Watch birds, don't shoot them!!!

Sorry, I've been in Spain bird-watching without good internet connections, but then I return home to this from our birding guide:

We’re being asked to pay for the destruction of buzzard nests to subsidise the shooting industry. This is from DEFRA, whose Minister is a landowner and rejoices in game shooting, from a survey by the game and shooting industry.
They’ve already reduced Hen Harrier numbers to near zero in England and now want to do the same to Buzzards.
They even want the taxpayer to cough up over £300,000 for it.

Sign the petition at this URL; it even gives the US as its first country choice, so not only of interest to Brits...In fact, it is of interest to the entire world. 

Minister for Wildlife and Biodiversity, DEFRA: Stop the subsidy for Buzzard nest destruction.

www.change.org

The Buzzard is an indigenous protected bird of prey that is about to be persecuted by DEFRA subsidy. It is supposedly to protect a tiny fraction of...

Fantastic Ceramics Japanese Style – by Jill Fanshawe Kato

If you go in to any of the 450 Japanese restaurants in London, you might well come face-to-face with ceramics by Jill Fanshawe Kato. The Tsurukame on Gray's Inn Road have these lovely pitchers on display sitting on a piano, while the counter at Blossom in City Point, near Moorgate tube station, supports a huge, globular narrow-necked jar by Jill.

Stoneware pitchers by Jill Fanshawe Kato.
The bamboo are in another vase behind!

These are advertisements for Jill's work, which can be seen in galleries across southern England as well as Glasgow, Edinburgh and Cardiff. Inspired by Japanese ceramics and by nature, her creations are wonderful statements in swaths of colour, bold shapes, and naturalistic images. I particularly like the pitcher shown on the right here, with a jay painted in a white oval. The pouring spout of the pitcher mirrors the bill of the jay, both facing upwards to the left in optimistic expectation.

Having taught ceramics at Goldsmiths College, University of London for several years, Jill now does workshops open to all in Devon. Her new schedule is:

2012 Pottery courses at Coombe Farm Studios near Dartmouth, Devon. www.coombefarmstudios.com
May 21-25	'Inspired by Nature'
September 14-16	'Creative Clay'

Jill also does special exhibitions and commissions across the globe. Her work challenges the more subtle Hamada school of stoneware carried on by the Leach Pottery in St Ives, Cornwall. More colourful and more playful than the Hamada tradition, Jill's ceramics are conversation pieces as well as utilitarian items. Really interested persons can make a special appointment to see Jill in her London studio; see her website for info.

Cormorants in the dead of winter

Nothing like a bleak water scene to remind one of winter. But the birds don't seem to mind. Here are two seagulls and two cormorants on the River Wear (pronounced 'weir', maybe because there is a weir there – actually more than one). In keeping with Spotting Animals, I have also seen salmon leaping up the weir, right here in the centre of Durham.

Cormorants on the weir of the River Wear, Durham

   In Japan cormorants are used to fish for ayu (Plecoglossus altivelis altivelis), a small (ca. 20 cm) freshwater member of the salmon family, using a leash and a ring. They put a ring around the bird's neck to keep it from thoroughly swallowing down any fish, and then pull the bird back to the boat with the leash so it can disgorge the fish. It is a favourite tourist activity to watch the night-time cormorant fishing in Uji and Arashiyama in Kyoto during the traditional ayu fishing season between mid-May and Mid-October.
   I don't know what the cormorants eat here, but in the line of 'invented traditions', maybe this is an area to expand the tourist trade, here in Durham and in London where cormorants frequent the River Thames (pronounded 'tems'). Just have to find the right fishermen fishing for the right fish and get the fishermen to 'tame' the cormorants to do their work for them.

Chainsaw Art at Thornley Woods nr Newcastle

Thornley woodpecker

Otter from a tree stump

This past Sunday was a glorious autumn day, so we decided to go for a walk and hit on Thornley Woods near Newcastle. Never been before, but we happened to arrive after Tommy Cragg had just finished his series of chainsaw sculptures on dead trees along the trails leading away from the Thornley Woods information centre. Dead fascinating!

Red kite from a
tree stump

Rabbit at Thornley Woods

It turns out that Tommy Cragg, based near Consett, is well-known on the international chainsaw art

circuit, having competed in the Chainsaw Carving day at Chetwynd, BC in June 2011, winning overall Third Prize. And he won the 2008 APF Chainsaw Carving Competition sponsored by Echo in Cannock Chase, Staffordshire.  His works adorn several venues around England; see his Gallery for the enormous range of artwork he does and where those works are located.  I must say, we were impressed; the artistry is astounding. And the fact that these sculptures are all on trees that are still rooted mean they will remain to be enjoyed many years. If you are interested in how these sculptures are done, see the 4 videos on YouTube of the Chetwynd competition.
   In addition to seeing Cragg's Red Kite, we also saw two red kites in the air, two dippers in the stream, and a grey heron (Ardea cinerea), relative of the North American great blue heron (Ardea herodias). The red kites are a real treat, as they have been reintroduced to England and are now thriving. On the wing, they are one of the most beautiful birds, flashing red, black and white in the sun.

Peregrines at the Tate Modern and Other Bird Life

The birds on this blog page are one of the offered templates. I'm too lazy to customize, and I like the birds anyway. Birds are a big part of our life: with feeders in the backyard we have all the garden birds of England: great tits, blue tits, coal tits, robins, wren (occasionally), greenfinches, bullfinches, goldfinches, dunnocks, blackbirds, ring-necked doves, song thrush (rarely these days), sometimes a fly-through of long-tailed tits, and jackdaws and woodpigeons. The last two are unwelcome guests as they hoover through the feed too fast. But I don't mind fattening up the woodpigeons – we might have to make a meal of them some day the way the economy is going.

The birds seem to like it when we come to the table to eat. Perhaps they can see us through the patio door windows, but our presence must be reassuring because when we eat, the birds come in to eat, too. Maybe they think we keep away the neighborhood cats, who have at times been found to be lurking in the nearby bushes.

A recent trip to the Tate Modern was to see the peregrines that often roost on the tower. The RSPB* had set up a viewing stand with two tripod binoculars. The peregrines are one of several pairs now nesting around London and like high ledges on which to roost. The day we saw the peregrine, it looked like a feathery humpty dumpty – just a half-oval shape plunked on the ledge. Not the regal hunting bird I was expecting. Still, it was nice to spot it.

A friend with a very black eye thought he looked like a peregrine with its black face mask. Do you think so, too?

*The Royal Society for the Preservation of Birds

Walk along the Browney

So, yesterday was the hottest September 30th in a hundred years! It certainly felt good...and deserved a country walk. So we went down to the River Browney and immediately spotted a dipper (Cinclus cinclus), "scudding low over water on whirring wings", as the bird book says they do. But instead of disappearing around a corner as stated, it stopped on a point bar and showed us its white breast. The bird book also says that dippers are "best found by watching up and downstream from bridges over suitable waterways", which is where we were over the River Browney on the A690.

   Once in Colorado, we saw five dippers in a row scud past us at a picnic site along a river. We could hardly believe our eyes, and the local shopkeeper at the pet food (bird seed) store simply didn't believe us at all. But we know what we saw...


From the Browney bridge near the Honest Lawyer pub, we took a path along the river established by the Woodland Trust. Lined with oak trees, acorns crunched underfoot. The path led into fields which are being returned to woodland by the Trust. We saw the fruits of our labors last year when we helped plant trees there; they are now leafing beyond the tall grasses that have invaded the fields. A truly lovely day...And now we hear that October 1st also broke a heat record, with 30° in Yorkshire!!



Kightley, C. et al. (1998) Pocket Guide to the Birds of Britain and North-West Europe. Sussex: Pica, p. 205.