MARINA ZURKOW
Artwork at Allenheads, “Exploring Nostalgia,” photo by Sharon Bailey Crazy… Moles are traditionally nailed to fences – it’s a way of counting coupe so the molecatcher gets paid. More on this after I visit Allenheads Contemporary Arts (ACA), an arts centre in the moors of rural Northumberland. Just for context, I looked into molecatchers and…
Seeing Thomas Bewick preparatory drawings in the flesh at the archive today, with archivist June Holmes. Yes, I don’t get out enough and don those WHITE GLOVES. It was a thrill. Bewick’s work is astonishing – firstly, because of the level of detail at such a tiny scale, but also because he worked varying degrees…
… made explicitly poetic by two visits I had in the last week with taxidermy artists. First was Emily Mayer, an amazing animal artist in Norwich. She lives + works in an old workhouse infirmary, and makes exquisite sculptures – some taxidermy, some found materials like scrap metal and plastic bits and downed wood (see…
Owen, I like to imagine that you are Chief Squirrel Liaison for the Guardian. Owen, can you hear me? Do you heart the Red and hate the Grey, as much as your photos convey?
Wild Chillingham Cattle are known as “fairy cattle” for their small size and tufted red fur in their ears; they are genetically distinct from any other (including their relatives the White Park Cattle, who have black ear fur).
Nice overview of the cattle- history and genetics found at the BBC web site. The cattle, who live in northern Northumberland, have been inbred for 700 years; in the 13th century the park around Chillingham Castle was enclosed to protect the cattle from the Border Reiver rustlers. These are wild cattle that have never been…
The article “The Squirrel Wars,” by D.T. Max, that ran in the NY Times in 2007 on the Red vs Gray struggle has a wonderful mid-section devoted to the House of Lords discussion on the subject. As a perhaps-important underscore, the House has cut hereditary peers’ membership by 90% in the recent decade. Lady Saltoun…
Well! Sad but inevitable use of animals as symbols. The squirrel of course is cute and wonderful, and was at one time well-adapted and in balance with its native habitat. But c’mon – I’ve been keeping quiet and recording “just the facts” about the critters – and it wasn’t hard to find this unsurprising (lock)step:…
+ + + + 22,586 Grey Squirrels trapped since January 2007 (statistic from the RSSP) + + + + This is a screen shot of the Northern Red Squirrels home page – a volunteer protection group: A link from their web site led me to an article in the Telegraph from April 2009, in which the Prince…
Sorry. I can’t stop myself. Here’s the best picture yet of a red squirrel. If ever there was a reason to protect the Reds, it’s their supersonic selfdom. Though this one looks wily enough to defeat the Pox.
In the manifold and often ugly ways people interrelate with animals, Bewick’s wood engravings portray the specifics of rural northern England at a time when conditions, politics and views toward the land and nature were changing (urbanization, privatization of land, and the disappearance of the commons). Bewick escapes nostalgia, although many of his tiny, delicate…
This in May 9, 2009, from the New York Times, courtesy Una Chaudhuri: The history of animal escapes in New York City, collected in the archives of the city’s newspapers, reads like a feeding schedule at the Bronx Zoo — elephants, horses, wolves, bulls, monkeys, bears, goats, lions, deer and a six-foot boa constrictor named…
Well I’ll be; who knew? The Royal Entomological Society, that’s who. I am sad they only do even years – the next National Insect Week is in 2010 But they continue to host competitions like Close Encounters: …and to offer loads of information on the National Insect Week web site. There’s some great contextual material…
This image freaks me out, as well it should. from Wikipedia: Ponies began to be used underground, often replacing child or female labour, as distances from pithead to coal face became greater. The first known recorded use in Britain was in the Durham coalfield in 1750. In later years, mechanical haulage was introduced on the…
I’m not sorry that the squirrel-human gyre keeps widening. There was apparently a time, not long ago, that the Squirrel Clubs of the Scottish Highlands had their sites on the Reds. This week the BBC published in a historical report, ‘Send Me Tails of Red Squirrels’ that …from 1903, there was an active effort on…
Friend Richard O’Flynn (whom I will ask for a close reading) alerted me to the 1973 UK Public Information Films of Tufty the Red Squirrel. BBC News published a tribute to Tufty in 2006: Tufty is a colossus of public information. Though just a small squirrel, he was a phenomenon who bestrode childhoods from the…
This is from a wondrous article in the NY Times today on ant research (thanks, NN). The mysteries unfold: Two harvester ants (Pogonomyrmex rugosus) from adjacent nests engaging in ritual warfare, pushing in a display of force but not actually harming each other. It is thought that colonies use these mock battles to gather information…
Apropos nothing except looking in depth at Victorian naturalists, I found this passage by Gosse from a digitized Google Book copy of “The Romance of Natural History” (1863) Gosse’s use of the “you” seems more choose-your-own-adventure than Victorian nature narratives. He declares in the preface that he’s taken an aesthetic approach, and while he denies…
A few morsels from the New York Times’ January 2009 article on “Saving a Squirrel by Eating One” article. If you are so enchanted as to sample the cute critters, the last excerpt certainly puts a dent in the argument for delighting in consumption: Enter the “Save Our Squirrels” campaign begun in 2006 to rescue…