#SIBCLive with Michaela Strachan – Episode 75

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the view of western texas look at that i like that it's a lot warmer in western texas and it is in the new forest it looks quite sunny and nice there isn't it does doesn't it quite active this theater we love these cornell birthdays look at that there we go scrub guy isn't it it is a species of scrub jerry yeah i bet it's called the western sculpture or something like that do you know one of my first ever jobs yeah overseas i went to um i went to florida to film the florida scrub day which is quite a rare bird what's interesting is that they have cooperative helpers at the nest so you know they'll have i mean i managed to film five birds all around one nest feeding the chicks yeah so it's like a they're related individuals of course you know um anyway i went out there and when i got to the um got to pick up the hire car because i had my camera tried fog lots of bags and things like that i was a cameraman at the time not presented so i should have made that clear so i was shooting as a cameraman and um they said oh i'm really sorry we don't have a station wagon you know like a state car and they said is there anything else that you that you would like and they had this post them i'll never forget it it was uh it was um in the center it was a picture of a thing called a trans am right right which was a gas guzzling sports car and then radiating from it were a lot of less interesting vehicles anyway so i pointed at the center and said you haven't got one of those up there and they said yeah and so i managed to cram now listen this this story's got a brilliant payoff right so basically i managed to cram all of my equipment into this sports car there's a tiny boot even for an american car from the 1980s this was in about 1984 and um and the tripod was on the seat everything was stuffed in i could barely squeeze into the car like this and i drove from florida from miami airport all the way up to um the archbold research station and this castle sounded like you know like those big gas guzzling american cars v8s as i pulled into the car park the producer that was employing me and david attenborough were both standing in the car park right and as i pulled in the lady who'd employ me put her hands on her hips like that and i had to pull up and stop the body was about 12 feet long david and her oh no and they said and she said to me oh exactly as well as i got out with a big grin on my face she said what's that and i sort of looked around as if i didn't know what she was talking about like that you know and then she pointed at the car and i said it's a it's a trans am i got here really quickly [Laughter] what did you say dave didn't mind at all no he thought it was pretty good of course you know he would have done exactly the same well when i looked around the car park was a red tram though but the end of my camera work career of course on account of the uh you know it didn't cost any more money but it wasn't exactly the most practical vehicle no no no i bet it wasn't yeah anyway then you turned to presenting thank goodness thank goodness for that ever since then i've been turning up in minis yeah small economic family now we love watching these bird cameras from the cornell lab it's a fantastic thing to do so if you're you know have a few minutes here and there pop into corner lab and check out on their website and you get lots of amazing live cameras so you get a few of these yeah and you can contribute as well because they do have them all over the world and maintaining them is quite a tall order but they give us a great insight it's great the one we've been watching a lot is northern world or albatross at tyro ahead in new zealand might want to check that one out actually because yeah i don't know how long that bird's been incubating me yeah so it might be a catching relative back then look at that lots of people saying hello this evening so we've got uh debbie we've got emanuel we've got richard sue poppy sue jackie claire and nancy julia elaine katherine we've got everyone from essex to maryland usa northern ireland orkney dublin liverpool hello everyone good evening or good morning wherever you are in the world you know what a great thing we've got a brilliant show coming up today uh first of all though we wanted to take a look at some of your photos uh that you've been sending in so first of all this is good this is one we spoke about a little bit on winter watch and you got very excited i did get violence when you saw this i like the simple romance of the snow bubble the snow bubble have a look at this yes this is this is actually this was sent in by carol marsh look at that there we are you like a snow bubble beautiful isn't it look at that it's frozen can you imagine how thin that ice is there oh it's so delicate stunning aren't they it's got to be as as i said on the program it's got to be below minus 11. so even if you've got snow and you've got bubble mixture doesn't mean it's gonna sort of do that remarkable thing of freezing um and it needs to be below minus 11. yeah if you do have snow and it's under minus 11 go out and give that a go creativity well we've got coming up well we've got something good coming up we have yes well we missed uh so much doing our winter watch broadcast this year um mckayla was unable to join us of course because she was in south africa and we were all strictly adhering to the lockdown rules we didn't move any distance from our home naughty jollo and jillian but i'm afraid it did mean that uh michaela wasn't able to join us but she's going to join us tonight yeah and yeah she did escape the rain did she escape the rain she looks like she's in lovely sunshine although the sun setting yeah and so she's she's in a nice warm part of the world which is quite but for spring watch yeah but for spring watch we hope yeah then things hopefully would have sorted themselves out yeah we'll be able to move more freely which would be great yeah but before we go to michaela there's another photo that was sent in this is a fantastic this is one of our new sibc members ivor look at that hold on a moment you'd like that photo hey hold on i'm gonna have to put my glasses on and get some i'm at that distance where this isn't quite sharp but that's very definitely not so i mean that sort of that's nice isn't it look at the wing feathers look at the beady the eyes sharp isn't it the critical bit is the is the head and particularly the eye if you've got a photograph of movement and you really do need the head sharp yeah and that head is sharp look at the way the wings yes that is a lovely photograph of a fantastic bird we were only saying yesterday yeah absolutely which is the last day today so you haven't done your big garden bird watch yeah right now it's been late for me i'll be your own hope tony now still good yeah it would be good but we are what we're hoping we were saying this afternoon won't be that because of lockdown this year um perhaps more people than ever might have done the big garden bird watch half a million last year and this year when um we did the big butterfly count in july yeah with butterfly conservation more people did that than ever before probably because they were locked down and spending more time in their gardens yeah so fingers crossed we've got lots of fantastic data that's been collected during the course of this weekend quiz oh now hold on you see a couple of weeks ago i you know really pushed the boat out and i got my little match box out yeah and i showed everyone a lap wing crest that i'd collected in the 1970s well one half of it the other half i made into an ear wing for my then girlfriend i hope she still has it and um and that was that was a sacred object but what i'm about to show you tonight is in in my collection of bits of animal remains you have a lot of animal remains indeed in the in a rather extensive collection of animal remains this is right up there this is is i mean i i don't know what to say really this is the amongst the most sacred that i'm about to show you now yeah it's pretty spectacular this yeah and i and i had to risk life and limb to get it as well and i'll tell you that story when we reveal what it is i'm just fiddling around so i can hold it properly so just give me a moment now there it is oh my goodness me a couple of black feathers there white feathers too look at that hold on now look at that i can tell you it's from uh a uk well i collected it in the uk i collected this in in the uk and when i saw it i i went to extraordinary lengths to be able to retrieve this because this is a real treasure i've got to tell you my in my feather collection rather extensive rather extensive feather collection this takes pride of place even over the lapwing crest that says a lot hey what about that i'll leave it to my world i'll leave it in my way yeah oh lucky me yeah that's pretty good actually i shouldn't have said that i could probably find some poison put in my supper actually because she'll be so so desperate to get your hands on this well you can cook if you like [Laughter] we don't need to cook we've got our lentil chips and everyone's got on with the lentil chips loads of people are eating lentil chips it's great they're good aren't they they're really good we're not we're not we're paying a lot of money to eat them eat them we eat a lot it's very bad we have done the two potato based or lentil-based snacks are available or chickpea or chips yeah snacks are available but this one takes their lentils and there is one i think it's potato-based i don't know i haven't eaten them for many years and then the catchphrase is once you spot that once you pop you just can't stop oh yeah that's the pop pop chips yeah yeah yeah but honestly once you've opened these [Music] they're already almost gone anyway we'll chat about lentils forever and we you don't want to hear us chatting about that what you'd really love to hear is michaela strucken hello michaela how are you i'm pretty good thanks yeah i was just sitting there thinking is this about wildlife or is this a cookery program that crisps congratulations first of all you guys on a great winter watch i watched every episode and thoroughly enjoyed it as did millions of viewers so you did a brilliant job in the rain what i'm not thanking you for though is sending the rain to us because this is the first day we've had rain in cape town four weeks so um yeah that's why i'm indoors with a little sort of view of my garden here but um yeah i hope you missed me a little bit we did that too we did miss you we did we did on a couple of occasions rather envy or rather warmer climate down there in southern africa i have to say because it was very wet and cold i think the key thing is though i mean we put our you know coats and hats and everything on but the crew as you know makayla that you know all the guys running the cameras and the cables and doing the sound it's tough for them in that in those conditions and they did a brilliant job of keeping their spirits up to be quite an amazing job yeah it was it was good i think real i think a real nod has to go to the whole team actually because i think what the viewers don't realize is how many last minute changes there were i mean myself included you know it's three days before i was getting on a plane that we suddenly decided it wasn't the right thing to do for me to fly over um and there were various changes the the director got covered and couldn't do it at the last minute so you know they had so many things to deal with and so many goal posts were changing all the time so they did a phenomenal job technically to get the show on without any hitches at all it's a minor miracle yeah it's just an astonishing collection of people really when you think about that just getting it actually into people's living rooms onto their tv yeah you know and we like said we get the easy bit just down there and talk about wildlife or all of the rest of those yeah pulled it together organized it worked for them restrictions should we stop sort of picking up the babies i mean it's good to be picked up i've got to say but anyway yeah so michaela what have you been up to then i think you've been out and about enjoying yours it's your summer of course that's the key thing isn't it it's our summer and we're not in as seriously locked down as you guys are in the uk so we can still get out and about not onto our beaches we're banned from going to the beaches as you know we're still not allowed to drink alcohol that's been a month now well you're allowed to drink it i tell a lie you're allowed to drink it you're not allowed to sell it so my stock is dwindling but um we have been out and about in fact just just yesterday i went on a five-hour hike in in the mountain in table mountain and throughout the last few months because i've been home so much i've managed to do an awful lot of stuff and and seen some fantastic wildlife and back in december my son and i went on a trip up to kwazulu-natal and we went on safari and we went out with a rhino de horning program which was an incredible experience and i mean you guys know and i'm sure most of our listeners and viewers know that rhinos are being poached at an unbelievable rate here in south africa and in fact there were some statistics that i read just today they've got some data that they reckon in the last decade the kruger national park have lost two-thirds of their rhino so that's 65 of their rhino have gone i don't think that is two thousand but that's that's the figure that was there which is absolutely tragic and again i'm sure everybody watching this knows why rhino horn is taken it's taken as a status symbol it's taken to put in traditional chinese medicine so what an awful lot of the reserves are doing including the kruger national park is they're dehorning their rhino so we went to one of the private game reserves and and they they go up in a helicopter and they they uh they they dart the rhino first of all in fact these photos are going a little bit quicker than i'm talking i think but you could see the in the first photograph me with the rhino after it had been darted it was anesthetized they then put a blindfold on it and ear plugs in so so it you know it doesn't have any in stimulation around it um and then they come down to the ground and then a vet will come and basically saw off the rhino horn which with a chainsaw which is absolutely tragic the one you're seeing that you've just seen now is is the calf so this particular mother that we saw was with a calf um so they both get anesthetized they both have their horns removed uh they'll grow it doesn't hurt i mean what i should say is it's not painful uh that horn is made out of keratin it's the same as our nails and our hair you can see all around the ground that's that's what people want they want that rhino horn and all the shavings that they then say put in the chinese medicine there's no proof that that chinese medicine actually does anything in fact i think it's the world's most expensive placebo um so by taking the horn off as you can see that the vet is doing there it's um it stops people from poaching them but you know i i look at that chris and makes and i i actually cried as i was watching it i found it incredibly emotional because i think it is so sad that we have to deface a species in order to save a species and you know you and i chris have been in conservation and trying to get the word out for the last 30 odd years and yet this is where we're at we don't seem to have been able to stop the demand so we're now defacing species so i know it's necessary but i just found it incredibly emotional watching it have you ever seen it before chris live no i've never been to a a dehorning i've been where we've darted rhino on a couple occasions for such you know to put satellite tracking devices on so we can study them but you're right i i think that it is a sad indictment of an age that we're living in when our only hope of keeping those creatures as of alive is and the word you use is so pertinent it's defacing them you know we're and also you know rhinos have horns for a reason they don't just put all the protein into a massive great horn for no reason so they need their horns but of course they need to be alive more than they need those horns so that's the sacrifice that we're forcing them to make it's grotesque and you're exactly right you know i that's what i was asking the researchers on the ground there i said have you noticed any change because it's only been in the last well decade or so that they've done this dehorning and i said have you noticed any change they said anecdotally i mean they haven't done any proper research on it yet but they've noticed that the males fight for longer because obviously you know when two two male rhinos fight with a big horn then they're not going to fight for long because it's extremely dangerous but without the horn they don't back off so quickly so that's one thing that they've anecdotally noticed they've also noticed that the females are being mated younger because they don't have a horn to fight the male off when they're not ready yet so you know it'll be really interesting over time to see how that changes the behavior of rhino and i just thought you know i saw so many when we were on safari without their horn that i just thought i can't remember what they look like with that glorious horn it's so sad so that's what we do i mean an amazing thing for my son's 15 years old now and what an amazing thing for him to witness to see how conservation is tough you know it's it it's a tough business and it really but i think it ignited his passion in conservation i mean as you know chris he's a cricketer he's not his the wildlife is is sort of being ignited as we go along but definitely the passion for conservation was ignited on that trip so we did that we did the rhino d horny then we went up to cozy bay which is on the east coast of south africa just on the border of mozambique and that was a bit more of a delightful thing to see because we saw um turtles laying their eggs and it's the most amazing thing that they do because um they take you out a guide and they take you on this beach in the pitch dark so you think how are we ever gonna see a turtle and they've got amazing eyes and as soon as they see a turtle come up the beach they make you sit still we were in a little group they made us sit still we weren't allowed to make any noise until the turtle had and with a back flipper's head a duck it's it's sort of nest that it's going to lay in and then they put a little light on the backside and as soon as it starts laying it goes into a trance and you can see the picture here i mean the turtle's gone into its trance and it starts laying its eggs um and i think we've got another pic oh we've got a bit of video so watch watch the video of it actually laying it's beautiful isn't it incredible to see that again and it's guess how many eggs they lay you probably know the answer to this don't you chris well they can make one i'd say it depends on the size of the turtle of course but i mean sometimes they'll lay you know 40 60 or more eggs weren't they well this is a loggerhead turtle and it laid 100 eggs so that's an average clutch it's about 100 but what is astonishing is one in about one or two in every thousand are thought to make it to adulthood so they lay a hundred they have three to six clutches a year and they only lay every two to three years so they only replace themselves what every year and a half i guess or every two years i mean if one out of a thousand make it which is quite astonishing but again a lovely thing to be able to watch and and as i say a much nicer thing to watch than than having a rhino d horned um we then went back from cozy bay we went back on safari and i wanted to show you one of my favorite things on safari because i think you'll really love this it's it's a lion roaring just have a look at this and listen [Music] i'll just shout about my territory but i'm not going to bother moving and protecting it i'll just lie here and shout about it instead and the way you see that stomach contract is amazing but that's what i think is incredible it's that diaphragm that's moving and that's 114 decibels it's louder than a chainsaw or this is the funny statistic that i looked up is 25 times louder than a gas-powered lawn mower of course we all we all know what that sounds like don't we a gas powered lawnmower but yeah it could be heard what five miles eight kilometers away so it's an incredible sun i think did you i can't see what's going out actually so did you see it when it's standing up because we have got it looking rather resplendent standing up as well have a look at this yeah we got him sat up it looks like a splendid line but still beautiful magnificent rather lazy individual not bothering to stand to roar but it is amazing the sound they make isn't it and you know it was fantastic to see those lions roaring like that and okay so now i've got a quiz for you guys um i think chris you might get quite a few of these because after that i mean it was the most amazing trip it was actually organized by olly's school my son's school so a few of the families went on this trip and they set up um miss netting catching birds and then bringing them so they were doing a lot of scientific stuff on on the birds they got very very few bird ringers in south africa compared to the uk interestingly so this guy had all these nets up he was catching these beautiful birds and then letting all the kids release a birdie and myself so i'm going to show you some birds see if you can guess what they are okay here's the first one that's what flycatcher african paradise fly catcher oh gosh i knew you'd find that easy okay next what's that i'm it's a small seed eating bird with a red rump so it's probably a female fire finch oh you are too good it's a female african farface okay this one i know you know this one because i actually tweeted this one and you were actually impressed that i'd seen it look at that bird iridescence violet violet starling i've never seen one i've always wanted to see when they've got a white chest haven't they with that striking purple back can i just pause there a minute so you mean i've seen a bird that you've never seen before yes okay here's the next one you might not get this this is a bit harder isn't it i don't know hold on that's a young cricketer and in his hand he has um hold on it's a babbler it's a it's probably a brown babbler no somber green ball oh somber green ball okay yeah he says okay and then this is me releasing one what do you think this is that's very small that's even a worse photograph than the somber green ball i can't see that it's way too small it's quite camouflaging what do you mean it's too small it's got white outer tail is it a lark of some kind it's got a white outer tail feathers and it seems to have a bit of a wing bar is it a lark oh there we are no no no no yeah it's it with christmas i don't know that's bound to confuse me because i'm you know i'm not very good at those sort of things um robin well it's a female then isn't it this male squad bobby's a far more flamboyant what are you doing with the female and then and then this one wasn't in our net but i just wanted to show you anyway i'm sure makes you'll get this one what's this that's a pride kingfisher it is indeed because then we also went on the water and i just love kingfishers so i just wanted to finish my little bird quiz on that one because that was quite an easy one and then then so that was an amazing trip that we went on and we did some incredible things but then i wanted to show you something that i saw just last week a bit more closer to home because it was actually outside my front door have a look at this i know you're going to love this because this is a spider hunting wasp now this is the sort of thing that horror films are made of and what they do the wasps catch i know it's it's rubbish footage because it was on my camera on a i mean on my phone on a very windy den i don't know why it's going up the wall but what they do is these wasps catch a spider and then they inject venom into it that will paralyze the spider and then they will lay an egg inside the spider it'll hatch and then the larvae will eat the spider that's still alive but paralyzed can't move it will eat it from the inside out and this the wasp will drag that spider to its ready-made den as i said i don't know what it was doing going up the wall because normally they're in burrows underground so i just think that is it as i say is so awful that behavior and you could just imagine them making a horror film out of that you must have seen that before chris many times not with uk species yeah we have them in the uk um pompilot spider hunting wasp and the amophila the uh caterpillar uh sand sand wasp as we call them so i have seen them doing that again i many years ago filmed it for the for the bbc one of the pompeo pompillious scenario which was a spider hunting wasp here yeah splendid thing so i'd rather like the gruesome nature of that yeah well you like zombie films don't you so it's that sort of thing it's sort of you know i can imagine whoever writes zombie films probably watches a a spider wasps by hunting spider a spider hunting boss bombing anyway listen i'm gonna finish on something that i know is gonna impress you because i went bird watching the other day to a place called stranteen which is a waste water treatment works and look look chris and megs i've even got my bird list look at that that's a good list what do you know you can see 200 species at this place it's an incredible place i think that did they just show a photograph or is a photograph coming up there's you looking down the telescope yeah i mean it was it was it was really fantastic couple of hours that we spent there and you could see about 50 species in two hours and as you know chris i tend to talk quite a lot when i'm bird watching so i didn't see the full 50 but i did see 35 different species pretty good black one's still there very elegant birds yeah look at that yeah and that's waste water treatment work so i really enjoy my doubt but that's the whole thing isn't it of having more time at home is that's 45 minutes from where i live and i've never been there before so i'm that's a place that's on my list now to go maybe not regularly because it did smell a bit but i will definitely go again so as you can see i've done an awful lot in the time that i've not been doing winter watch you've been keeping yourself busy it's great to see that i love that place that winter um about when to watch the waterworks places calling it a waste water treatment plant right this is because you know being nice it's a sewage works you've been to the local sewage works yeah well as i say wastewater treatment is a much more polite way of saying it but this week i'm going to go to um a sea bird rescue center called san cob to help hand rear cape cormorants that were um that would there was about a thousand seven hundred of them that were abandoned on their nests on robin island so i'll take some photographs i'll come on again when i've done a bit of volunteering and i'll let you know how they're doing because there's 1 200 of them in the rescue center at the moment an endangered species so it's very important to get as many of those back into the world as possible fantastic start michaela thanks ever so much for joining us we sorry that you weren't here for winter watch of course make sure you uh do everything you can try and get back to spring if we can get the disease under control enough people vaccinate it then hopefully the restrictions will be more forgiving and we don't know i mean obviously we're talking about spring watch we i mean you know we should we presenters should never count our chickens you know protect birds in your garden feed us for a big garden bird watch but we really shouldn't count the chickens but i think that winter watch was you're seemingly a success with the viewers so fingers crossed we'll be doing a spring watch somewhere this year well i'm i really really hope i i do make it because it was extremely frustrating not to be part of it so yeah i will do everything i can to be there for spring watch thanks so much nicole it's really nice to see you i'm glad you're doing well and keeping busy good luck with the volunteering it's honestly yeah there's a lot of cool ones to feed yeah thanks a lot guys cheers oh she's got some good wildlife there isn't she [Music] she's close enough to smell it she could have smelled the inside of a rhino's ear oh yeah animals ears always have quite a distinct smell don't they do they do so i can always tell the difference between the dogs by the smell of their ears because they do have different smells yeah slightly yeah yeah people all over the nation are sniffing their dog's ears i like the smell of the dog's ear if you really want to know you know in the middle of the night in the dark all right pressing their face into yours and pushing you out of the bed catch that little whiff of their ear and without opening your eyes you know which dog is if you got to there we are anyway yeah moving on got a bit of a thank you to say to someone now um so a bit of a story of kindness so sarah costen is from vermont in the us and she actually bought some christmas cards that i think um chris chris had created um but she wasn't aware that they couldn't be posted outside the uk but it was too late wasn't it we didn't have time by christmas yeah as much as we would like to still be trying to get there now yeah ready for next christmas yeah quite possibly yeah um but instead of accepting a refund she chose to send those cards to someone who needed cheering up so thank you very much very very kind of very very nice thing yeah that's great in a world where there's a lot of sort of i don't know division and anger at the moment it's nice that people are doing good things like that looking out for one another is important and which is why i love srbc so much because it's become such an amazing community yeah and um we're going to go on to a bit of a mindfulness moment now there's such a a big hit aren't they on winter watch and we absolutely love them yeah uh this one was filmed by helen bass and some music for our very own fabian harrison so sit back relax take a deep breath and unwind with this [Music] i know a lot of people don't because it can be i love snacks really i thought you wouldn't like snacks the way it calms the whole landscape and of course swan is the perfect perfect subject for that snack however we must make an immediate correction because um we've just done something in terms of classical music was absolutely sacrilegious because we've credited fabian house and our technological genius who puts all this stuff on air with composing the music to swarm night when when i see on my uh on my phone here that it was actually peter elliot tchaikovsky i knew it was titroscot in those film names um in 1875 1976 and despite his initial failure it's now one of the most popular ballets of all it's a great ballet i love swan i love ballet and i love going to see someone late yeah it's great it's a great job because it wasn't composed by baby yeah marie just said uh fabian's good doesn't he love that but um he wasn't the composer he did write the music or didn't even perform it he added it to the clip so we're very grateful for his talents his technical talents and acting breakdown of the percussion instruments that were involved in the orchestration of that particular anyway there we are should we move on well i think we should move on oh move on quickly now okay so um susan kerwin lives in county limerick in ireland and she's opened the first ever dedicated bat hospital in ireland what about that amazing thing that's so an amazing thing let's hope that she starts a trend and of course once she's training people to look after these fragile and sometimes very rare um and vulnerable vulnerable uh animals then hopefully that will spread and we're very very pleased to say that rte the broadcaster are allowing us to show one of their films yeah which is actually quite extraordinary and we are really grateful for that we're fortunate that lots of people send us their films and they've even made films for us yeah indie etc etc but this is a leading broadcaster in ireland and they've said that we can show you this little film about the bad hospital here we go they're completely misunderstood they have just it's off they're just the most gentle social creatures um beautiful creatures and they want nothing more but just to go about their lives and do what they do best and that is to control the insect population here in [Music] ireland out of the 128 bats that i've taken in this year i've successfully managed to rehabilitate and release 75 of those 46 bats that came in this year were under a week old so we had bad puppies and bat pups are extremely difficult they're so delicate some of them that came in were just over a gram and in the wild their mothers are feeding them milk for the first six weeks so they have to be fed a special milk formula and this has to be done every two and a half hours 24 hours a day for the first few weeks which was one of the most challenging things i've ever done [Music] so my treatment for cervical cancer i started suffering with insomnia so i would spend a lot of time sitting outside at night with a cup of tea just watching the baths and i went and bought myself a bat detector and and bat detector is something that we use to ease drop on the bats because of the frequency that they echolocate at our ears can pick it up so this allowed me to find which species were around my house and this all helped me to kind of escape from the problems that i was having so i started to learn more about them and i became more fascinated so this all then started me on the road of trying to help them because i felt that they had helped me so much i feel that what i'm doing at the moment is really a vocation and it's happened to me for a reason and it's helping to pull me back out of the mental health issues that i've been struggling with and give me that opportunity to get my life back and to give something back to wildlife as well amazing so important you know those hospitals really will make well it will make a huge difference and it'd be fantastic wouldn't it they started popping up yeah in other parts of ireland yeah the other thing is with the hospitals is they invariably end up with bats which can't be unfortunately rehabilitated and go back into the wild but they um then they make excellent ambassadors and very often the people who spend so much time looking after these are so very fragile little animals will end up with one with a permanently damaged wing and then they can show them to lots of people when they get a chance to see about which is an animal otherwise they would never ever get to see alive like that and i remember you know seeing my first natural in the hand nelly the notch two local naturalists here david and maj goodall and they were that crazy and they had this nocturnal called nelly and it must have met thousands and thousands of people thousands and thousands of children and um i mean i took you to meet her actually i remember i remember because he went to shake my hand as a bit of a joke he had the bat on his hands like this and he pulled it out of his pocket and then i went to shake his hand and then he pulled away and it was about there and i remember being really small that was certain it was amazing yes that was uh it's the name of the place outside the um there's a church there shedfield i think it's shedfield church and we went there one uh one time and you got to meet nearly the knockout and that naturally lives i tell that noctual must have gone on for about 15 years at least you know what an ambassador anyway top work top work there um and thank you very much again to rte for allowing us to uh to use that news report i think we should get on with the quiz a few people did get this right i have to say so well done to danny mjg birder wildlife rufus fiona kate ben maria abby garden watch ally morgan and linda look at that now they're splayed out actually they're looking a bit toughty because it wouldn't have been like that i can't hold them easily in the form that it would have taken when the bird was alive but what i can do is take out the two principal feathers which are the black ones because these are the ones that you see when uh if you're fortunate enough to see these birds when they're out on the sea um look at that oh my goodness me look at that look how long they are here's my finger for scale there we are look look at that they're very long how long are they that's 10 centimeters they're 20 20 to 22 centimeters long black and they splay up like that when the wind blows them behind the bird out in the roiling spume because these once belonged to a male long tailed duck what about that the tail plumes of a long-tailed duck it's pretty good hey and the and the story was i was working with gary moore the sound of cordless and we were walking along the side of a dock and it was low tide and we looked down and on the mud beneath us was a dead drake long tail but it was a precipitous climb down over algae covered rocks but nothing was going to stop me i scrambled down slipped and slid got myself completely covered silt and mud and got down there to the duck gary is peering over the side very enviously because obviously gary wanted the title of the long-term duck too and um i uh withdrew the feathers from the uh the deceased bird yeah and then i thought well i can't leave gary empty-handed no you have to get him something so i got the uh i've got the the head and which gallery now has the skull form of course so gary got the skull i thought that's a fair divvy up i mean i don't yeah a skull would be pretty good yeah the skull would have been pretty good but you know we shared it between us i got the towel gary got the got the skull and um and that is one of my in my feather collection i think that's the the one in the cap but your pinnacle oh well but you know what obviously i was out in costa rica once and um there's a bird called a resplendent ketzel it's one of the world's most over-dressed flamboyant birds the males and um and you know i i actually thought wouldn't it be amazing to find that in the tail feather of the resplendent quetzal and uh anyway we were walking along and i was with a party of people and one of them bent down and picked up as ketzel's tail feather that's pretty amazing [Music] look that's what you're looking at yeah i've seen them they are stuck up oh that's a great photo as well it does justice doesn't it to the tail it's beautiful beautiful thanks to hugh howe for that excellent picture of one of the most striking and beautiful of our wintering waterfowl of course they nest right at the top of russia and they come down here well most of them go to the baltic and if the baltic gets icy they come across the north sea and you'll see them on the on the eastern side of the uk very rarely do they come inland they stay on the sea they can put up with the most awful weather terrible terrible storms and they're out there bobbing about and they dive down and that pink and black bill is used for feeding on shellfish so despite the fact that they're quite a small duck actually um they they feed on shellfish on the bottom and they they swim down and take those but the dry i mean and this is winter winter plumage in the summer that sort of gray smudge on the side of the head goes to like a chocolate brown and to be honest with you they're not as attractive in the summer no i like grey smudge the gray smudge the pink bill yeah it's all kind of color coordinated isn't it it's a good bird that is a good bird isn't it really it's a very good bird oh hello you can't quite see oh he's a thigh rubbing don't need to see but you know what's going on what a bird any birthdays and there's been quite a few birthdays actually lots of milestones have happened this week so happy 30th birthday on the 1st of february to ruthie from john and chloe so very happy birthday to you ruthie and daniel evans wrote in to let us know that his wife rachel evans is 40 on the 28th of january and has watched every broadcast since we began which is quite something because we've been chatting and rambling on quite a long time now so very happy birthday to you rachel i hope you have a fantastic birthday um another milestone right sure i just gotta point something out good well you're speaking about it as if it's going to happen and you said her birthday was on the 20th yes well some have happened some haven't yet okay because it doesn't matter now yeah it is i've lost all sense of time you never know what's happening when you're doing winter wash no we don't you kind of go into a bubble yeah you're sucked into this kind of well there's no time bubbles no so you kind of wake up to this minute you anyway um we also have uh rachel jones who turned 50 on the 21st of january as well so we passed that one too so that's up to you rachel uh and finally abby shaw wrote in to wish her mum andrea a very happy birthday for the 23rd she's a very big fan of sibc and it always brings a smile to her as well so happy birthday to all of those people very happy mostly they've had their birthdays and you have to wait more than 365 days for another one but they're coming up anyway you can send us your birthday details what is it first birthday if you would like us to say happy birthday then you can email us on birthdays at si bird dot club birthdays si bird club um and we will be able to check all that out and uh happy birthday okay and obviously everyone's watching this on youtube we're asking people to subscribe it's a strange word because subscriptions normally mean that you you pay something but you don't have to pay anything it's just a means of signing up which means that we can better communicate with you and we're going to carry on doing srbc's on sunday evening and uh now that we've got winter watch behind us yeah we do have some breathing space a little bit a little bit of breathing space um we'll be out and about and back you know and spicing them up a little bit and we've got some plans now we've got time to investigate new technology that's all yeah do sign up on to youtube won't cost you anything of course i'd also like to make you aware of an event that chris and i are both very excited to host this will be happening on the 10th of april um however everyone's being told about it today so we're really really excited about it so the birds of paul harbour are having an event it's all about rewiring it's all about reintroductions it's going to be a day event and chris and i are going to be there to talk to you about the conservation projects that are going on throughout the uk and throughout europe talk a little bit about how effective rewilding and reintroductions can be um and some of the you know the great success stories as well so that'll be on the television lots of guests as well i think lots of guests it's going to be a really fantastic day the uh birdspool harbour are you know along with the warden roy dennis wildlife foundation and forestry england yeah are releasing the eagles on the isle of wight they are and the ospreys and the arts so there's lots of um reintroductions going on so it's going to be fantastic to speak with them i think they've actually got a little video to show come on [Music] [Laughter] [Music] [Music] very very excited for that event in april we can't wait to see this be an advantage i know yeah it's going to be really good it's going to be one to put in your diaries because you're not going to want to miss that day the extravaganza of the rewilding and reintroduction summit we did quite a bit in our book didn't we back to nature about rewiring and reintroduction and um there's some fantastic initiatives in the uk i mean rewired in europe is doing things you know on on a large scale but obviously charlie and isabella down on the nepa state are doing brilliant stories connect of course doing great things then you've got a great fen project yeah so and then when it comes to restoration one of my favorites is the rspb's lake and heath fenn which was a carrot filled and now has breeding crane marsh harrier bitten bearded tit i mean you know in a very short space of time they turned a relatively sterile piece of farmland into a beautiful beautiful place for wildlife and we went on the barbless we did yeah it's really good isn't it really really good so it's it's something which you know we think is an increasingly important conservation tool rewilding and certainly the projects that are taking place in europe i'm sure we'll hear all about them are generating you know lots of money for the local economies they have their own bank so they will loan people money at very low rates of interest to set up uh you know businesses which are compatible with the rewilding projects um to get you know business startups going so it's not just about wildlife it's about people too you know people have to share that landscape with those animals so it's about getting people to think about changing the way we use the landscape yes it's very exciting join us on the 10th for that and we'll be obviously talking more about that in the lead up to it of course as well but one to keep up to date with uh what's gonna happen next week well we've got lizzie daly the fantastic lizzie daley will be joining us live now she has been to norway throughout the course well in the middle of the long in between between the lockdowns i have to say i know when she was there lizzie and i talk a little bit and uh i've seen some of the photos you're not going to want to miss it i mean whale extravagant humpbacks yeah but honestly so many of them she had she was very very close to a very special site so she'll be there to talk to us a little bit about that eagles yeah there's lots there's really lots that she saw so it's gonna be really good it's good yeah anyway elves elves not so many elves you know uh oh hey what about the aurora boy alice i don't know actually i'm not sure if she saw your boy yeah we'll have to ask her be lucky yeah i'd be pretty amazing okay so lizzy's on next week um we're back on uh sunday then we'll see you at six o'clock and we're going to go out are we going out with texas i think the subway should we have a little bit of protection we're going to leave you with a bit of western texas do check out the cornell lab site for these cameras as we were talking about on the winter watch this week even watching wildlife virtually on a screen can give you a positive mental health benefit and uh i think those you know some of those webcams have certainly given me a positive mental health benefits you stop talking about your surges and um we'll see you next week have a good week everyone stay safe bye you
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Channel: The Self-Isolating Bird Club
Views: 7,790
Rating: 4.9908886 out of 5
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Length: 57min 34sec (3454 seconds)
Published: Sun Jan 31 2021
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