#SIBCLive with Paul Goldstein – Episode 79

[Music] anyone think they were sponsored by in royal lenta chips but we're not we just eat lots of eat real lentils yeah we do only tend to eat them at 6 p.m on a sunday well you speak for yourself yeah well you only bring them over at 6 p.m when you come over here inside i'll eat it for you nancy hello hello and welcome to our south island bird club sunday evening somewhere near six o'clock yeah i'm sorry we wouldn't be munching the whole time yes you know it's a nice sibc treat lentil chips all i can say is if you haven't tried to eat with lentil chips yeah you really should you know what my nan right no i love my nan i was on the phone with her the other day and she was very upset because she was going around all the supermarkets to try and get a packet i couldn't find them anywhere could also i reckon people were just flooding in to buy them yeah yeah well i hope so because they're vegan and they're very good and i hope you've got some i hope you got a packet right next to you i know you'll be watching yeah so i hope you're seeing no one's going to believe we're not sponsored we just keep spending significant sums of money all our money if anyone comes back having gone out shopping and they don't bring ten packets of those back yeah you get told off you get told yeah all our kitchen cupboards forget any other condiments or anything it's all packed full of lentils and when we go on about this don't you you're probably bored to death yeah let's go back to that webcam yeah let's go back to the actual animals yeah let's get look look at that blue jay jay lucha on the right and the northern cardinals but look at that i like a blue gin do you use i like the color bit complicated for me more than cardinal there look slightly more pale than that look at that yeah it's a bit red i mean you say spring is on the way there i know the snow is retreated quite significantly you can store some stitches yeah let us know but it has gone back isn't it quite a lot it has melted but it does look quite rainy oh look european styling yeah non-native species introduced to north america look at that oh hold on i'm gonna have to put that down because i think that's the house just turned up but i can't see so i'm gonna put it down let me have a little look at that there oh yeah yeah there's another female oh my my own orbital the difference between um the north of north america and uh and the uk is that they have an enormous number of sparrows in the uk we've got uh obviously we've got the house sparrow and the trees bow which are relatives and we've got the hedgebow which isn't related to them it's in a center rather than a sparrow we just call it a hedgepower or more probably done but over in the united states they've got masses of sparrows loads of them and they're weird and in winter when the males aren't in their breeding plumage they are devils to tell apart i was once um in texas went out there for a couple weeks uh three weeks actually harder car i went to the alamo back in the day back in my day i was pretty depressed actually so i thought i'm gonna go and just drive around texas on my own in the middle of winter and um you weren't working no i didn't have any work so just just went out there fired a car started driving around texas on my own uh went to uh trinity site where they exploded the first um atomic bomb did a little bit of oftentimes research went to some really smart art galleries went to the moscow chapel just outside houston oh look listen this is all getting boring the fact of the matter is that i spent a lot of my time trying to get to grips with the american sparrows and uh they'd be all on the ground looking brown and streaky and then they would have caught flighty not like our ones and they'd go anywhere near them they'd flew away and i was really struggling i'd identified about five or six species were pretty poor and i was at a place called big bend national park because there's a big bend in the rio grande there where the creatures yeah and um i i there was a lady there and she was in her 80s and i somehow got into conversation with her you know and she said turn up here tomorrow morning at first light and i'll show you how to identify the the sparrows of course of course that was an offer i couldn't refuse yeah so i woke up in my scoffy motel got in the car went back to big bend car park and uh this wonderful lady um showed me god taught me basically how to identify them mainly using the call oh yeah that's how it's still hard it was still pretty tricky don't hold me to it now i'm not sure i could still do the same and we'll test you next week north american sparrows in winter by call yes i'm going to lose that one that wouldn't be my chosen subject for celebrity mastermind no it certainly wouldn't but anyway she was a wonderful lady an absolute you know what a kind thing to do what a wonderful gesture never forget her i can see her now in my mind and exactly what she looks like she was john white car remember everything about it marvelous hey well listen look at these northern cardinals they're nice they're pretty fantastic aren't they and did you see the news this week yes what about this let's have a look at it now let's have a look folks cut up the picture if you've got it of this it's actually it's a pretty ordinary bird look at this now do you know what that is well it's obviously a northern cardinal but it looks like it's been um cutting half and glued back together because on the left hand side you've got a male and on the right hand side look at that there you can see it more clearly in this photograph it's a female now when i was a kid this was known as mosaic syndrome and you used to see it in occasionally in chickens where half the chicken would be a cockroach and the other half would be um would be a hen and inside the bird it's not just this is not just on the surface this runs right the way through the bird's body so in this case we we believe this is what we call a gynandrome morph a gynandromorph is a the up-to-date name for this and it's likely that um on the left-hand side of the body this bird has a singular testy testicle and um and on the right hand side it's probably got an ovary um fallopian tube it's an extraordinary thing incredible isn't it but it has now seen i know it has been seen in this species before and do you know why god why i didn't well look because they're so strongly sexually sexually diagnosed now if you think that if you had a little brown jolly imagine you had a donut oh and it was going andromorphic tricky you would hardly be able to tell one half from another because the sexes are alike but when you get a species which is so sexually dimorphic as the northern cardinal bright red and rather mouthy ground quite obvious isn't it it shows up and they've seen them in this area before it could even be the same bird the guy who found it reckoned it could be the same bird could have survived for a few years yeah they did live that long but look it's an adult plumage it's beautiful isn't it so it's surviving survivor i wonder i wonder you know how if it ever attracts the attention from another individual based on which side it's facing funny you should say that because in um chris patton's animal einsteins oh yes bbc two later this evening eight o'clock unfortunately yeah yeah um i'm not sure whether it's in tonight's program but we we look at a couple fish oh yes which actively chooses to um disguise itself by being by appearing to be half male and half females i've seen that before just like this seriously but it has a choice it can stop it so essentially it's a male cuttlefish and and it it dresses up as a male on one side and then it and it mimics a female on the other side so it's able to sneak under uh another male cuttlefish which is mate guarding a female so that male thinks whoopi do i've got two females but when it's under the larger cuttlefish what it does then does the naughty it does one half of its body to a male to attract the female that's being mate guarded by the larger male and then it mates with it it's very neat sneaky sneaky sneaky it pretends to be going andromorphic the catfish that may well be on bbc2 later tonight at eight o'clock that was a good start hello everyone lots of people saying hello so we've got sarah from vermont tina from dis ian from north hertz debbie essex sharon we've got mandy elsie we've got crazy caterpillar andy and heather from nottinghamshire they have lentil chips and g and t's at the ready giant tea we're short of something we're sort of g and t aren't we no i'm not drinking so we're not drinking i might have to go make a gnt in a bit yeah you've tempted my taste buds we've got camilla we've got sue and finally seven-year-old oceana very excited to hear from paul her dream is to work with cheetahs that brings us very much nicely on doesn't it because we're in a minute yeah we've got um the wonderful paul goldstein coming up live he's currently in kenya yep in a pretty remarkable spot yeah he is he's at kachechi in uh one of the uh mara conservancies which are bobby's paul tell us all about it in a moment but there are parcels of land around the masai mara at national park but they are a different order of magnitude yeah i mean just so rammed with wildlife absolutely heaving the density and diversity is frankly astonishing he's very very fortunate to be there he's sent us some photographs we're going to be having a laugh also look at those we've known paul for a very very very long time i've known paul since i was diddy absolutely tiny um he's a very good family friend and um chris and paul are incredibly mean to one another about their photographs so i i guarantee you that tonight will be nothing short of entertaining because when you put the two of them together it's honestly like two atomic bombs isn't it really a lot of the time it can be but i've got to tell you i'm not sure he's going to show us all of them tonight but he's been out there for a little while and um he did send me a photograph the other day which i've got to say yeah he's got some good ones outstanding absolutely yeah that's rare so for you yeah no no i know paul has taken some outstanding photos and he's taken three no no he's taking more than three but um but he has recently he's been hitting some fine form anyway we're gonna look at those in a bit we've also got green finger george finger george yeah he's a fantastic he's very green-fingered as his nickname might suggest but he's got an amazing video to show us what he's writing about yeah he's out and about showing his car the importance of you know getting out and connecting with nature in your local green space and it's a beautiful film he's a fantastic very well yeah yeah he is and he is so natural to watch he's really interesting yeah he is he's a very good presenter and it's i have to say it's pretty slick it's very slick it's really good so that'll be coming up we'll be hearing from george but look at this this is an image that was sent into us of some gold crests have a look at this this is john baltes isn't it yeah here we are look at that boosted fluffy and huddly look like long tail tits yeah they do they look like you know john waters is i have to say you know we've never met yeah which is a shame but um he is one of the best naturalists online best athletes in real life as well his online output is astonishing he is his breadth of knowledge is phenomenal everything from invertebrates he's really good on his insects wasps and bees and stuff right the way through to his birds he um has frequently um uh long tail tips roosting together like that you know i think i've seen some of his long tails hit stuff yeah he's brilliant absolutely if you don't follow him you'll find him on twitter and i really strongly suggest you do because he posts really regularly he paints as well he's a bit of a um yeah and um but yeah interesting to see the gold quest well you would predict that wouldn't you because they are our smallest bird and it has been chilly recently so snuggling together to conserve some body heat yeah yeah yeah why not exactly it makes sense isn't it when's doing it yeah when's will go into bird boxes it was that case wasn't there i i remember martin hughes games talking about it on one of the watches years ago where um they do it habitually once they start going into a bird box they continue to do it yeah and uh i think it was like 50 wrens in one bird box there was a record wasn't it packed in i mean if you were the first one and you were at the bottom all night i mean france imagine you've eaten a few too many spiders and you wanted to just snip out to you know use the lube you'd never get past the other four or maybe it's like a penguin maybe they go like circular motion you know a huddle situation you know but you kind of take turns on the bottom i mean you couldn't say that i'm like you get all suffocated so they must constantly well you say that but i mean i i i bet you the the respiration rate drops down i bet you i'm not saying they use torpor yeah like the hummingbirds or anything like that we talked about that last week but i'm not saying that but i bet you they're not fully you know fully aspiring but they shut themselves down a little bit yeah but still you get squashed anyway yeah but that's not the only activity don't do it so i'll keep interrupting but yeah i know as far as we know i've never read an account of gold crests going into a box like that so maybe huddling out in the trees is what they do maybe that's what she's um but of course there's been lots of other activity as well now have a look at this this is a dissection of an owl pellet this was sent into us by dennis strenton have a look at that i like an owl pellet yes nothing fine so this is going through the process now dennis is using the wet method they already soaked that you see in a saucer and then he's probably using a mounted needle or some other tool maybe if you haven't got a mounted needle you could have cocktail stick to prise it all apart and remove the skulls and there you can see there look all of those rodent skulls across the middle all of those rodents and uh and their hip girdles there and their femurs behind by the looks of it and if you um obviously if you flip them over and look at their teeth the pattern of their teeth then you can tell whether they're a bankroll or a field collaboration as well yeah coloration and and also if you um remove the teeth of those that are mice using a pair of tweezers the pattern of roots will tell you which species of mouse it is so when you get a skull out of that you can it's pretty easy actually with a bit of practice to be able to um even using your naked eye although a magnifying glass helps um and a pair of tweezers you can identify exactly which species of rodent or if it's true in sector four that the uh owl has been eating nice isn't it and i've said this before but i might as well say again you used to do this with john buckley um my biology master we used to go out once a month and collect burnout pellets and we take them back and sit down i think it was multi-colored swap shop be on tv obviously and um i remember doing donuts and yeah despair because we wouldn't wash our hands we'd just be you know tucking into the donuts with our dirty owl pellet fingers and um yeah anyway i found a door now skull one week and i sort of thought that's it you know jackpot you know the pupil has outdone the master people the people has outdone the master yeah you know anyway he was a bit miffed i expect and in the following week he he's following month he's um fumbling through an owl pellet and he found a bat oh you know what don't challenge the master no i know it's a long time it took me well i'm not saying i've even got beyond john buckley actually he's still a master still a great brilliant naturalist yeah yes there's always more to learn isn't that yes we should go on to the quiz the quiz yeah okay so we've got paul goldstein live from kenya tonight so um here's the quiz i thought i'd bring in a little bit of a kenyan relic here i'll pick this up in kenya and uh obviously you can see it's a it's a horn and uh so that means it's not like an outlet it's not shed it stays on a bony core which is inside here and so as a consequence of this i can tell you this animal has been predated obviously um and this would have been obviously equally obviously one of a pair on top of the head of the animal like that but something has killed it and punched it off and it left the horn on the ground i couldn't resist picking it up it's lovely feels great you feel that yeah no i sort of stroke the horn it goes quite rough and then quite soft perfect absolutely julian so what do you think that is which species do you think that is uh and that came from the plains of kenya plains of kenya we'll get back to that at the end there we are okay right without further ado i think well paul's going to introduce himself using a video so we get to see where a little film so let's take a look at uh paul goldstein's film which he's made out in uh the marwa conservancy at his cache cam here he is my name is paul goldstein i live in sw19 but the fabled grasslands and forests behind me are where i call home here in the heart of the massamara conservancies there is no finer place to view cats being the only area in africa with a growing lion population [Music] i have guided all over the world and probably have over a thousand game drives under my belt here but i feel virginal compared to some of my maasai guides these seasoned sorcerers work here in the mara conservancies these fertile priceless parcels of land where both stakeholders and animals benefit off-road driving is permitted in fact encouraged and vehicle limits are strictly controlled sadly that isn't a problem right now because we're lacking tourists still a few people are making it out they're jumping through the hoops to get here but goodness me we need more i must thank all those extraordinarily generous people who've donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to keep their favorite backyards in top condition why do people make this journey why do they return year after year for their formal fix i'll show you why this is unfenced uncensored unadulterated wilderness the animals are missing as a win many four-legged patrons return year after year as they have done for millennia they gallop in well-trodden travel colleges there is no quarantine they don't need visas they don't need social distancing lockdown or indeed isolation they will be here on your return i sincerely hope it is soon and as for the lions they keep eating out to help out nothing holds a torch to it you know you came back you said that didn't you when you came back because we've been quite lucky to go to lots of places you've said there's nowhere else i mean i've been into some places and seen you know things i didn't see at cachet but you know the fact of the matter is every time you go out it's just wildlife everywhere it's absolutely round there's more leopards than you could shake a sticker like you wouldn't shake a stick at the left i wouldn't recommend it that's not polite or sensible but yeah it's leopard-tastic isn't it it's pretty everything tastic actually and we're very pleased to tell us how tastic it is now we've got the mr tastic paul goldstein paul good evening good evening chris evening rex good to see you um so i'm uh yeah it's three hours ahead here i've just had a sump sumptuous meal and you your my laptop won't be able to pick up the lions and hyenas and jackals keeming in the background uh but yeah it's good to be with you and this was going to be a sort of two or three week long trip and it's turned out a lot longer we still have a few tourists trickling through jumping through any number of uh i suppose bureaucratic hoots to get here but yeah we're doing our best but i you know i would be lying if i said it was anything other than tough at the moment it is the for travel everywhere it's been a bloodbath oh this is kennedy look at that on kennedy coming to the screen here chris do you remember kennedy he's just here's ken he's behaving with his with his face mark he's fine he's just brought me my um my ethically sourced mapani juice as as you know so yeah it is tough uh but it's yeah it's still i suppose some would say you have skipped the uk winter by getting you know stuck in in kenya as it were there were worse places to be stuck than the fabulous you know marwa conservancies paul for those people that don't know what the conservancies are just give us a quick breakdown as to as to what they are as opposed to the marwa national park uh the mara reserve is controlled by uh the council essentially the government uh so it can be a little bit of a free-for-all um i mean it's still the the fabled contiguous park with the tanzania serengeti the conservancies are where you have 350 acres per guest you have limits on vehicles you have off-road driving but critically um they're ecologically sound the the land holder the stakeholders and landowners all benefit so everybody benefits including the animals so it's also the fees you pay to be here audited several times a year so we really know where every penny is going which isn't something which i wish it was uh widespread across the whole continent but it it just isn't so we have everybody has has skin in it really i suppose it's the best way to put it but there were lots of um human-centric projects because when i was out there we went to see one where um there was a water collection point which was saving people enormous amounts of time and energy uh collecting water every day there's another group that's set up to make um i was gonna say sort of tourist trinkets but they're far from that they're beautiful works of art which people by the way you owe me a couple of dog leads by the way um a dog collars i think they were well dog leads and collars don't try and get out anyway what was that well they make they make these beaded dog leaves and collars yeah um but anyway the fact was that they were made out of leather and in a rather you know impetuous way and i was saying to uh saying to the ladies that were making them would you do me so if i sent you some nylon leads would you be the nylon for me so it wasn't leather anyway i think that's going to happen and look we've digressed look paul tell us about what you've been up to because you've been taking some stonking photographs well um it's i suppose it's all a big juggling act um what we haven't done is closed down and and waved the white flag which i suppose in some ways is understandable but we have such an interest and i've said a lot of skin in this conservancy and the other three uh um adjoining here i've been guiding almost every day not the the big groups like when you were here but a few people here and there who have been they keep extending their safaris and we like them very very much for that you know no check too large frankly uh for those because as you can imagine it's the the numbers that you have seen uh when you came 18 months ago just aren't here and this has huge ramifications for animals huge ramifications for people if you think of the millions of people tied up with uh tourism and wildlife here uh things like isolation and quarantine and all of those things these may be just i suppose catch phrases used by the uk government and others to sort of deflect from the appalling incompetence of a year ago but actually they had vast damaging effects uh for for wildlife here because wildlife needs tourists they absolutely do number one uh because of their policing eyes number two because of the currency who do you think pays the bills you know what pays the bills for the rangers what pays the bills for the the park wardens what pays the bills for for for i don't know but the uh the the roads and the and all of the the dams that are built it's critical that we get tourists back here quickly but there's a lot of heroes as you know not just with with large uh signature species there's a lot of heroes uh who are doing their very best and and i consider some of the guides you've worked with here uh amongst that that coterie so yeah it's tough uh but the wildlife's still here they don't know anything about coronavirus uh you know they don't know anything about social distancing either so you know they're doing their best for us but we have to do our best for them as well and i hope mr shafts is perhaps uh tuning into this okay talk us through some of the pictures paul you've sent us you've got a whole range of them that you've sent over you've certainly been enticing your tourists okay that's uh yeah that one's um that's a helicopter you know when they take the doors off that's over lake natron uh uh or that's actually mcgaddy very close to the tanzania border i think something like that you know i'd like to say piously i waited till it formed this extraordinary ethereal shape i didn't i pointed the camera down and i pressed the shutter and this is as some of them are taking off off and some of the time and yeah that's probably even on full automatic setting a little underexposed yeah there's a probably a couple of graters amongst them and actually that's taken in the morning and in the afternoon uh you can get these extraordinary colors as the the sun really beats down on the shallow waters and the silt uh starts it's almost multi-colored almost rainbow light colors but uh for me frankly it's flying over the rift valley down into that lake is is just uh and it's extraordinary it looks like saturn doesn't it doesn't i saw this look like saturn to me a saturn yes flamingos okay i'm scoring that one uh i'm going i'm going to give that 1.2 only two one foot two yeah out of ten next up one out of ten yeah i'm absolutely crushed i'll give that six paul i'd give it six thank you megs thank you any time i know and that's let's be clear that's unprocessed you can't start processing stuff like that uh well i can't anyways you get all sorts of noise that is a leopard you're familiar with it's probably the greatest leopard that i've i don't know if i've spent four months of my life with this this animal that you know they're kichi guides here who probably spent four years um and it's one of those things are you really gonna climb that tree is that storm really going to brood and build into that sort of angry color behind that brooding color behind and she just lay there for an hour and yeah you know underexposed a little bit that's all it needs it was it was extraordinary and what will interest you chris is uh about 18 months ago you were you had a um i i suppose a tryst uh with that that animal's daughter do you remember it was asleep um up that tree and you talked dreadful joke and at the punch line it woke up memories not such a dramatic tree keen on the branch in her middle but yeah that was that was a great moment oh scoring that one 3.8 oh you see improvement you can't halt progress ever i'd say 7.5 7.5 oh my megan you may have started a little too generously though no i see i'm a nice human you know i like it's got a leopard in it i haven't you know i haven't seen good food for a long time beautiful like language leopard upper tree oh i think that i mean i miss africa so much that i'm kind of i'm just going to love them all is that another hint uh megan yeah it's another hint that i'll be yeah i thought it was uh yeah very badly disguised if i may say yeah i'm not being i'm not being subtle about it paul i'll come and visit you no not at all okay next up then [Music] yeah yeah this was um these are five boys you saw them briefly and you said i've had quite enough of too many vehicles and i was with you that evening but these ones we we picked the uh position and there was a lot of water uh and they chased down this you probably can't can you tell what they're feeding on chris both of you look at that it's got a short horn at the top we can't yeah you don't like as opposed to your much longer horn earlier yes i mean so it's got a short horn and it's got no stripes on its side so it's quite plain so no no no because it would be stripy i'm saying it could be one of those topi or something like that well i think i'll go with the second part of your answer something like that uh it's a it's a hearty beast a congolese yes well like close to tope yeah i okay i'll give you 1.8 out of 10 for toby uh so you get um and they took this sub adult and they actually hit it in water there was this huge explosion i wish i could show you the photo there but bush and and so what we did is is charles and um james we we drove down and we positioned ourselves where there was a bit of dry ground and they did the right thing they dragged the carcass right next to us because it was dry and then that that's not a drone i i you know game of drones is not for me with photography uh it just isn't so that's just stood up on the seat and with a very wide angle underexposed uh going straight down before they absolutely butchered the carcass the photo got too visceral for for for this watershed do you like it i'd make it square though okay i can live with that it's not quite symmetrical yeah i'm sorry yeah they they don't oblige with that um you're right though eight yeah no i'm sticking eight i'm sticking with 3.8 for that one still so okay so there's no inflation okay well i did put uh yeah you're gonna have a soft and cuddly one i'm glad to say this cub is still alive it's one of four and it's getting if you notice behind uh the shot chris you'll just say it's distraction and clutter and how much you hate all of that but um you'll see the way that sub adults is looking at it it's because that sub adult's just given that poor little cub of about seven weeks an almighty chewing and it's it is suffering but it somehow it has pulled through it looks to be the runt of the litter but it's successful uh pride in the boy show conservancy and uh that was just a moment where i think it had been given such a kicking uh it was just grumpy with everything and everyone uh they'd fed on a zebra uh about three hours before so you eat that much i think you get pretty grumpy anyway i just wanted to catch that moment and a little bit of clear uh green between the two muzzles is what i was after it is there is a bit of clutter you won't like the tree on the right-hand side you probably won't even like the in fact there's probably nothing you like about it as well frankly yeah i'm giving that one um i'm giving that one 1.6 i'll give it about three oh dear uh okay so i try and put a soppy one in trying to appeal uh like the positions of the head yeah okay all right we'll move on then right next up next up or classic classic iconic it's one of those yes yes yeah this um this is a we don't see too many of these and these are the great survivors it's like the sort of 40 or 45 rhino um in the masamura and when you see an elephant like this i don't know about you i i find it uh i i'm in fact chris you know wayne hansen very well the extraordinary conservationist from namibia he was with me when we once saw a three-horned rhino in the massamara and we were both speechless not so much the fact that it's worth you know i don't know just if you compare it it's horn against cocaine prices but um it's just the value of it but also these are such survivors that's probably a 50 year old elephant look at that ivory you know those masks like 40 40 kilos each and it has somehow survived and and this was the classic case people say oh you know how long did you wait for that shot well you don't just come across that uh it was about 5 5 15 i said we're just going to stick with this i was guiding two photographers we're just going to stick with this elephant i think we might get a good sunset and digital format's not great for sunsets because you often just get that white blob uh so we actually got out of the vehicle we stayed inside the sort of parameters of the vehicle but we needed to be on foot needed to be low and that's just a bit underexposed and there was just this moment uh that it dropped its horns now initially i thought it would be good to have the the orb actually over the horns but actually i prefer it it almost looks it's doing sort of keep it keepy uppy with the with the sun with it with tusks uh so yeah it's a good moment and you don't need all of the elephant in with big animals as long as it's a big bold crop you know everyone knows it's an elephant it would the the the sun setting um is that that final sort of pastel color before it drops is really the the point of the picture yeah okay it's stunning lots of keen on the grass on the right hand side so i'm going to give it i'm going to give it a 4.8 4.8 i didn't mind the grass because it kind of um outlines the shape of the sun okay we're going up a bit so um i'll give it a six six a six all right okay this great survivor this extraordinary animal that has trolled and truffled its way over the plains of africa that has somehow avoided the poachers bullet that it hasn't left its wanton carcass on the plains uh you know it's horns uh i suppose devoured by the despicable and insidious chinese market and you give it a six yeah no no that was your photograph yeah it's kind of facing the wrong direction paul it's kind of walking off the opposite yeah yeah you are right it's a oblique yes it loses four points for its obliqueness yes okay yeah we've got time for a couple more let's have a next one up uh abstract elephant yeah like that is it raining or is it just yeah that that was the point of the photograph megan um i took it uh yeah this is a very tolerant bull this is right next to busch camp uh and it was about i don't know three o'clock in the afternoon and this storm just rolled in it was blazing hot and then five minutes later you kind of i suppose visibility of about 50 meters and we found this tolerant old bull not quite as old as the previous one and yeah you there's just a particular angle where you get the sun coming in you go right in on the head and i took that at about an 80th of a second to to lengthen the rain a bit uh and yeah it's i don't know is this sort of what do they call it the roomy old eye but if you notice it's got the little flecks of water um just off the eyelashes which which kind of draw me in a little bit and i've really enjoyed it in in the rains and the storms photographing elephants it's it's been wonderful it has yeah okay i i'd rather like that one because i like the texture oh here we go i like the texture oh stop it come on and uh as a consequence i'm giving that one a six oh really yeah i know i love all the light playing across the creases of the skin i like the rain cascading it's more granulations isn't it yeah i like a granulated skin right right okay 6.5 6.5 yeah you see that so that's that's more like it well out of those which you sent us have you got one that you'd particularly like to show us to wrap up um i don't know what you next what you have in the vault uh there um i don't know but um actually fabian have you got the one of the the kingfisher fabian you mentioned yes let me bring this one up uh if you've been now now now this one there's a lot going on here because chris don't you hate it when you go out with a specific intention to photograph a bird all right and and there are few more colorful than the malachite kingfisher and you line it up on the perch uh and it's and it's looking at you you've got the little cheeky but not impertinent catch light in its eye and then just as you press the shutter you get this photobombing leopard just leap into the image so what you end up with is an out of focus uh i don't know everybody even spotted the leopard chris frankly but yeah this was yeah that's a good you've got malachite leopard airborne spume backlighting and a bit of clutter just to annoy you chris so yeah there's a bit going on there yeah yeah it happened to me this afternoon only this afternoon was i focusing on a kingfisher a leopard you know the new the new force leopard ruined me you can't get a photo these days with some kind of without some kind of rosette poor tail ear of some kind yeah it is just as you see talking of busting in on the scene um the thing is i have a friend of um of both of us chris you know often about uh wildlife photographs very simply and and he says a great photograph has two aspects to it uh jen i always say a very good background followed by a very good subject because you can have the best i suppose action going on in the world uh an aardvark mating with a pangolin but if the background's messy uh you know it's you're still gonna score at a two but it's just that little extra thing and of course i hadn't seen the hadn't seen the malachite as it came past but it's something that just adds a certain free sound to the photograph uh that just elevates it a bit what would you score that one there's too much clutter for you wasn't there yeah no it's too much clutter the birds too colorful um the leopard's leaping uh it's just yeah it's chaos absolutely photographic chaos i mean it's an interesting piece of behavior that i'll give it a point i'll give it point one for the behavior it's a method i'll give it i'll give it another 0.8 so that's 0.9 uh the kingfish are soft obviously that loses 0.1 not 2. so they're back down to 0.7 um i mean you know i'm struggling i'm struggling with this one but it's a car wreck isn't it it's yeah it's a disaster i love the i love the shape of the leopard though and i like i mean you just got to go back and make that moment happen again paul give it another go yeah i know and and get them both sharp you're quite right yeah no on a biblical scale i'm afraid well thanks listen thanks for showing us these photos um i'm sorry i will follow you on uh your instagram feed where you put some some decent photos occasionally and uh of course and uh and also check out oh hold on look at that young yeah look at that you know what i do yeah they they really are as cubs they're they're really something but you know it is terrifically hard for them and i'm not blaming this on covid and i'm not blaming it on the the you know the the british transport secretary or the home secretary like i blame everything else on uh quite rightly but yeah it's uh those cubs have a have a tough future uh they really do um so yeah it's very hard and i don't mind oh look at that eh and then you listen to these guys listen to this [Music] um how about that that that asthmatic wheeze at the end uh it is extraordinary and that was you know these these are just taken on a a regular camera or iphone uh you know it's it is extraordinary but yeah i think chris let's finish on those cheaters because it's a delightful scene but that mother only has two of those four cubs now you know nature is red in tooth and claw and and one of them was limping the other day and that one's disappeared another one got killed by lions it's tough it really is tough for them and they need tourists so we can't wait for you all to come back and i'll include you in that megan yes well honestly i think everyone's definitely kind of ready to start exploring again once of course it's safe to do so and of course as you say for not just the wildlife but the communities in these places it's so important that that comes back and that we can start supporting one another again and supporting in vital conservation work in these really important fire fighter birth areas yeah chris thanks for that i'm gonna go off to bed now then and um i put the crack off i presume tomorrow morning this oh completely uh yes i found a i found a a wonderful spot to photograph hippos do you remember that lunch that breakfast we had chris and we got frankly too close and we sort of lay down really low but this is gorgeous because the sun backslide backlights them and they throw up a cloud of spume like a humpback and you can lie down on the bridge do you remember when you arrived and there was a there was that leopard that very same leopard you saw lying in that culvert of that concrete bridge it's that same one so that's where i'll be at at um yes i do take the crack of uh tomorrow morning uh as um yeah three hours so yeah you'll be fast asleep won't you but i'll still send you a couple of images to score ferociously poorly as you've done all evening thank you excellent paul please get pass all my best wishes to everyone at the camp yeah look at that thank you very very much indeed for taking time out to join that grizz and the show show us your your photos excellent stuff good night thanks thanks excellent stuff what a place what a place honestly i can't tell you it's just teaming absolutely teaming yeah honestly it's one of those places where if you just sort of went and just pointed your camera out the window blindfolded and pressed the shutter by the time you got back you probably have three decent pictures on it there's just so much wildlife there it's absolutely absolutely stuck with it because it's so well looked after as paul said low numbers of people community working with that wildlife to make sure it's looked after community benefits from that in so many different ways it's a it's a a model of sustainable eco-tourism to me which is not all like that they're not not everyone not everywhere but that is one so it's a pleasure to host port goldstein excuse me brilliant what are we up to why didn't calm down to be honest i think i need a bit of a moment yeah a mindfulness moment of course so have a look at this this is a bit of a dusk song chorus this was sent into us by hannah cajawa have a listen and relax to this she sorry about that we just had to fiddle around with our microphone but um we got that working again it wasn't that nice lovely yeah i like a little storm course we'll start kicking in soon but you know what the last couple of days has been um down here at least in the south of england it's been really um frosty to start with and then really lovely clear days and clear in the evening birds have really been going berserk yeah blackbirds have started now missile thrush is going all the time now throughout the i was out with the with the sit and dance this morning and throughout the course of my walk i could hear missile thrush pretty much continuously the robins are singing obviously they've been going for a little while it's been absolutely true i have here today yeah can i head here what goals yeah of course goals this might i wake up every morning to the sound i like i like girls i do i do yeah good stuff anyway excellent stuff so thank you very much hannah for sending that in much appreciated and it certainly should be an inspiration for everyone to take just five ten minutes off if you get a nice clear evening like that to go and stick your ear out the window and look at that darkening sky and listen to that increasing cacophony of birds natural orchestra yeah yeah anyway so now on to our very good friend green think good george he is an amazing young naturalist who's got just such a wealth of knowledge for his subject and i follow him on all different social media platforms and every day he's always up to something new and love love following him and love the stuff that he put out and he's made as we said earlier on a very very slick video for us uh today to about kind of about our connection with nature and how you can engage in your local green space so i think we should hand over to george for this one because it's pretty spectacular here we go george hello i'm george and i've lived opposite the penguins all my life but it's in more recent times that i've found a new passion for them for me at the moment the moors are the one thing that i can rely on so today i'm going to take a walk on there come on let's go the first part of my walk takes me over the tame river and huddersfield canal despite having an issue with plastic pollution nature doesn't just survive here it thrives i regularly see spara hawks dippers kingfisher heron and cassandra whilst in the canal i often spot pike carp and roach the next section of my walk takes me through the woods now the great thing about hills and moorland is they often influence the weather now due to their height it often rains here and in the valley you get lots of wetland woodland which sums to load species of lichen fungi and wildlife such as woodcut long tail tits gold crest and rhodia now school has been suffering recently with extra pressures and changes but the one thing that i've relied on is this it's the one place that's kept me sane though i should say it's a place that should be respected peat bog moorland is a specialist habitat with strong winds freezing cold temperatures in winter and boggy ground so anything that's up here all year round has to be as strong and mighty as the hills themselves up on these malls and surrounding hills you get rich purple heather stubborn bilbray ancient withered hawthorns and gentle cotton grass most of plants on mold and tend to be quite low-lying this is to contend with the pretty much constant wind and are adapted to live in boggy soil by growing on the sides of hills where the water tends to move away quicker [Music] the wildlife up here is no less tough though most of it actually migrates in the autumn which means these old norse are quite quiet in winter one all year round species is the mountain hare brown in summer and it actually goes white in winter another all year round species is one that is surrounded in controversy and it's the red grouse now there's no denying these are proper maul and birds it's very haunting to hear their cry echoing across the moors in the fog there are many reasons these moles are under threat climate change means they're burning more regularly and driven ground shooting is a serious problem now you'll have noticed that when i mentioned red grouse i said they're controversial and it's because of the sport tied to them the actual shooting of grouse isn't environmentally impactful but it's activities tied to ground shooting that really impact the malls [Music] the one bird i haven't mentioned is the hen harrier and there's one reason that the phantom of the moors has never haunted this place it's because of a glorious sport right i've reached the end of my walk for today and just a mile over there the rspv are doing some incredible work in restoring the stagnant moths now this place these moors are an incredible area and you can't deny the rolling heather and bubbling streams don't take your breath away now it's said that wherever your heart is is your own not a bad place to rest stay [Music] it's great it's beautiful so well my filming yeah i mean i'm talking slick yeah yeah nice shots he's smooth a bit of slow-mo walking to camera there yeah with his hair i was just saying how luscious george's hair is yeah was mine yeah i'm on a slow-mo move it was great i'm not keen on the slow-mo moves actually myself you don't like any kind of slayer i'm not a slow motion i like a bit of slow-mo no you like slime poodle oh it's i don't mind it slow my poodle but i like that and humans in real time however i'm not i'm not dissing the film in any way shape or form that was a slick piece of production george was on top form as well as ever yeah very very good passionate keen and talking sense he's good isn't he and he's called green finger george of course if you haven't caught up with george before and i suggest you do as meg said on his social media um because um he um he grows things in his garden and he has a wildlife garden he put pond in last year he filmed yeah made a film for us about that didn't he as well and uh yeah it's very very very very good indeed so george thanks ever so much that was fantastic yeah thank you very much george you're a wonderful did you pick the right day to be up there yeah it looked beautiful it's been up there and there's been not like that no crazy yeah yeah just cry just just gray indeed okay quiz reveal i think quiz reveal let's see shall we who got it right just waiting to see oh not many people i don't think oh here we go we've only got a couple and you've got a couple okay so we've got abby sean camilla and anis okay four of them you've got it right well done everyone everyone most people i believe what did they say in parliament impala i think yeah a lot of people said impala yeah okay i'll tell you why it's not an impala well size um and shape are the key things now you might say ah but it could be a small impala but small impalas horns don't uh go into this sort of shape now it's quite difficult to see the shape so it sort of comes up and it's got like i don't know how many curves that is and then it goes all the way around here like that and it's close up yeah sorry and it would you know look at that can you see that and also it's good well and parlov got that but not as dense the granulations the granulation is on the impala are not as dense besides which impalas much more robust at the base it would be about that diameter yeah much much thicker this is the um this is the horn of uh thompson's gazelle and it's one of the principal prey of uh paul goldstein's cheetahs in fact i picked this up in cachet where paul was speaking from tonight um on the ground like a thompson's gazelle yeah i like a tommy as they call them little stripe size very sweet do everything they can to get away from those cheetos it's a pretty even match of course you know because the gazelles are pretty fast they need to make a mistake before the cheater gets them cheetah's hit rates notoriously low yeah they're not you know they're speedy but um they don't they can't keep up that speed for long duration so they're short sprinters now they remind me actually a bit like uh of dogs in the sense that basically they see something and then they start running after it whereas the cats on their hands see something and then they stalk closer to it using garland cunning and then they run after it but it's almost like cheetahs i mean they do a bit of stalking a little bit but they're not quite as they don't have quite the same patience they're not a leopard i mean the leopard will try to get within a few meters of this prey but a cheetah relies on its explosive burst of speed and very often it gets a timing run that's true it's true indeed yeah birthdays birthdays lots of people's birthdays and so today we'd like to say very happy birthday to helen bray whose birthday is on the 29th of february that's today isn't it uh she doesn't have a birthday this year because we don't get many years with the 29th that's true isn't it yeah yeah um so you're actually only 13 and a quarter that's quite funny isn't it 13 and a quarter so she's only ever had 13 and a quarter birthday yes because it's because she's born on the 29th and because it's not a leap year yeah that'd be that's quite cheap for the parents though yes that's right i mean if you were thinking about giving birth you know having a child perhaps you could sort of back date nine months from the 20 years yeah you wouldn't get many chances though you only get like a couple chances a year yeah you'd have a couple of chances if you tried to conceive at that point it you could save you an enormous amount in birthday presence that's what i'm thinking right let's see or just look okay so you could go in terms of saving presents obviously february the 29th christmas day is another one just no because you get double don't you no you're right tom yeah you do some people do you honestly think if you've been born on christmas day you're gonna get double the number of presidents i hope so on christmas day i think i'd make my birthday like a week after and i just like can't do it yeah no i could i would written down on a book no yeah i know but then sure but then yeah my my age would change but the celebration would be delayed because you know because if it's christmas no one's going to care about birthday exactly that's my point but that's not that sad okay i like birthdays most of the time anyway uh next we've got sally scott whose birthday is on the 2nd of march sally volunteers at hedgehog rescue center and also works entirely to keep north dorset countryside free of litter in her spare time work amazing sally thank you very much for that and uh very happy birthday to you hope you're having a nice time with your hedgehogs um she's been spoiled for her birthday this year with an owl pellet dissection kit and a bag of lentil chips your lucky devil you know they're gone yeah but they disappeared by about half past eight this morning if she was up here we'd also like to wish a bit of an uncom unconventional birthday to the climate action north who's four years old as an organization i've met the the people from climate action north yeah a few years ago yes i was up um in newcastle i think and i met them really dynamic bunch of people they were involved in you know you know when they were netting and the kitty weights were getting tangled up in that yes they've got the finger on the pulse of lots of things up there and they liaise really effectively with local groups and stakeholders as we like to call them these days and they're doing really good things so climate action north if you're in the northeast of england i would suggest following them david jones has just commented yeah he says i was born on christmas day and i get double oh dave but you're lucky because you've probably got very generous pounds yes i like that you have to get double or just you know oh hold on hold on did he get double or did he just get half and half no did he get like no because he'd be able to compare that then if you liked his siblings or you know no well there you go there you go and we've also like to say a very happy birthday to bieber j uh we've got elizabeth slater joan grundy and rosie's mum joe and stepdad pat whose birthdays were all last week so very happy birthday to everyone i think you've had a fantastic day able to celebrate where you came happy birthday happy birthday we've also had a couple things oh go on oh what gone then well i'm just gonna say a friend of mine danny o'connor you might remember her she has been on sibc before back in the springtime now she has spent a lot of lockdown away with a group of red squirrels which she helped to look after a lot unfortunately there were the wild red squirrels um however we believe the mum was hit by a car in road traffic accident and she found the youngsters so she went and she kind of supplemented fed them and looked kind of gave them a helping hand along the way and kept them wild but also supported them and she went viral all over social media she went viral she was on the news she's had articles written because she put a microphone next to this little um red squirrel and it was munching and it was the sweetest sound ever and she has made a full-length film about her time with these red squirrels so you can find that online but she's given us the trailer for it now but that we'd really love to share with you so take it away danny my name is danny i'm a wildlife photographer and i named squirrels ghost chibordashka little one timo mama mojo dada elf moomin remy and this hello baby pear [Music] is baby pear this is the story of how i rescued four baby squirrels and befriended a family of wild squirrels in northern sweden [Music] the squirrels are made and memes absolutely she's had the best time out with those girls she's an amazing photographer danny she's really very very good at what she does um and this film has been beautifully what it's just the dogs are eating all the lentils the dogs are eating all the lentil chips yeah um but danny is incredibly talented an amazing photographer and filmmaker so i really do recommend that you go and watch the full film um because it is a really beautiful thing and you can find that online if you put danny o'connor squirrels and me it will come up and you can find it on her social media channels as well okay so right a couple of things have been sent in here yeah i had this letter i've only opened these today um ben moore um from um bader's field if it was douglas bader or it could be badersfield in in norfolk has sent us a letter here and he sent us a spare copy look here of the transactions of the norfolk and norwich naturalist society which is really nice of him he says i hope this finds you its way to you i found myself some spare copies of the publications i received was being a member of my local naturous group i wanted to give them to you as a thank you for putting your time and effort into the sibc i look forward to watching every week you always cover interesting topics and have engaging guests i hope you've enjoyed um paul goldstein and green finger tonight ben um hopefully you find the information in these books of interest there's several graphs and sharks too i've had a chance to look yet ben to be honest with you literally took it out of the envelope this afternoon um thank you for all you're doing educating and entertaining us uh and getting involved in the fight to save our wildlife all the best ben that's very nice isn't it so i couldn't squeeze any lentil chips in the envelope that's right ben we'll forgive you thank you so much for that book it's really nice to send that to us thank you so let's have a little you know just a little quick scan so it's good quality isn't it yeah i like it it's a nice photo very well oh look at that oh look at that yeah this is chris's favorite kind of painting i like you know graphs yeah i like data illustrated the relationship between flow velocity and signal crayfish abundance in the intervals for both river western and river black water science i might sort of immerse myself if you'll forgive the pun what else we've got here resurrection of a norfolk pond gem it's a grass species look like this is good stuff yeah there's good stuff in here it's very very good isn't it bright green leaf bead was a clip beetle there look yeah okay better put that down also just wanted to show you this one um this has been sent to us as well and uh this is another great little publication this one and this was sent to us um by the henfield bird watch and it describes itself as citizen science at its best you can't argue with that because in 2009 the books that they published gained the bto marsh award for the best local community conservation project and they've self-published five of those books beasts since 1998. uh so in 98 99 2004 2009 14 and 19. this is gonna have all the birds that they found in the local area a little bit of information about them i like this though this is a map this is of the parish in henfield yeah it's a map of it all and then it's got where you can go and find different species so where you might find your kingfishers or your barn owls your lap wings they are fortunate though nice because it does something yes exactly i was about to say they've got turtledove and nightingale there our ethos is to encourage local involvement so that people become more informed residents of henfield we should say henfield is in sussex um survey their garden birds and during survey years they do so for the whole of 50 or whole 52 weeks in non-survey years they survey their gardens as a over a specific weekend in spring and autumn pretty good they've got a facebook page okay so if you are anywhere in the region of henfield in sussex i would suggest you take a look out it's henfieldbirdwatch.co.uk is their website henfieldbirdwatch dot co dot uk um and if even if you're not i would suggest you probably visit there debbie colgate has sent us this thank you very much debbie um because this is the sort of thing that people could aspire to if you've got an active local community like that even look on the back nice piece of art lap wings by will green now they are out in the fields and this just goes to prove what you know a dynamic active community can do in terms of surveying the birds and putting it all together again it's really well done isn't it got them like that isn't it got them out i'm just going to look up turtledove to see what's um see what the situation is with turtle dove maybe just cover me for a minute yeah well i get to well i just want to talk about this comment that was sent into us this was from finley who's 13 years old and he's watching currently and he's just sent us a message to say that he works tirelessly around the clock to look after the badges in his words and he's got 12 different cameras up watching them that's lovely isn't it it's you know something that we've got close to our badges by putting in um cameras and things it's a great way to get to know them as individuals and everything so often we'd love to see some of your footage yeah we're getting camera app stuff send it in to us at sibc there'll be a link below um a little um kind of an email address that you can send things into maybe we could show some next week if you've got any nice badge of footage we'd love to see it yeah keep the great work finley turtle dub one of henfield's special birds our patch is a bit of a hot spot for this critically threatened species the south of the parish is the stronghold in terms of the population with five singing birds around woods mill and oregon common and up to three potential breeding territories along the mill stream singing birds were also recorded on broadsmear common and at wantly whilst in may a report came in of four birds around the ashhurst bynes bridge area it's an alarming thought this very small number is an important population nationally and it looks possible that the numbers in 2020 have unfortunately reduced but we only know that because the people of henfield have been out surveying them and publishing so so important so debbie thank you very much for sending that thanks ben for your publications i'll be uh sitting down with a slice of lemon drizzle cake that will be eaten by dogs and some do you know what that's one good thing about these pedals at the moment is they don't drink hot chocolate at least i've got that me or your food they have eaten all of the lentils yeah they've gone and as for drizzle cake i mean honestly there are nightmares the minute you crack the cake tin open they because you know like werewolves it's like they were these nice cute poodley things the moment there's lemon drizzle cake they just become these kind of insidious monsters they're zesty that's they're they become a zesty monster they like the zest they love the zebras zesty things they go mad for the zest and coming up next week what have we got what do we got next week we've got matthew gould you know matt gould so he's a he's a friend of mine i've got a funny story to tell you about matt gould we've um we did some visa fantastic uh filmmaker he does his own youtube channel and he's made a film for us that we'll be showing next week and uh i've got a funny story about when i met him at about 5am in the middle of the morning in a dark car park in the middle of nowhere is it funny or is it inappropriate better both okay we've also got neville and umani who's coming up next week who's a very uh accomplished photographer um it's not paul goldstein goes for beauty and interest and you know he's a sort of classical photographer but um neville is a man on a mission uh his photography centers around um conveying sometimes quite um harsh difficult conservation issues and he lives in south uh africa and uh there's all sorts of poaching and things going on so he will be presenting another side of photography to us a challenging site but if you don't see it you don't know it's happening and you won't do anything about it and and photography as a tool in conservation cannot be underestimated exactly so it'd be a great thing to catch up with next week but we do have an announcement to make we have an announcement to make very important announcement of course we've been coming to you live at 6 00 pm now spring last week it was tiptoeing in this week it's jogging in by next week i'm gonna say it's spring are you yeah now i'm just excited for it you know i'm just i'm just excited so to make the most of the glorious sunshine that we're having we're going to be changing the time of our broadcast so instead of doing it at 6 00 pm we will be coming live to you on sunday at 9 00 am so we'll be switching back to a morning broadcast which is a slot that we used to do and just to make the most of the glory of the sunshine and the birds and the birds will be singing we hope and um feds will be singing we'll make we'll make the most of some lovely sunshine sunshine sunshine and some spring so um nine am nine am nine am next six o'clock not six o'clock nine am nine am we'll be there at nine a.m next monday early outside i can't wait i don't you know i haven't like doing them indoors no i like i so much prefer outside you always just see something going on you know you know we've had to become preoccupied by you know um sort of semi-savoury snacks yeah whereas normally we'd be like why'd you just be looking at what's going on around here you know so next time we'll be outside indeed thanks for joining us we're going to thank you very much go back to pennsylvania i think for our um cardinal bird feeder would be great for guy nandra morph dropped in oh we love a guy natural right it's interesting stuff isn't it no we didn't get into explaining exactly what oh hold on sap sucker in the foreground look at that wow i like your um pronunciation of that sap sucker in the foreground oh i know there's some sparkling birds on that feeder that's good of course you can keep an eye on this yourselves as well go to um you can go to be a bird watcher on youtube and see this and keep an eye on it throughout course cardinals everywhere yeah it's a sprinkling of cardinals to feed two females there two males yeah it's good stuff isn't it samsucker so good um yeah we didn't explain gynandramov because it's quite complex so you can always look that up online half male half emails get to the sort of genetical basis basically it's where um two sperms get in at the same time and fertilize two ah i'll tell you what let's leave it if i start going we'll be here we'll be here for another half an hour when you start going off on it i was like oh dave yeah sorry i'm gonna i'm gonna maybe next week maybe next time be quiet and let you look up going andromorph ism online okay see you next week nine o'clock have a good week everyone stay safe and enjoy the sunshine it's just the drinks of the packet here i'm so hungry you've eaten a whole lot now bye everyone djd you

Channel: The Self-Isolating Bird Club

Views: 7,468

Rating: 4.971292 out of 5

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Length: 73min 44sec (4424 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 28 2021