#SIBCLive with Gary Moore – Episode 10

[Music] [Music] you you ocular so with these new viewers we thought we probably gonna introduce ourselves again so this guy I mean you mean unusual haircuts to say the least right we all got over it we all got over the 80s in the 90s thanks and this is Megan McCubbin my stepdaughter zoology graduate a keen campaign has been traveling all over the world campaigning on behalf of conservation environmental animal rights issues so on and so forth for now joining me here in the sunny new forest as we said if you are overseas and you're not familiar with where we are here's a map of the UK we are right down here in the South of England adjacent to the channel and the new forest is a national park it's about 70 square miles the principal habitats in the new forest of repute are ancient woodlands Valley Myers the wet boggy bits and Sandy lowland Heath and sandy Lothal and Heath is one of the rarest habitats in the world home to all sorts of exotic relatively exotic species here in the UK we live on the edge of that new Forest National Park and we're fortunate enough to have this sunny garden where we've been exploring some of our everyday wildlife and just using that wildlife to keep us connected to the natural world and at this critical and difficult time to keep our spirits up today now we've chosen a great bird it is an amazing bird have a look at this [Music] you know one of the unusual things about that skulls I think that people might look at it it doesn't necessarily look military bird it hasn't got a hooked bill but it's got really big eyes massive eyes which suggests that it might be operating in areas where there are low light or it could be a predator predators typically have obviously quite large eyes if they're hunting using those eyes and not their nose although he is but yeah super skull absolutely make sure that you send your comments into us guesses we've got got my laptop here so I can see your comments coming through and we can name a few people they get it right and all this kind of stuff so make sure that you're interacting with us yeah we're trying to improve the technology and obviously we're making these broadcasts on a couple of smartphones and behind the scenes we should have introduced Fabian as well it's not just the two of us not just the two of us the wizard behind this operation is Fabian Harrison who is self isolating like we are near Norwich in England I'm gonna show when Norwich is baviaan is up here somewhere in the East of England and he's running all of this stuff he's our tech wizard and now we have got a Wi-Fi connection here which means we can interact with you live which we previously couldn't do and we've got these ear pods in so that we can hear what's going on because today we're very excited to be having a guest coming up so I'm gonna give you a little bit of a background about what he's gonna be talking about bird so of course we've had loud wrens we've had woodpeckers hammering we've had you know whole range Robins we go mad in the garden it really connects us on to it but have very different ways you can have bird calls which are shorter but the bird song itself I mean the repertoire that these bird songs of all song species only have one song in their repertoire only one and then there's the oasis of the natural world then where every single song sounded exactly the same and sounded like the Rolling Stones and the Beatles controversial to Oasis so when it comes to birdsong we always defer to experts in everything we do and when it does come to that birdsong I'm very pleased to say that I know a great expert his name is Gary Moore he's going to be coming to us live from Bath now from just outside his back garden where he is self isolating and he is a sound recordist he's a great naturalist I met him about 25 years ago got all sorts of jobs he's turned his skills to his greatest talent which is engaging that with the natural world so for the first time in our broadcast were very pleased to invite a guest and hand over to Gary Moore down in bath Gary over to you morning Chris morning makes whoa I'm actually positioned in a little bit of scrubland on the edge of Bath it's trapped between the low main London Road and the river even behind me I say it's only 300 meters from a back door I don't have a garden I live in a first law flat so for me this I make this part of my little morning exercise my little routine again it's a great little place there are some issues with it we'll discuss those in a bit again I was going to bring you a live feed from my parabolic reflector however technophobia strikes again and I don't have the relevant lead to go into my smartphone but we are going to do something about that we're going to fix it and hopefully somewhere in the future you'll get a live feed from my parabolic reflector there when Chris asked me if I could talk for probably eight five to eight minutes I made a crib sheet and the first thing I put on my crib sheet was not o'clock and that's too late nine o'clock far too late for a dawn chorus I was awake at five o'clock this morning it was light we could see we could move about I opened the window and I let the birdsong in so if we do want to live dawn chorus I think we may have to get up slightly earlier than nine o'clock I know we're all self isolating but it's no excuse to stay in bed right okay so first things are let's talk about rich Bird Sings when you have a dawn chorus usually people think it's a real toss-up between the Robin and the blackbird basically and that will also depend on ambient light often birds will sing if they're an area that's lit by Archbishop Lighting's was your car park street lamps and things but normally about now they're kicking off at about courts of five birth the perfect time for dawn calls from the UK is the last week of April and the first week of May now on those two weeks I would really be leaving my house at 3:30 in the morning to do a dawn chorus so between now and basically mid May I very rarely sleep it's a little bit scrub here nice little habitat I've got lots of ducks just flitting across the top of the bramble here it's actually a long tout its nest in the river overhanging the river over there now don't know if you've been following any stuff that John Walters has been doing from Devon and but he's been we've been putting up some clips of some amazing long-tailed tipnis on the edge of Dartmoor I believe that in the North long town tits are called bomb barrels anyway let's see right so let's do I think Fabian's gonna try and play in some of the calls of the birds so I've given a Robin and a blackbird these are the two birds that you're most likely to hear first thing on a dawn chorus so let's see Fabian if we can do that can we hear the Robin and the blackbird any joy gone okay right right okay so they're basically pure early enough and you want to get dawn chorus they're the first two birds that you'll hear the great thing about spring as well is the fact that there are not many league other than that but you know leaves on the tree so as far as identification goes it really helps um if you are keen to learn birdsong bizarrely the dawn chorus isn't actually the best time to do it because often you're hit with just a war of stamford Ornan it's very difficult to isolate individual birds so actually if you are keen to learn birdsong I have a policy always tell people if you learn three songs a year that's ample so the great thing about now is most of the birds have done their initial dawn chorus and they're off feeding pheasant why do birds sing in the morning birds sing in the morning because there is a cold layer of bound of the cold layer of still air and sound travels better through still air I'm about half a mile away here from the salty Hill bypass now I can hear the traffic it's clearly drifting across towards me but that is because there's a cold layer still there I can guarantee you a bit an hour's time I will no longer be able to hear that traffic so that's another reason why birds sing first thing in the morning and also trillium to feed there's another theory that the birds were the biggest eyes sing first ie robbing blackbirds so yeah what I say is you've gotta learn birdsong let the dawn chorus die damn get a cup of tea check it wherever you are get comfortable than try and watch the bird that's singing let it call watch let it call watch and slowly but surely that's the way you'll do it don't try and dump it jump in the deep end I say dawn chorus far too many birds calling just try and get one that's singing by its own and the great thing about these birds is well hey look when birds sing they say two things they say this is my territory go away and they say this is where I live come and mate with me and so a lot of the birds that are singing will have a thing called a song perch or an area they're protecting and they'll sing from that perch from that branch mother you're top of the tree might be at fence post almost all time and so that's a great place to find that bird to sit down and watch it listen to it I'm gonna say actually that unfortunately it's mainly with birds all birds call but it's really only males that sing there are some exceptions the robbing during the winter the female robbing holds a territory so she will call as well so usually this time a bit too fond a year if a bird is singing chances are it's gonna be in male green woodpecker the thing of Troubles about learning birdsong is you get a thing called birding Tourette's where assume is absurd cause you have to call it pull it out it's like when you're around people who are not Birds it can be quite embarrassing yeah anyway hopefully you'll them you're going to come back to my crib sheet okay yes so one of the coals are put in there is great tip great it is a really really classic early bird to learn it's what I teach all the kids kids come to me and want to learn bird song always hitting with a great tips now I know the Fagin's got a little track because I sent to him last night over the web so can we hear the greatest okay so there we go why I think that's a great one for kids to learn is because it's very simple it's that classic to note teacher teacher teacher teacher but actually great tips yesterday for the first time this year I have a first shift chat and behind me and it's a little bit of scrubland here so we've had Chief Jeff singing this morning again that's a great one to teach the kids it's a really simple one to learn against an onomatopoeia so basically it seems its name Chief Jack Jack Jack the chief sometimes with chips just so that's another great bird and a really easy one to learn let's have a look riot one of the birds that I'm hoping to hear soon that should be arriving in this country with a black cap the black caps slightly more difficult to learn but hopefully I know favors got clipped let's have the black cap there we go quite complex at once but hopefully these birds will be arising the new case and all our it having is likely problems everywhere Gardens we shut up a little bit black another absolutely top bird now I know Chris yesterday you were talking about marsh tip willow tea I've got another one to add to that wouldn't it and wouldn't it be nice if we could tell the difference between the two many many years people thought it was the same bird and the only way that could tell the difference always by the call now again I can't I've not got those calls I'm not gonna do it for you one of them goes Pikachu one of them doesn't very difficult but again top birds difficult to tell difference only ways by the call now Chris I was away last week and for the first time look as as birders were also great naturalist and spring is a really important time for us really get excited and I was over in a garden last week for the first time I saw a brimstone this year always a key butterfly first butterfly the if me is always a brimstone and I know that when I see my breath first brimstone spring is on its way but in the space of about an hour I know makes you were talking about the bee fly yesterday so within a space of an hour I saw my first brimstone and my first bee fly as well so for me it was a real sense of spring now Chris I've got a question for you and it concerns the color of the brimstone now all the all-male Brimstone's are yellow the females are white and variants see them but it's basically any yellow butterfly you're seeing around at the moment is gonna be a brimstone do you think there's any correlation between the color of the male brimstone and the spring flowers because look we've got daffodils we've got lesser selling dines I know you talked about those again yesterday and we've also got a lot of the primroses they all seem to have that funny yellow tinge to them is there some sort of wave form some sort of yellow light you think that's one of them maybe warms up all feeds this time of year why are most well spring flowers yellow why is the brimstone yellow that's the question right so yeah one of the other things I'm going to talk about as well it's that I've been watching a lot I've been watching a lot of little films and the clips that we've been getting in and hopefully sometime over the next week or so or a few weeks we'll do a bit of a Tech Talk because a lot of our clips that we're submitting they've got a lot of wind noise on listen I do it all the time you know it's really difficult things you're on your ivory on your smartphone you're on your whatever you do that lovely little click you play it back and all you've got is that terminal or rumble of wind over the top my little tip for that is if you've got a little cheap set of headphones plug them into your smartphone and it will help you hear exactly what you're recording because very often when your phones at arm's length you're not aware of the wind blowing over the capsule on your smartphone so you have some great images but when you play them back the sound is often not often really distracting me great images so again huggy little headphones in have a little listen because it left me going through the speakers well you can control the wing noise on to your little clip or if you do do it on your phone I sometimes recommend wearing a woolen glove and just put your little finger with your woman glove over the edge of your smartphone and just try and keep the wind off that microphone off that capsule and I think hopefully you should get some great audio to go with your great images so I think guys at the moment I've exhausted my crib sheets I hope that's been long enough so it's a next time love some live audio from your parabolic and keep up the great work guys thank you thanks Kari fantastic sand clot facts in there that wouldn't it was probably my favorite wouldn't it be good if they were easier to tell apart and that would be go ask that question there about the yellow flowers there is an abundance of yellow flowers this time of year cell undines Primrose cowslip as well but I've got so there were also flowers which aren't yellows the little violets are outward violets were out at the moment as well and the thing about the blue moonstone is yes it matches that color in the spring but it does have a second generation in the summer and of course there are many other blooms of agar far greater spectrum about but in nature as we said before there is no redundancy there will be a reason for everything so there will be a reason why green stones are bright yellow it may not be something that we can understand now because the evolution that we may have occurred perhaps hundreds of thousands or millions of years ago and now conditions have changed and without the benefit of geological time scale you know looking back then we may not be able to interpret that but yeah something to think about always something think about Issel trash there to some audience questions we had some yesterday and that we weren't able to see live that I've kind of pulled out from the comments and as a couple we were talking about our bird feed yes they've had a live stream of it and there's lots of questions that have come in about bird feeders so where's the best place to put well you don't want it too close to any window where you don't have curtains because that means that that window made during the course of the day generate a reflection of the outside and one of the problems we have is birds flying into windows so if you have a bird feeder and you have it close to a window then be sure to draw the curtains when you're not enjoying it but obviously it's got about getting the balance right you want to be able to see the birds on your feeder that's your reward for feeding them of course but you need them to be safe enough distance so they're not endangered and as I was saying yesterday helps to put it near some cover not fight against it not too close because otherwise things like cats and other predators can jump out onto the field yeah yeah they feel safe enough to come out and of course some birds take a little bit of time so if you just put your bird feeder out give them a little bit of time - yeah and also if they're traveling to it they're expending energy so they it needs to be reliable you know if you've got a bird feeder up and it keeps running out of toilet rolls then people won't go back to that shop basically so you've got to keep it topped up so that if they know that it's worth making that journey to that feeder they're definitely going to get an energetic reward you know birds lives are always in the balance and particular obviously during the winter months when things are much tougher than they are now then you know you'll find that you know that the dependence on those feeders is it's not total about fifty only about 50% of their food will come from your feeder but that 50% is still critical and they won't come unless it's a reliably fill now and it's kind of brings me onto it's quite a similar question this one's from Joffrey range range play on Twitter and so she has a little bird feeder on the window doesn't have a garden so you can get these kind of suction bird feeders if these suction pads to the window and it goes back to that point doesn't it of making sure that you've got your the seed is visible and that it's not too close to any kind of structures where cats or squirrels and things can disturb the birds yeah though they work really well and soon the birds get very used to you just being on the other side of the glass just this far away so you can probably get the best use of all without the need for any binoculars if you're using those stick on feeders and certainly and yes friend of ours sent us in an amazing photo he's working still he's suffocating obviously but that doesn't mean he's not getting out into his garden on the space just beyond it and he's working with garden birds and he is very lucky in that case that his garden he has these little owls that allow us obviously a not a native species in the UK they were introduced in the 1800s they were doing really well but they've suddenly dropped back a little bit in terms of their numbers recently and they like to nest in holes natural holes holes in trees but of course they will also nest in holes in buildings and this one you can see in that beautiful beautiful evening light peeping out stunning photo and we're hoping that Andy will be a guest on our little broadcast maybe sometime next week giving us top tips about wildlife photography from your garden or there abouts whilst yourself isolating yeah they're very characterful little birds very popular with people the name Athena noctua is their scientific name they were not named after the Greek god Afeni and their natural habitat is the Middle East actually but they feed on insects worms small birds there can be quite a ferocious predator despite the fact they're only standing this tall they're quite feisty little things and if you're lucky enough to have any near use and welcome or treat today why do black birds sing at night well what about birds sing at night there was a question for Gary really but I mean the thing is that's going mentioned black birds have got very big eyes and they will want to be getting in early taking advantage of that cold layer there to pump their sound out so they'll be starting whilst it's still dark in the morning like Robins another bird with very large eyes and they'll be finishing late in the evening in fact round here the last bird that we hear not singing but calling are the black birds when they go pattering and chattering if there's any potential predators about in the evening like a you know a real noise in the bushes so yeah I think it's again it's about now we talk about niche separation I think you have song separation there is competition for their airspace and there's a consequence if the black birds can get in early and late then it separates them from those other birds which don't sing at that time very good one more question where would you suggest putting bug hotels interesting is your the makeup okay so that question on there's a multitude of answers to that question is depend on which sort of bunk you want to come into your hotel if you're going to open the Ritz you need it basically you know take a dilly dilly if you're gonna open a Holiday Inn you can put it anywhere it's convenient oh yeah okay so we just had a question come through live as well on Facebook why do wood pigeons make the wing slap sound and they do actually slap their wings together over their backs in flight as part of their display yeah it's part of the displayed during the springtime it may be I don't know conjecture that you know the volume of the clap it would be a measure for the females looking at the male's of how fit the male is maybe from the volume or the type of sound they could judge the strength or the weight or the Fitness somehow of those male pigeons but you know very certainly part of their display in a lot of birds use their wings to produce sound snipe drum and pheasants you know common pheasant make a whirring sound the male's stand up and they produce their croak and then they beat their wings to produce a whirring sound when I say too much about I was going to clean out of wings and we did it was tricky common sea birds this is a Guillemot skull yeah amazing iconic countershading haven't they well on an animal with countershading it looks dark and it blends in with its dark the dark floors the seabed art you have this beautiful white belly and that obviously blends in with the light surroundings coming in from the Sun so countershading so common in marine animals poodle fight you guys got it right they've got very interesting skulls they obviously have birds because they they go into the water at quite high impact Guinea much they tend to feed on schooling fish that is not too deep from the surface but the deepest record or begin what is about hundred and thirty meters Wow considering their average to die time is only a minute so and about the guillemot not so much it's copied its its eggs no I don't know about you guys and but I can barely find my car in the car park I can barely find my own car she takes mine and brings it back with no fuel in it and I'm covered in mud dangerous ground now if the shape of the getting egg it's very very different a research by Tim Birkhead shows that they've got these pear-shaped eggs now there's various theories about why that might be um one of the most popular ones is that it helps with the distribution of insulation when the bird is sat on the egg the second is that if the egg was to move it kind of goes round if you guys have those toys where you could spin it as a kid I mean I know I do but they spin round and round because of this iconic pear shape so if it was at the shape of a normal egg the chances are it would just roll directly off Tim says that's not true it ain't true he says that's only the case when the eggs have been blown as they were by collectors in days of old and they would spin round like that I mean absolutely that one but these boats do they come back to their own you ever a lion egg an egg there's going to be more than stock trying to find it's gonna be a scientific force but you know in varying color they can be quite washed out there can be more green but each female has a very very specific pattern and it will copy that pattern how amazing is that all right so this means that each egg is unique to each female and when they get back to their colony if they land in a flurry on the cliff face that they can think they can identify their own makes sure that because it's the same it's not costing them they don't have to memorize a new pattern quite long live birds breeding every year as they do typically then that would be beneficial as you say not having to relearn it amazing isn't it I didn't know that finish with a quick book with you I think we've all got more time on our hands than we typically have might be a time to catch up with some reading got a host of good books here I will get through them beachcombing on the strandline we talked about that a summer timed Alice Roberts let's go for this one it's the feather thief the feather thief along at this book is obviously about birds the blonde aired there were very rare specimens kept in the Natural History Museum at Tring I was completely unaware that this theft had taken place someone broke in and stole some of the very rarest specimens but chosen because their feathers can be used get this Thai fishing flies fishing fly so this is the true story of what it says here the natural history of the century written by Kirk Wallis Johnson the feather thief I couldn't put it down to be quite honest with you I have to say that it's the criminal has probably has Asperger's syndrome so I felt a relation ship to him but obviously no desire to break into a museum and stall a call of its choice of specimens but it is an extraordinary tale and as I say you I couldn't put it down I've seen fantastic so that's it for today socks of those those are my socks the reason we're not two meters apart because someone has commented on that is obviously we are self isolating together we're not going out from our house at all with we're here together we don't need to be two meters apart at this point it might be useful because it's stolen yet another pair of my socks tomorrow we'll be out with our two poodle puppies walking we take a daily walk out in the woods here we don't meet any other people we're safe and secure we'll be looking at a wood pigeon kill some wood ants and we've also put a couple of trip cameras out just outside the garden put some bait out last night to see if we can attract any mammals and we haven't been to check them yet fingers crossed we'll be bringing all of that tomorrow so right now it is too old for months but the poodles have one last little thing for you we've got another slow-motion [Music]

Channel: Chris Packham

Views: 4,002

Rating: 4.9626169 out of 5

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Id: RFk-aCC6Om0

Length: 37min 8sec (2228 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 26 2020