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nym_wibblyThis weekend is the RSPB's Big Garden Birdwatch, where they ask people to record the birds they see in an hour and submit the data. They have decades of data now and it's been vital to conservation efforts, charting the terrible decline in the UK of common species like Starlings and the rocketing rise of the now-ubiquitous Collared Dove, which arrived in the country when I was a kid. The website is simple enough to use, but I don't think it's particularly informative. It's trying so hard to be cool and internet-era that it obscures the point: Sign up, fill in the web form (or print one you can post), make the hot beverage of your choice, and watch the birdies in a local park, space, or from the comfort of your window. If you see no birds, that's fine - they need to know that too.
This year, they've got a little extra bit on the form to ask about mammal sightings over the past year - how many squirrels, hedgehogs, badgers, deer, etc. We used to have thriving hedgehogs who acted like they owned the street. About ten years ago, over a single year, they vanished. I miss the spiky, trundling things so much, and their breeding-season antics on my lawn and next door were great value entertainment for the price of a few nuts or a serving of cat food. They were well looked-after in these few streets, with food, nest boxes, and even volunteer-vet-supplied flea treatments when we could catch one (which isn't hard if you're brave enough to just grab. They have zero fucks to give and just roll into a stubborn ball of spikes until you go away, and they don't notice when you dab on a blob of colour-coded Tip-Ex on a couple of spikes to show that this hog has treatment this month). We overlook a large green space that should've provided good habitat around the edges where it's left scrubby and unmanaged.
We had a particular character among our regular hogs, who got named Ramming Speed on this street because he invariably put his head down and rammed another hedgehog during his visit. It's a common behaviour, but this small male couldn't stop. He even rammed babies and, once, a flowerpot. I hope we can save them, or at least figure out what's causing them to vanish from areas where they once thrived. Meanwhile, I can report two multiple fox sightings over the past few weeks, after a lifetime where I'd only glimsped a pair, once for about ten seconds, in 45 years.
This year, they've got a little extra bit on the form to ask about mammal sightings over the past year - how many squirrels, hedgehogs, badgers, deer, etc. We used to have thriving hedgehogs who acted like they owned the street. About ten years ago, over a single year, they vanished. I miss the spiky, trundling things so much, and their breeding-season antics on my lawn and next door were great value entertainment for the price of a few nuts or a serving of cat food. They were well looked-after in these few streets, with food, nest boxes, and even volunteer-vet-supplied flea treatments when we could catch one (which isn't hard if you're brave enough to just grab. They have zero fucks to give and just roll into a stubborn ball of spikes until you go away, and they don't notice when you dab on a blob of colour-coded Tip-Ex on a couple of spikes to show that this hog has treatment this month). We overlook a large green space that should've provided good habitat around the edges where it's left scrubby and unmanaged.
We had a particular character among our regular hogs, who got named Ramming Speed on this street because he invariably put his head down and rammed another hedgehog during his visit. It's a common behaviour, but this small male couldn't stop. He even rammed babies and, once, a flowerpot. I hope we can save them, or at least figure out what's causing them to vanish from areas where they once thrived. Meanwhile, I can report two multiple fox sightings over the past few weeks, after a lifetime where I'd only glimsped a pair, once for about ten seconds, in 45 years.
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Date: 26 Jan 2019 10:40 (UTC)A few years ago, I went back to visit the rock platform at one end of the beach where I grew up. I remember the little tidal pools on the rock platform as full of brown and green and red and purple sea anemones, and star fish, limpets, small crabs, periwinkles, and little fish trapped there with the tide.
When I went back there were no anemones. No anything. It was all just... barren. That hurt me. It hurts to see living things just vanish from an area well within the space of a human lifetime.
I hope your hedgehogs come back, and I hope my anemones do too.
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Date: 27 Jan 2019 21:43 (UTC)no subject
Date: 28 Jan 2019 16:06 (UTC)