#SIBCLive with Iolo Williams – Episode 71

yes hello hello hello hello what about that i've got our northern royal albatross at tara head new zealand superb stuff we were looking at it last week we could be looking at that for weeks because the inks were it's going to be incubating its single egg but what did we say i said 80 days yes a long time isn't it it's you know energetically very costly but for me the highlight of watching this bird at this point in time when there isn't a youngster to watch being fed is there there are two potential highlights secondly is is that the other adult will return and if the other adult returns then you get to see all of their display but you may be watching you may be watching some time because sometimes they're away feeding for several days before they come back but wouldn't it be great to have it live though oh i know maybe we should just keep going until we get it live okay be quiet [Music] other than that of course there were plenty of fly bars you see the other birds there were about i think we said about 60 pairs um at that site and every now and again you see one scudding through the background on those magnificent three meter plus wings last week i was going on about slopes right and all that yeah how they lock in i love that tendon that locks yeah yeah i really like that stick there you go you're always [Laughter] some of us are up at quarter seven thanks to the poodles and out by eight o'clock in the driving rain and mud well seems like a lot of people have also been out and about over the weekend lots of people saying hello as well so lots of chat already going on over and on youtube we've got lots of hellos we've got tracy from north lincoln show we've got will from welsh marshes we've got leslie in london esther from the cotswolds gym uh we've got debbie from essex and from orkney and diana from france all joining in on the chat excellent good evening to everyone good evening to everyone yeah yeah thanks for giving up your rainy evening to us yeah i mean you'd much rather be outside i would tell you you wouldn't want to be outside yesterday pouring down so lots of people have been outside well i know i mean that's fine i was outside i had the raincoat and the and the yeah what is that i'm wearing i mean it's wild otter trust fantastic organization that we're both affiliated with it's amazing what rescue knot is it's a great hat but i have never ever ever ever seen you wear a baseball cap it just doesn't happen yeah it's not in your you know you know you've got your bucket hat but you're just not really a baseball cap wearer so you know i'm wearing this for two reasons one we're about to show you some remarkable otter footage and our guest jolly williams is going to be telling us an otter story um but also because i've been out in the rain all day my hair's a complete mess and there's nothing i can do so what look how old or off would you reckon you get away with it you spiked okay well look no no disrespect to the world otter trust it's a great charity check them out we're talking about them in a minute but i'll go out for either go hat free risky risky jill lewis's daughter yeah georgie lewis georgie they came across a really amazing site and this was posted on twitter have a look at this it is the most incredible clip it's great isn't it oh i absolutely love it i mean imagine getting to encounter that yeah it's almost tempting to go out on a run you know that's even funnier than the hat listen um i said well i've been out for a walk the dogs do all the running it's perfect yeah but um that's amazing in daylight i remember that's on a mobile phone camera so that auto must have been so close i bet georgie there could hardly breathe so exciting seeing otters like that you know when it's a surprise even better isn't it it yeah but to be out when you're running to be able to see wildlife capture your phone is fantastic and i think so many people have enjoyed watching that clip because it's been shared so widely so i know you know but one amazing moment someone i mean we'd all love to be in georgie's shoes but you know here's the thing right because i'm obviously from the dark ages yeah yeah but there were there were years you know when we were out and about as naturalist and we would see those sorts of things and then we would get back and we would say you'll never guess what and he'd meet up with you know people in nature reserve car parks you said no i saw i was just having a run and all of a sudden this auto popped up and they go oh come on get out it's but you know everyone's got some people complain about contemporary technology interfering with young people engaging with nature and all that sort of stuff but there are aspects there are real benefits it's an amazing thing you can't argue with georgie she saw the author you know exactly and we all got to enjoy seeing it with her as well which is really brilliant well we'll talk about georgie um julio so mum is an author of course and today i got my hands on a copy of her book yeah yeah that's good i'm not probably i'm not sure i'm meant to talk about it or not yet it's not out yet it's not out yet but i was given a copy guys sneak peek yeah i can give you a sneak peek jill's uh well josephine loads of books obviously but um sky dancer is the one oh we've been sending sky dancer out into school sky dances about hen harrier and it's been a great way of drawing young people's attention to the plight of these birds which are still sadly cruelly persecuted in the uk yeah it's a really well illustrated beautiful story you know about a relationship with this henna it's beautiful it is absolutely beautiful with some amazing amazing books new book coming soon about our guest well yes we have the one and only yolo williams coming on who i believe might have had a bit of a cool encounter of his very own so let's go over and say hi to yolo how are you oh i think you're muted he's muted i won't last long oh no oh no he's gone black he's gone dark well what's happened now switched his camera around okay we're getting there now his camera's off oh hang on hang on is that better yeah i'm i rubbish with all this technology and it's all been it's all been over zoom of course and we're using skype here i have new skype since about february this year i think something like that but but yes i i had a fantastic encounter with an otter just about two weeks ago we were down in pembrokeshire um filming for a new series for bbc wales and we set up the hide and we went into the height at half-past four and we didn't come out to the height till half past midnight and it was by that time was about minus two so staying without moving virtually for eight hours is not easy for me anyway and it was absolutely freeze but the fantastic thing was we had a wonderful view of a dog otter with an infrared camera and i had a little screen i could watch it he went up the bank and it had like a slide there so it slid back down into the river and then came back up and did exactly the same thing again so yeah it was it was fabulous it was really really cool encounter and here's something something i've been thinking about a lot i reckon that otters originally wouldn't have been nocturnal animals there's no reason for them to be nocturnal i think it's a long history of persecution by man that's driven them into being nocturnal and now that that persecution is virtually non-existent i think they're coming back out again in daylight like they used to yeah i think there's a very good chance you're you're right about that the other thing they would have been of course is when they're on the coast they would have been somewhat tidal because they like forging when the tides out sometimes along the shore in all of those rock pools depending on where they are of course so they might have had some rhythms that were based around the tides but when you think back to when we were kids like i said earlier you know the dark ages they were all strictly nocturnal weren't they otters you never heard the people seeing them in the daylight so things have definitely changed oh yeah very much so i mean big influence on my life was tight granddad he used to take me out little boys show me how to find nests tickle fish with my hands and he was dying to show me an otter and the river near him the avon saiyan had been a really good otter river and we went out regularly never saw an otter i heard my first daughter when i was about probably 23 24 the chattering little whistles and what have you but i didn't see an otter till 20 um so no they were they were extremely scarce very hard to see unless of course you went up to shetland or mull whatever it is but now i'm so so pleased that they're back on every major welsh river probably every english welsh river by now as well well what else you've been up to yolo apart from stalking otters in the freezing night i've been been out about quite a bit been on some some nice times actually he's spending quite a bit of time because it's you know back into lockdown and everything else he was here anyway um but that meant i could spend quite a bit of time out and about walking so quite a few pole cats oddly enough they've been yeah they've been very active in and around this area around some of the old farmyards where there's plenty of rats in the woods edge of the woods where there are rabbits i think in the last month i think i've seen something like three or four pole cats which is very unusual but i do like going out at night with a with an infrared with well with a red light torch you know it's fantastic the things you see just absolutely amazing and just a few days ago i had the pleasure of going down to the rspb's ham wall reserve down on the somerset levels one of my favorite english reserves it's just absolutely fantastic and it was it was mind-blowing it's amazing to arrive somewhere where great white egrets are more common than literally grits you know i i was there for about four hours i must have seen well upwards of a dozen great white egrets and only two um little egrets and they were you know around every corner great whitey grit and you know chris when when we were youngsters when we were in our team before the boer war you know a great white egret wow that would have brought out you know 5 000 twitches and now they well i wouldn't say they're 10 a penny but if you go down to the levels they're around every corner virtually and the other thing that i did there was um i watched the starling roost and this was truly amazing it was a fantastic show it really was one of the best styling murmurations i have ever seen how many birds i eat easy 250 000 easily that may well have been more than that and and it's just it was an amazing amazing show and i need to apologize to the rspb here because i've learned since that they've been keeping people away because of covid um obviously you can go there there is a path there but they're asking people please don't go i knew nothing of this at all and um i just went there i filmed it i put it on twitter and it's gone viral and um they're not they're not best pleased with me because they're not saying please please please take it off don't put it on there because we don't want people to come down so for those people listening enjoy the video but please don't go down to ham wall because of covid it'll all be over soon and hopefully we can all rush down there and enjoy this you know just an amazing amazing show yeah it's a beautiful video it's fantastic yeah that's rather envious to say i'm burn rated this winter no we haven't we were talking about this yeah we were saying that we hadn't gone commemorated there's a little murmur that occurs just quite close to us but only with a handful of birds we're talking about hundreds rather than thousands of birds but they still go through the motions and we shouldn't ourselves out there locally and that's a place where you can go which is covered safe it's not you it's a massive broad area you can just stand out on flat land and socially distance so yeah we could have a we could have a look at that on a nice evening not tonight it's been gruesome here we were talking about joel lewis's skydancer book the plight of the hen however it's a bird obviously close to your heart you had a fortune of growing up with them in the dark ages i don't it's long before megan not a bird that i know to be honest with you south of england where i grew up we never had them there but you but you've been familiar with this species for for many years yeah i've i've been very lucky to grow up uh just north of where i am now in mid wales in the berwin mountains and so um you know since i was about eight nine years old i've wandered the moors and watched 10 harriers and and they're just incredible birds and and because of lockdown this year i was able to spend a few more days than usual up on the malls helping a good mate of mine keith offered up there he does 99 of the work and i get the odd day up with him and we had a very good year on the patch that we monitor we had um 11 pairs in all this is just one area uh three failed eight successfully reared 24 young so you know welsh harriers do pretty well on the whole we do we we get poor years of course we do weather's a big issue for us here um but but this year was a pretty good year over most of wales it's just of course that when they they leave wales here and then they head off to parts of northern england and other parts of the uk that's when they disappear in inverted commas um but yeah on the whole here in wales our haris are actually doing really well but persecution is still a problem in some parts of the the uk as you mentioned but to show us your your gruesome artifact your life yeah this is something that goes back to my rspb days look at that this is something i confiscated oddly enough of a welsh farmer in 1988 um he'd released some peasants some peasants he'd released those as well he'd released some pheasants from a pen and uh when i arrived there this was hanging from a post there it's it's a pull trap and you can see try and hear how it kind of works is you can see the teeth here um you can see the the the teeth here this opens up and uh this is then put on a perch and let me see i can can i open it up yeah here we go here we go look nice that's how it opens up and see the teeth there it's it's a vicious cruel thing it's hung on a post when it's set there's a perch in the middle here that the bird lands on and that causes the teeth to snap shut and it'll hold the bird there until the farmer the keeper whatever it is comes along and dispatches the bird now they've been outlawed since 1904 but they've still been used not not old ones i mean this is probably built in victorian times i think they use fen traps now which can be used legally if they're hidden out the way below bales or in a tunnel against things like rats but um we still finding them put up on posts to catch birds of prey so um yeah it's it's it's barbaric really to think things haven't changed in the last 150 years or not very much anyway it's terrible to think of an animal trapped in that you know it's absolutely horrific especially something like the hen harry's the martial all of that i mean it's just absolutely heartbreaking terrible stuff what what's what's next then yellow what you we got plans for the next few days um well i've just been down in the southwest filming for for winter watch so i'm looking forward to that that'll be the last two weeks of january of course and it'll be the same format as ever you two will be down in the new forest i'll be at the center for alternative technology michaela in scotland jillian in yorkshire um and other than that hopefully a couple of days filming for this bbc wales series down in pembrokeshire and only enough we we're hoping there are enough birds to film a stalling murmuration down there and it's one that about five years ago had nearly half a million birds in it and it's it's a pretty good winter four starlings from what i gathered i've seen three or four memorations uh over the last six weeks or so and and fairly good numbers so i'm hoping there'll be good numbers there for us to go down and film and other than that chris it's going to be pretty quiet then leading up to the new year so a lot of time out in the field a lot of time wildlife watching and bird watching a lot of people are asking you'll be leaving perfectly on to the question that everyone's dying to know how do you count a starting commemoration how do you go about estimating that it's it's really difficult meg and i leave it to the experts the people who are out there all the time i'll never forget going out with a chap called colin wells who for 20 years was uh the rspb warden on the d estuary and we were we were counting pink-footed geese and not now not do this murmuration very much like starlings do and he turned to me and said okay how many knots are in there and i looked at it and i thought well maybe 1200. and he said no no it's about two two and a half thousand and do you know what we took a photograph had it enlarged and he was well i wouldn't say he was spot on but he was only a few hundred out so these people who are out there constantly counting these birds they're incredibly accurate so um i just leave it to them my maths in school was dreadful you know i i've only got 10 fingers that i could use so uh once i get beyond that i struggle yeah i'm the same with you yolo my mouth is absolutely awful but yeah trained eye then is what you need is it well or technology like always says you can take a photograph and these those yeah there's what we call spot recognition software so you can take a photograph feed it into the the computer and it counts the number of spots or birds um pretty accurately actually and it can do species differences as well so if there's a different mix of species and flock you can tell which is which and it deals with overlap and all that sort of stuff so i think that would probably be the easiest easiest way to do it yeah employ the technology you're going to leave us with a quiz i think uh yes i am but something else i picked up at ham wall is is this no it's a pellet um with a foot sticking out of it um it's not a difficult one to put this on twitter as well but for those of you who don't tweet my two questions really first of all whose pellet is that which bird uh produced that pellet and secondly um whose foot is that um poor bird in there but yeah that was a that's amazing i found that in one of the hides in ham wall and it it was like a lolly you know you could pick it up with that bird's foot and and lick the pellet if you were so inclined i hope you did i mean i know that's exactly what chris would do yellow but i hope yeah no no no no believe me i'll eat virtually anything but uh no no no i got i wasn't gonna lick that no i'm glad to hear it yeah i find they get stuck in your teeth if you try it right yeah yeah it's a little bit sort of sinewy i fine both find bad as each other you too oh yeah thanks so much for coming on really good to hear and see you and uh good to look forward to seeing you for winter watch right and because we'll only be seeing each other through the screen there won't be any any sort of you know muttering mattering behind the porter cabin about birds of yesteryear [Laughter] no talking about the good old days chris talking about the good old days thanks for allowing me back on and um just merry christmas to everyone who's who's watching i know it's a few weeks away but have a fantastic christmas and let's hope 2021 is better than 2020. fingers crossed that merry christmas your lady see you live thank you very it's a brilliant naturalist as well that's what i like about it yeah he's been he's done what he's done all the time in the field like he said yeah from the time he was a kid he was up on those moors he's incredible picking up so if you think you know which palette that is do let us know yeah and uh we'll see who can who's guest right at the end yeah who's foot and who's pellet that is the question whose palette it is a bit like it does kind of look like some kind of dinosaur legs i love that you can dinosaur drumstick almost you know what i wish that was in my collection do you yeah i'd love it i didn't think i think you'll left it right up there it might be nipping down a couple hours people you don't want people to visit no covered as well i'm tempted to knit back and try and find that but just send them a letter see if they'll send it to you in the past look at it it's a beauty isn't it i'd get that finding of it on the wall yeah it is a good one now anyways if you think you know what that is put it in the comments we'll get back to that at the end but from one fantastic conservationist to another many of you might know rebecca or becker's butterfly farm on social media and she is so enthusiastic and so knowledgeable about butterflies she has done a roundup of this year everything that she's been up to and the things that she's seen so let's hear from becca hi chris and megan i've had a brilliant butterfly year this year i've released holly blues green veined whites peacocks commas and small tortoise shelves my highlights have been watching the peacock caterpillar peel off its skin to reveal the chrysalis seeing the large white layer eggs and watching the caterpillars hatch out i also found two comma caterpillars on the nettles as well over winter i'll be looking after orange tips large whites and a holly blue all this christmas they should be hatching out next year in spring or summer sadly this year's big butterfly count has showed the lowest numbers recorded in 11 years it would be great if everyone can do what they can to help butterflies and bring their numbers back up again so together we can help make next year a better butterfly year that's it for now bye so sweet i love it i love becca all the content i love it the best my favorite bit was the holy blue such a stunning butterfly but when you're you know well any age actually i was going to say when you're young but at any age when you get a creature like that on your hand in contact with you and you're looking at it and you think can i feel it it's so small can i actually feel that on my thing can i feel its little feet sometimes you can certainly with the heavier butterflies you can feel them and feeling a little you know butterfly walking across your hand is a is inspirational the sort of thing that you know is clearly lit a spark for becca that's going to burn for a lifetime her passion for these insects is never going to be dulled and that's that contact with wildlife i think sometimes that's so important to establish for young people because if they can touch it and feel it and get scratched and stung and bitten by it yeah well my child may be here put your finger in there yeah come on stick your names in it yeah see how hard that bites and it's it's um it's those sort of things are really formative formative experiences and today well this week we're going to do a good a good news story i'm just going to read the headline from one of the uk's papers from this week largest ever fine for wildlife crime handed down by court after bat ruse destroyed the largest ever fine was 600 000 pounds now look at that money is a lot of money that's a real kind of significant yeah consequence isn't it it was uh it was wrought upon a house building firm after it carried out demolition work at a site known to be inhabited by protected bats so the site was known by bat workers the bats were soprano pipistrelles and they were definitely there the previous year the police had said this was in greenwich in in london but between the 17th of march and 17th of august in 2018 the buildings were destroyed and the company was fined six hundred thousand pounds had to pay cost of thirty thousand pounds and voluntarily i have to say voluntary agreed to make a donation of twenty thousand pounds to the bat conservation trust uh a body that does all it can to yeah to raise awareness of the fact that these animals are firstly fascinating beautiful you know but also good indicator species of community health and ecological wealth but also rare and therefore protected but i just want to draw attention to one other thing here because i think credit where credit's due is always part of my mantra the metropolitan police said the fine was the largest ever issued by a court in relation to a wildlife crime and inspector david houghton praised officers sergeant simon henderson and police constable giles valestrini for their roles in this complex investigation so there we are david simon and giles thank you very much it's through your diligent hard work that this fine has been passed on to this company and greater awareness of the plight of these creatures will be established and clearly a fine of that size is sending out a clear message to other developers don't mess with bat roosts yeah because if you get diligent police officers like these gentlemen here then you could end up with more than half a million pounds good it's really good because musicians are significant you know they i mean a lot of things are in decline back to massively underground you know we need to be able to protecting as much as we can with new developments popping up seemingly everywhere we need to really think about those developments carefully and sending a message like that and getting people to think twice about what they're doing you know whether you're putting swift boxes in batteries everything you know we need to be incredibly careful and that for me is a real step because one of the big issues is when you get caught it's hard enough to you know get catch wildlife crime because often it is out in the middle of nowhere yeah but when it is port there are often not many fines given there's no penalties as such so to see something like that is really encouraging they're not named there actually but we ought to also thank the judge on in this case because very often as megan says it's the judiciary that it's the last thing you know people are caught the evidence is presented they're judged if they're found to be guilty that very often that the punishment doesn't fit the crime yeah we see this very often all sorts of things but here clearly the judge or judges on the case have seen the gravity of this crime and wanted to send out a clear message to the developers not just the company that we find but the other companies too top work from the police and to the judiciary we like that we like that very much we do okay why am i wearing one of your tops not only not only have i come wearing a baseball cap albeit for the fabulous world of trust but i'm now also wearing one of your tops which you insisted that i am it's a bit tight for you but it's because you've come unprepared you came unprepared honestly so apparently it's christmas jumper wow well it's from marionville who on our sibc facebook group notified us all that it was christmas jumper day which is the best day of the year the best time where you can get out the most ridiculous jumpers that are you know tinsel and ball balls and bells and whatever else you want to stick on it you can get away with wearing it i've got some ghastly ones at home i finally i'd known honestly so lots of people join in today posting their own christmas jumpers have a look at this we've created a little montage of everybody wearing them have a look at this i love this everyone's looking so oh i like that one see i like that one yeah that's cool yes t-rex what does that say have a rawsome christmas oh come on do you know what are the baubles on the beards christmas tree oh look everyone having such a nice time yeah i know but it's they're treating like it's christmas already oh it is only a couple weeks away isn't it oh no oh i like that one yeah yeah there we go i like a bit of an elf last christmas you made me dress up as an elf that's it you did i had to dress up as enough i thought we went on this bus and we were campaigning against hs2 and i was told that everybody would be dressed up in kind of christmas gear i turn up there he's dressed as santa claus i have the most horrific elf costume ever and we have to walk around london like that and nobody else is dressed up but anyway enough about that i still be in a bonnet about it so we have also got we were jumping on the bus and we went around we were handing out trains it was good are you going to show us i'm going to show you my one because this is really cool i love sharks so i've got have a jaw some christmas it's pretty good oh santa jaws is coming to town and yours it says a whale in a manger now these these jumpers were actually produced by a friend of mine at love the oceans and my friend fran is a fantastic conservation she runs a charity in mozambique to highlight kind of the issues surrounding marine conservation and she's done these amazing jumpers and there's lots of different ones on the lovely oceans website and um so yeah i've got two of them and you didn't have one turned into qvc you know obviously if you christmas jumper with a whale and a shark on it it's quite cool yeah yeah we've got better that's a great collection there i love it yeah just have a look see what i've got underneath what have you got this one oh it's okay no it's okay it's okay yeah i just sort of thought better be careful before i take it off i've got star wars there's an attack being taken for a walk by a stormtrooper anyway yeah that's right i thought i might have had a poodle t-shirt on or something like that you know shall we move by paul hartley of course is the most fantastic design illustrators needed those beautiful bird designs and he's joined us many times on sibc and we featured his work and gently referenced birds ourselves and he has run a competition called birds can fly it's been a fantastic competition and he's here now to announce the winner so here is paul harfleet this is a very special video because i'm about to reveal the winner of my birds can fly competition so now to the exciting bit [Music] i've been so lucky to get so many brilliant entries i just love them all [Music] [Applause] [Music] we use blue siberian robin so beautifully painted [Applause] [Music] look at his face alexander's great crested grieb was a very close second i love benjamin's osprey with the wings [Music] and dylan's use of wooden spoons [Music] genius apparently this is reuben's first completed piece of work i love the geometry of that peacock and i love the seriousness and the faces of these kids who are really channeling the bird [Music] jude is just two and this spinny fix pigeon by elsie is amazing so great wasn't that nice very grateful to all of you for entering but that does have to be a winner oh but there is a special guest bringing the winning envelope i'm just going to have a look to see if they're here yet can you see yeah they're on their way i don't normally let my special guest in the house but i've opened a window curry and kieran thank you the winner is drumroll drummer the winner is elsie age nine elsie's commitment to the bird um was amazing i love the use of uh bananas i just absolutely love it everything about it is just so charming so thank you elsie and your family for helping you you have to now let me know which bird you'd like me to draw so thank you so much it really has been such a treat to do this bye-bye top blood so good so good and that was brilliant and what about all those entries they were superb it was the mathematicians got and the creativity of everybody who participated was just congratulations to the winner as well spin effects pidgin it was good there were some really good ones in there you know there was one in there that points me my like my favorite facts yeah do you know what it's going to be so the photograph of the spoon bill gently referenced spoon bill and i loved it because the young man in there put a sheet over his head and put serving spoons in his mouth here's my favorite spoonbill patch what and i've said this before on snbc but i'll say it again and i'll probably say totally certainly and i'll say it you know going forward what do you call a baby spoonbill beautiful images of the northern royal albatross from the cornell institute that the second adult has come in you might well hold on is it is it intentionally it's the pair i presume because otherwise it wouldn't be getting quite so close without the fact oh no look he's coming in let's see what happens it could be you'd have thought we could be watching for days oh oh look look billing how are they going to stand up and dance come on stand up and dance take a little break oh look you can imagine oh chattering oh what a beautiful can't tell the sexes apart so i can't tell you which one's the male and the female at this point because they share the incubation duties but come on get up and dance that lazy bird doing the escalating these birds could have known each other for like 30 40 years because no idea how old they are but they lived such a long time they could are you okay with that here we go oh no there's a stretch the one that's sitting down isn't doesn't seem to want to join in no not quite going oh no honestly it's still amazing to see that kind of interaction there coming towards the camera we did say didn't we it would be great to have the pen yeah i didn't want the darts and it's still pretty good isn't it it's pretty good oh stretch your wings go on come on you know you want to go on go on yeah yes oh that was a false take-off i think you can see that it's yeah yes yes do you know what i don't think that was the pair no i don't i think that was probably an unrelated bird that landed close to that one had a little bit of an altercation yeah a mild altercation flirted with how's it going you know how's your incubation going yeah bill clattering yeah and then obviously you can see the wind you know riffling yeah riffling the grass there and then it took off into the wind when it was when there was a gust what a scene though because look at the clouds and the blues blue sea it was great oh that was very nice it was very exciting yeah it was very exciting was very very good indeed now a little while ago we said we wanted to hear your back to nature stories and we wanted to know how you were getting out and connecting with wildlife and how you were getting back to nature yourself so so many people tweeted us and used our hashtag back to nature and we've got some great stories so we just wanted to share a few of those with you this is one from karen stapley of a bumblebee look how beautiful the colors are stunning aren't they it's pretty good isn't it yeah because the yellow of the bee matches the presumably the anthers within the flower and and the petals of the flower frame the bee perfectly and it's covered in pollen it's great isn't it yeah i quite like it that's good yeah this next one is from ron roberts a photograph of a grass snake god they're one of the best stars i love grass snakes look at this bit frowny that one though it is i love that in the water though they're just something else aren't they yeah well they they will feed beneath the water and they can swallow fish beneath the water without drowning i i can't do that no i've seen you trying the bath many times with your you often hear it when you're downstairs chris just flailing around yeah trying to perform the similar antics to the glass night who else we got oh we've got mark grove coming up next who has got a video of us of a kingfisher having a bit of a waddle like a penguin yes yes well they have got very short legs and small feet haven't they yeah because they're very sweet obviously don't use them for anything but perching i know that sounds ridiculous but other many birds use there well sometimes when you see owls and stuff they've got very long legs yeah of course but they'd and again they need them for killing yeah but not the kingfisher the kingfisher used its head first in doesn't need long legs but that's a great little clip so lots of people getting back to nature if you've been getting back to nature remember to tweet us facebook us whatever and use the hashtag back to nature and we'll be sure to see those as well okay so now um what about the the quiz quiz yeah yolo's quiz that he had for us let's have a look at the picture one more time we asked you let us know what you thought about um whose pellets this could be and also whose foot it is hmm that is the question very big question this is a very very big question i'm just waiting for some answers to come through i'm i'm not quite sure if they haven't come through yet oh we've got michelle we've got simon and danny who i believe have got it right so well done to the three of you so that's good i've got both questions right so they were able to work out whose pellet and whose foot it was yeah which was the tricky thing so two bonus points mandy got whose foot correct side and he's got his foot correct and uh as they come through i'll keep reading them out but chris jonah should we rub the answer so this is the the pellet of a bar now and the foot that's inside it won't surprise you is that of a starling um which has no doubt been plucked out of its roost after murmurating so it murmurated its last sorry about that so how do we know that well firstly if you look at the pellet itself um although it's just a photograph you can see that it doesn't have a fluffy surface it's got essentially a smooth surface it's as if it's coated in a black film i've got i know that bones are poking through it and you can see tufts of feathers and maybe fur there as well but many birds of prey when they produce their pellets when they dry out they go hairy but the bar now doesn't it often has a smooth black surface over much of the pellet and of course the size and shape tell you that it's a bar now pelletes too and then the starlings foot well again very characteristic different than the kingfisher of course your long leg is a walking bird finds it yeah walking across the grassland where it does its open beak probing and so therefore it's got those long toes and long claws to help it walk effectively so starting and um when i remember years ago we were at um leighton moss but there's a small murmuration that takes place that was going in after dark and plucking the starlings out of the roost very cool don't worry anyone else get it right or not uh we have dave g who i believe also got um the barn owl bit right so yes well done to anyone who got that was a tricky one that was tricky it was a tricky one it was a very beautiful palette yeah gorgeous you'd like to have that in your complexion there so onto your birthdays want to wish everyone a very happy birthday we've got carol platt it was her birthday on the 18th of december love the photos of the fox and the term stone she sent to we've got uh harriet wanted to say happy birthday to her mum angela her birthday was on the 8th of december angela is a tireless campaigner and protector for wildlife so thank you so much angela for all that you do we really wish you a very very happy birthday amanda wanted to say happy birthday to her son aaron it was his birthday yesterday aaron is a very big fan of sibc and the wildlife cameras from wildlife kate they've also created a pond during knockdown well i hope that's been lots of biodiversity has been coming into your garden from that pond i'm sure it has been a very happy birthday to you aaron john would also like to say happy birthday to his wife helen farrow she loves the show and has worked through lockdown in a care home nature and srbc videos have really helped her well thank you so much karen for all that you do you know working as an entrepreneur in the care homes and you know all the key workers for absolutely phenomenal work we are forever indebted to you and everything that you've been through this year so thank you very much and we hope you had a fantastic birthday uh excellent stuff happy birthday to all of you and just before we conclude simon watts has said that um he so simon waltz of wild presentations uk had some pellet soup going this afternoon stunning skulls 12 bank vol 5 wood mouse because what you can do although i will tell you now it's not popular with your parents is that you can collect the pellets yeah you like to you put them you put them in a saucepan and you gently warm the water and you stir it gently until all of the fur and feathers part ways from the bones which then fall to the bottom of the surface of the saucepan and and and you get like a a thick felting mat of feathers and fur across the top of the saucepan it does have a characteristic that's a nice way of saying it a characteristic aroma the one problem i will say is that if you do that you don't know which pellet which skull came from unless you were to do one pellet at a time in a saucepan which would be time consuming yeah so i did boil some pellets a few times and they it did make a characteristic smell in the house and it wasn't very popular because i used obviously we only had enough spare saucepans when i was a kid we just had the ones we were cooking potatoes your mum must have been so happy but what i used then got to do was i used to then dry my pellets out so i would collect my pellets and i would leave them out on newspaper in my bedroom over a period of time so that they would dry out and if some of them were still a little bit sticky because obviously when the birds regurgitate them they're very moist and sticky and when you're dissecting them then you get like black stuff all over your fingers you know it's not bad it's just black stuff on your fingers but then what i used to do was put them under the grill low setting and another characteristic smell is produced at that oh i can see i can see this makes your pellets crisp this is your crispy pellets right and then you can break them open without any of the black guns on your fingers and you can find out which colors in which individual color yeah so a couple of top tips there one from simon wattsworld presentations you want to do a bit of boiling with your pellets or you can do a bit of grilling it's a christmas activity for the kids i'll tell you something there's more likelihood of me grilling some pellets on christmas day than there is putting anything else in the oven i know there is because last time you cooked christmas dinner and how to disaster the potatoes that you've got frozen brought potatoes you put them in the oven they still came out frozen was the last time i ever let him cook i think i went to so much trouble tonight like christmas dinner i mean it was still partially frozen it was a very nice episode this is why we take over in the kitchen challenge but it was like it was a good effort take over you make a ghastly mess absolutely but then you have like heated through food to eat so it's all you know present okay so we better wrap this up because i don't want anyone else knowing about my frozen potatoes tip of the iceberg if you'll forgive the pun um and uh so what we got to say yeah basically look lots of people are watching us on youtube now but not subscribing if you do subscribe it does help us uh help us monitor the analytics etcetera it means that we can stay in touch with you and let you know exactly exactly what we're going to be doing and in the new year we've got great plans for sibc with new technology which we're going to invest in yes um we've sold all the calendars yes thank you very much thank you very much i hope you enjoy those for 12 all 12 months of next year there are a few christmas cards left if you'd like some christmas cards it's got a you know i mean better be quick there otherwise it'll be christmas my job would still set them in january it doesn't matter anyway you know um yeah that's fine and then of course if you're thinking of any last-minute christmas presents um you can um you can maybe think about reading a book over christmas i don't know this one's awesome yeah it's okay it was all right it's a bit bitter animals in there yeah it's all right it's quite good yeah it's available at all respectable retailers yeah and some unrespectable retailers i hope as well but as you are out about and exploring we would love to get your submissions in and you can keep in contact with us send in your videos your pictures anything that you get up to any kind of activities that do environment wildlife or just recipes recipes always good and you can send those in to us at submissions at si bird dot club and if you have a birthday then make sure you email us at birthdays at siberd.com now next sunday is the 20th of december and we won't be broadcasting on the 20th december because we've got a special treat for you a little present for christmas day yes an sibc christmas special our bells will be jingling our trees will be glistening yeah and you know somewhere someone will have a red nose if they go on about my frozen potatoes any longer and it won't be rude off so yeah no broadcast next sunday but on uh christmas day we'll be there with an sibc christmas special and i'll get one of my own jumpers out for that yeah oh dear that is going to be a special organ we will see you all on christmas day but until then have a fantastic time enjoy the lead up to christmas i hope you snuggle up on the sofa watch some great christmas films you know get out and about and enjoy nature safely of course as well so until then we will see you very soon yeah we'll leave you with the royal albatross at tyro ahead bye everyone um uh so um

Channel: The Self-Isolating Bird Club

Views: 8,126

Rating: 4.9873013 out of 5

Keywords: chris packham, megan mccubbin, springwatch, live wildlife, live camera, nature, iolo williams, welsh, naturalist

Id: S_pTxj9r2M0

Length: 62min 16sec (3736 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 13 2020