#SIBCLive with Luke Massey – Episode 83

[Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] good morning good morning from the arctic circle oh it's cold today you know when everyone said oh it's gonna be great we'll get up and you know we'll be doing them at 9am we can do them outside great love it but it's cold i thought it'd be spring it's not even 9am i know it's 8 am yeah because the clock someone's messed with time yeah which we had we had a debate about this last night didn't we do you want do you want to tell everyone what happened well i i've always been really upset about the fact that we mess with time you know i think time's sort of pretty satisfying yeah and we didn't all just start just sort of changing it to suit ourselves now i understand obviously when daylight saving time was introduced are very good reasons for it and um you know when i when i were a kid you know one of the key things that decided because they stopped doing it for a while you know did they yes i think in the 1960s we all used to i tell you what they did they stopped doing it and it was dark when we were going to school um and we walked to school in those days when people actually children had legs and they they had before they've evolved into having their mums and dads and guardians take them in take them in cars but we had legs and we used to walk to school and they stopped the daylight saving time as an experiment and um we used to have to wear these fluorescent armbands you didn't yeah we did and they were really uncool and why did you have to do oh because you walk in the dark we're in the dark so we have like these reflective reflections of fluorescent armbands which we have to put on i would love to have seen that of course what we did was we put them on in the house yeah you know take them all off and then as soon as we got outside the gate we took them off and stuck them in our pockets then when we got to the school gate we put them back on again because otherwise you get told off by the teachers yeah yeah anyway look i don't think you should mess with time i think you just leave time alone no but you but it's not the thought that we were talking about was it because i agree i think it's a weird thing that we switch our hours but i mean it's nice to have longer daylight of course but isn't it any longer it's just a different time we get more daylight don't we you do because it's just done so into the sun no you're talking about it like we get more light in the evening yes exactly yeah it's so good to me yeah but you could do that anyway but anyway this wasn't what we were discussing was it no no what we were discussing was that i was i was saying that it was only the uk that were foolish enough to do this and in europe in europe that they didn't change the time which is absolute rubbish but the reason for that was that when i was living in france right the time wouldn't change because your phone automatically does it for you so you would you wouldn't notice it when you were in front of chris said chris said that you know in france they don't change their hours back and forth and i of course immediately took to google and found that 140 countries across the world do do this including argentina mexico the majority of the european union including france germany et cetera et cetera and um you were adamant that that wasn't the case and we were the only country to do it idiots yeah well i don't think anyone else would be foolish enough across the world to mess with time like that to be quite honest with you anyway um i was wrong about that but the reason i think i was wrong was that when i was in france i was living on a mixture of um european time and uk time because obviously i was communicating with people in the uk and and so part of my day was uk centric and the part was playing centric you know you should just have this time you should just have you know you've had a great job i don't know everyone else's you should just have your own i've had a great time anyway look we've been messing with time so it's eight o'clock welcome well it's 9am but yes hello i'm saying it's eight right well you say it's 18. but we get very confusing very quickly for next week what time will next week show be on everyone will be here either an hour early next week's show will be on september the 42nd oh dear lots of people are saying hello so we've got anne from oakley we've got joe in london rose walcher we've got uh sarah and vermont maria and bristol barry and uh beijing stoke we've got james paula mary um oh mary says she's from suffolk she says spring has sprung shifts chief chapter chuffing ambitions are booming britain's booming is booming well you're very lucky who was that mary did you say that was mary from suffolk very lucky mary yeah britain's booming booming bitten well something to brag about isn't it i haven't heard like i have heard chief jeff actually because they sort of seem to call all the time don't they but yeah um but i haven't heard one sort of distinctly springy actually yeah lots of other birds singing no not up in the in the woods or here no not chipping and chuffing what did i hear yesterday oh marsh tit singing that was good yeah the last chip was singing that was good um it's good when they sing because you know they're definitely marsh tits and not reloaded um so that that was good and uh i just got a couple of things i was going to show you i've been out and about this week snuffling you know something i'll tell you something there's an enormous amount of badger poo out in the woods at the moment yeah it's that time of year they seem to be i should really sort of measure the volume of badger poo on my walks let me tell you what it's a little weird some scales and weigh the volume because at this time of year they you know they're filling the latrines and every day i find a new latrine dug in in a new place it's they get very excited fecally at this time of year particularly exciting it's like there's lots of places a lot of badger activity going on and around the set area went to the set yesterday i can't tell you haven't been there look look what um sid found out in the woods yeah look i found this so it's a it's a a small row um was the top of it i was going to say the skull but the teeth are missing from the bottom as you can see so basically it's just the uh the top of a uh a robux head there with a couple of little anthony's piece quite nice yeah sid found that came trotting but he was quite proud of himself he was i confiscated immediately obviously but it's quite a nice little memento of the woods there i'll tell you what i'll tell you what i'm a generous bloke if any of our younger viewers would like this okay um to contact us through the usual channels and i'll stick it in the post um there we are look at that i mean it's not in perfect condition because it's been sitted in fact it's been gnawed here on the side that adds to its you know it's been normal and of course the teeth are missing but still a nice object and they feel nice feel those antlers they always feel so nice yeah that's nice i also found this and cut it off as well look i like this so i mean i've shown people these before but i couldn't resist this one piece yeah i was on a piece of dead hazel so the hazel would have been grown up like that of course and what's happened here is that some honeysuckle has wrapped itself around the hazel the hazel's continued to grow and you can see the spiral of the honeysuckle there as it's gone around like that and it's caused the hazel to form you know to do a topia to grow in a spiral and hazel's growing straight up of course but because of the way that honeysuckle has constricted it it's it's growing like that i've got about four of these actually in the old container and uh this is not the best one but yeah i can't i don't know i quite like those i've always quite wanted them yeah i like that yeah i thought about making something yeah well i mean that's how they make walking sticks isn't it because they grow it up and then you wind some wire around it yeah why they do something to make it grow in that kind of contorted yeah i might do that i might you know i'm getting on so i might be needing a stick relatively shortly yeah and much more gardening i'll need more than a stick i can tell you um and uh yeah and i might make my own walking stick anyway there we are okay should we get back to those off space yeah let's go on because this is pretty exciting isn't it that's they're back they're back it always strikes me that it's too early for space i don't know why i had this bizarre you know association with them arriving later in the year but so this is great this is our ospreys from all around look at the ones there yeah i know they're great aren't they so this is the view of mountain bay osprey nest at rutland water nature reserve it's stunning isn't it this is the star pair so the female is called maya and they have nests these this pair have been nesting together since 2015. they've got quite a long ongoing relationship it's good isn't it and they've been migrating and surviving that whole time so i think uh the the male is called 33. i don't know why he's called 33 and she's called maya i'm not sure but um look at that because when they came to name him no one had any good ideas 33 33 yeah but they've they have bred really successfully they've raised three tricks together so far and uh 33 appears to be enjoying spending time on the nest more so than other males so he's quite an attentive male quite an attentive individual and uh since 2016 they've already raised an additional 12 checks including a record-breaking four chicks in 2019. wow check that out it's pretty good isn't it look there's a bit of nesting behavior going on there though refurbishment bit of refurbishment that's been battered by the winds and rains all winter and uh look at them i love that it's great to think they've been all the way to senegal and then they've come up look at that yeah look a bit of scraping there i love how they kind of like wiggle their bottoms you know the tail feathers go forward you just switch it out that's what i do when i get into bed you know and it's cold you've got like do you wiggle what i mean no no just me then no i've got two pedals that do all the wiggling that i need on on the bed on the phone um yeah superb ospreys look at that when you think that again you know when i were a kid now we're a kid they're only in scotland and they've only started nesting there relatively recently in the 1950s of course and now they're doing really well aren't they look at that do you know what i'm very excited about this year birds of paul harbor let's go to that nest right now now cast your minds back to a year ago and the story of cj seven now this is a reintroduction project of course that's run by birds of poor harbor and there hasn't been ospreys on the south coast for any 200 years something like that a very very long time so this is a really important reintroduction project and last year we had everything crossed because cj7 uh came to this nest and found well she was waiting for a long long time but no mail showed up and we were waiting every single day looking for other stuff she showed up in yeah we had a night jar yeah tournament we had a tournament because other ospreys yeah with uh with osprey nest they're so large that smaller birds often nest within the osprey nest so we did see a lot of other things going going through that is a stunning view isn't it it is just sandy lowland heath look at that yeah it's a great spot isn't it here's a question then so is she back because obviously it's not on the nest at the moment doesn't mean she's not back i'm not sure about that well i don't think she has returned actually no so no returning birds yet this year although last year there was of course that exciting development so we do have a lot of hope that cj7 will return with a male you might remember that she did produce an egg but without a male presence that egg was infertile but if she comes back and manages to successfully breed it'll be the first time we'll have ospreys in the south for nearly 200 years be awesome he's so excited white tailed eagles i was um listening to a great talk yesterday afternoon on the hampshire ornithological society sort of uh open day about the reintroduction of white-tailed eagles on the isle of wight and dude they had maps of their recent activity during the last week i know yeah have they been flying over here i mean i'm not sure are you kidding well as far as i could discern from the you know the quality of the map the accuracy of the map but you know if they weren't there they were there and they were big enough to see so yeah twice this week twice this week okay well i'm camping well hold on actually it's worse than that i think it's bringing almost two birds two birds had flown right over here and um and then on another occasion a single bird had flown over and they're still not on the list you know what i put on the garden list yesterday collard dove i'd rather put white tailed eagle i'll be honest with you yeah okay let's go back to those ospreys though fantasizing about eagles on garden list look at the lows now the look of the lows is a very famous uh nest actually which has had a camera on it for a long time and again really successful great place to visit when we were out and about when we're allowed to start moving around the uk and of course a lot of people i think will be staycationing this year which will be like a staycation yeah which would be great because we need to put some um put some cash back in the pockets of all those b and b's the little shops the pubs and things like that around the uk so if we're unable to travel overseas then visiting wildlife sites in the uk and there are so many of them when you think about all the top locations we've got in the uk for looking at wildlife and i'm sure a lot of the lows you know will be looking forward as will um lock garden to huge maybe even record-breaking numbers of visitors this year so fingers crossed the off space will come back was it we've got a gen on this one we do yeah right so oh okay so yeah and we have this little sheet of paper update on lm12 oh come on think of a name lm12 arrived on the 21st of march at five o'clock for the tenth season running and then nc zero um it's almost a non-commissioned officer nco but it's not as a zero nc zero arrived on the 25th of march at thirteen twenty one i like the accuracy of the fact that the australian arrived at 1321 it means it's being diligently watched yeah which is excellent but that's a matured pair isn't it yes indeed of course and and you can find out uh we should we should be giving the links for these you know yes okay so the link for rutland water is lrwt.org dot uk lrwt.org dot uk there's a donate link there these cameras are expensive to run and we get so much enjoyment from them that if you can give a small donation it would be most welcome uh birds of paul harbor of course not just covering the cost of the camera but also helping with the reintroduction project which is ongoing and will be for a few years yet um and that's obviously birdspoolharbour.co.uk look at the low scottishwildlifetrust.org dot uk so that's this one and uh so there will be plenty of activity there maybe if they come back at any point they were on the next system okay lastly let's go to the last of the four nests that we're looking at this morning this one's in the glassland valley now yellow williams if he's up and about and i'm watching can obviously immediately text me and tell me that my pronunciation of the glassline valley that the the bird quilt glaslin wildlife bit bearish that's better than i would have said i'm sorry i don't mean to be uh in any way inappropriate or rude to the worst language it's just not something that i've mastered my french spanish in fact every other language other than english is more pronounced so sorry about that and if y'all were here you'd get it right for us obviously um okay so the ospreys that we've got at that nest which we have looked at before look at that that one's been uranium yeah it is a bit rainy there but also look i see that they've been um helping with a bit of nest building there they've been put you can see some cable ties but they've tied that nest together it looks quite exposed that one doesn't it yeah it looks very very wet and windy okay so they are boys that are visiting hopefully visiting this on mrs g and aaron i like that yeah proper names properly i like the name yeah yeah better than lm12 honestly come on okay i'm sure they've got nicknames on location i'm sure they have anyway listen um mrs g is the oldest breeding female in wales and it's been breeding there since 2004 this is amazing to date she successfully raised 41 chicks grand chicks and four great grandchildren her first mate was oka 11 1998 and they raised 26 chicks he failed to return 2015 when she was attracted to her current mate and they've raced 15 ships together so far and she returned on the 19th after the 19th near running on the 25th march at 0 8 42 and again excellent precision from the glaston wildlife and the the link for this one is glaslyn wildlife so that's g l a s l y n g l a s l y n wildlife dot co dot uk and you can keep your eyes pinned on peeled and pinned on these over the next few weeks check out all of that osprey activity of course yeah you're going to want to keep an eye on all of those yeah really really i mean your guaranteed activity at the obviously lock of the lows glaston and rutland but the one that perhaps we are most interested in at this point just to see if they turn up would be paul because if they were to raise young as you say in the south of england that would be good a huge feat would be a huge success hey look at this this is the uh sibc t-shirt oh yeah look look i i did wear mine today i didn't know i did but it's so chilly yeah there we are well done okay i'm holding mine up because it was no way that i was going to be peeling open the front of my puffer and those t-shirts are available if you'd like them and you can get those at s i bird club bird dot club s i bird dot club slash t-shirt yeah they're all really ethically sourced ethically made printed using vegan prints and everything else and renewable energy powered factories yeah so they're all as ethical as we can make them and lots of you have been buying them yeah so thank you i've seen we've seen so many photos i think we can have a look at some of the photos that have been sent into us look maybe not maybe not maybe not but yes lots of photos have come so thank you very much for sending those to us i'm really glad you're oh there we are oh there we are look at that okay like i like those yes it looks good i quite like it in black yes i might have to get a black one yeah it doesn't show the poodle pool partner pedal we have when the pools jump up you know oh yeah but mud over there oh see yeah look this is how it's all made it's all very clever isn't it it's been printed sent out in oh no plastic obviously in the post which is good isn't it money goes back to the communities of the people that actually produce the cotton all that sort of stuff jolly good so if you'd like one of those then um do something right now today's quiz is here it's quite fragile relatively precious um it's not the only one i've got but a little bit of it did break off last night which caused me a bit of just concern yeah yeah okay there we are there we are okay what do you think that is right now we're actually going to hold it much closer to the screen and in that direction so see if you can look at that and have a look at what's in it what's on the surface and what's in it i think we've got a photo too to give you an idea of scale if you don't know how big my fingers are and um look at that yeah and you need to think about what you can see on the surface of it which is protruding from the interior part of this object and it's come from the uk um what else can i say as a clue a bit harder to find these days than they were when i'm a kid but um nevertheless yeah it's a good one that one yeah it is um when you when you collect those last night i don't know if you know that i was going out into the garage with the uh fixative wait could you well you know this week i've got very excited this week because i've finally got my hands on some um wombat poo and yeah i was gonna steal a few bits of that oh yeah yeah if you've got you've got a lot of no you have so much you share the wombat food share it be friendly anyway um so i was spraying it with fixative yes well we were filming we were filming with the one back poo for something that's coming up hopefully soon we'll be able to jump back in but um yeah it's uh it was exciting we got very excited about one batpoo this week yeah and now it's preserved uh i'll be i'll be pinching a few little a few little squares of it three more yeah i know i will go get your own one back too but you didn't get your own one back but you've got to stop they'd be so stingy okay now let's crack on then because we've been there's been a lot of waffles so far today everyone i'm sorry about that so yeah and the fact that it's eight o'clock um and so hold on let's just have a little pause listen stop just stopped just right at that moment been singing like absolute bonkers isn't it yeah one of the friends of sibc for the well from the outset of course friend of ours from yeah far going back a long way is luke massey uh luke massey is a young he's still young actually yeah yeah he's still here okay young um phil filmmaker cam man brilliant naturalist amazing campaigner i met you luke years ago when we were going to mortar and cyprus up all night he did fall asleep in the car a couple of times but we won't mention that but you know so did you i'm sure ruth ruth pc and i never fell asleep in the car yeah right i don't believe that i think i was out in that have been dangerous it would have been dangerous because one of us was driving listen it only happened at once um he's up all night he really does does his stuff um and relatively recently he bought a farm out in spain yeah he got beautiful i mean you might have seen it on sibc he's been sharing videos and he's got a beautiful farmhouse and he um lives on this gorgeous area of land with his family and they're out exploring it all the time oh look we've got an update yeah we do we've got a winter update yeah from the wild wild thinker here we go welcome back to wild thinker it's been a while we've survived the winter and it was quite a cold one we had lots of red wings first snow for 10 years or so and it was really interesting our domestic animals survive but also co-exist with wildlife meadow pipettes especially following in their footsteps feeding on the kind of exposed ground in the snow and of course lots of winter thrushes like those red wings you've had song for us missile fresh and black birds as well and for the not so fortunate creatures the vultures have been soaring overhead looking to see if anything has succumbed to the cold weather we're hoping the frosts that we've had have put paid to any asian hornets that have recently invaded we lost all of our beehives last year the frog spawn was actually frozen in the pond but we now have tadpoles swimming around so that survived the the cold snap too it's really interesting because yeah last winter was our first proper winter here i guess and we didn't have any cold weather really and this we had snow and kind of three weeks of frosty mornings and in some parts of the farm nothing fought at all our sheep have begun to lamb so that has brought in ravens and vultures we had a raven instant with one of our lambs so we now have a lamb being bottle raised but that's just part and parcel of living alongside nature and we leave the placentas out we move them away from where they actually lamb and put them where the sheep aren't grazing and the vultures come down and feed on them but it's not just vultures we had our first that we've seen golden eagle landed on wildfinka we've had them flying over but this guy was perched in a tree getting mobbed by a raven and magpies the beautiful early spring mornings we have this amazing mist coming up from the valley and now the dawn chorus is just starting to come in we've got grasshopper warbler calling now our first cuckoo i heard on monday there's a few species that are basically a week earlier than last year which is really interesting wild narcissi are springing up the dung beetles are doing their thing moving around with our domestic animals and searle buttons have really been making their voice known fire crest too flitting about in the bushes one of our favorites here and like i say these migrants are coming back our egyptian vultures are back and this week on monday despite the wind it was a beautiful day and our short towed eagle pair are back too so spring has most definitely sprung here at wild thinker vultures egyptian vulture golden eagle honestly i know i know what a place what a place amazing mind you it looks like it's been quite a harsh winter yeah it's first known and of course luke you probably have been doing a lot of the diy the roof's probably still off and just see the family in there now shivering away because he's been out filming and not not putting the roof on and the water cold water they're washing with cold water because you still haven't got the boiler i think we should probably find out luke what is the state what's going on the one and only luke massey morning luke good morning well we did survive the winter just uh we did have one morning actually where my son now he's walking i stupidly put there like water stop tap perfectly at his level and the first cold morning we had no water oh the pipes were frozen he'd bloom in the day before it turned the tap off um so we didn't actually have any water for a whole day um because it did all freeze but apart from that we we've been fine and yeah cracking on with the diy another roof went on this week so actually my motivation is for swifts and house martins that's what i'm trying to get the roofs done so we had a load of uh house martin swift boxes went up last week and then a couple more this week but we've had house martin's coming through already all the migrants really flying really early in in the film you were talking about grasshopper warbler now that strikes me even for where you are because obviously you're considerably what you must be from the uk what are you you you've got to be what five well you must be at least 600 miles south of where we are in the south of england yeah i think a thousand kilometers or so it's 1200 no more than that actually yeah anyway i'm not sure might you can tell my dudes probably about 700 600 to 700 miles then so but nevertheless that's still shortly early for the last one yeah this year they were much earlier which was it's really interesting i was actually talking to a local guy the other day because um like i mentioned the film obviously the frost and the snow last year so we had no snow and frost we literally had like two mornings and it was gone by kind of half 10 11 and this year we had three weeks of heavy heavy frosts which obviously for our uh lemon trees and stuff wasn't very good um but hopefully that will you know that there's um processionary caterpillars and asian hornets are both kind of like new invasive species here they've been in spain but they've worked their way up so hopefully that kind of hits them on the head a little bit but yeah surprisingly i guess because the birds don't really know about the frost and i guess we had southerly winds earlier i don't i don't really know to be honest yeah it definitely was an influx everything's come two weeks earlier avian species-wise which is really interesting uh we've got lots of swallows now but still passing through like none but which did happen last week i think earlier short towed eagles they didn't turn up till the 29th so tomorrow last year um they might be there a week earlier yeah the short toads are as well it's quite interesting i follow a guy called simon tompkin i think he's in there and it's quite funny obviously opposite ends of spain and he's seeing the birds coming in um to to spain and it's almost like he posts like you know 74 000 black kites came in this morning and then two days later black kites start coming through up here so it kind of seems to take them about two days to get through spain um and then they're turning up and now we do have them unfortunately we had a fox attack the other day on our ducks overnight and we just left the carcasses out and black kites feeding on them um same what one of our sheep gave birth and the opposite happened we left the placenta out and had we never really have we have one red kite maybe over winter passes through like once once a week but it clearly was a day when all the red kites are heading back down or heading north again the kites that have migrated uh the red kites and yeah had like 20 red kites all feeding kind of like swooping in and it must have just been the time that they went all food came in the black kites are the ones that are more not resident but the breeding around here yeah that's a business i love the idea that you're kind of getting a kind of notification of what's on the way so you know what to go out and account for two days later roughly that's really good yeah yeah yeah definitely and quick get the boxes uh this year i was very slack on my boxes um i don't know why really well filming everything kind of it's kind of we need an extra hour a few hours a day please or an extra day a week because we're messing with time over here messing with time you know yeah and luke we have a um this is from mary lapin she's asked what's calling in the background there because what i love about looking at where you are i mean you're not actually up against a white wall you're just sat outside but it's very foggy very foggy hopefully it's going to clear in the next 10 minutes or so it does really uh message fabian before and see if i had time to hike up because we've got like a hill above ours we're literally on the line you know if you hike 60 meters up then it's blue sky so hopefully it'll clear but um calling we have various cockrells a chinese goose that might be the really loud one uh they've just come out and because it's misty but we also have cell bunting which you saw in the film is still calling in that same ash um and they bred last year literally at the top of our driveway i i put a post up on twitter of our so our track comes down and of the left-hand side i have to manage and the right-hand side is our neighbors where it splits and there's his uh strimmed and weed-killed unfortunately and ours is all brambly and dog grows and stuff and actually bred in the brambles at the top of the drive so you could do the washing up um and see the male and the female perched on the telephone wire just above the nest all summer which was really nice um and grasshopper warbler has been calling not calling it stone chat everything it's always really interesting it's quite subdued when there's mist and then like tomorrow if it's clear you know the dawn chorus is really kicking off now um but still a couple more weeks you know until red starts and stuff come through what are your plans then on two accounts firstly what your plans around the thinker this year in terms of wildlife management i know that you're attempting to expand your your realm for rewilding there aren't you yes so as you know thank you very much to everyone that supported the crowdfunder so that land was finally well it was secured from the crowdfunder but with spanish bureaucracy and everything i actually went and signed for it last friday um so that's all confirmed and the seller actually the land that we confirmed in the crowdfunder they had four more parcels of land that i think they'd inherited or something and they just wanted rid of so they actually gave us four more parcels of land including like a really old orchard um we have about not we but the royal we there must be about 300 hectares of kind of not ancient woodland but nice chestnut oak woodland that stretches into the valley and we've got a couple of parcels in there which i think technically it could be logged um so it's nice to have control over that and we're just gonna obviously just leave it we're not gonna do it i put a couple of red start boxes up in there to see if anyone sets up home so yeah this year it's mainly just kind of seeing seeing what happens you know feeling our way we've we've put um two ponds in one is filling i i typically we had lots and lots of rain and it filled up and then had a puncture so completely unfilled but i think next week we've got a bit of rain forecast um so i'm really interested to see what happens there and yeah just just see it it's really interesting to basically we took a walk around the other day and obviously we've reduced the grazing animals a lot from what used to be here and the stuff that's popping up and kind of getting a chance to grow that i guess grew in the past but always got knocked back by grazers we've got our two astacon ponies and the sheep still obviously because we do need to keep that like mosaic of grazing animals um well the grazing animals to keep that mosaic of habitats um but now it's trying to work out where to keep the sheep away from for example for the orchids to come up um even when they try and escape and taming them at the minute is taming the astacons which is going well we've had a few escapes where they've uh disappeared into the village but luckily they come back for food um and then yeah nest boxes i'm actually building a huge bee hotel at the minute it's about three meters by a meter and a half tall um so yeah i i was building that yesterday so hopefully finish that this week and then i guess with kovid it's a tricky one because we were hoping to welcome people to the thinker this year in terms of like people come to have a walk around and see what we're doing but i don't actually know how possible that's going to be so i guess it gives us and nature another another year to get everything kind of that's a and span but the the clean and tidy crowd would definitely disagree this is and span but wild and and tangly and scrubby or something um but yeah and then we're also making a film which i kind of gave a hint at the end of that called notes from wild thinker um that chris you've very kindly lended your voice to um for the intro and will rose the animator we worked on our nightingale film he's worked did that beautiful title page there which we actually ended on so it's gonna be half an hour a month um basically a um slow tv i guess fly on the wall kind of style where we're just filming a little bit each day of our lives here the animals lives and the wildlife lives throughout the year um so i guess that three-minute film was kind of a summary of the last three what we in now almost the end of march so yeah the last three months and hopefully secure broadcast but if you'd like to see episode one please do sign up for our newsletter which is on our website wildfinger.com and then everyone signed up to the newsletter in a couple of weeks we're going to send out january episode and and if you're a broadcaster please take it off our hands excellent sounds great i'm looking forward to seeing you i look forward to seeing that now obviously we've been teasing you for some time about your promise for bears but you we won't large apprentices we won't go into that well we haven't haven't followed you over the boiler at the roof we'll leave the bears out of it but you did get lucky with some wolves i did indeed well quickly on the bears like you probably heard i did actually annoying not annoyingly it was quite lucky i was guiding at the end of last autumn and i actually saw a load of bears with the guests um but obviously couldn't film that so they are around they do exist yeah maybe april may we'll see but no promises yes i did see wolves um yes i shot a little film there it's quite interesting here obviously we're very lucky to have wolves but you know i think a lot of people think the human wildlife conflict is only kind of in africa or south american stuff and here is very much real um we're in a very agricultural you know farming community across northern spain and it is also the stronghold if you can call it that i mean there's not thousands and thousands but stronghold of the iberian wolf so of course there is conflict and the spanish government just passed full protection for the iberian wolf which is fantastic um but obviously now going forward there needs to be some kind of plan to work with the landowners and show them a value in the wolf um not just when it turns up and kills all their sheep unfortunately or cattle um but yeah so it's really interesting being on the ground here and seeing that and speaking to the local people but of course i mean i believe in love wolf so to to be out in the mountains and yeah i was i was at a wharf den last year i managed to take a few people out and actually a morning not dissimilar to this and i had an actual absolute faux pas in terms of guiding because i just wasn't expecting it i knew the wolves were there but one there was a noise and i saw all red deer and literally as the word red deer left my mouth um every other wolf started cool and had the whole pack howling all around us in the mist um kind of like 360 orchestral wolf howling and then the mist lifted and we saw the wolves opposite us um so that's where i filmed this little film okay let's have a look at it now then we got that we got the film towards the end of 2020 i had the immense privilege to spend some time on a hillside watching a wolf den the cubs were about five months old so they were almost on their way out um to head out into the big wide world in spain wolves are kind of limited to the northern reaches asterisk cantabria and these guys were doing really well um but the human wildlife conflict is very much real um hopefully these guys they were an area with not too much farming going on so hopefully they'd go about their business and not cause too much trouble let's say but it was amazing to be able to watch them for a few mornings appearing out of the scrub and playing and feeding on what their parents had brought them the night before okay what a beautiful sight no there were walls i was very excited when fabian said oh luke's got a wolf film for us i couldn't believe it but there it is it was amazing what amazing footage very fortunate that's fantastic stuff luke um yeah so that denning behavior then i'm surprised that they've stayed at the den for that long because they look pretty big those wolves at that stage yeah that was really really on the cusp um so i think that was october september october and that is when they start moving on kind of they'll start denning around now march april and then they hang around for five six months and then start dispersing and yeah i mean that's good for them in terms of their survival what was really interesting about that then it was right next to a road um not not a major road at all it's a dead-end road to a village but i was a bit worried obviously because of our new lockdown rules we can't leave asturias and those wolves were just outside of asturias so i don't actually know how those ones are doing um but yeah i think the last time i saw them with the group i was guiding i had four cubs right next to the road and unfortunately didn't seem i think they'd be scared of you on foot but not really scared of a vehicle and one did get hit by a car literally the day before we visited um so of course that is the other problem with with them living so close to kind of human habitation um not only the conflict but obviously their i guess run-ins with humans yeah and what about that i have a problem with living next to humans is that humans very frequently have dogs and and hybridation hobbitization with domestic dogs is an issue as well isn't it i'm not so sure if i know in italy i think that's happened um i'm not 100 sure because yeah there's you have to kind of take it with a pinch of salt here as well because there's also stories of people releasing wolves into the wild here but yeah i would assume there's mastines like the spanish mastiff which people use to protect dogs protects livestock and i think there have been instances where yeah they've people have seen kind of either amastine actually hanging out with a wolf pack or vice versa a wolf hanging out with a masten as a couple so i assume they have bred but i haven't seen too much of it in spain um i guess those kind of ones would be the easiest to control let's say by the government or whoever needs to if they are very close to people and hanging out with dogs unfortunately all the other ones are very much you know wild you know some of them you've got to hike for four hours up into the mountains and then nowhere near anyone so i guess they're fine but yeah to be honest i haven't looked hugely at the hybridization of it but i know in italy it has happened and now that they've got that full protection that you mentioned from the government is that going to be a real on the ground benefit do you think i mean it's all very well having legislation we've got legislation here that protects our birds of prey but they're still sadly slaughtered on a daily basis um so you know what what does it actually mean do you think i'm not sure so basically the full protection at the minute means that like you and i couldn't apply for a permit to hunt them um but i think if there was a problem wolf so to speak the government can still come in and control them but like i say the problem here is that you know i live in a rural agricultural community and the farmers are incredibly angry and kind of rightly so because they've been told they can't do anything to these walls which like you say yeah which to me could allude people take matters into their own hands unfortunately but also they aren't really being supported in any way um which isn't ideal like they've been told they've just got to live with wolves and kind of that's final for the moment um you know what i'd like to see and i'm sure maybe this has been worked on in the background but you know i think in romania they've done it quite a lot working with the herders there you know training people to live with wolves um supplying them with livestock guardian dogs you know but the thing is you can't just have one big dog with a flock of sheep that's not gonna put off a pack of wolves you know you need ten and ten of them cost a lot of money to not only get 10 but also to feed so there's all these like chain of events that kind of are needed to allow people to live with wolves and also see some kind of benefit uh sommiedo whether the phantom bears live um that is a place that is an agricultural community and is booming in tourism because of bear tourism but there's nothing like that really in in at least in asturias in terms of wolf tourism and i guess that's what people need to see unfortunately but then will that have the far-reaching effects and and the education to see that walls are an incredibly important part of an ecosystem you know there is free-ranging livestock here and recently i've seen stories of like you know there's some kind of illness i think it's a worm or some kind of parasite i don't know much about basically going up roe deer's noses um and killing them but you know stuff like that that only starts appearing as you know when you take out the predators that would take out the the ill and in firm so to speak um so i guess it's an education thing showing that if you have wolves it can bring in tourism it can benefit the health of the ecosystem for your livestock um yeah it's such a complex situation i think when you look at the wolf it's always an animal that is intriguing to me because you look at stories you know in the far east and and in states in canada with indigenous peoples you know the wolf is held in such high regard yet in europe and as you know in the uk you know we've exterminated them or doing our best to exterminate them yet we all love dogs um and it's a dog but obviously you know we we're it's ingrained in us from such a young age you know red riding hood three little pigs there's all these stories where it's always the big bad wolf you never really hit well i guess yeah goldilocks and the free bears but there's very little other stuff you know it's always the wolf is the baddie and it's almost you're taught to hate it from the beginning um so it's kind of dealt a bad deal um from from the beginning unfortunately and and i guess that's what i'd like to see change but then you see amazing things you know they're coming back in holland and germany there was a strange video this week of one running to a little i think that was in germany and i don't know it was in that here oh was it latvia okay yeah yeah it was it was just waiting for for the little to open and uh i remember you and i actually hiding in a car outside of a little in cyprus waiting for it to open after a long night traveling around and getting chased and exactly we can empathize with that wolf probably had had a long night being chased by people and just wanted a little special perhaps but yeah it's such a tricky one on the wolves and i mean i'd love to see them back it interestingly kind of related to wolves but to put things into perspective i saw a really interesting video last week from the rspb of using cattle in scotland to help create habitat for cappuccily and the kappa kali here in asturias and contemporary um yeah and i think it's in cantabria anyhow it's it's declined hugely the last one kind of where we live was 1989 i think or 1979. um so i messaged a farmer who i've been speaking to a lot about the capital they called the uruguayan here um and i sent him the video and said it's all in english but look and he said ah really interesting but there's no wolves in scotland first thing he said there's no walls in scotland so of course you can put cows in in the fields and i just said well for the moment there's no wolves in scotland so yeah we'll see yeah hopefully it would be good rewilding is um is on our agenda in fact there's a rewilding conference coming up we're going to be talking about i think we might oh oh no oh with that hello hello okay luke yeah so we've got to wrap up the mist hasn't cleared but people can still uh support your rewilding project out there yes yeah just check us out on social media at wild thinker and on our website worldfinka.com and there's always updates and if you are allowed to ever enter spain ever again then yeah we we are open to kind of guinea pig visitors if you want to come have a stroll around and a glass of history insider and see what's what please do pop by just just drop us a line um going forward yeah we're trying to develop this nature trail and and yeah lots of developments want to go in more into education certainly with local education try and get school groups here um bug hotel building nest building all that kind of stuff so yeah well we'd love to visit wouldn't you yeah we certainly would certainly i'll give you a hand with a boiler as well mate and um get some flooring down a bit of plastering not i can do all of that i've got one more roof to go as well yeah okay i'll put two chimneys up once so you know i'll probably do a roof all right i've got an extensive cv but that'll do luke thanks ever so much for joining us i hope the rest of your day goes well i'm with the bee hotel then that's today's job thanks for having me nice to see you luke cheers see you next time top like what a top lane i know it sounds amazing doesn't it oh yeah oh there's a poodle stroll around and it's a bad poodle check out to check out the situation yeah how do i listen that we've been chatting we've been rambling and then chatting with luke for a long time so we're going to wrap things up this morning well lots of people's birthdays go on they should say let's get into birthdays so today we'd like to wish a very big birthday to the richmond birder sandra who says the sib programs have been the highlight of her week since they started thank you so much sandra very happy birthday to you also lisa woods is birthday today she's 49. happy birthday to you lisa next week we've got heidi weaver whose birthday is on the 29th and this was emailed in by graham who is asked if we could also arrange for the elusive cuckoo to make an appearance hmm yeah we'll put in a message yeah we could but it's increasingly difficult with clickers is there it is declining quite rapidly actually yeah very sad we'll see what we can do there we'll see if we can you know you know send a few whispers out hopefully the cooker arrives very happy birthday to you heidi and emily and ben would like to wish their mum helen a very happy 39th birthday for the 31st of march uh she's the best mummy in the world and they really enjoy sitting and watching sibc as a family every week that's very nice that's great that's very happy birthday to you helen um and belated birthday we've got rose russell whose birthday was on the 27th of march and celebrated wearing her snibc t-shirt excellent what a great way to celebrate you know what we need now we need a mindfulness moment oh yes yes and we need one that's been sent in from florida by one of our uh viewers from there shelly gagnon blodgett so i might not have got that right let's try that again shelley gagnon blodgett yeah and she sent us this lovely lovely recording just listen to the song of this northern mockingbird oh northern mockingbird really quite a common and widespread bird over north north america all the way down to mexico into south america quite a lot of mockingbird species actually get them on galapagos as well but they're called mockingbirds because they're mimics so um they mimic lots of other birds songs up to about 30 species i think also car alarms yeah other stuff doors shutting yeah they have amazing mimics if you go on youtube have a google yours but you get yourself into a youtube poll watching that kind of stuff i love it and they have about 200 up to 200 songs and they continue to learn more songs as long as they long as they live and of course it's the usual thing with the uh um you know males although having said that female mockingbirds sing as well not as much as the males but they do sing but like our robins i suppose both sets is singing and they do sing and yeah the ones that have got greatest repertoire are the fittest and and get the get their mates yeah good stuff but thank you shelley for sending that fantastic soap so beautifully green yeah i love florida just saying i was looking forward to a bit of greenery on our trees not long now not long should we do the quiz reveal okay let's see we've got that one right right quite a few people did they i think they did actually yeah but did they get it precisely right oh i don't know kate anyone got it precisely right send me a message um so we have got simon karen tara jo yo fez god uh fiona wildlife rufus debbie claire ian a photographer and barb okay so it's a pellet it's the regurgitated remains of prey and so what happens is the bird eats prey with indigestible parts in it it separates those indigestible parts in its crop and then rather than pass them through its elementary system down to its stomach and gut intestines and everything else it uh it regurgitates this this comes back out of the bird's mouth and crack it's called a pellet of course lots of birds make these pellets even got even robins if they've been eating lots of insects they'll pop up a pellet black birds eat worms they have a little pellet mud gulls crows and of course birds of prey and owls and that is the pellet of a little owl and what is so distinctive about that is the beetle remains that you might have been able to see in it the beetle elytra the wing cases so if you find one of these little reddish brown pellets full of beetle elytra typically on top of a fence post where these beautiful birds sit frequently um then you might have found yourself a little owl pellet they're quite difficult to preserve because they dry out and they're very friable and fragile so the technique is to spray them with a fixative so you can either use an art fixative you know like if you use pastels to to draw with then you typically spray a fixative on them so that they don't smudge so you can get yourself some of that or you can simply use hairspray because when i was a kid all of my pellets were preserved with my mum's silk silver cream she used a lot of hairspray i mean silver cream yeah silver clean hairspray i remember just drenching pellets in silver various things on pieces of tissue and toilet paper and then drench them to protect them she would be an interesting child to raise well i hope there are other young people doing the same thing that's a top tip to preserve your little hour so much fun spray it with fixative right okay what do we got just to wrap up with them we've had some things sent in what about this this is a wheat here uh sue clayton in hampshire actually but must be look at that oh they are one of the earlier migrants that we get back to the uk so march early april is the time to see these migrants these birds on the move they used to nest here and the new fast remember going out one day when i were lad actually airfield not too far from where we are and um and there used to be wheat tears breeding there sadly they're no longer there but if you get them on passage as we call it they're striking birds that's the most stunning this next one is from simon watts let's have a look at that that's very tricky hold on can you see the fluttering there yeah it is of course the chick chat is it chip and chuffing it is a chip chat it's chipping and it's chopping and it's chip chopping it's chatting and chipping yeah look at that oh there it is [Music] and it's come to our facebook group and her husband was on a ship on the irish sea and this uh bird has turned up so look oh look at that yes he's a rather tired red wing hitching a lift on the ship that claire's husband was on so obviously red wings were on the move i was out here the other night in the garden lots of red wings going over making that very characteristic high-pitched sleeping call as they have now started to move north in fact there's a whole gang of them on the lawn the other day which we haven't seen for some time so they're definitely on the move so i imagine that this bird was crossing the irish sea maybe it was going from ireland to um england or scotland or something and then maybe get heading on back to scandinavia let's hope that it's uh you know after its rest it made its way further on so thanks for that claire that's good as well okay next week yeah ben goward's on next week we are joined by the wonderful professor ben garrett i wanted him yeah he's an amazing author an incredible zoologist and naturalist he you know he's a good one he's amazing on bones he's really good at extinct things but he's also a primatologist so he has worked with jane goodall and that foundation working with chimpanzees he's done so so much and so we're very excited to have ben on he's a lovely lovely guy and um yeah we'll be chatting to him about primates and everything else everything in between excellent excellent stuff i've just got to remind you about the t-shirts here we go again look here we are puffin better looking than me for sure so get yourself one of those t-shirts if you want to and find out how to do that and then one other thing that we ought to talk about is the fact that we have been asked very kindly yeah we're flattered to be asked that we're doing a rewilding summit on april the 10th with birds of paul harbour and so you might want to be thinking about signing up for that you can find the details at s i bird dot club slash rewiring summit yeah the link is in the chat now um it's going to be a really really amazing time amazing day a few hours where we're going to be going live and we're going to be talking to the most amazing people around the country who are running projects about re-introductions um so we'll be discussing you know what what they are what they do what the purpose is and what what they're hoping to achieve so lots of amazing people and problems inspiring talk so do book a ticket it's going to be a really good way to spend a saturday yeah yeah and one other thing we ought to squeeze in just quickly um kate mcrae we featured her 20 hours i've been following him all week on twitter kate's been posting on twitter yeah and i think we might have a little float now to her tony house because it's been a hatch yes very early in london obviously they're early one of the earliest species to actually yeah look at the egg you can see the egg shell there and that little young tawny yeah oh being brooded under that very fluffy chest it's so warm i'd like to be under there right now really well and legs have just ghosts i think but there is um that individual does have another egg i believe so keep an eye on that nest cam because that might hatch very soon if it hasn't already yeah they do start incubating though with the first egg i think tournament so they hatch asynchronously but at some point this week yeah it won't be wildlife kate yeah so you can check out all of our stuff all of our cameras okay there's a message here from last week yes it says hi my sincere thanks for reading out a happy birthday to claire this morning for interest charlie sorry sorry what's wrong with me i said it's the numbers it's because it's um quarter past three in the morning um so i'll start again because we're messing with time yeah we're messing with dimensions yeah next week we're not going to be featuring birds we're going to be teaching tyrannosaurs because some people would have messed with time and will be back in the woody mammoth sometimes my sincere thanks for reading out a happy birthday to charlie this morning this was from last week for interest tarmigan is his middle name we wanted to give him a permanent reminder of the importance of the natural world well there's always transformers bmx bikes and freddos to compete with his brother is called walkwar as in the whale walkway thank you and best wishes johnny so there we are because we were saying that he must have made up that name but it's a real name i love that yeah because he was featured last week wasn't he chilling again and we were wondering about his name that's amazing i love that he's very lucky because his parents have you know had a good idea yeah and great imagination do you know what my middle name is what oh no i know this gary thanks mum thanks dad gary mine's like equal to yours though isn't it what's mine what's yours this is an interesting test now go on what's my middle name i've got it on the fake where i've got it that it could be um shannon yay right okay you do know it shannon yeah i think charlotte's got a middle name don't tell her that dude what's my because my first name what's my first name megan no yeah yeah my name's hyphenated does it really matter it's not tommy no but i'm curious no it's not time but i'm just testing you because you don't normally remember those kind of things so i was just curious to see whether you actually knew my whole name or not yeah but you do i'm impressed you're actually surprised genuinely i might have been involved in giving you a name i might have gone for sort of that yeah yeah you know something like um i don't know much some confectionary from the 18 section yeah like spangle or something like that you know you would have called me spangled spangle i'll tell you what you're going to speak to my mum and dad about that and then see what they think they're like okay yeah i think there's been way too much banter this morning that's because we've messed with time and uh it's really upset my whole sort of cerebral cortex the time messings got caught in some sort of whirlpool vortex um i i've had too much spice basically that's the problem that's why my eyes are very blue this morning particularly it's the volume of spice and that i've had and i'm going to go and fold space now uh like the guild navigator you know what i'm going on about dude no i didn't june it's june yes june well yeah oh no not june again no because so chris goes on about you and we're gonna get we're gonna start rambling about everything now um if you do want something to watch that isn't a ridiculously long film which i haven't actually seen but i've heard mixed things about it and they've made another one villeneurbs made one it was meant to have been put out last october and they're still not out i know we're desperate to see june yes yeah well they fold spaces for them time's not linear they use this you know this substance called spice which they mine on the desert planet of arrakis and then they use it to fold space thing anyone knows what you're going on about anyway if you do i'll get my coat yeah going off you go and i'm just going to mention quickly that this week on cbbc at 6 35 a new series which i've been working on called planet defenders is out um i'll talk about problems with sharks in the uk but there's loads of other great episodes so you can catch it all on bbc iplayer now though if you want can't wait but anyway we'll leave you uh with ospreys i suppose shall we go let's go let's go to rutland water shall we let's have a look there we are right so everyone we will see you next week at 9am [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] you

Channel: The Self-Isolating Bird Club

Views: 7,128

Rating: 4.9895287 out of 5

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Id: __mXLXIcr1E

Length: 71min 56sec (4316 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 28 2021