#SIBCLive with Indy Greene – Episode 72

[Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] now there's a lot of things you can watch on a sunday evening you can gravitate towards country file you could hang on in eager anticipation of antiques roadshow or tonight obviously david attenborough perfect planet not yet not yet but you could tune into the cornell labs all about bird live cameras which they have scattered around the world i note that now they've got caho or bermuda and petrol which i think we featured earlier in the year i remember talking about it i went to look for those birds once i said look let's not digress immediately because we're in panama at the moment on a fruit feeder camp in panama and this has got to be worth watching at the moment there's a couple of thrushes on there i think um i've got the glasses on uh yes couple of things yeah they look like a couple of pallid black birds they're very clearly not um they're a south america american species but you can see that they fulfill exactly the same niche in the way that they move and behave and just like thrushes out in our gardens in the countryside that are currently feasting on fallen apples all of those red wings and black birds that will come to those apples that fall beneath the trees this couple are out there in panama now panama is one of the best places in the world to see birds they have one of the greatest bird diversities on earth i once went to panama birding yeah there's a plate there's a thing called pipeline road guess what it's a road yeah which runs alongside a pipeline that runs down the side of the panama canal and it is famed as one of the places where you can go and see the most birds in the shortest amount of time and i think that for a long time it held a record whereby people went out for a couple of hours before breakfast first thing in the morning and they saw hundreds of species incredible hundreds of species before breakfast before breakfast pretty special place pretty good pretty good but the cornell bird live bird feeder calves are absolutely top viewing always worth checking those out of course keeping your eyes peeled for some exotic species i better get tannagers in there there's a whole guild of birds that you find in the americas both north and south is that a tanager because um frequently that could be a temperature there's just this little b-cup the blue bird there on the right-hand side of the screen with its back tillers not helping for any identification features but anyway there are a whole guild of birds called tannagers and they are us and they frequently come to fruits in the wintertime so worth checking that one out and if you feel that you might want to you can always give a donation to cornell as well to help pay for the overheads of running these cameras all the way around the world it's nice though isn't it it looks nice and warm and sunny over there i feel like i'm transported to a tropical island sweaty well you know what i i'm feeling quite cold at the moment so i wouldn't mind going listen don't try and out cold me no don't don't out cold me no listen no no listen i had thermals today i had undershirts i had maximal puff action chris the reason why we of course we were gonna do sipc at six o'clock tonight we had to push that back to seven o'clock because chris and i both been out filming separately for winter watch both been out in the cold filming different things so we're a little bit chilly at the moment so that tropical island looks quite nice it doesn't age yeah no it was a chilly day i went down to a i can't say two i'll give you two i was in pursuit of two uh yes rare-ish birds localized in their distribution and uh as the sun came up well actually as the mist came out first thing this morning we managed to score hit with one of them and then we hung on right until the end in the freezing cold using the hand warmers that we tried to use in 10 o'clock you know those handbooks we had last time oh yeah the ones with no heat luke warmers again today honestly be better off just putting a mouse inside your glove well i don't know some small mammals because the respiratory activities of a small mammal would have generated more heat than the hand luke warmer that we were using today anyway that will be coming up when it starts on the 17th i know lots of people have tuned in today and are saying hello we've got lots of people coming in so we've got steve from prague we've got simon in coventry nancy and dublin will from mid wales beverly sussex pete from oxfordshire and from orkney chris from staffordshire tracy from north lincolnshire and apparently lots of people from america are tuning in today as well so hello hello over there i'll be jumping up and down and speech because we've described our day as being very cold and i can imagine that it's probably a lot colder it's probably a lot colder in fact so we ought to stop being a couple of southern softies and yeah and get on with things uh plenty coming up this evening i'm very pleased to say that indie green will be joining us soon to tell us about some of the things that he's been up to recently and a great project that he's involved with that's really good we've got a film coming up from charlotte o'neill yeah which is going to be good quiz of course any second now and then this week we haven't got a soapbox we've got a champagne box oh yeah we've decided we've had enough of soap we've done a lot of soap we've done a lot there's been soap going everywhere bubbles and you know and we thought we'd switch the bubbles right okay we're going back to our roots for this one we're going back to skull quinn's skull of the day skull of okay but there is a commonality in the skulls so let me show you the first skull first obviously um right here is the first one the darker bell okay so here it is here right there we are see that that's got a very stout long bill quite difficult to see so i'm gonna stand up i'll hold it in front of my fabulous the alarm stuff there we go okay let me look at that it's got like quite a stout bill it's got quite a big eye now i'll just i'll just turn it head on to you as well like that because it's quite sort of uh what would you say some narrow and pointy uk species of course there we are okay and the second species and you'll see why i put the two together when we reveal the answers is this one this is a bit of a treasure now look at this one yeah it's pretty smart it's got a very long narrow bill with a very long nostril large eye again but then look at this one as well this one shares that similarity in the fact that it's very very pointy very that isn't yeah this one's pointy this is one of the pointiest of pointy skulls that i could ever point out to be quite honest with you and again a uk species both of these and the clue is then the clue i'll give you for those couple of species is that you will find them living alongside one another very frequently in the same habitat okay so get all of your thoughts in put it in the comments and we will come back to that at the end of our broadcast it's a good one's a little bit tricky but i think i think it's cool well yes but two two two species that could be feeding on the same thing in the same place okay but there's been niche separation taking place here because although they're there both of their skulls are pointy that's a technical anatomical phrase of course used by um you know people who study study bones pointy they're very narrow they're very narrow they've also got quite long beaks one is stout and the other is gentle gently referencing there now on to indy green who is coming to us live today now indy is a fantastic young naturalist i actually had the pleasure of meeting indy a few months ago in that break between lockdown we went up to look for of course the bearded vulture now indeed's been very fortunate enough and he saw the bearded vocabulary he saw a lot of the beard he saw the loss of the beard involved he said how much do you see of the bearded vulture not bad no it was raining it wasn't the best of conditions but we wouldn't had a great look anyway and had a fantastic time with indy he's a brilliant naturalist as i said he's done lots of great films for us on sibc so it's a pleasure to have him live indy hello hey chris and megan how are you we're good how are you doing i'm just about as cold as we were on that rock up together in the pizza street i'm good you know what i think that was that actually might have taken it i know we said we were cold today but that was a very cold day because it was splintering rain as well and i was in shorts as well which was a very bad decision so tell us a little bit about what you've been up to then indy since we last saw you at the moment um i've been doing a lot of wildlife watching sheldon forest is absolutely bliss at the moment it's full of things like crossfields and you've got half inches and the march tits and the lesser spot of woodpeckers um but one bird that i've been really really enjoying is the goss hawks and i'm lucky enough i think you guys have some close views of goshawks too because and that's quite close to you and i'm the same i've got um bear goshawks and nests just around the corner from my house and i'm lucky enough to see them a lot as you can see on the pictures here and i was actually watching some this evening it was just fantastic i think it was an adult female it's just ginormous ginormous bird and it was just gliding along the top of the canopy and sort of spinning in between all these large trees just then literally like this sort of cruise missile just dived into the woodland and the wood pigeons just went bang that would absolutely explode and i just like they are my absolute favorite bird i love that you can almost even though you can't see them you know they're there because you know that while they're spinning and between the trees under the canopy you see the wood pigeons just going back bang bang just like domino so i just love i just love how kind of secretive they are and you never see them but you sort of have all these signs you know they're there and so just a lot of gospel watching to be honest they've got a reputation for being very very hard to watch to see to find in the first place so what are your top tips for goss watching because they are slowly becoming commoner and more widespread across the uk so there will be people who have got hawks living near them what tips would you give them to go and watch them particularly this time of year when they're not displaying uh first top tip come to my house um but yeah because literally i i i'm quite lucky really because i know like you said they are really hard to spot um but i just i have something to literally watch them from the doorstep i've got this barn i walk up to and i watch three or four individuals going to roost in the trees by my house every evening um so i'm quite lucky in that respect but i think winter can be quite a good time to see them because there's no leaves on the trees so you are in an area if you know you're in an area where they are um just keep an ear open because i've heard quite a few calling recently um but again like you say in the spring it's a great and i've never actually seen them displaying so that's my mission for 2021 to see a castle when they go up and down um above the woodland over the nest site so that's my absolute mission but at the moment um i think there's quite a few even though if i just maybe try there and but yeah just just keep your eyes and ears open but you yeah you gotta be kind of quite patient with them sometimes yeah i see them from time to time that because they will sit beneath the canopy on the sides of you know rides and roads waiting for those wood pigeons to fly down those rides and roads and then literally just jumping on them out of the trees basically sort of a short sharp hunt and typically if i'm out with nancy sometimes they'll flush them if the dogs are ahead of me and i'll just see the bird just disappearing off through the woods which is always a treat but in springtime which is coming fast i've got to say because they will start displaying you know end of february march on a clear sunny morning that's when they really like to get up and do their display flights and we are fortunate enough to have a couple of sites here in the new forest where we've got some elevations so we can look down over the woodland and people go to the acres down is one of them's very famous site down here in in the new falls where people if they're allowed to travel at that time we'll be traveling to to watch god salt's display but yeah no i i share your passion for the bird i call them terminators they just go out and kill whatever they want don't they i know i just love that i just i mean it's not really an intimidating name but i just call them glossy glossies i don't really know why but i always think that the adults look quite glossy on there and sort of slate great plumage but like you say they're just the most cool birds in the world anyone um i was on the phone to a friend this morning and we were talking about an hour and i was just talking about gossip i just i just absolutely i've actually got a pin batch of gossip here actually a little plug rsvp in badge didn't really like that um but yeah so i just like i like you say they just love those rides and they just pounce on pray for even though it's there and there's this really cool encounter one morning when i opened the door um my front door and i was a gossip actually sat on a wood pigeon on my doorstep um and then immediately after it just took off with it straight away so that was just yeah that was really cool but they're epic birds absolutely brilliant yeah that's quite a morning isn't it to open your door and there's literally one on your doorstep something people dream about that kind of thing i mean we were quite lucky in the spring you know flew into our window we frequently have an angry postman asking us where where the letter should be first yeah because we don't have a post box that's not quite the goshawk it's not one dude i don't know it's only got the song about a bad tempo depends depends on the day depends on the day but you know what i love about you indeed that you're so passionate about kind of everything world like in particular birds and like just listening to you talk about gossip is fantastic and i think you know of course we're now in a national lockdown and a lot of people are going to be going out and exploring you know their local areas for their one hour of exercise getting in touch with nature and now the schools are closed too trying to kind of get their children involved and connected as well so what tips have you got for kind of educating young people about wildlife educating young people wildlife i think one of the ways i always kind of suggest is definitely get a pond especially in the spring when you just see it basically just absolutely coming to life and learning about all the amazing 100 000 different species that dive into it and we got a pond about maybe four years ago and just every single year it's just full of just frogs born and just toads and we found a new recently we actually found it in the kitchen we moved into the park next to the next one so i think just just get out there as much as you can when it's safe to do so obviously um but yeah i just think just just immerse yourself in it because i think every young child does have that need or basically wants to get out in nature like i've never met a toddler who doesn't want to jump in a puddle so i think it's just just just letting them do that just letting kids just have a bit of fun find some trees and i just think it's just immersing yourself in it and then you constantly sort of outdoors and then you know just you know look at fungi look at birds put some feeders down it's just um it's just constantly getting outside and trying new things what about your new project in enviro the educational thing that you're starting to work on tell us a bit about that yes so um fantastic group um called envira education that was started over lockdown by two fantastic people the now directors susie and adrian who have previously worked with jane goodall on a couple of her projects they started this project in viral education during the first lockdown when they thought well we're all twiddling our thumbs now so let's give kids something to do and that hobby could be watching nature for example um so they thought well let's do it so they've set up this fantastic website which you can check out at www.enviroeducationuk.uk and then you can go through and there's lots of what's called eco warriors and i'm lucky enough to be one of them and you've got other fantastic people like green finger george you got kabir cool you've got michael sinclair um you got trendy pringle maya bambrick samuel levy there's just so so many fantastic young people on there and the idea with that is is that you um other young people from you know wherever in the uk across the world who maybe have an interest in nature who are in school and don't really know anyone else who's interested in nature and they kind of feel a bit isolated they'll hopefully come across this website and then um all our twitter feeds are up there and our email addresses so they could be able to contact us and then kind of join our kind of young naturalist bubble if you like um so that's really the kind of idea of it but they've got a lot of fantastic future aims and after lockdown to kind of go into schools and give talks on how to sort of campaign and do social media and do fantastic things like nest box making and talking about hedgehog highways and how to communicate with mps and things like that so it's just a lot of um cool naturey stuff that they're encouraging kids to do um and they also do and they also highlight quite a lot of campaigns each month so one of the recent ones they did was save me by brian may who's got this fantastic wildlife rescue center and they've been working with him to fight against fox hunting and the badger cole and one of their ones that they're running at the moment is the stop hs2 petition which you've been sharing chris and so they've just been working on that and congratulations on getting over a hundred thousand signatures that's really awesome um so yeah they'll be sharing a lot of that and um hopefully talking about some other cool projects they can get behind i think they're sharing something that kabir came up with a lot too long ago and basically their own overall aim is to create this massive network of young naturalists across the globe um who can communicate and talk about and share sightings and just come together and try and save nature as quick and as in the best way we can really um so it's kind of doing what a lot of people have been talking about for quite some time there's actually bringing some action to it so it's getting young people involved at a young age which is really really super okay again remind us of the website address again where people can find it uh so that's www.enviroeducationuk.co.uk and it's a really nice child-friendly website they've got loads of cool stuff on there activities training all the good stuff it's amazing brilliant it's great it's really good putting people together sharing ideas building communities or a good thing but you're absolutely excited though when you say that you know we built quite a lot of communities already and there are quite a lot of people who connect perhaps not so broadly and so enthusiastically as as all of those young people and yourself um but action has got to be important something's going to come out of it because uh obviously we're just about to make some sort of glassy last stand and um everyone needs to uh to not just stand up and be heard but stand up to actually do something yeah so that's great talk work okay well before we let you go um okay it's a difficult question for you if you could add one bird to your uk list this year which species would it be oh what a question um so i've never seen a bitten i've only ever heard them um and that was really cool i've been literally meters away from them in the netherlands before but i've never actually seen one so that's a good one but probably a nightingale um there was a fantastic video posted on twitter last night and it was just this fantastic three minute audio of a night and girl singing and it was just about before i was going to sleep and i just pressed play put my phone down close my eyes and just listen to it and it's just if you haven't heard of nightingale look at that's the best song in the world so that was probably one of the main birds i'm going to be after this year yeah so i mean forgive me i'm not sure but close to where you live you've got gossips on your doorstep um in your kitchen if locked down working to continue because nightingales are going to peak at the very end of april beginning of may are there any within your reach or is it one of those species that now very sadly people like myself have to travel to go in here and see i think there's there's none in nottinghamshire where i'm based um but i think there's quite a good site in lincolnshire um woodland begins with w but i think their numbers were down last year unfortunately as pretty much everything else so um but hopefully we'll get a few returning and that's probably the closest site to me that i'd love to kind of visit but i just i just love to see them to be honest they got such a great song they really do they are so incredibly beautiful i do hope you get to see one yeah we've got one very quick question for you andy that's coming from queen vicki on youtube that says indeed where did you get your hoodie from it's really cool i got this um yeah i really really like it she's got loads of swallows on it i absolutely love it swallows swifts swift sorry i got loads of swifts on it and um attached to my gossip beanbag um and i got it my parents got it for me for my birthday last year um and i think it's off the rspb website because you've got the logo just down the bottom so um check it out i'm hoping to be ordering some more because this one's not going to fit me soon again top work indeed thank you very much for joining us and keep enjoying your gospel very privileged to have those literally on your doorstep and flying around the garden so yeah and also keep up great work with the photography and the enviro education scheme sounds great check you out rumors are flying little birds are twittering you know in the trees from the badges yes yes that is sleeping the badgers are snapping it says that indy's going to be on winter watch what's the story yes um i was very very excited about this we we've been planning it since i've been playing it with jack adams when i know you both know back in i think it was october or september and it finally happened in november and we've um i won't give away too much but everything went to plan i've seen little snippets of the film that looks absolutely super and um yeah i'm really i'm really happy that you've seen some of the pictures there but it was uh it was a great team we had james and jamie the two cameramen who had some fantastic fantastic ideas and it was it was it was such a great experience i i can definitely tell why you two both like you doing it um but yeah it's just it's just so much fun so i'm looking forward to seeing that yeah so top work on that very pleased to welcome you to the team yeah fantastic all right thank you thanks it's great to see you thank you for all my films on srbc i really appreciate all the support throughout 2020 and hopefully this year too so thank you both honestly thank you great to work with you we love you cheers we'll see you soon bye bye top load yeah if you follow india on social media you can find him at green indie green with a g-r-e-e-n-e-i-n-d-y he is honestly out there every day in the forest sharing really amazing stories it's quite funny actually yeah from you know what it's like yeah he's always up in a tree like he's always climbing trees and you know finding himself in funny positions and you know finding the most amazing thing so make sure you're following him on social media too because he's got some great content excellent stuff anyway now a little film uh made by charlotte o'neill um i won't tell you too much about it it's about a winter visitor the uh turnstone now already turned son i think we've now switched their names to bloody turns though yeah because in their breeding colors they're quite ruddy in their in that they're like a reddish color um but of course large numbers of them gravitate to the uk in the wintertime where they like turning stones and turning algae seaweed on the beach to find things underneath it but very often if you go to little fishing ports and places like that they become very tame sometimes they're literally running between your feet so they make an excellent subject for any young wildlife filmmaker like charlotte o'neill and here is her film about turnstiles the tideline where sea and land meet a world between worlds the beaches and landscape constantly in flux with the tides an adaptable bird makes its home in this unusual environment the ruddy turnstone a winter visitor to our shores is often seen poking around on many a coolish beach inquisitive and opportunistic no small animal was safe from their sharp probing bill [Music] [Music] so but the food that nature provides can be fin pickings and it may be time to look elsewhere [Music] the town is busy and the rewards to be found are great for those who dare [Music] just like the tourists come flooding in so do the birds unafraid of people turnstones gourds themselves on a diet of crumbs bird seed and mealworms but despite appearances not all is well here many dangers lay hidden within these streets [Music] something as simple as a strand of human hair can create devastation when wraps around a bird's foot it can cut off the blood supply [Music] starved of oxygen the toes die [Music] despite the riches that the town provides it is a dangerous place for turnstones and so they returned to the tideline once more excellent stuff yeah really kind of poignant film i thought you know i never really considered actually the impacts that even our hair might have especially yours masses of tournament detailing materials i'm gonna get a haircut growing yes but make sure you put it in the bag on yeah streets of coastal towns um it's extraordinary i've never thought about that either and i wonder therefore the species that we see more frequently obviously in our towns and cities are pigeons and very often they have performed yeah and i always wonder you know exactly how that happens i mean it's it i've always thought it was a disease that they had yeah or just a fumble which is a real disease of the birds will get um but maybe there's more maybe it's more to it than that maybe it's our waist that gets into he's hanging around their toes i'm i'm going to go everywhere wearing a shower cap now i think i am let's go charlotte thank you very much that was uh for allowing us to show your film excellent stuff and it does actually just wake you up to the fact that the way sometimes that we impact negatively on nature can be so subtle yeah we don't know that it's actually happening i mean i've got to say for years you know people were flushing you know cottonwool buds wipes all of these sorts of things down their toilet some people still aren't i know they were doing it no one was had clued into the fact that all this garbage was getting into the firstly blocking up all the drains and then secondly getting into the sea and doing enormous damage so yes revealing those sorts of subtleties is important and it's nice to see turnstones as well they're good all right okay i've got a couple of questions sent in this one from jan and she says i was wondering if you could help a couple of peregrine falcons have turned up on our church they seem to be on separate ledges and i've seen them once on the same ledge could these be a pair and what are the chances they will stay well jan if they are that close together on your church and tolerating one another they are very at this time of year when there are no young birds about they are very obviously a pair i would say now whether they're a breeding pair in that they are able and old enough to breed we can't say without looking at them but i'd say there was probably a good chance that they are now will they stay is the second part of your question only if you do something or you're lucky enough that your church has got a nice peregrine breeding platform already built so what you need to do is get yourself a peregrine box there is still time these birds do i mean they're looking for nest sites from now on basically occupying those territories looking for places like your church but there would still be time if you can get access to the roof of the church um to put up a nest box so that would be a shouted area it's an open kind of box isn't it it's got gravel on the inside it's just enough that they feel secure we've got a bit of gravel in there so they can make a little bit of a dome and then yeah sometimes they don't even have covers sometimes people just put up gravel trays that will drain probably uh properly and allow the uh the birds to lay their eggs they're not expensive and i think if everyone at the church you could make one had a whip around yes you could get the materials and just you know nail a few bits together make a box make sure i wonder if jimmy raptor aide does peregrine boxes because i just got uh from wrapped away some tawny owl boxes which i put up in the uh in the garden the top of the ladder very precarious it was quite scary very precarious um anyway there are um and i'm still walking and alive which is great and the owls are out there who too they are out there now is a really good time to put up any nest box yeah particularly things that we're hearing at all right now and they'll be you know looking to start breeding i don't know february time for every march wouldn't they yeah so it's a really important paraben but even if you just want to put up a few bird boxes now you know in preparation for the spring it's still a good time to get out there so jan look basically have a look online peregrine boxes you could buy one you could make your own get a gang together from the church see if you can get access there i mean it's difficult at the moment of course because of the restrictions that we're adhering to to make sure that we don't spread covert but there may be an opportunity for you to do that but you have to be doing it pretty quick and but it would be worth doing imagine if you had peregrine's nesting on your church hey it's a badge of honor that would be great for for the vicar that would be wouldn't it if it's a vicar that's in charge of your church don't get me into all that i'm not very good on the sort of um you know that you know really religious advocates terminology well i always get them slightly confused whether it's vehicles or priests or cumulatives and all those sorts of things i really need to jam up on them well anyway moving on shall we let's move on now we loved citizen science it is incredibly important anything that you see out and about if you can log it if you can let scientists know it really contributes to a lot of scientific studies and scientific realizations and answers to that knowledge now i've got a bit of an action for you all if you don't mind taking part it would be absolutely fantastic this is a questionnaire that has been orchestrated by the university of oxford's environmental geography department and it's a really exciting study that's going on so professor norma is and his research assistants are looking at how people's relationships have changed with their gardens during lockdown the survey is completely anonymous and the link will appear in the comments it's also you can find the link on chris's and our sibc twitter page right now so if you head over to those social media platforms you will find the link for it here and i've got it up the questionnaire itself is up on my laptop here and it's really interesting looking at this kind of human nature relationship we've been talking a lot about how lockdown has hopefully improved people's connection with nature so it's really important that we're able to figure out exactly how so that it can be harnessed going forward and we can kind of continue that relationship up but there's a few questions that i've got i'm just going to read you out so you know exactly kind of what to expect quite simple questions you know how has lockdown measures affected your daily movements are you traveling less are you spending more time in your home in your garden do you have access to private garden space has your engagement with this space increased decreased or stayed the same during lockdown so there's lots of simple questions like that but very important it will really help the scientists at the university of oxford understand just how connected we are with nature and how much we need it and have relied upon it during lockdown fantastic stuff and as meg says that link is available on our twitter feed so you can find it there and do please partake you know it's one of those things a pleasurable thing to do as well and it contributes some real information i've just checked on the raptor aide dot co dot uk website um they are pretty good at building boxes 31 barn owls 51 tawny house three of which are up in my garden um little hour 53 kestrel 7 doesn't mention peregrine but i bet you're a pound if you contact them they'll give you some good advice on how to build those uh how to build those boxes lots of other people out there be able to do the same as well now another friend of sibc is mr paul goldstein wildlife photographer extraordinaire so always um having some really remarkable images um he's been working overseas but also here in the uk of course during lockdown and he's recently sent us this little clip of a leopard you can have take a look at that now look at that look see look at that sky i mean is there anything more dramatic than you know an african landscape i mean this is in kenya isn't it yes it is this is in kenya the conservancies which are on the edge of that oh god that is he's got some fantastic photos from that i don't want to see no i don't i mean oh i mean it's going to be good has he sent us any of those photographs let's um i'm sure we will he he'll watch this and he'll hit the send button as we're talking and then we'll be here what amazing you know it's the best thing with world like photography isn't it is when you're in a position when the animals in the perfect spot i mean you could just lounge and the light everything comes together and you're able to get the image that you've been dreaming of i mean that's an amazing thing and it's nice isn't it i know we look down in the uk but it's nice for me i like a little bit of a snippet of what's going on overseas as well so there's currently a lot of people in trouble overseas because obviously with people unable to travel in many parts of the world people visiting those areas contributing to their communities through eco-tourism is what keeps those uh you know environments healthy and alive they have great concerns don't mean something about poaching and so on so forth it's a tricky one you've got this whole dilemma of people traveling but traveling to support other communities which are keeping species alive and it's something and also you know to help safeguard those communities too because a lot of those people are in really difficult situations and it's um yeah it's this pandemic has been you know incredibly hard on you know all different kind of communities in itself yeah fantastic stuff and paul i'm sure send us some photos and we can show you those next time anyway look we normally have a soapbox at this point but we've dispensed with the soap this week we're gonna have a champagne box i've got some soap i'm sure of champagne um but nevertheless um as indie mentioned uh earlier in the week i launched an e-petition asking our elected representatives in this case the english government to rethink about their decision to continue with the hs2 high-speed rail project now many people have concerns about the project for a very broad range of issues but at the forefront of many people's minds i have to say is the cost of the project particularly at this point in time when obviously the government has spent a lot of our money helping us or trying to help us get through this pandemic as best they are able to do and on that account our borrowing has hit an all-time high so the coffers are empty but hs2 when it was first postulated was set to cost 55 billion pounds 55 billion now it's in excess of 100 billion and some of the experts are saying that by the time if it were ever completed it could cost 170 billion maybe even more some are saying 200 billion pounds the first question is can we any longer afford this project now that's something that concerns a lot of people but at the forefront of our concern of course is its environmental impact and we know that we live in one of the most nature depleted countries in the world we know our biodiversity is in big trouble we've got people like indy green and all those people on enviro education out there trying to do their bit all of you guys out there trying to do your bit with your wildflower meadows with your ponds with your hedgehog highways everyone is working as hard as they can individually to try and protect the uk's biodiversity but then we have these large infrastructure projects like this which are enormously damaging and i won't wheel off all the figures because i'm so fed up with doing the stats but all i can say to you is check it out online there's an enormous amount of very important habitat being destroyed to to put hs through hs2 through the countryside and primarily of course uh our ancient woodlands species like bats badgers barnhouse rafter bliss butterflies hairstrike butterflies all sorts of things that are literally making way for the the concrete the other thing is the environmental aspect of it because now we are very aware of the fact that we all and as a country um need to do our bit in terms of reducing our carbon footprint and therefore we've set all sorts of targets which we're not yet meeting uh to reduce our carbon output so that we don't continue to heat the planet up so it becomes uninhabitable for everything um the paris accord was signed after hs2 was commissioned and again maybe it's time for a rethink maybe we know we need we need a green infrastructure we need to be able to move people around the uk in a sustainable way there's no argument about that and no we don't favor roads over rail as some of the trolls are constantly suggesting that's not the case at all we're focusing upon hs2 because it's highly symbolic at this point of time as heathrow's next runway uh postulated uh was symbolic as well so that's why we're choosing that we have serious concerns about all of these sorts of projects and whether we need them at all after all everyone is using video conferencing not perhaps needing to get from london to manchester or manchester to london a few minutes quickly just literally 15 20 minutes clear so anyway the petition is still up anyway it's a champagne box yes it's a champion 126 643 signatures which means that in the space of just four days it approved more than a hundred thousand signatures which means that parliament as it says here on my website will consider this for debate and given the gravity of public opinion concerning hs2 i think it's highly likely that parliament will give us a debate at some stage in the future we'll have to be patient of course because they're very busy um you know dealing with the kovid crisis and that's of course understandable um if we do get a debate it's not binding but it is an opportunity for people to put the cards on the table again and some of those cards have changed yeah and that's why we're asking people just to stop and rethink can we afford it can we afford it environmentally can we afford it in terms of our biodiversity there are other factors involved as well not the core of our uh expertise but you can check those out so if you have signed the petition which is still running um thank you very much indeed if you haven't then you certainly can and that would help people get sharing more signatures keep sharing yeah okay i just think it's a fair thing to do to constantly ask what questions about decisions that we've made in the past are they the right thing to continue to do well we have to reevaluate all the time do we because we have to evolve with the new information that we're given and ultimately you know now we've been given a lot more information about the impacts of hs2 maybe we shouldn't be so afraid of changing our minds and holding our hands up and going oh yeah actually that wasn't the best idea now we know and and you know we change our minds that's what it takes isn't it courage it takes a little bit of courage to actually say do you know what retrospectively and with contemporary thinking we've made a mistake oops sorry let's turn around but that's what we have to do at this point in our history we have to change our minds yeah otherwise we're not going to have minds to change in the future both of them right right so the four people got they got them right was abby it was rose was morgan and janet wow yes pretty good right here's the first goal did anyone get this one right yes lots of people got this one right so we've got red sky we've got simon we've got kaley we've got emily mark jillian michelle mandy kedzia we've got charlotte we've got peter joanne susan and pauline very characteristic skull relatively small at the back very front heavy big eyes stout beat like that um it comes in it comes in what purports to be blue but it's structural color not really blue yep but a lovely orange chest and it uses this beak to seize fish beneath the surface of the water and then beat them to death on a branch and swallow them ahead first it is of course the pointy skull of the very pointy king of fisher so yeah top work for that one okay what about the second skull mix did anyone get this one not that i can see other than the four people who've got both of them right janet yeah no i would argue that this is even pointier than the previous point this is one of the most pointy skulls in pointing us in the skull you know the pointy step yeah this the pointless quotient of this one soars to a massive 9.8 pointiness okay so it's very very sharp look how narrow this one is with this very long beak with the big nostril and the big eyes look at that that's a beauty and it's a prize in my skull collection because it once belonged to a water rail yes this is a water rail skull and they are what we call laterally compressed i feel laterally compressed most mornings when i wake up having been sleeping with sid and nancy because i've had sit on this side nancy on this side squeezing me together all night long so i'm laterally compressed the benefit for the water rail is of course that it can sneak through the fragmentee's reeds very quickly on its long toes and that's why it's very narrow like this and it has this long build because just like the kingfisher well it doesn't dive into the water it is seizing small fish and other invertebrates from just beneath the surface of the water and the long bill serves it well so yeah the skull of a water rail what a gem very fragile and delicate one isn't it actually there's a little few bones of crumbled off this one i saw them in the bag earlier someone in my absence has been manhandling the skull of the water why'd you look at me i haven't been manhandling any of your skulls i don't even know where you you know where they are someone has crept into this cabinet into the skull cabinet and been skulking in the skull cabinet pointing at the pointy ones and and and probing them and a few small bones have become detached i've been probing the tweezers will be used along with super glue it could just be that it's quite an old skull it is gross and it's quite normal yeah i mean i haven't been probing around in your house okay well that was good talk to those people who got yeah well done everyone so now on to birthdays there of course been some birthdays since we have we've well we've taken a little bit of break over christmas dinners there's been lots of celebrations that have been going on so claire would like to wish her son that daniel wright a very happy 21st birthday on the 1st of january she says although his celebration is probably not one he was hoping for she hopes that the pair of binoculars will go somewhere making up a binoculars that's a good one i'd take any lockdown birthday for a pair of binoculars because i was so excited so so excited i put them on around my neck and i went for a bike ride and they smashed into my handlebars and um moving on oh yeah would like to wish her mum vanessa mccaig a happy birthday from the 20th from the 31st of december very happy birthday to you vanessa um vicky ribbles husband colin was 76 on the 6th of january colin is an avid sibc watcher with vicky too happy birthday colin happy birthday another happy birthday from the 6th of january is to alison patterson very happy birthday to you guys and we hope you all had a fantastic day celebrating of course in lockdown and hope you made it as special as possible fantastic stuff fantastic stuff okay yeah so i think that's kind of coming to an end it is we're coming to an end yes well there we are i've got some um more work to do meeting yeah yeah but we will be back next week and we're going to be joined by the one and only michaela stratton who as you may have heard unfortunately will not be able to join us for winter watch for very obvious reasons so we're not contesting that and mikayla is not contesting it either she's taken it on the chin for those of you that don't know she lives in cape town in south africa so she's unable to make the journey to the east it would be entirely inappropriate for her to make that journey so um we will be without her for winter watch so we're very pleased that she can join us on sibc yeah on the eve because winter watch starts on the tuesday immediately after this doesn't it it does it doesn't slip so we'll be back then um the other thing i was going to ask you to do was to check out at yolo birder okay i'll spell it for you it's y o aloe berder and he is hosting kid kit duel is the man's name and he's a bit of a wizard he's a polymer yeah he's done some really good things he did that red 67 book last year he's had a number of imaginative charitable conservation-minded ideas yes and uh one of them was the red 67 book which he did in conjunction with the british trustable mythology where 67 red listed birds he got people to paint pictures of them and people like myself painted the picture and did a little bit of writing about them and they were collated into an excellent book actually some very beautiful artwork not mine um but some very beautiful artwork that was okay i could do it with household paints because all the paints were like inaccessible to me at the time well i had like literally tens of dulux and stuff like that that's all i had to do it was very embarrassing whatever listen i digress the fact is he's now hosting a series of podcasts called golden grenades golden grenades the next episode episode is released tomorrow and it features the fantastic author jill lewis jill you know of course for her skydancer book and she's been on her days with us and she's been very generous with her books sending them out to school so that people can get a wider awareness of the issues that she writes about um and you can catch up with these podcasts by following kit on yoloburda that's y-o-l-o-berda y-o-l-o-berna yolo birder on twitter and then you can get the details yeah well there's one last thing so we've switched to youtube as it's the best platform for us to go forward with it would really help if you subscribed it just helps us stay in touch with you and we know at the moment that 80 of those people watching are not subscribing yeah it's just click the button it really helps us yeah um and keeps you up to date as well when our broadcasts are because now you know chris and i are working with water watches to take times and change times might change slightly so we can keep you up to date for example just winter when to watch we did that we did that a few months ago for winterwood so we will obviously want to be doing sibc as much as possible throughout this course of the lockdown and we will be flexible with times and dates and we want to keep you up to date so you don't miss anything um so please do subscribe and um yeah keep up to date with us excellent yeah because we're busy we'll be busy doing match of the day yeah i guess i guess we could do winter watch okay nice to uh nice to see you all i hope you enjoyed the quiz and indy was fantastic charlotte's film was good goldstein leopard i know he'll send us the photos we'll have to look at them next week they're going to be glorious aren't we the leopard up the tree and we're going to leave you with those birds in panama so do check out those cornell lab webcams all around the world they are great insight into a range of species that otherwise you could never stick your nose into but we hope you're okay we hope you're holding up all right and staying safe of course this lockdown is not an easy one we're in the winter but take solace in the nature get out for your exercise and engage as much as you possibly can because even though it's a little bit colder than it was in the spring it will do so so much for our mental health so make sure you get out explore safely and within regulations as well and we hope that you're all safe and keeping well okay all right we'll see you next time bye [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] you

Channel: The Self-Isolating Bird Club

Views: 7,571

Rating: 4.9621749 out of 5

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Id: 6hmyNwUu0vc

Length: 59min 5sec (3545 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 10 2021