We’ve been watching avian dog fights. The woolly-necked storks in our part of the world (and there are now eight of them) often perch on the roof corner of a three-storey building we can see, clearly acting as sentinels. Just under the eaves at that corner are nesting red-wing starlings.
This is where the problem comes in. So, woolly-necked stork Number One lands on the roof and is immediately strafed by red-wing starling Number One.
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The stork calls in reinforcements and stork Number Two lands next to him (her). Then the red-wing calls in reinforcements and within moments we have a full scale dog fight going on.
This happens quite often and sometimes the storks are clearly the winners because they stay put, but on other occasions they give up and fly off, leaving the red-wings as victors.
Good news from England is that a pine marten, a ferret-like animal the size of a cat, has been seen in Yorkshire for the first time in 35 years.
Pine martens were once the second-most common carnivore in Britain, but today it is the second rarest. The animal causing the excitement was captured on camera set up by the Yorkshire Pine Marten Project, giving biologists a chance to find out more about these shy creatures.
More good news from Britain is that Atlantic salmon are finding their way up the Ecclesbourne River in Derbyshire for the first time since the Industrial Revolution in the mid-1700s.
The salmon disappeared from rivers in the region because of industrial pollution and the construction of weirs, which inhibited their breeding patterns.
However, 20 years of work by England’s Environmental Agency has done the trick, cleaning up the river and creating so-called passes at the weirs to enable the salmon to reach their breeding grounds.
Time for the bad news, and moving to Brazil, where the government has removed the protected status of a vast tract of the Amazon to open it up for mining.
The national reserve, known as the Renca, covers 46-thousand square kilometres (the size of Denmark) in the heart of the Amazon basin, an area of conservation importance as well as being home to many indigenous people, sadly the area is also rich in gold and copper deposits.
And finally, I’ve never quite understood this, but torn and worn-out blue jeans have been available for years, brand new and at considerable cost – I don’t understand because I’ve always managed to wear out or tear my blue jeans myself.
Anyway, to go one better one can now buy blue jeans in Britain that have been pre-mudded, presumably to show that you are a rugged, bush-type person. Interesting.
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When we were the proud owners of a genuine 1946 Willys Jeep we often took part in Jeep cross-country rallies, which involved collecting a lot of mud. Back at camp around the fire, we ‘Jeepies’ would often put forward the idea of selling some of that mud to upmarket 4×4 owners who never left the tar and were certainly never off-road.
Source: The Week: The Best of the British and Foreign Media
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