#SIBCLive with Megan McCubbin – Episode 67

[Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] so [Music] so so so so good morning everyone happy friday another sibc broadcast of course what else would you be doing with your friday mornings um of course it is just me here today chris is away he's filming another series for you which is going to be very exciting it's going to be very clever um so you have to keep an eye out for that when that eventually comes out so he's unfortunately busy he's away at the moment so um it's just me just me unfortunately last week you had just chris and now um and now it's just me but we'll be back together next week uh back uh about doing our usual thing so it is gonna be a great broadcast for you but first of all that live cam i mean come on something special is happening there you will have noticed it's been a pretty active morning because those chicks just hatched a couple hours ago so this is a a webcam that comes live to us from australia from the victorian peregrine project in melbourne and these i think there might be potentially three chicks here we haven't quite got a good look at them yet um have just literally hatched and there was a little bit of food you might have saw earlier that that the adult there was um the female was picking up and having a little nibble at but she's doing really well so far incubating those chicks because of course they've only just hatched which means they are incredibly vulnerable so it takes peregrine falcon chicks about 40 days from hatch to fledglings when they start you know flapping around and become incredibly active and start moving off exploring their local area but at hatching they are so so vulnerable so they weigh only between about 35 to 40 grams they're quite damp they're quite pink and their eyes are closed except of course when they start begging for food and so the female is going to be doing a really really you know keeping a very close eye on them being very close by all of the time to make sure that they're protected from from the elements now of course at the moment in australia it is the summer time so we've gone over to the southern hemisphere to look at the breeding birds over there because of course all of ours have kind of moved on and they're doing their wintering behavior they're wintering things so it's great to see a snapshot of the other side of the world and it'll be about five days time that the chicks there their weight will have doubled and they'll be sitting up with their eyes open uh they won't have yet had their second coat of feathers come through that will take a little bit longer and it starts kind of coming through about day six but there's going to be a lot of activity going on in this nest so it's really worth keeping an eye on it and you can do this at um googling victorian peregrine project this was actually a live camera that was suggested to us by one of the viewers by karen gee so thank you so much karen for this suggestion because we've been really enjoying watching this nest and all the events unfold and of course to keep the upkeep of these live cameras which have really helped me get us through lockdown you can help support them and you can do so to help support this one at birdlife.org dot a u slash donate if you type victorian peregrine project in the comment box all the donations will go directly to the upkeep of that camera as well because i think these live cameras have been really special for us you know we've been able to get an intimate look at these amazing birds throughout the course of lockdown it's connected us together at a time when we've been isolated so it's been great to kind of get a glimpse of the inside nest as we say and we've got more of that i have to say coming up later on in the program we're going to be catching up with uh one of our favorite stories from lockdown we're going to be going back to birds of paul harbour if you can remember a few uh a few weeks ago about months ago now we were looking at cj7 who was one of the ospreys at the birds of poo harbour project and we were keeping everything crossed at my toes and my fingers and everything that i could possibly have crossed that and she would successfully breed this year for the first time in over 200 years in the south of england wasn't of course the year for her but we're gonna have an update and kind of an overview of that story coming up which i have to say is fantastic so you have to wait and have a listen to that what else have we got coming well something really cool actually i'm really excited about this i'm going to really geek out it's going to be great and we've got a live camera again this one is something a bit different again we're going to australia we're going to phillip island where we're going to go and see little penguins coming in from the sea into their burrows so that isn't happening just yet they're still out foraging around doing their penguiny things and they'll be coming back onto the beach probably i don't know it's normally about half past nine our time that they start coming in so as soon as action starts taking hold there we'll quickly snip over and we'll have a look at all these penguins coming back it's the largest colony of little penguins i'm really excited about that well also we've come of course our soapbox this week is a really important one we're going to be talking about pheasant shooting it's coming it's quite timely it's a really important issue that i think you know we need to be discussing more because we need to think cohesively and collectively to come up with solutions for these issues we know that there are many issues surrounding things like present shooting and we need to uh address it so um there's going to be a video coming uh for you about that and the impact not only of pheasant shooting itself but also on how physical shooting impacts local flora and fauna things like adders and of course the one and only jack is going to be back to tell us about his second dinosaur too so that's going to be really good so it's going to be a jam-packed um srbc program for you this morning um firstly though i have to offer a sincere apology last week i wasn't here i was in scotland i went off grid for a few days and went round in a van around the coast looking for wildlife and um i had a really really lovely time it was nice to kind of be away and get out in the wilderness a little bit after lockdown and after chris and i had obviously finished writing a book so took the time to kind of go off and explore a bit but i did a little video for you of which i set chris off on one this is where the apology comes in because i know better i know if i start talking about world to air warcraft's that he's going to go off on a rampage about and and he did so i set him up and i think most everyone enjoyed it so it's honestly his mind is incredible i often say to him i'll go i'm going up on one now but i often say to him wouldn't it be i just love a little sliver of his mind because how he can collect all that information about natural history world war ii aircrafts and everything just pull it out of thin air and it's incredible it's absolutely incredible to see him work but um he isn't here today and he did send me off before i went on a mission if you remember a couple weeks ago he said that he wanted me to go after wild cats i did keep my eyes open but they are incredibly rare incredibly elusive and i am i failed i did try but there we go that's what happens with wildlife but he did ask me to bring him back some poo and he doesn't know this yet i haven't spoken to him so he might be watching live if you are chris there is a box here full of presents just for you now one of them is a bit of a trick one of them is a bit of a trick so we'll um we'll go over these next week and we'll see whether he can guess what yes we'll give you a little preview though there we go this is a bit of a bigger one if you can see what kind of substrate is in there it's a bit of a habitus animal perhaps and this one very small very small there we go we're going to um quiz chris on that next week which is always fun i mean he'll get it right away but i think i think the trick one might throw him a little bit i hope you can't get them all right all the time wow he does gotta give it a go so there's a present here waiting for you chris i will leave it on your kitchen table um anyway enough of me rambling on i think we should get on to today's quiz so i'm quite excited by the quiz today i think it's going to be a quite a good one there's three different pictures here for you let's have a look at the first one it is of course a foot sort of something some kind and now you can get a point i think if you get the kind of animal that it is um kind of the generic group of them and but i think you get bonus points if you were able to tell me the exact species i mean i'd struggle with it i think this would be really that's a bit tricky that but you do get bonus points if you get the the actual species let's go to the second photo remember this one some blue oh this gives a little bit more away about what kind of animal it is look at that kind of dense feathering the water droplets might give it away and of course the way that these those feet are placed at the bottom of the animal and the way that that animal is standing i say animal and you can clearly see feathers so it is a bird and the way that the bird is standing uh and there's bright orange tones so let's go to the next one yeah i think that one that one kind of gives it away the type of animal i hope so anyway and if you can guess what exact species that might be then put it in the comments and we will come back to that a little bit at the end so remember those three three pictures we'll go over them a little bit as well um yeah it's quite cool they're cool i like these birds i'm gonna geek out on them a little bit later i'm really excited about it but anyway enough of me talking um i think we should go over to birds of paul harbor who are well they've done some fantastic conservation work in reintroducing ospreys into the south of england and it was a story that i think gripped all of south isolating bird club i found myself every day every hour trying to look at this live camera to see the progress of cj7 whether a male did or didn't return i think it was something that we all connected over so without any kind of hesitation i think we should go over to paul morton who works at bird birds of paul harbour to tell us a little bit about the story the overview and where it's at now in hopes for next year so spring 2020 was a very different spring for all of us but a very special one certainly for me and my family we were expecting an exciting spring for our osprey project but we hadn't really anticipated what was going to happen in terms of the whole country being in a lockdown and not having any direct connection to nature we set up the fundraiser last winter to provide a portal to see what's happening with our osprey project this spring with the thought of hoping to engage people with nature but little did we know at the time that it was going to become such a focal point for so many people at such a stressful and worrying time it was stunning and cj7 really brought a warmth into our house and it brought me and my family closer together we we watched it every morning we watched her her connection to the harbour and to the nest evolve and grow we saw her bringing sticks we saw her laying her eggs and it was a magical moment for all of us to be able to experience this as a nation and as a community to witness history being made one of the hidden treasures in the area is the work that's being done by bird depaul harbour to reintroduce ospreys and get them breeding in the area again and the osprey webcam project has proved to be a particularly inspirational part of that it's given me some real insights into how ospreys behave give me some genuine new perspectives on this impressive bird of prey the problem with it is it's entirely addictive once you've seen that glorious full color life footage of an osprey flying in maybe with a stick or a fish in its claws you've seen how it lays the branch into the nest how it makes itself comfortable how it eats its prey uh you'll want to watch it again watching the web camera this spring and seeing cj7 embarking on the very beginnings of what we hope is going to be a long and fruitful journey for her and sharing in the collective anticipation of that experience with thousands of other people was quite frankly nothing short of a sheer privilege and that's not just because she provided us with a reason to get up in the morning excited for the day ahead and hopeful for what the future might hold in what for many was a very dark time but she also provided us with some unique brand new scientific insights into the breeding behavior of her species during lockdown the live q and a's was such a great way to start my day answering questions from people who are seeing ospreys for the first time on a live stream compared to people who've been watching them for years it's really fascinating because you've got this group of people coming together who really care about osprey's returning to the south coast of england you know back in the 1950s when ospreys were first returning to scotland we saw people come together to protect the nest then led by george waterston as the rspb this operation osprey came together to protect them as a returning species and that needs to continue today because rapt persecution is still a problem during lockdown when you know we couldn't get out to our birding patches to engage with those birds we normally love seeing especially the springtime and they're all breeding webcams really came to the fore because they allowed people from inside their houses to engage with pretty spectacular birds in an intimate way you know with those cameras looking into their nests and they were a real hit on the south isolating bird club broadcast that we did weren't they we showed a lot of them but i don't think there was any story that gripped the nation quite so much as cj-7 they haven't been breeding ospreys in the south of the uk for hundreds of years so it's a project that's been going on for a couple years now and we were hoping hoping hoping that a male would turn up we were watching intently weren't we day after day she was building the nest she was displaying mating behaviors and unfortunately it wasn't to be a male didn't show up but she connected us to one another she connected us to her and provided so many benefits to our mental health during lockdown and also it's not such bad news because she's displaying all that fantastic behavior that when a male does turn up potentially next year or the year after that then chances are there's going to be breeding officers it's going to happen and also the other thing is that even when she gave up the nest and moved away other birds showed up we had night jar cheering on an auspicious tornial turned up as well these web cameras are an absolute you know lifeline in some instances and provide enormous insight into behaviours that otherwise we could never see they are absolutely fantastic and next year i can tell you one thing's for sure the whole nation's eyes are going to be glued on that camera on cj7's nest it's going to happen i can feel it so what we all experience together this spring and summer is the beginnings of recolonization of osprey on the south coast it's been a long process and it is going to be a long process these things don't happen overnight but it's been amazing to be able to share that whole experience with you we've had just under a million views through our different social media channels on our website people wanting to engage and witness this historic event and it's been stunning to be able to share that we're in a strange period at the moment where we're losing species we are losing habitats and we are now having to work even harder than ever before to help reinstate rejuvenate and regenerate all these different landscapes and also by reintroductions we're in an amazing place here on the south coast we've got us doing osprey introduction we've got our partners on the isle of wight doing the white-tailed sea eagles there are beaver reintroduction plans for dorset you've got the white stalks up at net and it's exciting period we're part of that process so we hope that um you're already looking forward to next spring we're sad to see cj7 and our friends disappear but it's going to be an exciting 2021 and we cannot wait so nice to go back and relive uh that story i mean what an amazing thing that totally kind of connected everyone together so thank you so much to paul and everyone at birds of pool harbour because that was just something that you know cj7 just really kind of connected us and i just felt really you know strongly about her and fingers crossed for next year she'll be back of course hopefully and maybe be breeding and it'd be amazing to have ospreys in the south of england i mean i live relatively close to paul just about an hour and a half down the road and to be able to go and drive along and see ospreys in the harbour or in the water would just be so so exciting we need to really work at encouraging this biodiversity back we know that we're one of the most nature depleted countries in the world so we need to really work on these reintroductions and the work that birds of poor harbour and pool have been doing is just instrumental in bringing those kind of species back so thank you so so much and fingers crossed for next year it's not all bad news you know like as we said she did lay an egg it's really positive that is still progress it's still a step forward so we're moving in the right direction there and it's all looking really good and really exciting so fingers crossed next year we're gonna get a breeding male turn up and he's gonna be a strapping osprey catching lots of fish lots of big fish to impress cj seven and she'll um you know have a good look at him and they go they'll do their thing anyway i've gone off on another one again without chris without one another without chris and i next to each other i think we do go off on tangents more it's good we need one another to keep each other on track but there we go anyway i'm gonna start moving on to the soapbox now of course this is a pretty important issue we're talking about biodiversity loss just then and the fact that we are one of the most natured depleted countries but that doesn't necessarily mean that there aren't species here of high abundance and should they be here in high abundance well not pheasants pheasants are a non-native species that we bring into the uk in their millions millions and millions about 53 million and come in every single year and there's a whole wealth of issues that come along with pheasant shooting but what i want to do first is show you a video this is from nick milton and he discusses here the impact that pheasants have on our native amphibians particularly adders hello my name's nigel hand i'm a uk ad expert and today we're in the melvin hills on the area outstanding natural beauty looking for adders but also looking into the issues of pheasant predation on addis you may not know this but between 47 and 60 million pheasants are released into the uk countryside and i believe that the pheasant is contributing to the decline of the uk adder in many areas of the uk the adder is now extinct here we are at the side of the road away from the chutes and we're finding many dead roadkill pheasants thousands of birds are killed on the road and lost to the chute they're actually dispersing away while the shooting is on and end up on sensitive wildlife areas with adders we've now moved on to my study site and i have a number of tins and refuges which the adders and other reptiles use but before we look at those i'd like to point out on the bank here signs of pheasant this is a dust bath or a lining up area where pheasants regularly sit now i see a lot of these across the reptile areas that the both the species seem to coexist in the same areas so this is evidence that pheasants do come here and it's very close to where my reptile refuges are so the so the pheasants are in here okay let's have a look oh little baby she is i'm gonna be very gentle here and pick him up okay this is a little small baby adder little female and you can see how small she is it's a worm-like snack for a predatory bird like a pheasant we've got a five-pence piece on the top of the mat there which illustrates how small this snake actually is now adders will act uh pheasants will actually attack uh full grown adders i've seen a 41 centimeter female attacked but not predated by a by a pheasant but certainly a snake or a lizard of this size will be swallowed okay we've got an adult female adder here now i'm going to quickly just show you this and you can see on her back just around there there is a punch an old puncture wound now we do come across a lot of snakes and slow worms and lizards which have got wounds and there is a very good chance a lot of these are avian and pheasant related snakes are pectat regularly birds are one of the greatest predators of ever had us um but it shows the conflicts these animals come into with with these animals i'm gonna let it go on our way okay so in my lifetime i've seen the decline of adders on sites i've known and extinctions in actual counties i have two boys are they going to see adders into the future and will their children see adders into the future now we know climate change habitat mismanagement and disturbance are all factors leading to the decline but the unregulated release of up to 60 million non-native birds into the uk countryside is the biggest factor in my opinion this is going to lead to the extinction of adders if we do not regulate it and do something about this so that was a film that was produced by nick milton and that was nigel hans there giving you know a really interesting overview it's a connection i don't think many people think of it's a connection that i didn't make um until quite recently but of course it's absolutely devastating you know when there's 57 million pheasants and partridges released you know non-native birds released into the countryside of course it's going to have a devastating impact on the wildlife that's already there you know there's recent reports show that adders could be extinct by 2032 and in surveyed sites 90 of them had 10 or fewer adult adders remaining when there should be plenty more and of course there's lots of different contributing factors to the decline of adders you know habitat destruction the change of climate but of course when you're adding 57 million game birds into you know a place where they shouldn't be of course that's going to have a really really big impact and it's something that i think you know we come face to face with all the time you're driving through the countryside there are pheasants and partages absolutely everywhere when i was up in scotland the stark thing for me that i found really hard was that there wasn't any wildlife known places where there should be red kites with places where there should have been buzzards and more eagles and you know everything else deer though it just wasn't there but the one thing that was was pheasants there were pheasants absolutely everywhere and the pheasant shooting season started yesterday on the 1st of october so of course all of these birds have been released out but there's so many different issues when it comes to pheasant shooting um one of them you know what just start from the beginning some of them you know are brought in as eggs some of them are you know they predominantly come in i think from spain france and belgium they're imported over some come as adults and they're not initially released of course straight into the wild our wild and they are kind of kept in these absolutely awful conditions and i'm just going to read this out to you because this is something that i found um quite shocking actually so game birds are not raised as wild birds they are instead mass farmed in the same way as intensively reared farm animals yet they are not protected by humane slaughter laws and many won't be eaten as food so the government admitted that over 25 million pheasants and partridges eggs were imported into the uk between the 1st of may 2018 and the 30th of april 2019. these birds are farmed and shot in the name of sport and many are wounded or and left to suffer or killed as roadkill but according to the game shooting industry less than half of the birds released each year are actually killed by shooters many of them die on roads around the shooting states causing a lot of damage to vehicles and motorists and other design others die due to disease exposure that is prevalent in our british environment that they of course are not involved to deal with they're not involved to cope with and in in our environment it's a little bit warmer as well and they're not able to survive very well in our climate and in the uk the minimum standards exist for the protection of animals bred or kept for farming however it does not apply to animals intended for the use in competitions shows cultural or sporting events or activities that essentially means that it denies birds farmed the game the game shooting industry even the basic welfare protection given to birds at a farm for food despite similar rearing conditions so they are essentially kind of hatched in these barren cages uh you know egg laying hens have been they're gonna be brought in from the eu normally you know with chickens they have enrichment that's one of the laws is that they have to have nest boxes you know some the intensive farming of course is incredibly awful and horrendous and but it's better conditions than often many of these pheasants and partridges have because they don't have to have any sort of nest boxes or size requirements whatsoever so the welfare of these birds is unbelievably horrendous um it's just yeah something i find really hard to wrap my head around that we bring in these birds you know their welfare conditions are non-existent they're released into an environment that they're not adept to cope with and of course they are going to naturally have a horrendous impact on our natural ecology why wouldn't they you know we're releasing 57 million of them and you know up until well even now there is no independent unbiased review on how the release of these birds impacts the native ecology it's never been looked into independently never been looked into on an unbiased scientific review it hasn't happened yet and that's something that world justice were asking for last year and um you can go and see kind of the results and what happened with that online but anyway that was just an issue that we i wanted to bring to your attention because of course it's a really big thing at the moment with the start of the season you'll start seeing adult pheasants and partridges around quite a lot and it's important to understand the impact that they are having on our environment and we need to talk cohesively i think you know we need to talk with the shooting fraternity we need to talk with the farmers and because it's having an impact when those pheasants come in and they eat the seed of the farm and decrease the yield of the farmers and then they go into you know sites of specific conservation success and then they fertilize soils which shouldn't be fertilized it needs to be you know it's affecting all these areas because there's just so many birds so we need to have a collective conversation about how we can manage this situation better um for the sake of native wildlife and you know our ecology of our environment and for also the welfare of these poor game birds which are you know kept in the most hideous conditions and i've seen footage of pheasant um i guess you call them farms and i i have no words it's absolutely horrendous beyond anything you could possibly imagine so um you know we we need to address that anyway on from the soapbox um one thing actually i did want to bring our attention to slightly soap boxy but we'll move on quickly is of course the petition about the badger cull that was capable that came out relatively recently now at the moment we're doing pretty well and there's 33 512 signatures so far and the petition is to stop culling immediately and start the widespread vaccination of badges now of course we know that the issues with the badger call we've spoken about this previously on sibc we know that there is no scientific warranting to be going out and killing these badges in these numbers it's unethical it is cruel it is not working in kind of the fight against tb it doesn't have a standpoint so we need to look at other methods and vaccination is really important so please please please the link is below please do sign up to this petition we need these numbers to rise and get over to a hundred thousand which would be great because then it can be debated in parliament and hopefully we can make some headway on that it is 100 possible we can make these changes and every every signature makes a big difference and if you've already signed it then get sharing hit that button and hopefully we can keep boosting that number and we'll be able to uh help badgers as well but anyway enough of this hope box i feel like i've been ranting for quite some time now and on to something which is um absolutely adorable i have to say we're gonna go over to jack if you remember last week he told us about his third favorite dinosaur this week he's back to tell us about his second this is my second favorite dinosaur the triceratops reasons why because it's got those horns the thrill the little and that tail and the four legs it's a plant eater and where does it live it lives in canada and the usa and it eats plants and it it's it probably hunted down by giant theropod dinosaurs and of course it would have a conifers on the floor because it was the cretaceous um and it it goes on and on and on until the volcano struck and it died in and then all we've got left are the bones from all the other periods i love this t-shirt little legend i have to say that is a hundred percent true i mean triceratops what a dinosaur i love i don't know i almost wore a triceratops top today i really should have done that in hindsight because i it was a triceratops on a dance floor and which was uh really great by koala street art which you can find online obviously i got sent in these brilliant t-shirts of them dinosaurs doing the best things so i think jack you'd like that quite a lot and uh triceratops have to say popped up i have to i think it's in my top three actually i really i've always loved triceratops i used to have one of those plastic toys i'd always hang around with really really smart animals and i wanted to just give you a bit of a a book wow book review a book suggestion i know chris is a big fan of um you know the book lists and everything so i wanted to add one that i've been reading recently i find really interesting for me i really love how the mind works and how animals are intelligent and how they evolved to be that way and it's really fascinating to figure out how different types of intelligence evolved over different animal groups at different times and it's something you know normally you know a trait can evolve and then that species will evolve even further and that trait will be continued out sometimes it evolves independently and involves evolving different animal groups when it is really beneficial and intelligence is an example of that so this is a book here this is called other minds the octopus and the evolution intelligent life it was written by peter godfrey smith it actually won the science book prize uh in 2017 it was shortlisted by the royal society and and i'm just going to read you the back here you can see look at that it's got great covers an alternate inspired i'm just going to read you the back here other minds tell tells a bold news story of how nature became aware of itself a story that largely occurs in the ocean where animals first appeared tracking the mind's fitfull development from unruly clumps of seaborne cells to the first uh evolved nervous system in ancient relatives of jellyfish it explores the incredible evolutionary journey of cethopods things like octopus and squid um but what kind of intelligence do they possess how did the octopus a solitary creature with little social life become so smart what is it like to have eight tentacles that are so packed with neurons that they virtually think for themselves by tracing the question of inner life back to its fruits and comparing human beings with our most remarkable animal relatives godfrey smith casts crucial new light on the octopus's mind and our very own i have to say i'm halfway through it at the moment and i'm really really enjoying it it's really fascinating you know we don't often think as cephalopods octopuses to be you know super intelligent because they're so different from us you know often an indicator of high intelligence is the fact that an animal is social if it has a large social group and has to remember other individuals and how to communicate with those individuals and then that is often indicative of high intelligence however octopuses aren't so social so you know how do we tell about their intelligence here and this reminds me of a really great story actually i'm just going to tell you it now because i think it's really cool and so there was a an aquarium i can't remember where it was in the world i think it might have been i might have even been australia actually that i had a had an ox person and sealed all the fish and everything and the staff there noticed that the fish were disappearing each morning when they'd come in and they weren't sure what was going on they thought perhaps somebody was sneaking into the aquarium and taking fish out perhaps for private collections or um you know the tropical fish trade or something like that and this was going on for over a really long time and it kept kind of increasing it's going on for months and every day they come in more fish would be taken and they were coming becoming incredibly confused by it so they invested in a camera and they put a camera up in the corner of the the back area of the aquarium and they left it running for a few nights and they came back to see what was going on and what they found was that their octopus had actually been opening up its own tank going out into other tanks taking the fish and and just before the staff would arrive in the morning whatever i got done what time they would arrive say six a.m um but about 5 58 in the morning it would no it would be able to kind of judge the time and know when to go back in its tank and it would close everything up as if nothing had happened they are so so intelligent and so smart um and this kind of book is all about how they came to be that way so if you can kind of get a get a copy of it i really would recommend it i'm really enjoying it if you're interested in kind of the minds of animals and the evolution and how how it all works and particularly something that's kind of a species that doesn't want to stir alien from ourselves it's a really good insight so there we are i'm going to recommend that add that to the book list um so i think now i don't know are we anywhere i think we do have penguins and the live camera has started over in australia so we're going to go over to philip island here we go look at that so not much activity going on at the moment but what we're going to do is we're going to all zooming in anything no the little penguins haven't started coming in yet but we uh but we will keep an eye on it so the sun is of course setting in australia at the moment um so this is the largest colony of little penguins in the world and you can watch this every day really it's a 30 minute free live camera that looks across the beach it's gone a little bit blurry there i don't know who's maneuvering the camera but if you know anyone anyone listening in australia there we go zooming in a little bit more um so you can watch this live of course every day and see lots of twins have a look oh look at that oh my goodness look at the modeling off the beach the big old day of foraging and now they're all coming back to their burrows oh my goodness the penguins it's just so great to watch aren't they just kind of like waddling around oh my goodness they are absolutely fantastic fantastic birds oh my goodness so of course they are little penguins and i'll um give you extra points on the quiz if you're able to tell me where on the scale of size these penguins might lie in comparison to the other 18 official species of penguin that we have in the world they are you know as their names suggest the smallest species of penguin that we've got we do have everything from these small little little penguins to everything up to the emperor penguins which are the largest species of penguin that reside in the center of antarctica these of course live in a slightly warmer environment they are in australia at the moment and they live kind of around the coast of australia and also around the coast of new zealand as well but if you are to kind of have a look at little penguins a little bit closer maybe google a picture of them and they're also kind of famously called blue penguins too and that's because on their back they actually have these kind of iridescent kind of bluish feathers of course they're not actually blue at all it's something called structural color which i know chris and i've spoken about before it's the way that the light interacts with the feather as the feathers evolved they as the feathers develop from from the young they have these kind of tiny water bubbles within the feather microscopic and as the feather develops that water evaporates leaving holes within the feather and it's how the light comes and bounce down into those holes and bounces back off the feather and enters into our eye which makes us see blue uh whereas actually it doesn't even exist but they do have blue backs when you look at them so they are called blue penguins they are also have the nickname of fairy penguins too i'm not entirely sure where that came from maybe because their wings look blue like you know like a fairy perhaps i'm not entirely sure of the illusion of that but um look at them all go it's amazing isn't it to see them all coming in like this they've all been really busy foraging because in october is where they when they lay their eggs so they'll lay about two eggs i believe um in the in their burrows and uh it'll take quite you know a good 40 or so days before before those eggs hatch so they're kind of right in the beginning of their breeding season of course they want to plump up and eat as many fish as they possibly can so that they can sustain themselves through what is going to be an energetically expensive process as well but there are incredibly streamlined penguins they're really well built because of course when they enter the water they have got a lot of there's a lot of momentum particularly you know antarctic penguins that dive off of quite high uh area sometimes you see them kind of literally just springing themselves off of icebergs or cliff tops and often quite rough water and of course around the coast of australia it's quite rough too so they need to be slim lined in order to deal with that momentum and you can see how they're bending down there to hop over those rocks they're lowering their neck and they've got an incredibly flexible neck that they can elongate and you can see them do this we didn't do it now but you've got to do it when they are vocalizing look at them coming in oh my goodness it does just make you smile doesn't it i'd love to be stood up there look at those people they've got a great view we've got a pretty good view though ourselves and we considering we're watching this from around the world it's some pretty amazing insight look at them oh it's so funny waddling around like that um obviously brilliant there's so so many of them um so of course they live in temperatures where about the water is around 13 degrees c to 20 degrees c so they kind of prefer the warmer climate i don't blame them i'd rather be in 20 degrees c i think than the waters of antarctica but there we go they're really well adapted of course those penguins to living in those cold environments they've got two different types of feathers they've got their downs feathers to keep them really nice and insulated and then they're waterproof feathers on top as well these ones also have those types of feathers but they don't need to be quite so well insulated um but these little penguins they mainly feed in inshore waters around the coast um and around their breeding islands and they'll go to continental shelves as well there where there will be lots of kind of nutrients coming in from the different currents and they'll be able to make the most of that influx of fish that is making the most of that nutrient so that is why they're located on philip island i believe because actually quite close to the continental shelf i remember correctly um but they are kind of breeding pairs that which means you know they're monogamous they're seasonally monogamous which means for the uh the year that they are together and they are incredibly loyal to one another this is one of the reasons i think people really love penguins so much is because they have kind of uh relationships like i suppose a little bit similar like our own we you know we're kind of monogamous species there are monogamous species too and they really kind of um have the most strong pair bonds and i've always find it amazing you know how they find one another in a crowd but it's all about you know the smells and the sound and they're able to recognize each other i suppose they'd find it hard in a crowd of humans to understand how we recognize each other i suppose so i always like to think of it the other way around just as much as you know thinking about how they might find it difficult to recognize each other you can see a few more just coming in there oh my goodness what a tree what a special thing to be yeah look at that so these are males will search for mates often by kind of advertising outside the nest area and after paying after pairing up with each other they will continue to cool and that helps with hair bonding and more vocalizations the more rituals they can do and that the stronger their bond will be and during courtships both birds will stand and like i said they've got that really flexible neck they'll stand upright like this and and they'll move their necks back and forth you often see this with king penguins actually they have got the most amazing necks and they kind of like ripple like this like little tuxedos i don't know i love it they're just so entertaining to watch because they're so clumsy on land you see them you know they're having to really watch where they step particularly when they're coming over those rocks because they do fall over quite a bit um but it's pretty pretty amazing and they're really kind of defensive of their burrows as well as you would be i mean penguins are you know there's a lot of penguins you've got things like gentile dealy playing the demon penguins are notorious for stealing pebbles they are you have to keep a close eye on the daily because they will they they have kind of a different nest system than these little penguins here daily penguins have piles of little rocks that they build up into a kind of dome shape and they sit inside and and the nests are the perfect distance away from the neighbor so that the neighbor can't stretch its neck out and steal your stones so if you were to go out and measure the distance between the penguin nest you'll find that it's you know specifically further enough away that the neighboring kingdom can't stay with stones however when you go off to find food or you go to stretch your legs or something and you can't trust remember because they will inevitably come and pinch your stones and then they'll get told off but these are species which live in burrows and they will defend those burrows of course especially right now in the season where they're going to be starting to lay their eggs which is um pretty pretty amazing i have to say it's great to be able to see them but of course you can watch these every day as much as you like um around 9 00 a.m is the better you can kind of start tuning in at 9 00 am all the action tends to happen kind of a little bit later on so between about i don't know 9 30 9 45 is when you start seeing sites like this when they're all coming in and you get 30 minutes and you can find them at penguins.org dot a u that's penguins p-e-n-g-u-i-n-s dot org dot a-u and you can follow them on twitter at philip island mp or uh yes that's on twitter at philip island np p h i l l i p i s l a n d np on twitter which you know you go i'm going to follow it immediately i don't follow it i'm going to because this is just bringing me so much joy watching these come in and you can also donate as well to help to the conservation of these incredible animals and you can do that at penguinfoundation.org dot a u slash donate that's penguin foundation dot org dot a u forward slash donate what an amazing privilege to be able to see such incredible birds i mean um like penguins we just have such an affinity for them as i said earlier we've got 18 species uh all kinds varying in size and behavior and strategies living in warm environments to cold environments but sadly 10 of those 18 species are listed as threatened and many are becoming vulnerable and endangered and little penguins because they live in an accessible area um you know the conservation is really active on them and they are of course you know in decline like many of you know penguins are and but their conservation is is really important and we're able to monitor them closely because the environment they live in it's difficult to conserve and monitor the penguins such as you know the king penguins or the emperor penguins in particular because they live in such a hostile environment that we really struggle to survive for long periods of time in to monitor them effectively and to get you know an overview of what the population is doing so um we need to kind of all the conservation work uh as much conservation work on penguins as possible because of course they live in a place in in the bottom of the world in antarctica where lots of ice is melting as a direct result of climate change and global warming and so it's a it's a lot we need to do to build awareness about the issues that these species are facing and to kind of help motivate us i think to see these penguins to connect with them like we are now with these little penguins we're loving watching them modeling around we're gaining so much effect and an affinity for them and hopefully that is motivation that you know maybe we'll kind of think about um how we can adapt and change our behavior so that we can better the environment not just for these birds but for ourselves too so make sure you keep an eye on this uh on the little penguins in australia is what a view that is it's such a privilege to put them swimming oh my goodness i could just watch this for hours i feel like the sibc this morning might go on all day until the sun sets in australia at least because i'm gonna i'm gonna keep watching this for uh as long as possible but i promise i won't i'm sure many of you have got to get off to work or meetings or anything so we'll um we'll scoot on but we'll one we'll come back to the penguins if anything uh anything goes on so we're gonna i think do the quiz now i'm sure i think many of you have actually guessed what might be going on there with the quiz so let's have a little look at the first image we got that coming up yes there we go that's the first image there um it is a little bit tricky it is a little bit tricky this one this is the foot of an adelie penguin can we see the photo of the deli penguin i love these little guy these are the ones that i was saying that are notorious rock stealers rock thieves and stealing pebbles from one another and very distinct of the daily penguins they're quite small on the penguins here larger of course in the little penguins but they are they are very very tiny and they're very distinctive with that kind of white stripe around the eye there so that's uh that's how you kind of tell an ideally let's have a look at the second image where there's a a phone ringing if you can hear that but uh a little cough scene um so of course this is another penguin this is a different species of penguin uh let's see did anybody get this one right let's have a little look oh we did so simon got this one right and also got this right on youtube as well morgan i think alicia got this right uh and ross too so let's have a look who these feet belong to it is a gentoo penguin this is my favorite species of penguin they are very vocal you can see they're the neck rays as i said when they when they're quite vocal they raise their neck um but i just think they're beautiful their eye markings there is all speckled and absolutely sparkling and they look fantastic in the gorgeous pristine white snow with that eye marking in that very vivid build color there as well so hold on to everyone who got gently these are quite tricky getting the getting the species for the penguin feet some of them are quite obscure but let's go to the next one hopefully uh some more people will have got this third image right yes there we go so this is a brush tail penguin you can see it's kind of a brush tail because of the type of tail it's got in the back and uh you can see it's got its one foot up there got a dark foot let's see you've got this one right we've got betty you've got michelle mazz got this right morgan to alec and anis also simon and uh dracus on youtube too got this right and of course it is the foot of the one and only king penguin there we go very very distinctive king penguins live kind of on the islands around antarctica um so not to be confused with emperor penguins emperor penguins are much larger they do have kind of similar coloration and that king penguins are much smaller and they don't live actually on the main antarctica continent themselves and they live out on the kind of the surrounding islands there too so there we go that's our penguin quiz well done to everybody who got that one right uh it was a little bit tricky i think if you've got penguin like really good get a point but if you've got the species correct too bonus yourself a couple extra because that's true particularly the first one there because it's they look amazing like dinosaur feet don't they so it goes uh it goes really well with the video of the triceratops we watched earlier um so let's go on and do some birthdays lots of birthdays today so we've got elia is eight on sunday happy birthday to you really enthusiastic young naturalist who recently saved a bumblebee by bringing it steady supply flowers and made friends with it thank you so much for looking after that bumblebee that's really fantastic and i hope you have a fantastic eighth birthday uh also happy birthday to charlotte hearn a birthday on first of october um so message sent in to us from rob very happy birthday to you charlotte i hope you had a fantastic birthday also um lorraine flores wants to wish her daughter charlotte a happy birthday turned six last sunday had a lovely afternoon at the wild heart trust feeding the goats that's fantastic the wild heart trust is of course um a trust that chris and i are very you know strongly associated to it's uh the kind of the rescue facility of the cats and lemurs over on the isle of wight and uh it's a fantastic place to go and connect it's fantastic you were able to go there and i'm glad you enjoyed feeding the goats i love the goats are great fun they're very naughty i've been i've spent many many time with those goats playing with them they've got a lot of fun it's a great place to go so if you're on the island head down to the wild hot trust but a very happy birthday to you charlotte i also bev bernie wants to wish her son max a very happy birthday for yesterday so happy birthday max also wendy cooper happy birthday yesterday your husband mike sent us in a message um and so yeah very happy birthday to you i hope you've had a fantastic day uh also very happy birthday to angela whose birthday was on the 30th of september and we got a message from your husband john so hope you had a fantastic birthday also um ben rumsby happy birthday to you for tomorrow you're going to be 14 years old very keen bird watcher and naturalist we'll be out all weekend at the essex bird watching society big county bird watch that sounds like fun that does sound good what a great way to spend a birthday if you're in essex and maybe google the big county bird watch and get involved with that because that sounds like a great way to be out this weekend and surveying the birds in your local area so uh yeah enjoy that very happy birthday to you ben fantastic and also one more uh wendy pritchard 65 tomorrow on wednesday so very happy birthday to everyone lots of birthdays there to get through whoever whoever else's birthday is hope you have a fantastic day uh let's see what else have we got going on uh let me see i'm doing things with mixed technology today you might have noticed i've only got well i've got half the number of screens that i'd normally have uh the printer is currently not working so i don't have anything printed out and i'm also inside because of the torrential rain that was outside but the moment i started it started shining with the sun which is of course the way things go so you have to excuse me being inside today and being a little bit all over the place with the lack of um technology that we've got going on at the moment um so just going to start wrapping up one announcement to make is that well we're very excited to say that we're going to be doing a south isolating bird club calendar yes very excited about that and this isn't going to be images that are you know in any way um done by the professionals or you might be a professional photographer i don't know but this is going to be images that represent the self-isolating bird club so we're going to be going through all the images that you've submitted over the last few months the favorites the best stories the characters that we've got to know and we're going to be putting it all into a calendar but of course if you would like to um submit photos to us then please please please do and you can do that with this email address so 2021 calendar at s i bird dot club that's 20 21 calendar at s i bird dot club so please send in all your photos there if you post them on the facebook group or anything else you know we do monitor it and we'll hopefully get around and see everything but you know sometimes things might get missed so make sure if you really if you'd like to be in calendar we'd love you to be and please do email your images along so it can be a representation of the group and all the fantastic stories and it's going to be a way of making a little bit of money that's going to go towards a wildlife charity so we're on the case and we're going to be putting that together and if you have any other ideas about live cameras or any stories that you'd like us to know about you can also send in your suggestions to us at um submissions si bird dot club as well that's submissions at a cyber club as well uh next week what have we got coming up chris and i are going to be back together again got the dynamic duo uh we're also going to be talking about something really special um in this box here which was sent to us very kindly by simon constantine mark constantine who uh well mark is the founder of lush cosmetics and simon is his son who works it's an amazing job creating perfume i actually worked for lush for about a year and a half and i have to say they are one of the most incredible innovative modern companies that you know i think every company should just aspire to be and there is a reason we're going to go and speak where they've got some new perfumes coming out i have to say just smelling in the box it smells oh absolutely amazing i've been sniffing these all day but there are environmental stories that go behind all of their perfumes and really really powerful stories from different cultures different places around the world that highlight issues of uh you know environmental concern and also promote sustainability and promote kind of uh ethical i suppose um you know ingredients ethical ingredients so we're going to be sharing some of the stories behind the ingredients in their perfumes and talking a little bit about lush a little bit about you know the incredible conservation work that they do i have to say you know you might recognize this i've got this is my makeup bag here i'm a little bit less obsessed and it's a fantastic company so we'll be going over that next week as well and there's also really some brilliant wildlife too but for now we're going to leave you i'm not sure we might be leaving you with peregrines you might be leaving you with penguins i'm not sure which one we are yes so i would like to thank claire whitehouse for the calendar idea one of our viewers so thank you very much claire for sending us the idea of doing a calendar because it's an absolute fantastic idea and we're really excited to be kind of getting on and doing that we are going to leave you with the peregrines obviously incredibly exciting those chicks just hatched a few hours ago now so keep an eye out for that peregrine cam in melbourne australia again you can find that and birdlife.org.au if you google the victorian peregrine project uh you can follow those chicks as they grow and also remember to keep an eye out on that penguin cam but that's it from me for today and we will see you next week at 9am thank you so much for sticking with me sorry about the technical issues and i hope you have a fantastic weekend see you later bye b [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] 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Channel: Chris Packham

Views: 6,306

Rating: 4.9384613 out of 5

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Id: Zrlpy_NnmLg

Length: 80min 44sec (4844 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 02 2020