The Nature News Thread.

[Crispy]

Mrs Snake was out again today. Asleep. She looks like she's got Maggie T's eyes, but it's only the colour of her nictating membrane when she snoozes.

They are green with round pupils normally. Wouldn't want to get too close, although she's non-poisonous, I bet she never cleans her teeth.

Saw a lizard dispatch a moth quite neatly today, and found some real alien bugs whilst shovelling compost. Size of cheesey wotsits they were.

ooh, don't put them in with your plants - they'll probably be some witchitty grub that'll eat all the roots.

 

[Calva dosser]

I wondered about that, so I put them in with the toads.

The boss is a bit of a gardening bio-diversity type, I would've squished them or given them to the chickens personally, but they looked as if they were about to pupate into something rather splendid.

A Cessna perhaps.

 

[Crispy]

I wondered about that, so I put them in with the toads.

The boss is a bit of a gardening bio-diversity type, I would've squished them or given them to the chickens personally, but they looked as if they were about to pupate into something rather splendid.

A Cessna perhaps.

 

[Calva dosser]

Oh, and Orang Utan, if you wish to discuss the molecular biology of Caenorhabditis elegans, that is for Science and nature. Here, feet are put up and lazy observations made

 

[Calva dosser]

Crispy, wtf? that looked like a toy aeroplane stuck to the back of a late Carboniferous amphibian.

 

[Crispy]

shh, it's hatching!

 

[onemonkey]

eww

"University of Manchester researchers are ridding diabetic patients of the superbug MRSA - by treating their foot ulcers with maggots."

read on (if you must)

 

[Calva dosser]

That is not coffee table, or even Armagnac bench stuff.

Neither is it about flowers, gardens, woods and silly small animals. Apart from maggots.

I thought it was quite common practice to use maggots in cases of necrosis. They lurve festering pus. To them it's like pottage before the steak. Just have to get the little buggers off before they fancy the main course.

If I had MRSA I'd go for maggots everytime.

 

[Phenol]

I'm rarely being serious, bricabrac -please don't be cross.

Sorry PieEyeYippyEyeAy, didn't mean to sound agressive. Rarely serious myself!

4.45 a.m. woken by the most glorious morning chorus ever. It was like all the birds had woken up at once and were totally rejoicing at having made it through another night! 15 minutes later it all went (relatively) quiet.
What a wonderful thing a spring morning chorus is!
Do you ever hear it where you live, people?

 

[sparkling]

Sorry PieEyeYippyEyeAy, didn't mean to sound agressive. Rarely serious myself!

4.45 a.m. woken by the most glorious morning chorus ever. It was like all the birds had woken up at once and were totally rejoicing at having made it through another night! 15 minutes later it all went (relatively) quiet.
What a wonderful thing a spring morning chorus is!
Do you ever hear it where you live, people?

Yes its great isn't? The loudest bird I hear here is the Chaffinch. I also love the little chaffinch so bright and quick with flashes of white on their wings, but not quite as much as the blackbird who sing beautifully and are so brave.

 

[Pieface]

4.45 a.m. woken by the most glorious morning chorus ever. It was like all the birds had woken up at once and were totally rejoicing at having made it through another night! 15 minutes later it all went (relatively) quiet.
What a wonderful thing a spring morning chorus is!
Do you ever hear it where you live, people?

not often - when I'm still awake and twitchy from the previous night's misbehaviour I sometimes am kept awake by it - they start up very early and then stop again - is that because the sun's up??

They're getting ready for the big PR day:

Apparently its International Dawn Chorus Day on May the 6th. Anyone planning on getting up early or staying up late to hear this? http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/programmes/radio/dawn_chorus/

Let's all do recordings on monday morning and post them!

 

[geminisnake]

We went to Tentsmuir Reserve today and saw quite a few orange-tip butterflies. They've only just spread to this area so Took some photos of them, two small coppers(butterfly) and a green tiger beetle.

I will post link to photos when I download them. My battery is flat now.

And moths are only in decline in some areas of the UK, but they never tell you that

 

[madamv]

We fed lambs today, held a guinea pig, watched goats climb rocks and giggled at two horses and a donkey having a game of 'it'. Although it wasnt a real farm, the children love being so close to the animals whom didnt seem to mind their company either.

Yesterday I saw a purple/black flutty, a damselfly, green shield bug. (not at all like the stamps).

 

[geminisnake]

What a wonderful thing a spring morning chorus is!
Do you ever hear it where you live, people?

Hear the birds virtually every morning till I put earplugs in

If anyone knows where I can get a female chaffinch to shut the little male one out there up I'd appreciate it Unless it's a territory call

 

[sparkling]

I'm going bird watching today. I'll bring back the list of what we see

 

[Calva dosser]

Hope you didn't forget the shooter, you may have seen a lesser spotted warbling Bill Oddie soaring on the thermals above the ruins.

 

[maya]

Five different species of birds greet the daylight outside my window in the morning...
The earliest little bugger start chirping happily around 4:30, then its happy hour multicultural bird species chorus until ca. 6:45, then small clusters of tweet-tweet and flapflap and BOUM! skratch! RIP! as one of the more greedy magpie types fly up to the windowsill and try to steal the (shiny, silvery) window fastener which to them might look like a spoon or royal sceptre for nest decoration...
Then the bastards continue to flap and sing and chirrup and shit and tweet for the entire morning, extending this (sporadically) to the afternoon and not shutting up for good until sundown, when after some few quiet* hours the bloody chatter start again...

(*quiet from birdshouts, that is, but not taking into account the noisy soundblasting neighbours- subpar human scum!)

(The only thing which partly redeem the evil beasts is that at least they aren't doves! Doves are vile, like rats with wings!)

 

[eme]

Cycled / Walked through Walberswich Nature Reserve on Friday... it was full of tweety, rustley nature and was v. pretty in a bleak, reedy way...

[looks at nature table...]

 

[sparkling]

Went to Rye Hill nature reserve and sat in hides with people with long lenses and tripods and green camaflage jackets and talked about who was sleeping with who and where we are going for our holidays but we did see.

1. 
   1 herron
   swans
   lots of mallard ducks
   A duck family which was sooo cute
   tufted ducks
   geese including an adorable geese famiily including mum, dad and loads of babies all toddling along in between.
   Coots
   Moorhens
   A flash of a magnificent Jay
   magpies
   vaious sparrows and other sundry birds all too numerous to identify and mention

We were promised kingfishers but then we always are at Rye House and they never turn up.

Lovely stroll with borrowed binoculars.

Then re read the history of the Rye House plot which I did during my history degree so could show off a bit.

 

[geminisnake]

Went to Rye Hill nature reserve and sat in hides with people with long lenses and tripods and green camaflage jackets and talked about who was sleeping with who and where we are going for our holidays but we did see.

They can't possibly be 'real' birdwatchers!! They chatted!! Real birdwatchers would have told you to shush and frowned at you, and looked down their noses at your clothes, binos, etc!!

Your list reminded me we saw several herons yesterday, and various sea birds and ducks.

 

[sparkling]

They can't possibly be 'real' birdwatchers!! They chatted!! Real birdwatchers would have told you to shush and frowned at you, and looked down their noses at your clothes, binos, etc!!

.

They did look very serious and scary. They could obviously see something that we couldn't as they kept those lenses fixed on something in the distance although they did have a fiddle around with the length every now and then. We felt unwanted with our chocolate bars and chat and so would move onto a new unhibitied hide only to be flushed out by more green jacket wearers after a short while.

The pub lunch was nice though.


On a serious note what I want to know is why do birds sort of wipe their beaks on branches and things they perch on? Do they have some kind of scent gland there and are marking their territory or is it that the rasins I've put out for them are sticky and they are just cleaning their beaks?

 

[Pieface]

then small clusters of tweet-tweet and flapflap and BOUM! skratch! RIP! as one of the more greedy magpie types fly up to the windowsill and try to steal the (shiny, silvery) window fastener which to them might look like a spoon or royal sceptre for nest decoration...

I used to keep my cheese in a carrier bag out my window when I was a student to stop people eating it. I woke up one morning to this unnerving tapping at the window - I lived 11 floors up a tower block - and pulled back my curtain to see a massive crow feasting on my pound of extra strong cheddar

Fucker didn't even fly off when I gave it my best "shoo"

 

[geminisnake]

On a serious note what I want to know is why do birds sort of wipe their beaks on branches and things they perch on?

Nothing to do with the raisins, they do it here too. They is just being clean.

Today we went to Glenshee. We saw some of these

and these

but some of the lambs had horns(ie were rams)

and for some reason all the black cows had calves that were golden/auburn colour like the one on the left, didn't see any like the one on the right

We also encountered several near suicidal birds!
A buzzard nearly flew into us from the verge, a blackbird dived in front of the bike, a pheasant came out of a field to 'challenge' us then sensibly changed his mind and several finches(gold & chaff) nearly got blown in front of us!!
Oh the joys of biking in the spring!

 

[sparkling]

What gorgeous photos Gemini


I had roast lamb last night for dinner with a bit of rosemary it was delicious

 

[foo]

nice thread PieEye.

i've got some notveryhappy nature news.

we've been keeping our eyes on 12 little ducklings and their mum, pootling about near my mum's boat. the number's gone rapidly down over the past couple of weeks....and now there's just one little duckling left.

d'you think that's why they (animals birds) have so many sprogs - cos life expectancy is so short...?

 

[Pieface]

totally - everything seems to eat them - even pike will have a duckling.

 

[foo]

ooh, maybe that was the bugger who ate them. there was a trapped pike between the bank and mum's boat the other day.

it was huge! and the way it flapped and thrashed about was a bit alarming. we tried to help it get out - but lost it in the end.... :-\

i'm turning into a bit of a bird watcher (which has suprised me) i lay on the roof for ages watching them the other day - it was lovely. mum's got her own robin and a beautiful whassitcalled (teeny green river bird....it'll come back to me my head's gone after a heavy weekend)

 

[Pieface]

Kingfisher??

 

[Orang Utan]

They're blue

 

[Pieface]

I know.

Can you think of a small green river bird?

She's thinking of a kingfisher I reckon.