MARINA ZURKOW
I saw wild Exmoor Ponies, a feral breed of horse, up on the moors near High Green. They’ve been brought here from Devon in a land management scheme – eating invasive grasses and bracken in the hope that rarer wildflowers will flourish. They also don’t touch the heather. Exmoor ponies are a hardy breed who…
Chris Leyland, manager of the cattle, takes us on a tour – the park has some ancient alder trees Alder and cattle in bg Sometimes called “Fairy Cattle” for the unique red fur in ther ears They darken in color as they get older definitely curious about us, but on their own terms the oldest…
My first red squirrel today – actually 2 of them. Not a hard find- there is a very nice, very fancy, very comfortable, and very well-stocked wildlife hide set up in Kielder Water, at Leaplish. It’s rather National Geographic- except with no effort to conceal the lure of an arsenal of feeding stations, in all…
Fashion swings this way and that, with regard to the construction of nature on offer – its pendulum swung farther towards novel or traditional. Currently, the tastemakers want indigenous, and are beginning to pay well for green (privileged locavores and nationalized tree planting subsidizers, to name two user groups willing to cough up the surcharge)….
There aren’t many sites in defense of the grey squirrel. Here’s one written in the first person, with some good arguments on defining “nativeness:” http://www.grey-squirrel.org.uk/ “NATIVE BY BIRTH – CONDEMNED BY ORIGIN” Key points at a glance 1. “Nativeness” is based on political boundaries rather than sensible concepts of the range of a species, or…
Looks like lynching. More info on trap methods here.
Another cheerful celebration of the squirrel commando, Paul Parker, just in from the Daily Mail. Paul Parker loves grey squirrels. Especially when they’ve been slow-cooked for eight hours with thyme, garlic and tomatoes. Certainly my braised grey squirrel on a cherry tomato risotto – £12.95 at the Manor House Inn, 15 miles outside Newcastle, near…
Some introduced species to Britain by the Romans include: Brown hare, Roman snail, Peacocks, guinea fowl, pheasants, domestic cats and possibly fallow deer. …vegetables such as cabbages, peas, celery, onions, parsnips, leeks, turnips, cucumbers, radishes, carrots and asparagus, as well as fruit, including plums, pears, grapes, apples and cherries and nuts such as walnuts. In…
From the Non-Native Species site: The Chinese mitten crab is a native of East Asia, introduced into Europe in the 1930s. It is thought to have been transported to Britain in ships’ ballast water (juvenile crabs and larvae) or perhaps by adult crabs clinging to ships’ hulls. The species has six larval development stages and…
BBC News, June 02 2009 Hopper, who’s two and a half, made a bid for freedom by digging under a fence and making a hop for it towards a local forest. Police believe the wallaby is still in the area and believed to be hiding in the Kielder Forest. If you see him, kindly call…
from The Guardian, March 2009: “Eating the enemy – Alien species are being put on the menu in what campaigners say is the perfect green solution to save the UK’s native animals” What can be done about invasive alien species? Governments and conservationists try to eradicate them, sometimes at enormous expense, but one group of…
From an article by Paul MacInnes / guardian.co.uk, Friday 5 June 2009: Prince Charles is the patron (naturally) of the Red Squirrel Survival Trust, and as such hates those grey bastards with a passion. So much so that rather than simply using his letter to call for action, he’s instead said that all grey squirrels…
BBC April 2009: …for 43 years, from 1903, there was an active effort on estates across the Highlands to trap, shoot and kill reds. By 1946, the Highland Squirrel Club had killed 102,900 squirrels and paid out £1,504 in bounties. Tails were submitted as proof of kills.
Links to literature: http://www.europeansquirrelinitiative.org/reports.html Including THE RED SQUIRREL Redressing The Wrong by Charles Dutton
A genetic mutation of the UK enemy squirrel threatens to out-grab even the wild and power-hungry greys: This from 2008 – seems to have been affecting East Anglia mostly. Not sure what’s happening with them now.. been quite in the news. The black squirrel – a genetic mutation of the grey – was first recorded…
Talking to Grant Burgess at the DOVE Marine Lab today about the defensive slime that bacteria produce, in order to keep from being decimated (by enemies, by antibiotics) reminded me of Alfonso Lingis’ description of the body as bodies, systems inside of systems, from his book “Dangerous Emotions”:
This from the BBC/Tyne online “The Kittiwake, a small seagull, could be driven off its nesting sites on the Tyne Bridge by Newcastle City Council. The birds are at sea feeding on fish offal discarded by trawlers and when they return in the spring to nest they may find that the City Council has netted…
The Newcastle Metro is plastered with appeals for oesophagal cancer using the ‘cute’ animal logo of the “oesophogoose:”