Ninja turtles help marine turtles

This video is called Hawaiian Green Sea Turtle on Surface with Oahu Diving.

By Martin Croft:

The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (TMNT) are celebrating their 25th anniversary by linking with The Marine Conservation Society (MCS) to help the charity save real turtles.

The ‘heroes on a half-shell’ will now act as champions of marine turtles and the issues they face, appearing in the MCS’ Cool Seas Roadshow, which will tour schools throughout the UK during 2009. …

The MCS tackles litter, pollution and other threats to endangered marine turtles, as well as promoting turtle conservation in the UK and around world.

Cretaceous marine turtle in Arctic: here.

Mass capture of Indonesian Box turtles driving them towards extinction: here.

British ex-miners remember 1985 strike

From British daily The Morning Star:

Miners mark twenty-fifth anniversary of bitter strike

(Thursday 05 March 2009)

FORMER miners recalled the bitter events of the 1985 miners’ strike on Thursday 25 years after it took place.

The anniversary marked the beginning of what went on to become the longest-running dispute since the 1926 General Strike.

The resulting hardship, violence and bitterness affected a generation and many miners still resent those who carried on working.

Ex-miner Roy Sargesson said that if he saw a non-striker now, he would still ignore them. “Once a scab, always a scab,” he said.

The year-long dispute pitted the National Union of Mineworkers, led by Arthur Scargill, against Margaret Thatcher‘s Conservative government.

Clashes between miners and police over pit closures began in Yorkshire but quickly spread across the country.

Former union official Mike Appleyard said that the police were “dreadful” and had “a lot to be forgiven for.”

“There were riot shields and batons against men in trainers and plimsolls. Young men, the salt of the earth,” he said.

“I was arrested and thrown in jail with shackles on me. The police officer just stood me up, gave me a number, photographed me.

“His first words were, ‘do you know any trade union leaders? Do you know any communists?’ Straight up.

“This was Britain, anybody would think this was South Africa or some fascist state, but this was Britain,” he said.

See also here. And here.

Billy Bragg: With 25 years’ hindsight, Maggie’s bitter victory over the striking miners unleashed forces that led directly to this economic crisis: here.

FORMER union leader Arthur Scargill broke his silence on the miners’ strike at the weekend, accusing Margaret Thatcher of blocking five separate deals that could have ended the dispute: here.

See also here.

LABOUR MP David Drew urged the government on Monday to release secret files covering MI5 activities during the miners’ strike: here.

Margaret Thatcher blocked Soviet aid for striking miners, files reveal: here.

How Margaret Thatcher planned to undermine miners’ union: here.

Former leaders of the scab Union of Democratic Mineworkers (UDM) stole almost £150,000 from a miners’ care home charity by billing it for work done on their own properties, Nottingham Crown Court heard on Tuesday: here.

Former president of the Union of Democratic Mineworkers Neil Greatrex was found guilty on Tuesday of stealing thousands of pounds from a miners’ care home charity: here.

The former leader of the scab Union of Democratic Mineworkers (UDM) Neil Greatrex was jailed for four years on Friday for stealing almost £150,000 from a charity which cared for elderly miners: here.

Coalfield communities continue to face significant health problems and economic difficulties even decades after the pits were closed: here.

Women Against Pit Closures: here.

British economic crisis continues

The economic crisis continues; also in Britain.

FURIOUS London City cleaners protesting against unfair sackings blockaded a finance corporation’s luxurious headquarters yesterday despite heavy-handed bosses’ attempts to silence their campaign: here.

THE government announced plans to increase the cost of NHS prescriptions and dental treatment in England on Thursday despite calls for the charges to be abolished: here.

A TOP Communist Party of Britain (CPB) official has accused Gordon Brown of “giving public ownership a bad name” with his massive bank bail-outs: here.

SOLOMON HUGHES on the failed bankers feeding the Tory Party: here.

Cormorants and zanders

This is a video about a zander in the Brechtsee in Germany.

According to the Baltic Sea Portal:

The diet of [great] cormorants [in Finland] consists predominantly of the most abundant fish species of shallow waters. The amount of fish needed by a cormorant is about a half kilogram per day. Three fourths of the diet during the nesting period consists of economically valueless species, such as roach. Of economically valuable species, perch makes up one fifth of the total amount of the diet, whereas the proportions of Baltic herring and zander are less than five percent.

Though the proportion of zander is small in the cormorants’ diet, this fish may mean life or death for a great cormorant.

Zanders are big fish. The biggest ones are too big for a cormorant to gulp down. If it tries so nevertheless, the zander may get stuck in the cormorant’s gullet; and the cormorant may die.

According to Dutch daily NRC Handelsblad of 12 February 2009, page 18, there is a maximum height and circumference for fish beyond which cormorants cannot eat them: 7.4 centimer height, 23 centimeter circumference. Which corresponds, for zanders, to 48 centimeter long. Height and circumference are more important than length.

Atlantic herring mega-shoals: here.

Economic crisis worsening

The economic crisis continues.

The annual summit of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) in Bangkok last weekend followed what is becoming a familiar pattern at top-level international gatherings. Amid a sharp downturn in all 10 member states, ASEAN leaders pledged themselves to economic cooperation and free trade, even as they resort to protectionist measures: here.

Australian economy heads into recession: here.

The New York state budget crisis and the debate over the “millionaire’s tax”: here.

Britain: EUROPEAN WORKING TIME DIRECTIVE – a tool for increased exploitation and hospital closures: here.

Jane Fonda’s anti Vietnam war film on DVD

This video from the USA is the trailer of Jane Fonda‘s FTA film.

By Jennifer Merin in the USA:

FTA: Jane Fonda Protest Doc Resurfaces on DVD

Tuesday March 3, 2009

FTA is a doc with a fascinating past.

Featuring a singing and dancing Jane Fonda and Donald Sutherland, the film follows a touring cabaret troupe, protesting the Vietnam War in performances outside US military bases and in meetings with disillusioned military personnel. Shortly after its 1972 release, the doc was pulled from theaters and, poof!, disappeared from public view.

Thirty-some years later, FTA’s negatives were discovered, a print was made and the doc is back. Amazingly–or perhaps not so amazingly–the film is still fresh and relevant, the songs are catchy, the skits very funny. More to the point, however, America is again engaged in an unpopular war, and protesting Veterans Against the Iraq War [sic; Iraq Veterans Against the War] are close kin to the Vietnam Veterans Against The War who serve as players in FTA.

Back from Suriname

This video is the music and lyrics, in Dutch and Sranan tongo, of the national anthem of Suriname.

Yesterday, we went to the airport for our flight out of Suriname.

Mostly dark night and clouds.

Today, 25 February, we arrived back. At the airport, first a kestrel. Then, a male tufted duck in a ditch. Then, a buzzard trying to catch a hare.

Suriname, 22d day, hummingbird and macaw

Suriname, 24 February.

After coming back from eastern Suriname yesterday, this is our last day.

This video says about itself:

The making of a sculpture of Barack Obama, by the well known Surinamese Artist, Erwin de Vries.

Also about Erwin de Vries: here.

One of the background sounds of the video is the call of the great kiskadee, a common bird in Suriname, also in Paramaribo city.

In the afternoon, we will go to the airport.

But in the morning, still the last opportunity to look for birds around Leonsberg.

And it would turn out that this was the best birding day of all in Leonsberg; in spite of interruptions by a few rainy showers.

In the morning, rusty margined flycatcher and tropical kingbird on a wire.

On a shrub: a blue-black grassquit.

In a ditch: tri-coloured heron, catching a fish.

Male and female variable seedeater.

Black vultures.

Great kiskadee. Buff-throated saltator.

At the ferry: twelve black skimmers together, hunting for fish near the water’s edge.

Two green-rumped parrotlets sitting on a pole in the water.

Semipalmated sandpiper.

Blue-winged swallow. Little blue heron. Snowy egret.

Blue-grey tanager. Tropical mockingbird.

Orange-winged parrots flying overhead.

A whimbrel near the Suriname river. Whimbrel sound: here.

White-lined tanager.

Then, in a leafless tree, a yellow-headed caracara. Not a very unusual bird around Paramaribo. However, that a blue-and yellow macaw sits below it is really unusual. This species occurs naturally in the coastal regions of Suriname. But catching them as cagebirds has really diminished the blue-and-yellow macaw numbers, certainly around Paramaribo.

Is this an escaped cagebird? It calls. Other macaws, who are certainly in cages, call back. The bird in the tree calls back again. Then, it flies away.

This is a video about macaws, both in captivity and in nature.

Then, a much smaller and less brightly coloured bird, much more common about Paramaribo, but beautiful nevertheless: a pied water-tyrant.

A short-tailed swift high in the air.

Ruddy ground-doves.

A turkey vulture, driven away by a roadside hawk.

A pale-breasted thrush on a wire.

A grey-breasted martin.

A wattled jacana in a ditch.

The rufous crab-hawk sits on his usual tree again.

A black-collared hawk flying.

Two brown-throated parakeets in a leafless tree.

In another tree, a snail kite.

Snail kites in Florida: here.

In yet another tree, a ringed kingfisher and a scaled pigeon.

A smooth-billed ani on a wire.

A common tody-flycatcher.

A boat-billed flycatcher on a wire.

A plain-breasted ground dove on the road.

On another leafless tree, a slender-billed kite. A great kiskadee tries to drive it away, but the hawk is not impressed and stays on the branch. The great kiskadee seemingly gives up, and sits down above the slender-billed kite. Maybe realizing that, though a bird of prey, this kite eats snails, not baby kiskadees.

A monarch butterfly.

Two tropical kingbirds on a palm tree.

A plain-crested elaenia.

Two crested oropendolas just behind the swimming pool.

A pygmy kingfisher diving from a branch into a ditch.

Near the sluice, teju lizard and green garden lizard.

Twenty-five black skimmers resting on the muddy Suriname river bank.

A wattled jacana.

A house wren singing from an electricity pole.

A green-throated mango hummingbird sitting on a branch, quite close.

Then, as last Leonsberg bird, a species that we have not seen before: blood-colored woodpecker. Male and female on a small tree.

From the bus to the airport, near Onverwacht: a cattle egret.

After Onverwacht, a swallow-tailed kite.

The last bird of Suriname, which we see at Zanderij airport, is also a swallow-tailed kite.

March 2010. A brightly coloured, new subspecies of Mountain-Tanager has been discovered in Colombia. It was first found in the Serranía de los Yariguíes Mountains, near ProAves’ Cerulean Warbler Bird Reserve in 2005: here.

Cock-tailed tyrant (Alectrurus tricolor): here.