Beavers, Otters and a Feathery Assassin

Quite an amusing read this week on how the Angling Trust is calling for the beavers on the river Otter in East Devon to be shot. As some of you may already know, a single beaver was seen on the river last summer and now there is a family.  DEFRA however are wanting to evict the beavers.  Their main argument being that the beavers carry a parasitic tape worm Echinococcus Multilocularis (EM) which could spread to other wildlife, even humans. But this tapeworm is already carried by a wide range of other wildlife and is widespread across the Northern Hemisphere.  Beavers that have been introduced by formal programmes on the River Tay have been screened for it and it can prove difficult to find.  Experts believe it is highly unlikely that the animals introduced in Devon would be carriers.

You would think that the Anglers would relish the return of the beaver after 500 years for the beaver does not eat fish as he is a vegetarian.  The otter on the other hand, a creature steadily returning in some parts of the country is an exorbitant fish eater so one asks, will the otter be the next bright light of wild life chosen to be banished from our rivers?

A Gamekeeper friend a few years ago approached me in an almighty rage.  “A fox is killing my pheasant poults”.

“How can you be so sure it is a fox?” I asked.

“There is about fifteen all with their heads chewed off”, was his taut reply. “But I’ll have him tonight, your fox or not Allan.”

The fox that he was referring to was Dini.  Once Teddy had simmered down I asked him how many pheasant poults were in the pen which was located down in the woods.  “Five hundred or so”, was his reply.

“Then it wasn’t a fox was it?” I retorted.

“What are you talking about? Always trying to protect that blasted fox.  Why wasn’t it?”

“If a fox had got in there you would have lost fifty or a hundred poults because those who understand and have studied foxes know just how they have got such a bad reputation.  A chicken coop for instance, a fox by nature is a very highly strung, nervous animal in an attack situation.  He is a specialist in stealth and surprise. Quietness and stillness are the two ingredients in which he lays out his store, so once inside and his chosen chicken has been grabbed, the other birds inside the coop start to flap about wildly and uncontrollably.  The situation the fox finds himself in now is intolerable, noise coming from all quarters, noises that must be extinguished and dealt with as efficiently as possible.  The Coup de Grace to the birds making the noise is death defyingly quick.  Always the same grab and bite to the neck on which he’ll hang onto until the noise stops and the fox will carry on until every chicken is dead and not a sound can be heard.  Then he will leave with his one chosen chicken and that is the trademark of destruction that has followed the fox down through the centuries.  If the rest of the chickens were to stay still and quiet they would remain unharmed for it is noise and commotion that the fox finds himself just unable to tolerate or come to terms with. 

Teddy the Gamekeeper didn’t buy this of course but he finally agreed to let me go with him that night up to the pheasant pen as long as I promised that if it was a fox he was going to shoot it with no interference from me. 

The day soon came round to night and it was now 11pm and there we were led down 40 metres from the pheasant pen waiting on a beautifully still middle August evening. 

The owls were in full song.  One Tawny owl in particular was in quite breath taking form, his twit twoo was ringing out, reverberating right across the woodland but as the twit twoo got louder due to the owl getting nearer I sensed an unease within the pheasant poult pen.  Soon the noise was right over our heads, I nudged Teddy in the side.  We laid dead still.  With one last twit twoo the owl glided down from the Beech tree onto the top of the pheasant pen.  The Tawny owl sat on the pheasant pen, he was looking for his route in, the one that he had taken before and within seconds our feathery assassin was inside and the mayhem commenced.  Teddy sprang up onto his knees, gun in hand.  I grabbed the barrel of the gun and pushed it downwards towards the ground.  “The bet has been lost old friend, if you had wired over the top of the pen properly in the first place the owl would have been unable to have gained passage into the pheasant pen thus saving the fifteen poults last night and whatever has been killed tonight.  An easy ready meal.”

We were soon up at the pheasant pen pulling the wire from the top making it that much easier for the owl to make his escape and I must say the speed he swooped out of that pheasant pen, the phrase, “Bat out of hell” sprang to mind.

Ignorance and inaccuracy can blight our countryside and rob us of such creatures that words are just unable to describe or quantify.

Please watch my short film of a badger taking time out from his frolicking family on a warm summer night.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDq-ektv_2s

One of my Badgers relaxing with not a care in the world.

Biblical Badgers

As I sit here looking out across the valley, my two dogs howling in the back ground at the church bells that are ringing out across the countryside. The skylarks high in the sky all competing to be heard in amongst life’s tapestry of colour and ambience of sound.  Poppies in the distance, an orangey red with a gentle swaying movement in amongst the greens of our gorgeous English landscape.   Something so very biblical the morning after the longest day of the year. 

Last evening about 7:15pm I left the house, fly rod in hand, a couple of slices of bread, a lump of cheese and a can of cider.  The evening was going to start with a few hours fly fishing down on the river followed by my annual summer solstice acquaintance with my Badgers up at the Badger sett.  I walked through my garden where a couple of Muntjack and three Red Deer were nibbling about on my lawn looking for the most edible treats to satisfy themselves with.  There was a time when we used to try and keep them out but to be honest, the damage they do is more outweighed by the beauty of their presence.

When I arrived on the river bank I selected a fly of choice and soon I was in the most heavenly bliss.  A warm summer evening, a gentle flowing river, alone with the thoughts of the moment which were mainly on just how lucky this particular river was to be graced, like most Cotswold rivers with the British Isles natural fish, the Brown Trout.  Notoriously so difficult to catch and  whatever age you are when you do catch one, it is the exact same feeling you had when you were lucky enough to have caught your first, excitement, satisfaction, it is  an achievement of wit over nature.  A barbless hook in an imitation fly.  Even once hooked the way a Brown Trout fights, he is never yours until safely on the bank.  You can never relax with a rising, twisting, darting Brown Trout which is so beautiful as it writhes out of the water and then splashes back down.  You try to keep your line tight, but not too tight.  You try to tire the fish as he continually tries to get to the faster running water.  This is a sport that is a sport in the true sense of the word.  Fly fishing practised properly always gives the fish a much stronger chance of getting away than it does landing one.

 The evening time raced away and the sun soon began to set but I stayed on for another hour or so. As I continued to cast my fly, I noticed in the meadow behind me the Muntjack grazing with the Red deer.  Two of the deer had fawns at foot.  They had retrieved them from the long grass, knowing that down here by the river it was safe for them to do so to enable their fawns to break cover and enjoy the now dewy bite of fresh young grass.  They were making the most of the opportunity before the sheep were once again let in on the river meadows to have their fill. 

As I sat and watched them, melancholy thoughts entered into my mind of the days gone by when I had loved to race home and tell my own mother and father what I had seen and how breath taking the experience of the river had been.  My own mother and father must have felt much the same as I do when my own children tell me how much they adore the experiences and beauty of this amazing piece of England. 

It was now 11:45pm, I picked up my three trout and put them carefully into my bag.   The river had been bountiful.  Now it was time for me to go and toast the health of Daddy Cool and his family on the summer solstice, the longest day of the year. 

I walked along towards Beech Wyn, the night was mild and the sounds of the Little Owls and Tawny Owls were breaking the silence and as I got nearer the woodland, the Bats were ever more in evidence.  Always fascinating how they seemed to fly right at you and around you but never ever touching you. 

Once inside the woodland, I made my way to the Northern boundary, the spot where Daddy Cool had taken his cubs once they were big enough to follow him.  I passed the boulders that I had put around the main sett, to form a protection program for the Badgers now over a year ago.  Mozart’s Magic Flute had proved to be a great success.  The Coopers continue to devote their time and efforts in a no nonsense and considerate fashion. Their enthusiasm in protecting this woodland’s Badgers has never diminished. 

At last, I was on the Northern boundary.  There I sat and got the tin of cider from my bag and waited.  After ten, fifteen minutes or so, the Badgers graced me with their presence.  The cubs were immediately in to the hustle and bustle of their wrestling and play fighting.  Amusing how the bigger they get, the more their play fighting is dampened down with firmness by their mother, for when she did appear, she had one cub on her back and another one cadging a lift on her hind leg and a third one hanging off her right ear. They are now almost as big as she. 

After fifteen minutes watching their amazing showcase, Daddy Cool made his appearance.  Such a handsome beast.  This moment has always been so very special.  I raised my can of cider and toasted his and his family’s health.  Another successful season, unlike our own England football team.

Watch my short video of Daddy Cool and his family playing. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wA7KRudwYE

Badger in a leafy woodland.  A beautiful sight to behold

Orwellian Wrestling

Another Father’s Day in which I have been spoilt with some wonderful gifts. I am always touched by the high esteem in which my children and Jackie always hold me in. 

Yesterday evening we had a delightful meal in our local restaurant to celebrate Sam’s 18^th birthday, Father’s Day, Sam obtaining a place at The Royal Agriculture University and Sophie passing all her second year medical exams. It was a very jolly evening had by all and  the conversation flitted from local through to national and international affairs dominated by the main talking point which was the birthday gift my daughter Sophie was about to present to her brother Sam,  which was an imminent climb of the O2 arena.  Listening to them, their excitement was quite palpable. It is amusing how even now as they are getting bigger that their gifts to each other excites us all in the same way as the gifts that were bestowed on them as they were growing up by their mother and I. 

An interesting development this week came from the Humane Society International UK urging farmers to reject the Badger cull and to become more Badger friendly instead, because clearly protecting the species is one of the best ways of mitigating the risk of infection spreading.  The call follows the publication of new research by Jon Bielby and his colleagues suggesting that even small scale Badger culling might increase rather than reduce the spread of Bovine Tuberculosis.  Research has shown that culling a single Badger from a family can cause a perturbation that spreads TB. Quite ironic how behaviour of ignorance can cause such dire deprivation not just in nature, but the whole of life in general.

 I listen to the miserable news now coming out of Iraq. It was in the early nineties with the operation of Desert Storm led by “Storming Norman” Schwarzkopf to end one of the world’s most brutal regimes of Saddam Hussein’s.  His statue in Baghdad was eventually toppled on April 9^th 2003 and here we are in 2014 and Iraq is one of the most dangerous places on earth.  The disturbances throughout the Arab uprising, Egypt in particular springs to mind.  When the West cries out for regime change hoping in their naivety it will make the peoples’ lot in that particular country so much better when in reality, it is the total reverse. Whereas in these dictatorships the majority of law abiding people can bring up families and have a certain degree of stability in their day to day lives and a degree of certainty of when the next bottle of water can be obtained and the next loaf of bread can be placed on the table.  Democracy is the finest old wine of them all.  It takes hundreds of years to get it right, in the UK’s case, just over four hundred years. But we seem to have an appetite to blast democracy into countries that realistically are simply not ready for it.  Democracy is an evolution.  It is an evolution of fairness, justice for all and above all else, humanity.  So many peoples’ and families’ hopes have been given an expectation that realistically could never ever have been achieved on a timescale that quite honestly is literally comic book. A Hollywood type of leadership has been brought in to world affairs where the bigger the crash, bang, wallop the quicker these sad situations would be resolved, when in reality it is time, education, patience, nurturing and very often help, the type of help that is tangible to these fledgling democracy economies that is needed.  Simply an economy that filters that particular country’s wealth and resources from the great to the humble is the most fundamental attribution to any democracy.

Speaking of democracies, my Badger sett practices nature’s democracy in the woodland on a daily basis.  The cubs are now almost the size of their parents and the play fighting and wrestling is a constant source of entertainment.  A pecking order is found and an equilibrium is practiced to the degrees of tolerance that a lot of world societies would be happy to call their own.

Please watch my short film of my Badgers wrestling and frolicking in a Cotswold woodland.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKjT28UNUTE&feature=youtube_gdata

Badgers wrestling in the woodland.

Natural England, Buzzard good show!

Last Wednesday on my journey to work, in and around the bends on the country lanes, the hedgerows looked quite magnificent with the tall grasses and cow parsley. Whilst marvelling at this, as always, I was greeted with the flacking and flailing of wings; as I got over the top of the brow the creature giving this fractious display revealed itself as a buzzard. I had obviously disturbed him in the midst of his acquisition of a breakfast snack.  As he forced his wings down through the air to give himself lift, leaving a panic-stricken weasel behind, one couldn’t help but notice the extreme energy being used to force this giant bird back into the air space. Once at the right height to glide on the thermals, one can see why it is said that there is no bird in the British Isles that perfects this craft more masterly. Needless to say, the weasel did not hang about, scurrying into the long grass and cow parsley to reach the hedge once on the other side. 

I was so pleased this week to hear that Natural England has seen sense and turned down a licence request by some sporting estate to shoot and trap ten buzzards.  If this request had been granted, it would have opened the flood gates and we would have been back in the position that we were in the sixties through to the eighties when to see these birds one had to be in a bird sanctuary, due to the fact that they were all but wiped out throughout the British countryside. The absurd excuse given for this mass killing was that with such birds in the countryside it would render the ground nesting birds nearly extinct.

What amuses me these days is that when I think back to the sixties and seventies, I can see on every gate, every hedge and hanging from every tree stoats, weasels, jackdaws, rooks, crows, squirrels, magpies and jays; all killed mainly to protect the pheasant and partridge populations.  It did nothing for the wild birds of the country, for there is no doubt that the natural British bird population was far more plentiful and diverse than what it is today, although numbers across all regions are now starting to stabilise.  It would be nice to say the numbers are going northwards but from my experience and observations, if anything, for a lot of our British birds their numbers are largely in a southward trend. 

To kill weasels, stoats, buzzards, hawks, kestrels and kites on a pretence that they are having a devastating effect on British wild birds is absolute nonsense and clearly not true for I witnessed just Wednesday morning the aerial arch enemy of the game keeper trying to make a breakfast of a ground enemy of the game keeper, the weasel.  Let nature be the checks and balances and a countryside will remain more diverse, more natural and far more robust to the month on month element change that we have all witnessed throughout the whole of our lives.  The architect of the master class that surrounds us all in this beautiful countryside is Mother Nature herself, whether it is your shooting or your hunting or your fishing, if the main aim is to artificially enhance certain elements of nature at the expense of another, you will only create an imbalance and intolerance that the integrity of nature continues to struggle with.

In other news, it was great to see this week the 89 year old veteran Bernard Jordan from the 1944 D Day landings get himself up from his old people’s home across the channel to be once again on the shores of Normandy.  Quite an amazing story.  A lesson for all the leaders of the States present to look up to.  The sort of spirit shown by this elderly gentleman was the spirit that makes the United Kingdom what it is to this day and is the kind of spirit which is now very much needed more than ever to protect our British badgers from another roll out of this cursed 2014 badger cull. Please watch my short film of woodland dwellers, living in the way in which nature intended: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtDwSyOnF5A

Countryside is a much impoverished place without the magnificence of the buzzard.

Rape and Murder is Not Civilization.

I was watching a rather interesting programme last night on the life of the late Conservative, Sir Kenneth Clark who was an authority on Art that was brought into millions of ordinary people’s living rooms in the late sixties through a television documentary series called Civilization.

Although I was aware of the series, I certainly did not know that the programme was commissioned by Sir David Attenborough who was controller of BBC 2 at that time.

It was a programme which sent an awful lot of working class families to Radio Rentals to rent their first TV sets.  It really was a very much talked about programme of its time and so compelling for family viewing in an age when travel was the preserve for the rich, so little wonder that everything Sir David Attenborough has done since has been equally compelling, almost infectious to watch. 

However, ten minutes before the end of this engaging programme a phone call from a rather stunning looking lady in the village wanting to know if we could help with the removal of a tick from just below her little dog’s right eye. The gorgeous creature in question jogged down from her cottage to ours with her two mutts in tow.  The tick was soon despatched amidst the odd growl and seriously dirty looks and I don’t think I am going to be on that particular mutt’s, dog tail wagging list for some considerable time to come. 

I got back to the television set as quickly as possible but to no avail, the programme had gone off into the ether. 

In a week that has seen the most distressing news again come out of India with the raping of two young teenage girls who were then hung from a Mango tree for no other reason than the gratification of upper caste Indians honestly believing that they can behave and treat the lowest caste of all in a fashion akin to their own domestic animals.

Also in Pakistan, the most liberal city in the country, Lahore, a young woman was stoned to death by her family outside a courtroom where passers-by and the police looked on and did nothing, almost taking it to be the norm and when all came to all the husband of the three month pregnant woman had strangled his first wife for no apparent reason than him fancying a change.  His sons forgave him for murdering their mother and this seemed to be enough to permit him to carry on unpunished in that society. 

Civilization, the programme of Kenneth Clark’s and Sir David Attenborough’s of the late sixties kicked off with Kenneth Clark’s immortal words, “What is Civilization?” Well, it certainly isn’t India or Pakistan with the way it conducts its society with this wretched caste system.  An outdated, barbaric, feudal, totally unjust and baffonic system, where your treatment in life depends solely on how far up the social ladder you happen to be born in. So very true of so many countries around the globe.

The upper caste of India and Pakistan are the Judges, the Doctors, the Police Commissioners, the Law Makers, but what is so fundamentally wrong to me from these countries is we have companies that in around about way put bread upon the table of our own British workers, Land Rover, Jaguar, the Tata Group, World Steel, the owners of which are some of the richest people in the world.  In our own NHS, some of our Doctors and Nurses are selected again from these upper caste families.  There is a hypocrisy here that would be in India’s, Pakistan’s and the United Kingdom’s interest to rectify. 

The newly elected Prime Minister of India has said he will be looking into these atrocities, as if it is something so very new.  Who could forget the brutal rape and murder of a young girl on a bus last year? His persona is of surprise, disgust and dis-belief.  Where has he been for the last fifty years?  There has been no change as the establishment of the day has seen little mileage in trying to make life better for the lowest castes in India.

All these atrocities were brought to the world’s attention by the devastating, shocking images on a modern, everyday smartphone.  Somebody just happened to have one around all the hullabaloo and commotion at the time. These images were sent around the world for people to see, to judge for themselves and then make up their own minds on just how far civilization has penetrated these particular worlds.

On a lighter note, this year’s cubs in my Badger sett are going from strength to strength.  Daddy Cool and Mother Badger looks after them in quite a divine fashion.  Life seems to be very good.  Food is plentiful and for me their whole existence and the way they conduct their lives throughout the woodland is a civilization that I would be proud to be a part of.

Please watch my short film of Daddy Cool and his young brood playing and having fun.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K864-eZ6PCY&feature=youtube_gdata

Daddy Cool looking over his sett.