Puffins counted on Farne Islands

This video from Britain says about itself:

Puffin-cam: Live from the burrow

May 17, 2013

The very first National Trust “Puffin Cams” have now been installed in the Farne Islands puffin breeding colony off the coast of Northumberland. The cameras will record highlights throughout the breeding season, charting the ups and downs of these plucky little birds. See how the cameras were installed and find out what it means for the future of the Farnes colony. For all the latest updates, follow @NTsteely, Tweet #puffincensus or check out our web pages at www.nationaltrust.org.uk/northeast.

From Wildlife Extra:

Puffin count starts on Farne Islands

5 yearly census underway

May 2013. A Puffin census has begun at the north east’s most amazing wildlife habitat, the windswept Farne Islands, as National Trust rangers attempt to find how many breeding pairs of these iconic birds live on the Islands.

Every 5 years

The census takes place every five years and records date back to 1939 when 3,000 breeding pairs were recorded.

2008 showed first decine

Until 2008, each survey since the census began 65 years ago showed a steady increase in pairs of puffins on the Farne Islands, but the last count indicated numbers had fallen by a third. The 2008 survey recorded 36,500 pairs of puffins across eight islands compared to 55,674 pairs living on the Islands in the 2003 census.

How to count a puffin

This spring and summer a team of eleven National Trust rangers will be travelling between eight of the Farne Islands to carry out the mammoth task of counting every single bird. Puffins nest underground in burrows, which means the rangers will have to put their arms into the holes to make sure that the nests are occupied during the comprehensive count.

David Steel, Head Ranger for the Farne Islands told us: “We’ve been monitoring a small section of the Farnes every year since the last census in 2008 and have seen a small increase in numbers in this area. We’re hoping to see an increase overall numbers this year but you can’t tell after the winter we’ve just had.”

Puffin factors

Factors for why the Puffins continue to flourish on the Farne Islands include better protection, good sources of food and a lack of ground predators and the availability of suitable nesting areas. However rangers on the Farne Islands fear that the extreme colds weather this winter which has led to a higher than average mortality rate may affect numbers.

Coldest March since 1962 – Could impact breeding

David Steel continued: “This March was the coldest on record since 1962 and this could impact on breeding numbers. The extreme winds affected the puffin’s ability to feed as they made their way back to their summer breeding grounds. It will be interesting to see the results of the puffin census which we will have available to share in July.”

Nest cameras

For the first time, nest cameras have been inserted into puffin burrows to record the birds’ behaviour in intimate detail.

Related articles

• Today’s News: Farne Islands’ wardens count cost of poor weather on Puffin population (journallive.co.uk)
• Farne Islands puffin census starts (independent.ie)
• Farne Islands’ puffins stand up to be counted (itv.com)
• Puffin’s diminishing with climate change (bigpondnews.com)
• Farne Islands ‘puffin census’ starts (bbc.co.uk)
• VIDEO: Islands start ‘puffin census’ (bbc.co.uk)
• Farne Islands ‘puffin census’ begins (arunbabyveranakunnel.wordpress.com)
• Experts’ Concern For Breeding Puffin Numbers (news.sky.com)
• Puffin census to determine the number of birds begins (itv.com)

Drowned medieval English town Dunwich, new research

From the University of Southampton, in Britain:

-Secret streets of Britain’s Atlantis are revealed

09 May 2013

A University of Southampton professor has carried out the most detailed analysis ever of the archaeological remains of the lost medieval town of Dunwich, dubbed ‘Britain’s Atlantis’.

Funded and supported by English Heritage, and using advanced underwater imaging techniques, the project led by Professor David Sear of Geography and Environment has produced the most accurate map to date of the town’s streets, boundaries and major buildings, and revealed new ruins on the seabed. Professor Sear worked with a team from the University’s GeoData Institute; the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton; Wessex Archaeology; and local divers from North Sea Recovery and Learn Scuba.

He comments, “Visibility under the water at Dunwich is very poor due to the muddy water. This has limited the exploration of the site.

“We have now dived on the site using high resolution DIDSON ™ acoustic imaging to examine the ruins on the seabed – a first use of this technology for non-wreck marine archaeology.

“DIDSON technology is rather like shining a torch onto the seabed, only using sound instead of light. The data produced helps us to not only see the ruins, but also understand more about how they interact with the tidal currents and sea bed.”

Peter Murphy, English Heritage’s coastal survey expert who is currently completing a national assessment of coastal heritage assets in England, says: “The loss of most of the medieval town of Dunwich over the last few hundred years – one of the most important English ports in the Middle Ages – is part of a long process that is likely to result in more losses in the future. Everyone was surprised, though, by how much of the eroded town still survives under the sea and is identifiable.

“Whilst we cannot stop the forces of nature, we can ensure what is significant is recorded and our knowledge and memory of a place doesn’t get lost forever. Professor Sear and his team have developed techniques that will be valuable to understanding submerged and eroded terrestrial sites elsewhere.”

Present day Dunwich is a village 14 miles south of Lowestoft in Suffolk, but it was once a thriving port – similar in size to 14th Century London. Extreme storms forced coastal erosion and flooding that have almost completely wiped out this once prosperous town over the past seven centuries. This process began in 1286 when a huge storm swept much of the settlement into the sea and silted up the Dunwich River. This storm was followed by a succession of others that silted up the harbour and squeezed the economic life out of the town, leading to its eventual demise as a major international port in the 15th Century. It now lies collapsed and in ruins in a watery grave, three to 10 metres below the surface of the sea, just off the present coastline.

The project to survey the underwater ruins of Dunwich, the world’s largest medieval underwater town site, began in 2008. Six additional ruins on the seabed and 74 potential archaeological sites on the seafloor have since been found. Combining all known archaeological data from the site, together with old charts and navigation guides to the coast, it has also led to the production of the most accurate and detailed map of the street layout and position of buildings, including the town’s eight churches. Findings highlights are:

* Identification of the limits of the town, which reveal it was a substantial urban centre occupying approximately 1.8 km2 – almost as large as the City of London
* Confirmation the town had a central area enclosed by a defensive, possibly Saxon earthwork, about 1km2
* The documentation of ten buildings of medieval Dunwich, within this enclosed area, including the location and probable ruins of Blackfriars Friary, St Peter’s, All Saint’s and St Nicholas Churches, and the Chapel of St Katherine
* Additional ruins which initial interpretation suggests are part of a large house, possibly the town hall
* Further evidence that suggests the northern area of the town was largely commercial, with wooden structures associated with the port
* The use of shoreline change analysis to predict where the coastline was located at the height of the town’s prosperity

Commenting on the significance of Dunwich, Professor Sear says: “It is a sobering example of the relentless force of nature on our island coastline. It starkly demonstrates how rapidly the coast can change, even when protected by its inhabitants.
“Global climate change has made coastal erosion a topical issue in the 21st Century, but Dunwich demonstrates that it has happened before. The severe storms of the 13th and 14th Centuries coincided with a period of climate change, turning the warmer medieval climatic optimum into what we call the Little Ice Age.

“Our coastlines have always been changing, and communities have struggled to live with this change. Dunwich reminds us that it is not only the big storms and their frequency – coming one after another, that drives erosion and flooding, but also the social and economic decisions communities make at the coast. In the end, with the harbour silting up, the town partly destroyed, and falling market incomes, many people simply gave up on Dunwich.”

Professor Sear’s full report can be found here.

A new breed of archaeologists is using satellite imagery to unearth clues about past civilisations: here.

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British anti-bedroom tax protest

By Peter Lazenby in Leeds, England:

Leeds unites to defeat the bedroom tax

Sunday 21 April 2013

Nearly 2,000 people took to the streets of Leeds on Saturday in a protest against the coalition government‘s vicious bedroom tax.

Young and old united with disabled people, community and trade union activists to voice not only opposition to the tax but resistance to it.

The protesters marched through the city centre displaying the banners and flags of Unite, Unison, PCS, along with those of community and tenants’ organisations.

“There were home-made placards, with some saying “Can’t Pay Won’t Pay” – reminiscent of the anti-poll tax campaign which led to the downfall of Margaret Thatcher.

The marchers gathered for a rally outside the city’s art gallery.

The rally was rounded off by outstanding speeches – not from politicians but from council house tenants, the ordinary people hit by the bedroom tax. Several said they had never taken part in a protest before, making their first brave and moving public speeches.

Liz Kitchen was one of them.

“Why should I be forced to move from my home?” she said.

“I’ve been a taxpayer for more than 40 years. Why can’t my grandchildren have a bed when they come to stay over at the weekend?

“Why should my daughter be homeless when she leaves university this summer? Why is it that working people are being forced out of their homes in one of the richest countries on Earth?”

She told the crowds: “We will stand up against this tax. We will fight and we will win!”

Wheelchair-user Jenny Salpherson, kept upright by a brace around her head, faces the prospect of eviction because she has a small room in which she keeps equipment which helps her move around her flat.

“I have a tiny, two-bedroom flat which has been specially adapted for me,” she said. “There is nowhere for me to go.”

Leeds City Council came under attack for failing to adopt a “no evictions” policy to protect the 8,000 social-housing tenants hit by the tax.

There were reports of resistance and anger growing in major towns and cities across Britain.

See also here.

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• ‘We won’t put up with this’: Residents facing brunt of ‘bedroom tax’ will refuse to pay (independent.co.uk)
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British government damages wildlife

From Wildlife Extra:

Lydd Airport approval is a disaster for bugs

Conservation charities dismayed by Lydd airport expansion plans

April 2013. Wildlife charity, Buglife – The Invertebrate Conservation Trust is extremely disappointed that the Government has approved the expansion of Lydd Airport in Kent. The neighbouring site at Dungeness is known to be home to a number of rare and endangered invertebrates including the Sussex Emerald moth.

Alice Farr, Buglife Planning Manager said “We have opposed these plans for a number of years due to the impact of the airport on Dungeness, a habitat of international importance. This decision is a clear signal from the Government that the environment is of low priority and could be an indication of future decisions on development that are still to be taken”.

Internationally important as the largest shingle foreland in Europe

Alice said “Dungeness is internationally important as the largest shingle foreland in Europe. The area is of national and arguably international importance for invertebrates; including the Medicinal leech (Hirudo medicinalis), the Sussex Emerald moth (Thalera fimbrialis) and significant bumblebee populations including the UK Biodiversity Action Plan priority Brown-banded carder bee (Bombus humilis). Developing the airport so close to this site will have a detrimental effect for invertebrates”.

Several other Biodiversity Action Plan species are present on the site, including the White Spot moth (Hadena albimacula) and Toadflax Brocade moth (Calophasia lunula).

Kent Wildlife Trust dismay

Kent Wildife Trust has also expressed dismay at the decision by the Secretary of State to grant planning permission for the extension of the runway and enlargement of the terminal buildings at London Ashford Airport, Lydd in Kent.

Sue Young, the Trust’s Head of Conservation and Policy, said: “We are dismayed at this decision on many levels. The unique wildlife at Dungeness could be damaged irrevocably. The area is internationally important for the huge populations of breeding and wintering birds and supports a tremendous number of rare plant and insect species, some occurring nowhere else in the world.

Highly vulnerable

“The fragile shingle and open grassland habitats and the species they support are highly vulnerable; and whilst we are pleased to have secured agreement that the impacts of the airport development on these habitats will be monitored, we remain concerned that the damage will be irreversible.”

The Trust will now review the decision documents and work with partners to consider its next steps.

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Homeless film maker dies in wintry weather

This video is the preamble to a video Lee Halpin was making for a Channel 4 job application.

From daily The Morning Star in Britain:

Rough-sleeping film maker dies on streets

Friday 05 April 2013

A young film-maker has died as he made a documentary about sleeping rough on the streets.

Lee Halpin had planned to spend a week living on the streets in his home city of Newcastle to experience what it was like to be homeless.

He embarked upon his project on Sunday but he was found dead three days later in a derelict building in the city’s west end.

In a YouTube video, he said the project was part of an application for an investigative journalism course.

From Channel 4 News in Britain:

05 April 2013

Film-maker Lee Halpin dies during homeless probe

Aspiring documentary maker Lee Halpin has been found dead while sleeping rough as part of his research into homelessness. He is believed to have frozen to death.

Lee Halpin had decided to spend the week living on the streets in his home city of Newcastle to experience what it was like to be homeless and sleeping rough.

Speaking in a YouTube video of the eve of the project, he said he wanted to give an example of fearless reporting, as part of an application for a Channel 4 investigative journalism scheme.

But after just three days on Sunday, the 26-year-old was found dead in a derelict building in the Westgate Road. The coldest recorded temperature that weekend in Newcastle was -4 C. …

Halpin said he had spoken to a homeless charity about the rise in the number of people on the streets and the possible repercussions of the bedroom tax.

“I’m about to go and spend a week being homeless in the West End of Newcastle. I will sleep rough for a week, scrounge for my food, access the services that other homeless individuals use,” he said.

“I will interact with as many homeless people as possible and immerse myself in that lifestyle as deeply as I can.”

He concluded the video by saying he hoped it showed his willingness to get to the heart of a story.
‘The ultimate sacrifice’

Lee’s friend Daniel Lake told the Newcastle Chronicle: “No-one knows how he passed away, but we think it could have been hypothermia.

“He made the ultimate sacrifice trying to raise awareness about what was happening to other people.”

A Channel 4 spokesperson said: “We are saddened to learn of the tragic death of this aspiring young journalist. Our thoughts are with his family.”

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English countryside oral history

This video from Britain is called Sue Johnson on oral history.

By Peter Frost in Britain:

The true voices of the past

Thursday 04 April 2013

Today we take oral history for granted. We know just how valuable recording the real voices of ordinary people is to give an accurate picture of the way working people live and have lived.

George Ewart Evans was a frustrated writer until he began to record the reminiscences of farm workers in East Anglia.

He invented the new technique of oral history and we all owe him a huge debt.

George, born and raised in a Welsh mining village, became a writer and a poet contributing to the many radical Welsh magazines of the 1930s and ’40s.

Politically he moved to the left influenced by personal experience – his family had made great sacrifices to send George to grammar school and to university and as a result his father’s grocery store went bankrupt.

George supported the miners’ struggles and was contemptuous of the moneyed class, the leisured capitalists whom he held responsible for the economic and political crisis of the 1930s. Like many at the time he joined the Communist Party.

In 1934 with no prospect of employment in Wales he moved to England. First teaching at Sawston Village College in Cambridgeshire – a pioneering secondary school that was also a community centre. There he met the woman who would become his wife, Florence Ellen Knappett.

When they married in 1938 George was secretary of the Cambridge Communist Party.

After the war George and Ellen moved to a remote part of Suffolk. Ellen became headmistress at Blaxhall village school – the job offered a house.

Still writing mostly poetry and fiction, George started to hear the voices of those about him. Under his very nose was the subject that was going to occupy him for the rest of his life – the actual voices of working people. He knew they had something important to say.

His was a village populated by farm workers who had seen the virtual disappearance of the horse as the main motive power on the farm.

He saw it as an important piece of social history to record the voices, experiences, attitudes and feelings of these people in their own words. And to do it before they died and their memories were lost forever.

David Thomson, a radio producer at the BBC, lent him a tape recorder. The resulting recordings were heard on the Third Programme. Oral history had reached the airwaves.

George also realised that the recordings could be used in book form. In 1956 he wrote to Faber and Faber: “For the past eight years I have been living in the above village which is in a remote part of Suffolk and I have been struck by the number of interesting survivals here.

“The old people, who have such a knowledge of the village community which is quickly passing, are dying out and with their going much of real value is being lost. I have recorded some of the material they knew and have included it in the enclosed MS. I offer it to you as something that might be of interest.”

The manuscript became Ask The Fellows Who Cut the Hay, the first of 10 books – all still in print – by Evans.

Still worth reading they bring alive rural England after the war and before European subsidy and the scramble for profit before everything changed life on British farms forever.

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Fascist becomes Sunderland football manager

From CBC in Canada:

Paolo Di Canio signs deal to become Sunderland manager

Contract to replace fired Martin O’Neill is for 2.5 years

The Associated Press

Posted: Mar 31, 2013 5:34 PM ET

Last Updated: Mar 31, 2013 6:48 PM ET

Sunderland took a gamble by hiring Paolo Di Canio as its new manager on Sunday, empowering the inexperienced and outspoken Italian with the tough task of ensuring the relegation-threatened team retains its Premier League status.

The appointment came a day after Martin O’Neill was fired following a poor run of results and sparked immediate controversy, with former British politician David Miliband resigning from his positions as vice chairman and non-executive director of the club because of Di Canio’s openly fascist leanings.

Di Canio had a colorful playing career in the top divisions of Italy, England and Celtic, marked by sublime goals and headline-grabbing antics — notably when he pushed a referee to the ground after being sent off while playing for Sheffield Wednesday in 1996.

Then there was the straight-arm salute — adopted by the Italian Fascist regime in the early 20th century — that he performed in front of the fans of his Lazio team in 2005, earning him a ban, a fine and condemnation by FIFA.

“I am a fascist, not a racist,” Di Canio said at the time, and he has praised Mussolini in his autobiography, calling the former Italian leader as “basically a very principled, ethical individual” who was “deeply misunderstood.”

Di Canio has limited managerial experience, with his only previous job ending at third-tier English club Swindon last month after a turbulent 1 1/2 years in charge. It is a big call by Sunderland owner Ellis Short at this stage of the season. …

[David] Miliband, who contested the leadership in 2010 of the Labour party in Britain, stood down within minutes of the 44-year-old Di Canio’s appointment.

“I wish Sunderland AFC all success in the future,” Miliband wrote on his website. “It is a great institution that does a huge amount for the North East and I wish the team very well over the next vital seven games. However, in the light of the new manager’s past political statements, I think it right to step down.”

So David Miliband, rightly so, does not want to work now with a self-styled fascist. I wish he would have thought like that earlier, when he was still British Foreign Secretary and sent people to dictatorship’s dungeons to be tortured.

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Good Dutch Bewick’s swans news

This video from England is called Bewick Swans WWT Slimbridge.

Translated from the blog of warden Anke Bruin, on Vlieland island, the Netherlands:

March 4, 2013 by Anke Bruin, Forestry Department

No less than 69 Bewick’s Swans, including 6 first year youngsters (still a little gray) rested in the third Kroon’s polder wetland. Even the Chinook helicopter of the Air Force did not drive them away, they are probably very tired. ​​This morning, colleague Herman Vogel mentioned the beautiful white birds. Bewick’s Swans have been in Vlieland earlier, but never such a big group. They are migrating from the south to the northern tundra and they are quite right, they just come here to rest and recharge.

A slide show about this is here (scroll down).

Also from Vlieland: this morning the first spoonbills of spring flying.

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What freshwater seals eat

This video from England says about itself:

Some footage shot in the Farne Isles diving with Grey Seals.

Translated from Ecomare museum in the Netherlands:

Until now it was unknown what gray seals in our fresh water eat. But a gray seal which washed up dead on the fresh water side of the Afsluitdijk dam now has changed that. When scientists investigated the cause of its death they also examined what the animal had eaten. In the stomach and intestines of the adult female researchers found seven different species of fish. Perch, flounder, ruffe, zander and smelt were the most eaten. Which the seal had all caught in the IJsselmeer lake.

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Chinese deer in England

This video from England says about itself:

Chinese Water Deer on Camera Trap

Apr 27, 2012

Short video of a Chinese Water Deer buck with large tusks.
Captured in a small woodland belt on farmland near Wood Walten Fen.

By Peter Frost in Britain:

Deer visitors from the Far East

Thursday 21 February 2013

One of southern England’s commonest deer is the dog-sized muntjac (Muntiacus muntjak) but in north Norfolk and particularly around the Broads national park the small deer that you see is just as likely to be a Chinese water deer (Hydropotes intermis).

The differences between the two species are easy to spot if you can get a good sighting of the animal.

The water deer is slightly larger than the muntjac.

Full-grown water deer adults are between 50 and 55cm at the shoulder with a russet-brown coat in summer that turns paler and greyer in the winter.

Chinese water deer have no antlers but bucks have distinctive large protruding tusks. These tusks are used as weapons during the rut and for defence. Large and rounded ears sometimes suggest a teddy bear to more romantic or imaginative spotters.

Like most of these exotic invasive and unwelcome species, both plants and animals, these water deer were first bought to our shores by irresponsible aristocrats as exotic decorations for their large country estates.

The deer are spreading, and today there are believed to be many thousand Chinese water deer in East Anglia and smaller herds in places like the countryside around Woburn in Bedfordshire.

Nationally there are now so many in fact that a serious cull seemed like a necessary project.

At least that was the thinking until recent research in the animal’s native home in China bought the tragic news of the catastrophic decline in the species population there.

In China the small deer is widely hunted, sometimes for venison, but more often for inner organs used in traditional Chinese medicine.

More importantly, the enormous and well-publicised Three Gorges hydro power project on the Yangtze River is destroying or changing much of the water deer’s natural home environment.

The overall result is that the water deer population in China is plummeting and some experts say that the growing numbers in north Norfolk now represent between an eighth and a quarter of the entire world’s total.

The water deer is shot, or indeed run over, in Norfolk too and much of the local wild and delicious venison comes from this exotic oriental visitor.

But the lack of any but a few human predators means the population is still growing really fast.

Invasive introduced species are not generally good for the natural biodiversity of any region and local Norfolk farmers and gardeners are quick to complain about the water deer’s destructive habits among their precious trees, plants and crops.

However with extinction a real possibility in its native homeland it seems we might need to offer this particular illegal immigrant a real welcome and a safe home in our own watery wonderland the Norfolk Broads.

Just don’t mention it to the Daily Mail.

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