Daily Archives: March 22, 2011

Redwing and blue tit

Posted on by
Reply

In the village today, lesser celandine flowering.

Quite close to where I ride on the road, a redwing. Apparently, it has not yet migrated to the north.

This is a video about redwings.

The bird feed at the house-shaped feeder is almost finished. Still, a blue tit comes.

A bit later, a male blackbird on the ground.

Still later, a magpie and a great tit on the lawn further away.

Long-tailed tits build a nest: here.

The national bird of Sweden is the Blackbird Turdus merula, otherwise known as the Common Blackbird or Eurasian Blackbird, though, of course, in Sweden it is not known by any of those names but as Koltrast: here.

Reed bunting, godwits, hares

Posted on by
Reply

Along the ditch near the railway track, common butterbur flowers.

Today, to the nature reserve where Baillon’s crakes have nested. Coltsfoot flowers.

Near the entrance, a male reed bunting is sitting on an old yellow reed stem, singing. This is my first reed bunting this spring.

This is a reed bunting video.

Grey lag geese and tufted ducks in the ditches. A Canada goose flying overhead.

Quite some teal. Lapwings.

A male shoveler. A male common pochard.

A little grebe flies not far above the water. Then, it hides in a reedbed.

Many coots and moorhens. Magpies.

Oystercatchers. Gadwall ducks.

In the northern lake, the number of black-tailed godwits has increased to maybe 400. Sometimes, they all take flight, calling: very impressive.

Great cormorants. Black-headed and lesser black-backed gulls.

A blue tit on a tree. On the other side of the big canal, Egyptian geese and oystercatchers.

In the northern meadow, a hare. Then, another hare jumps from the dike across the ditch to the northern meadow. It starts cleaning its pelt. It is March, and the hares behave like real “March hares” in their mating season: they run after each other, not minding that they come close to me. Then, a third hare.

On the lake bank near the railway, a white stork.

Shovelers. Shelducks. If you look closely between the many black-tailed godwits, you discover a few redshanks.

Near the bridge linking the two parts of the reserve, a great crested grebe nest in a reedbed.

Australian nazi is Afghan occupation mercenary

Posted on by
10

Kenneth Stewart's Facebook image shows him on Remembrance Day in Kandahar

Not just in the United States armed forces, nazis (and other criminals) are welcome to help occupy Iraq and Afghanistan (contrary to unwelcome gay people).

From The Age in Australia:

Victorian neo-Nazi used as medic in Afghanistan

Staff Reporter
March 23, 2011

A NEO-NAZI organiser from Victoria has been working as a private military contractor in Afghanistan, mocking locals and holding secret ceremonies commemorating the deaths of German soldiers in World War II.

Kenneth Stewart, 36, has worked as a military-trained paramedic, accompanying aid workers around Afghanistan. His Facebook page shows a swastika flag in his room in Kandahar, and another picture shows him surrounded by Afghans he refers to as ”my nignogs” with a friend adding the comment ”it’s lovely to see a white man back in control of the subhuman”. On Stewart’s Facebook page he regularly makes disparaging comments about Afghans, Aborigines, Jews and others.

He has worked as a medic for several aid groups based in Kandahar, including the United Nations Development Program.

The Age made several attempts to contact Mr Stewart, but received no reply.

In Melbourne, he helps recruit white supremacists to the local branch of the Southern Cross Hammerskins, an international neo-Nazi group. He described himself on one internet forum as a ”skinhead, mercenary, pork-eating viking; not bad just misunderstood”.

Anti-facist groups in the US say there are growing numbers of neo-Nazis working in the expanding private military sector, and that the Hammerskins are considered to be among the best organised and most violent neo-Nazi groups in America.

The beliefs and photos posted by Mr Stewart have been condemned by the United Nations and the contractor who hired him on their behalf.

Spokesman Brian Hansford said the UN was ”horrified by these … disturbing images”.

On Armistice Day last year, Mr Stewart posted on a white supremacist website that he and his colleagues in Kandahar had a service commemorating World War II soldiers, including Germans and Italians ”that did what they thought was right regardless of which side they were on”.

The Age has not been able to establish who Mr Stewart worked for in Afghanistan last year, but it is clear from photos on his Facebook page that he was doing similar work.

One Australian security company that has employed him said it repudiated any far-right views and said the images he posted on Facebook should be removed.

Security experts say any Nazi or racist references could risk endangering the Coalition troops fighting under the NATO banner, including personnel from the Australian Defence Forces.

In the US, an intercepted 2009 email purported to show Oregon fascist organiser Randy Krager warning his colleagues not to email him about his racist skinhead group while he was working in Afghanistan. The email read: ”All communications from the mid-east are monitored by dept. of defense and/or cia … so I will have some contact but will not be able to discuss any business, not even vaguely.”

The Southern Cross Hammerskins also organise music festivals where far-right bands perform in front of vetted audiences. Their next festival is on the Gold Coast next month.

Helen Redmond exposes the lie that the U.S. war on Afghanistan was about liberating women–and describes the struggle of women themselves for equality: here.

Most Britons unsure of Afghan mission aims – poll: here.

Art exhibition for South African flamingos

Posted on by
2

This is another lesser flamingo video.

From BirdLife:

Artist aims to raise a million Rand for Kamfers Dam flamingos

Tue, Mar 22, 2011

On Wednesday 23rd March 2011, an exhibition of new works by Jeremy Houghton, inspired by the Near Threatened Lesser Flamingo Phoeniconaias minor will open at the Saatchi Gallery, London.

The exhibition will be raising funds in support of the Kamfers Dam wetlands, a conservation project centred on the largest Lesser Flamingo breeding population in South Africa. These wetlands contain a unique man-made breeding island, designed and created by Mark Anderson, Chief Executive Officer of BirdLife South Africa.

At times, up to 60 000 individuals -more than 50% of the southern African population- are present at Kamfers Dam, and in 2007-8, the breeding colony produced an estimated 9,000 chicks.

But flooding and contamination by sewage now threaten the future of the flamingo colony. The breeding island is currently submerged, eggs and chicks have been lost, and many flamingos are reported to have departed for other wetlands.

Jeremy Houghton

Jeremy Houghton is one of the UK’s most exciting emerging artists. He has been selected as one of the British Telecom Olympic Artists for the London 2012 Olympics, and has worked as the official artist of London Fashion Week.

“I feel strangely indebted to the flamingo, which I first encountered at Kamfers Dam”, Jeremy Houghton explains. “These beautiful creatures have given me thousands of hours of inspiration in front of many a canvas. So when the opportunity arose to give something back to them, I jumped at it.”

He added: “Mark Anderson has not only been a great source of help and inspiration for my paintings, enabling me to get closer to these magnificent birds than ever before, but he also demonstrated how my art could potentially make a difference to their survival. The forthcoming exhibition of my flamingo paintings at the Saatchi gallery is intended to highlight the plight of the Lesser Flamingo, whilst also providing an opportunity to secure their survival. My aim is for the exhibition to raise one million rand for the Save The Flamingo charity, allowing life in and around the wetlands to thrive, rather than just attempt to survive.”

1 April 2011: A quarry in Scotland, which is owned by building materials company, CEMEX, has played host to two unusual visitors, when two birds thought to be Greater Flamingos were spotted wading in the restored loch in Cambusmore Quarry near Callander in Perthshire, Scotland. According to Europe’s largest wildlife conservation charity, RSPB, this could be the first time Greater Flamingos, which are better known for being resident to Africa but does visit parts of Europe including Spain, have ventured this far north: here.

A new publication finds a significant mismatch between the protected area network in Africa, and the key habitats occupied by the continent’s most threatened birds: here.