are not pack animals. They can exist in extended family groups and it's common for two vixens to work together to raise young but this never extends to cooperative hunting. A pair of foxes would have more chance of bringing down a deer but this has never been a hunting strategy. Foxes fill a niche in which they scavenge and prey on rodents and birds, pigeons and pheasants being a favourite.

This clip shows three individuals sharing the same space and time, it's a rare illustration of a certain harmony in nature, a knowledge of eaches position in the ecosystem, and an awareness of the nature of the other.  It is sometimes too easy when wildlife watching to focus on the individual but a better understanding is gained when you consider the individual or the species in the context of the interconnectedness of the habitat. Nature is wonderful and much of that wonder comes from the complexity, thousands of species in an ecosystem reliant on one another woven into an intricate pattern of inter-reactions.                                                   

Time is the fire in which we burn

 As Dr. Soran said in Star Trek: Generations quoting a Delmore Schwartz poem – “Time is the fire in which we burn”. It is this quote to which I have been drawn this week. With my master’s studies fully completed I now find myself with the time to return to processing the vast quantities, I have assembled regarding my patch.

Hazel Trees I planted 8 years ago as whips

I have visited my patch and recorded every bird and animal species nearly every week for twenty years. In 2014 I started a long-term camera trapping project that has now expanded to include two further cams – otter cam and badger cam. This produces sometimes up to 1000 images and video clips a week to process. Alongside this, I record some environmental data, this year including water quality information.

All this data is compiled first in rough on paper, it then has to be transferred to my database and then Excel spreadsheets for detailed analysis. I have cut some of the work down by only fully analysing the data on a five-year cycle but even then I rarely have time to go into the statistical analysis I would like to.

I have spent the past few weeks updating the spreadsheets and graphs for my trail cam information. It was while I was looking at the Wood Mouse data that I started to see the telltale sign of the standard population oscillation trend reminiscent of the work of Lotka-Volterra. I began to wonder if I could correlate the data against those of Tawny Owl and Fox and see if the patterns matched. I realised then that these cycles represented generations of mice. A Wood Mouse has a life span of perhaps 12-18 months in the wild and so the mouse I saw on the camera was certainly not the same individual I saw in my first video recording.

Life is fleeting, I recalled, VGY and ZTG the first pair of swans at the Mill who were so familiar to me that they would come to my whistle, the now long deceased and Half-Tail the resident old Dog Fox who vanished two years ago, and the fat badger that was blind in one eye. In 20 years, individuals had come and gone and recently I have struggled to identify individuals to the same level. Life is hard, little Huey the hedgehog who I wrote about in the last post died of parasite infestation during the week.

20 years may seem like a long time but looking at the data it’s still not enough yet to identify meaningful population trends, not with such a small sample size as just me recording. Even if I recorded for another 20 years which health providing is possible, I am still not certain I would have enough data. You see more data is never enough, you just need more. The more you get the better its quality. Of course, by sending in my records to the local Ecology Unit and Birdtrack means my effort is reserved for posterity but I won’t be around to see what comes next.

I look at the landscape of the mill and I can look at the trees I planted, like the cluster of Hazels that now actually look like trees but at a larger scale I contemplate the course of the river. It’s clear from the topography where the river used to run and where it runs now, but that was thousands of years of change and there is no chance that I will ever see any natural change in the course of the river. I sit beside huge plane trees at the pub recalling that they are evident in the pictures taken in the late 1800’s.

We species each have a life span, an allotment in time, and it’s up to us to make the most of it. If I were to be an oak tree and see 500 years, I still would want to know what happens next, that’s the curiosity of human nature and so I must content myself with my allotted span and make the most of it. I may never complete the data because it never will be completed but I can have fun watching the annual cycles and remember that the fragility of life is the very thing that gives life purpose.

 

Intersections

The last few weeks down the mill have been somewhat dull. The weather has been on the whole uninspiring and there have been very few winter arrivals and I am missing the summer visitors. There is a form of stillness hanging in the air most days and the wildlife, like most of the population seemed to be hiding away.

I often wonder what it is about being in nature that I find so appealing. On the whole, this feeling is ineffable but there are elements that can be teased out. One element is that of chance. I am not a twitcher by nature nor do I have the patience for sitting for long hours staking out the animal in question instead I rely on happenstance.

The chance encounters I make with wildlife were exemplified today as I made my weekly rounds. Much of my patch was flooded and the water too deep for my wellingtons. As I patrolled the bankside, walking stealthily so as not to surprise any Teal I came across a Fox.

I was standing on the bank watching the swirling water when down the slope on the other bank a rather large healthy fox totted. He spotted me about the same time I spotted him and the two of us regarded each other a moment. I considered the likelihood of this encounter, we each live different lives and our separate paths had intersected on this riverbank at this time. Had I been a few minutes earlier or later, or the water just a few centimetres higher then we would never have met.

What was Mr Fox doing I wondered, I doubted it was hunting for a start the gait was quite sedate and his posture did not strike me as hungry. Additionally, the small birds around us both seemed at ease with him. I have seen many foxes in my time and the Great Tits and Blue Tits make a very distinct sound when alarmed by a fox, it’s very different in tone and speed to the threat of a Sparrowhawk. On the whole, they seem to be aware of when a fox is predating and not just passing by. Like me, the Fox was out patrolling his territory and today our paths coincided.

A second encounter occurred some twenty minutes later when further upriver on my patch I spotted the electric blue of a Kingfisher’s back sat in a bush. Like the fox, it wasn’t particularly bothered by me and allowed me to take a seat and watch as it tried to fish in the silt swollen river. Another intersection of happenstance. The Kingfisher doesn’t normally fish on this stretch preferring a quieter stretch with more trees but given the swollen river and the darkness of the water had adjusted itself to fish in the shallows where the river was not so fast.

My camera trapping exploits highlight how fragile these intersections with wildlife are. Last week I was 20 minutes later than the otter by the river and I missed the Roe Deer by a mere 5 minutes another day. Three minutes or twenty are as good as a day in these cases. One can imagine that all these animals go about their days in quiet disregard of each other and in particular me. Each time we cross paths is a moment of coincidence, of a myriad of factors. You never know which intersection you will get and that I guess is the appeal. I have been visiting my patch for nearly 20 years and it is these encounters that add the requisite excitement that holds my interest. 

Morality in Nature?

 

 Morality is not something often consider in natural history, the very framework of studying wildlife precludes the analysis of right and wrong. In nature there is only life and death something that was brought into focus this weekend and prompted these thoughts.

Much of scientific methodology encourages independence from the test subject in the case of the ecologist these are the birds and animals we observe. I have written before about my views on anthropomorphism and their place in study. I find it hard to be entirely cold and calculating when observing wildlife, spend enough time doing so and you will soon begin to understand the patterns.

I have watched swans for many years and have seen at first hand their different personalities. Whilst their behaviours may only be analogous to our own emotions there is some level of personal processing occurring within them, the more complex the animal the more obvious this becomes. Just look at how Elephants mourn their dead or Orangutan’s care for their young.

So, what prompted this internal dialogue? I spent some of the past weekend photographing birds in my garden. Taking time to practice with my camera and appreciating the common nature of their behaviour. Once I had done this for a few hours I returned inside. It was then that I was called back to the garden to see a Sparrowhawk that had caught something and landed on the pergola.

Sparrowhawks are relatively common to my garden and I have several photos of them perched in the tree and some of them devouring their unlucky prey. A thrill of excitement flowed through me. This was nature in action, an example of a hunter in its prime feeding to survive. It was only when the hawk moved to the birdbath and revealed the deep orange red breast of a robin in its talons that my interest instantly changed to horror.

Two robins visit the garden. They are delightful birds and highly inquisitive. They potter about gardeners looking for grubs and can be quite easily encouraged to feed from the hand. When I supposed the Sparrowhawk had caught a starling or sparrow as it normally did, I was fairly non-plussed, I had some thought of the life ended but in reality, starlings and sparrows were faceless. The robin was something different. It had a stronger identity. Perhaps the identity is born from its cultural relevance in the UK, the iconic Christmas bird or maybe it is their generally friendly nature. Either way this death shook me more. So much so that I followed my mother to frighten the hawk away even though the robin was past saving. The interaction shook us both and left me considering my prejudices. The sparrowhawk was doing what it does naturally, something I was fine with as long as it took from the faceless masses or birds to which I had less of a connection with.

So where does this revelation leave me. For one I can acknowledge how connected I become to wildlife, how I seem to value one species above another and accept that nature will do as nature does. Lastly that to be a good naturalist one needs to allow one’s emotions to embrace the world where instead the ecologist may stand remote and calculating, the naturalist does their best work when immersed in their subject and connected to it on the deepest level. What the robin incident showed me was the conflict between the scientific ecologist in me and the naturalist, and I think it is a blend of these two approaches that help me to understand the natural world all the better.

 

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.