#SIBCLive with Prof. Ben Garrod – Episode 84

look at that a nice little scene that is all cozy little kestrel female i love it on the eggs yeah yeah you're a big fan of the kestrel big fan of the kestrel used to be uh when our lad got that and we didn't you were a kid okay what you know what i got anything that was less than 20 seconds before i got that yeah it's less than 20. that's what you pay your license fee for no one's paying a license fee i know but that's free this is totally free yes it is um but i mean they were our communist raptor um you know every time we went out virtually on the bike in the car on the train you'd look out the window and see kestrels now they're not even on my garden list i've seen them no i've seen them just outside the garden about a kilometer over there but no i haven't even had a flyover look at that though beautiful we think that she's got two eggs and we have to say of course that um this is another one of kate mcrae's wildlife kate's cameras and a lot of you might have been watching at all's this week yeah oh gosh that was exciting isn't it the little chick super so cute little fluff ball sat in there um yeah so lots of activity already happening on those wildlife cameras so you have to make sure that you go to her website and keep up to date with what's going on i was watching this camera yesterday the kestrel yeah and there was a clip of um the male and female coming in having a bit of interaction which was lovely feeding the female on the nest at this time yeah provisioning anyway listen um wildlife k is absolutely brilliant and her cameras are are really really good but i was in contact with her last night actually because um i'm very pleased to say hold on i'm gonna look smug that's just my practice my smugglers look evolve go in then is that the smug you just look like you're basking well i am i'm basking i'm basking in my own success for once i've done something that's worked yes so really basically it only happens in january i got um i got three tawny hour boxes from raptor aid you can get them on ebay money goes to the charity raptor aid and um i painted them black and i climbed at the top of a ladder much to charlotte's disappointment yeah because i wanted to get them high and well i wanted to get them so that when the young outlets you know hop out they've got branches to hop onto so i didn't want them just untreated low down where there was nowhere for the owls to land but the uh the ground anyway we had the tornies calling in the garden last night in the box which i'm pointing at which is no less than 40 meters over there a um female tourney was calling quick quick quick for the male to come and give her something i'm sure she's in there on eggs obviously i'm leaving it well alone at this stage to uh don't want any disturbance going on but she came out and watching the thermal camera i saw her come out and then she flew hold on yeah oh there we go basketball she then flew and landed on my buttered feeding platform another device that i put up just over here and she flew straight out of the nest board straight onto my buzzer feeding platform and started eating a roadkill pheasant and i was watching all of this on the thermal i can't tell you oh hold on this is the face of happiness right oh seriously i was so overjoyed i was immediately straight on to uh jimmy from rap parade saying thank you very much your boxes have worked and straight on to wildlife kate um because very kindly a little while ago she sent me some cameras which i haven't put up yet and rather please haven't put them up yet now because i've got a great opportunity to put one on the buzzer cleaving platform yeah that's gonna be good you've got budgets and maybe i'm not i can't obviously put anything in the nest like kate so i'm not gonna get a rival her remarkable footage but um i am like i might be able to put a camera in a tree relatively close to it if i can um be great to get an outlet actually yeah take some advice on how to do that people at the uh spring watch team of course but the key things mustn't disturb those owls i'm so pleased yes happy easter first of all happy easter everyone bank holiday weekend it's easter isn't it yeah i suppose it is my egg do you know what i do oh you've got something i told you you've got some vegan chocolate back at my place by the way that's really handy that's really handy and that's right it just means you'll have a treat later on in the week when i see you next okay i'm so forgetful in the morning i'm not a morning person although do you know what this morning i get i get quite grumpy in the morning so i'm not it's not my favorite time of day and this morning i woke up and i was just you know this sun was out it was a blue sky and i was just feeling great i was having a little dance you know it was a great time yeah just forgot the chocolate never mind okay look what we got coming up today we've got some really good stuff professor ben garrod the one and only professor ben gower is joining us soon um i don't know ben toby well unfortunately um i follow him on social media and i watch what he's done on tv he's a really really top bloke he's massively into osteology he's good on his phone he's good on lots of things he's good on his bands and today he's going to be talking to us about dinosaurs and perhaps even a series of books that he's written um all about extinction so he's there um then we've got uh what else have we got we've got uh oh yeah well as part of that uh we've got tom wilkinson who has uh designed fabricated made what he thinks is the sound that t-rex would have would have made okay but before we hear anything more about that yeah you know what i'm going to ask you yeah what would a t-rex sound like would you want me to yes i do yeah well i can see when i i made a program a few years ago the real t-rex and we looked at it and we decided that t-rex would use infrasound really low frequency sound like elephants uh use for instance and it would have been and we know this because um someone in america had done a cat scan of a t-rex skull including their ear and they found similarities in the structure of the ear to that with animals that use infrasound and of course had big big big feet and there's no you know it might have been communicating and feeling the sound through its feet so what does it sound like well i won't be able to do it it's too low frequency that was what i was after [Music] you're not capable not capable and also fantastic film coming up from simon watts about uh one about a little bird really close to my heart actually before we moved we used to have them in the garden and to say that was an extraordinary privilege would have been let me go like this which is what i did every winter when they turned up on my bird feeder we're talking about willow tits britain's most endangered resident birds and a beautiful film from simon coming up a bit later on anyway that's that's what we do i've got a few books to review here i've got a few uh artifacts that i've picked up this week we've got a bit of a soapbox ben's going to join in with that one he's got uh something he wants to tell us about he's very excited about some new acquisitions but first and foremost we have to tell you the news there's been big big news this week i don't know if you have seen on twitter we did share it there but we have return of cj7 cj7 is back yes is this is when she arrived she spent a little while behind the camera i think she was feeding before then she went on to the nest but if you remember last year of course we were following following cj7 and she was waiting all season for a male she's a translocated bird part of a reintroduction project by birds of pool harbor and so if successful if she does happen to breed this year which we're keeping everything crossed for it will be the first time ospreys have bred in the south of england in nearly 200 years so all eyes on cj7 hopefully a male will turn up hopefully come on honestly i've got come on come on miles she's ready she's gone she's ready she's waiting he's in the mood look at that looking healthy best osprey view anywhere yeah a bit biased because they're mates of ours and it's just down the road and we want somebody to be breeding in the south of england other wasp cameras are available and there are some beautiful ones but we love this one because our expectations were so high last year and unfortunately well she did she laid an egg didn't she but without a male of course it was unfertilized but hopefully this time i feel like this year is the year 2021 yeah retweeting ospreys in the south of england superb and of course next saturday uh you and i are going to be hosting the rewiring summit we're very excited so that's saturday april the 10th uh with birds of poole harbour uh it's going to be all uh spread over all of saturday we're having a fantastic conversation with some of the the country's leading rewiring experts talking about how the process works what it could achieve notable successes of course yeah we're talking about white stalks we're talking about beavers we'll be talking about this eagles the whole lot better surprise everything there's a big range of different things lots of different talks lots of different events throughout the day and you can book your ticket there should be a link below on the chat so you can head over and get your place and and be part of the summit be part of the conversation which is really exciting yeah and also optimistic moving forward yeah we're moving forward and we have to think about rewilding yeah more seriously and implement it so it's going to be a really important day but many of those projects illustrate that if we actually get out of bed and do something rather than pontificate it for ages so i'll just have a little fiddle with an artifact there if we um pontificate about it for too long and nothing happens then nothing happens but if we actually get on with it we can do great things and we've got some people who really get on with it joining us for that summit so that's next saturday april the 10th uh hope to see you there right now what what people have been sending in we've got some hairs i think haven't we boxing here yeah so of course we'd like to check our self-isolation facebook group because lots of you post amazing photos and videos thank you so much for that always do please send them in to us this one was from paula cooper in norfolk on twitter this was boxing look at that i haven't seen this no i haven't seen this either that's amazing that's quite a bout isn't it it is that's a serious boxing section yeah now in the past when i were a kid oh yeah an hour a kid we used to think that these were two males have that is an extraordinary i tell you what phabes let's run that one again that's a that's a lovely piece of behavior let's have another look at that so when we were um when i were kids like almost four times already yeah anyway sorry i'm not counting right but so we used to think that these were males displaying to the females this was a show of strength and dominance but very often we now know that it's the female keeping an over amorous male away so one of these could be a female frankly saying to the male you're not my type um very difficult look was that a bit of fluff that just came out i think that i just just looked like one of them had knocked some uh well i'll tell you what i've got to tell you who who's this paula cooper paula i think that's one of the best hair boxing events that i've i've seen the pugilistic lego morphs when it comes to pugilistic lego morphs i think that's absolutely taken the carrot it's taken the carrot that was an extraordinary bout wasn't it that's good yeah and in good luck standing there nothing getting in the way really really nice stuff no you haven't excellent excellent stuff good opportunity to get some good photos uh next we've got this amazing photograph from carol hickson on facebook one of my favorite bird species the tree creeper oh yeah look at that hiding in there calling at the moment singing as much as they do you know not the world's greatest songsters the tree creeper but i was out by the gate this week and there was one calling away i was rather wishing i put up some tree creeper boxes i didn't get to yeah they're funny they're like little half drain pipes that you clamp to the tree and then they're made of wood creek with a couple of entrances yeah but the key things was they stopped the old great spot woodpecker getting in and out yeah we've seen that happen a few times honestly i don't think we've had a uh uh uh that hasn't had attention we've had them fledge but but not without a bit of drama not without a bit of drama from the great spot of woodpecker so i don't know maybe is it too late do you think or should i should i rush uh russia you know an online order this morning if you get it tomorrow you know modern day could put a few up why not see what happens if worse comes to worse they're up for next dead trees and flaking bark i guess the thing to do would be to put it on the dead tree close to the flaking bark and see if they would go into the more secure side see what happens i think i feel compelled now you feel compelled you've got to get on yeah that's another bird box that's another 50 quid isn't it um you can make them actually three group of boxes out of wood but when i thought about that i thought well if the if the great spots peck into wooden boxes sure they're just pecking to the wooden tree creeper box oh no do you make it i'm totally you're not you're not the best around you no well it's not that but look around you put 30 more than 30 boxes up here they're all concrete i'm not trusting those great sports i love a great spot i know i'm not sure you know everything's got to eat doesn't it okay i think we should get onto our guests yes let's do that okay professor ben garrod um is a remarkable biologist i think it's difficult to crack you see so if you say zoologist it's not you know his depth is very very he really does yeah and he writes some fantastic books particularly books for young people too you might talk about uh to us about those this morning um ben are you out there in the virtual ether i am i'm here i'm here morning guys happy easter good morning but ben we've been going for more than a year and you've never been on and we've been talking about getting you on for for absolutely ages yup you've clearly been busy what have you been up to well like you said chris i mean i've also been putting up bird boxes i live on a lovely communal crescent in bristol and we've put up about 20 boxes this year we've been rescuing chickens i adopted a a baby buzzard last year that we had to raise and fled help fledge and send to the uh the uh a local sanctuary around here and i mean as you say been writing books i've been writing well eight books so far so uh kind of busy and teaching as well i don't know how you do it then honestly eight books and teaching i mean yeah that's a lot that's a lot going on hey listen ben before we get into anything um i know you're going to set today's quiz for us so shall we set the quiz and then we can have a chat absolutely let's go for it so i don't know whether fabian has any photos to stick online as well but i've only got a couple today and i do have a i do a mystery one actually so it's a bit easter a bit clawy my first one is this cast here it's a long cast it's about the size of a banana it's very broad at one end and it's not too sharp at the other it's about 18 centimeters in length that's a good one more professional just what we'd expected from that's right i'm um envious of the cast as well actually you know aside from the uh the uh the authority and the with the uh with the scale i'm very envious of that cast my second one which i think you will be really invested chris is this monster here so this is the largest claw ever in nature it's at least 50 centimeters in length there's only a few of these that have been found you can see with a scale bar there again and this was found about 70 million years ago from an animal um that a lot of people don't know about so i'm going to see who guesses that one that's amazing isn't it what is what a thing that is the largest claw to ever have been on an animal so we're gonna have a bit of a dinosaur theme uh this morning ben how did you tell tell me how did you get into firstly you know wildlife biology osteology and then your interest in paleontology lots of ologies well when i was a lad i was welcome i was uh i grew up in norfolk so i saw your hairs a second ago and i grew up in coastal norfolk and spent a lot of time with both my grandparents and they were both they're both from the country so we used to spend a lot of time walking through the country a lot of time walking along the beach and it was just i know you can relate to this both of you but it was finding fossils on the beach finding bits of beak or finding feathers that i didn't recognize and this was the time when the only sort we didn't have the internet and it was gerald books and these lovely old guides and we would go back and flick through and it was that it was that wonderful sense of adventure and quest and and questioning the world around you and the more i didn't know it more inspired me to go and find out so i can i am old enough to go back to the library and i'd have to go to the library to find a book on birds and it was just that wonderful sense of exploring the world by the things that i found every day around me whether it was uh we used to say awfully we used to see moles um over farmers fields and just to see a little mole as a kid what was amazing for me but also to find a purpose skull on the beach really through me and really inspired me to get into my biology as you say chris bones quite specifically and then into conservation and paleo i've always loved my paleo so even as a kid it just inspired me and i've never lost that love really ben um to be fair um there are not a lot of easily accessible books available then and now about osteology the study of bones you did your fantastic television series which was a revelation at the time because no one else had sort of had touched on it what do people do if they are getting into into bones you know where do they find that information these days there are some really lovely old books so there's one by a guy called corbett which is only a tiny little green book that's really sort of a mainly british species on there um it's still available online um rick morris um skullbloke on twitter is doing an osteology book um at the moment which uh he's been saying for the last couple of years so i assume right now he's busy riding away but the best way same with again you both i guess is is just getting out there and exploring so i started by looking inside owl pellets um and just learning the differences and just seeing which bits went where and it's a lot of it is is self-exploration and finding what fits now luckily we do have a lot more in terms of resources nowadays online and the books than we did a few years ago but still the gerald dural books are a good place to start i think it's that natural sense of curiosity isn't it that mystery i suppose because that's when you when you find something you've got to piece together a puzzle and particularly when it comes to paleo things then it's you know you've got to piece together a quiz of something that happened millions of years ago and that's where that extra excitement i think comes from my perspective anyway yeah i don't know but ben we get a lot of people you know sending us pictures of bones on social media um because they do struggle to identify them a lot of people see the um you know the the uh the breast bone of sea birds um sometimes they imagine their skulls because they see the two sockets um in the rear of those and imagine their eye sockets it's hard for people to sort of see inside animals when if they haven't dissected to them so what are your top tips when it comes to bone id if people pick things up in the uk countryside first of all try and visualize where in the body it fits so if you know it's if you in your head know it's a skull then as you said chris with with the pelvis or breastbone think where it would fit and where would the attachments be so does your bone that you found really fit into the part of the body you think it does um first of all so try and imagine it as part of the bigger animal that'll help you identify whether you might have the wrong or right bit um the second tip i have is if you find a skull um very often people will find a skull about that sort of size and it's got quite square teeth with little projections on it's it's carnivorous but about this size i'll very often hear is it a badger well batches as you used to know are that size but the skull's about this size a good tip is for mammals at least the skull is usually about four or five times smaller than the whole body length so if you've got something that size as a skull the body's probably about that big and i'm talking about hedgehogs there for example so very often people say what is this thing is is it a badger is an otter think about the whole animal and then how does your skull fit there um and my third one is if you take your bones your skulls home uh if they're all ethically sourced obviously um make sure you clean them up a little bit of fairy liquid a little bit of a toothbrush don't use bleach or anything like that and then label everything i know this will appeal to your your inner geek as well here chris make sure everything's labeled make sure you know where things come from because believe it or not if you find them now when you're as old as the three of us you will forget where a lot of these bones are these feathers think up so start curating your own little museum collection and that's what conservationists and biologists and museum curators do anyway yeah when you did your bone series did you i think you went to the jardin de plants in paris didn't you isn't that where that really astonishing collection of uh skeletons is it is they did that classic thing uh chris where they made me wait outside and i've never been i can't believe i've never been before they made me sit outside while they set up and it took a couple of hours i was getting really frustrated and i said i can still pretend i'm i'm excited when i walk in i can please let me go in they said no we want to see that genuine surprise and i walked in and it really was like a herd of animals running flying leaping swimming gliding towards me and it it yeah it was it was shocking in the most a marvelous way because suddenly as a as an academic you can see all this form and function and all this diversity within the evolutionary context there and it's beautiful it really is a lot of people think oh it's morbid it's macabre it's it's all don't you prefer live things yeah of course i do but to see that as you said megan really helps us understand the context of different species how they evolved and ultimately how they can fit into their their ecosystem the mechanics of how things work isn't it and you're really good at explaining that all your incredible i love the one you did on skin recently it was really fascinating and of course you do a lot of books as well so tell us a little bit about the books that you've been writing recently so i'm just writing well i'm now finishing writing a series an eight part series on mass extinctions we hear so often this is what slurred me to do this we hear so often we're now going into our sixth mass extinction and kids say it with real authority like i do like to challenge uh young enthusiasts in a good way and i always say well that's great what were the first five then and you always get that perplexed um the dinosaurs one so yeah that's one of them where are the others so these aren't the most sad parts of our prehistory on earth these are some of the most iconic influential moments in evolutionary history every time we see a mass extinction yes it's terrible for those organisms and taxa and species that we lose but actually it's a bonanza and a huge opportunity for other groups other organisms um whole clades to suddenly pop up so i wanted to write about these mass extinctions not from a doom and gloom perspective but to really understand what mass extinction is to see what drives extinction and to see ultimately how it provides an opportunity in some ways for for nature in order for the kids to understand what we're now going through in terms of this mass extinction and i will say spoiler alert this isn't the sixth mass extinction in my terms we've had quite a few more before this excellent stuff i was once fortunate to be a t-rex dig in montana and the there was actually less interested in t-rex and more interested in what happened next and he showed me uh a line in the sa in the sand quite literally in this in in the strata which was um you know formed when that meteorite hit the hit the planet and and he was interested in what happened immediately after that and there was some staggering statistics about the explosion in the diversity of mammals once the the large reptiles had had lost their grip on the planet surface you know absolutely and we i mean again when you mentioned the hairs earlier i mean things change this is why science is so great if anyone young who's watching and i often get asked well don't we know everything i wish i mean we we know the tip of the iceberg and that's so exciting as a scientist and as you chris and megan zoologists and conservationists that there's so much we need to learn out there and this is a really good example of this so when i was much younger we were told there weren't many mammals they were just scrabbling around like shrews and things like that we now know there were primates like our own group for example we know there was a whole bunch of animals we might recognize today so the mammals were there but they weren't the dominant group the dinosaurs were doing really well they were around for about 170 million years but as you said chris the moment the dinosaurs were most of the dinosaurs on the way down the mammals had the opportunity and suddenly were exploiting the oceans the air the the land in many ways the the dinosaurs and the giant prehistoric reptiles like pterodons and pterosaurs and and plesiosaurs were doing in other environments as well it's all opportunity if you see an opportunity nature just grabs it and goes for it so yeah mammals exploded after that now chris i was out in chicxulub oh yes the crater site just north of mexico a few years ago and actually my series is being uh repeated tonight on bbc2 at some point i think eight o'clock or something the day the dinosaurs died and we actually were able to go along with a team from imperial and a few other universities around the world and they did a core sample it was a kilometer long core sample and again you could see underneath it was just rock rock rock rock rock and then suddenly it was like a mr whippy ice cream preserved in the in the rock itself because it liquefies but through a sonic liquefaction the boom of the and the the the the uh the full light was so intense it liquefied the rock and you could still as you said see that little line of iridium that was a slightly off green and that was it i mean that one line changed the world and allowed you two to be sitting there me to be sitting here and the world around us to be is as it is today fantastic stuff it's incredible isn't it it's fascinating how these events happen and it just shapes the course of everything as you say provides new opportunities and of course we look at extinction in a wholly negative way in many different ways and when we think of it on a personal kind of small scale account of course it can be quite terrifying but when you open your mind up and think of the larger scale it's it's quite a fascinating process glad you mentioned the old pterodon as well i've got one of my specimens here to show you ben look at this this is uh meg's got me this has a christmas present it's part of a pterodon bone um now one of the things i don't know we love science learning about stuff we love the way that informs us and gives us context but for me you know when i pick up this is another specimen i've got here this is a section of a sauropod uh bone so this was part of a you know basically a an apatosaurus leg bone and if i show you on that side you can see how it's vascular there that there would have been blood pumping through here um but for me there's a romance too about being able to touch this you know this this is able to trans you know take me back like 80 million years so do you get that sense from it as well do you sometimes still have the sort of you know the childish element which just sort of thinks blimey i'm actually touching you know part of a dinosaur chris one of my one of my favorite fossils was given to me a couple of years ago and it's this little thing here i'm going to hold it right close to the camera it's about seven or eight centimeters long it's tubular it's really solid but there's little weird bits and bobs in there yeah and it was found in the uk and it came from a pliosaur and it's a fossilized plyosaur poo um this is a coprolite so it's a fossilized poo from at least 100 million years ago from one of these huge these huge predatory marine reptiles and you can actually as you said with your your your sauropod bone there this was inside an animal that had hunted through the waters and had obviously processed stuff and again i get the same level of enthusiasm with this that you do watching orchestrals and i still love my kestrels and we have birds of prey flying over mine but to understand that you can actually see inside here and scan this in ways that would reveal what these animals were eating 100 million years ago of course that's exciting i think that's what so many of us have in science is that passion that love and that child-like um excitement that i know you've both got i've got david attenborough's got jane goodall's got we we maintain our whole lives and yeah that's that's that's incredible so yeah i still very much get excited by the fossils i have yes it's not just about the bones it's about their poo sometimes even trace fossils now this is a cast of a footprint of a theropod dinosaur that i um i bought when i was in um texas a few years ago some of our county in texas it was a fantastic uh trackway there that we followed in a river um a crap a canthalo source was the animal that might have produced this so i mean i'd love that as well the idea that you know these animals have left what would have appeared to be a temporary you know impression in a riverbed but it's lasted for millions of years and you can still see something there not about the ant necessarily about the animal's anatomy but about the way it moved you can look at its gate sometimes these trackways tell us stories where you've got you know herbivorous dinosaurs and then following them the tracks of a carnivorous dinosaur it's a beautiful thing isn't it it really is and like you said trace fossils are really important so as the best one are the footprints usually we also get skin imprints and things like that but it reveals behavior it reveals do they live in social groups as you said do they hunt with other uh other species or were they being tracked themselves so it's a really important part of how we understand um uh an ecosystem where 99 of their ecosystem is gone so these these little traces left are really important there is a site somewhere i can't really tell you where in the south of the uk um where every so often huge footprints like the ones you've got there are iguana daunted so partly guanodon group are revealed as the tide goes out and it's quite hard to access and but i did visit a few years ago and to see these these big boulders that had fallen into the sea with as you look underneath them there were these huge footprints still there that a week later might be gone and washed away into the sea it's it's it's it's exciting it is exciting yeah that's incredible isn't it that these footprints have just lasted the test of time quite literally and then you we're talking about trace fossils there but then there are certain things where it's really difficult to um to get to grips with you know what say dinosaurs looked like um when i was making my t-rex program we looked at uh melanocytes pigment uh organelles and these are fossilized and they were giving scientists some ideas to the color of dinosaurs but sound is a another thing by looking at the skulls looking at the ears you know all of the work that could be done there people have come up with conjecture and we've got tom wilkinson here has made us a short film now as to the sound that he imagined that rex made so ben let's have a look at this and then we can pontificate [Music] afterwards [Music] um [Music] um [Music] [Music] um [Music] [Music] it's not what you expect is it at all but it's that kind of journey imagine being out right pitch black and just being able to see and potentially feel that you know through the vibrations in the floor i mean it's quite an intense sound isn't it it is quite um i don't know ghostly almost yeah but you see every film you know every sort of you know movie representation of of t-rex since i was a when our lad um right up to the jurassic park franchise has had them roaring because we associate wars with things like lions and titans which are large predatory animals and we associate wars with a you know acoustic threat ben what do you think i like that sound clip because it showed diversity of calls as well and like again there's no one better to ask chris but we see birds with different calls for different reasons i i think we need to understand dinosaurs in a wider context they weren't these things that would walk up to you and just go and then walk off or eat you it was they were complex diverse behavioral animals here and i think you're right absolutely i know you're right that there we are pretty certain that as mammals we have a larynx which allows us to produce this very sort of low sound that we are whether we're speaking whether we're roaring barking it's all with our larynx birds have a syrinx which allows them that beautiful sort of song that we hear and and appreciate dinosaurs didn't really have either so we can already exclude they were roaring and we can probably exclude they were singing there was something somewhere in between potentially with some of them and but yeah infrasounds like uh like the ostrich and things now i don't know whether you know this chris but the the legend goes the reason dinosaurs raw in films was because back in the 60s there was a i forgot what it's called the valley of quango or something like that where there's a franchise so apparently that's to blame so ray harryhausen who made the models finished his work and said right guys um what sound did they make and nobody knew so he went and asked a couple of scientists they didn't know and they said no no we'll never know so we went to the local zoo and recorded a lion an elephant two or three different animals mashed them together and made that as the sound of dinosaurs and from then on we've had dinosaurs roaring so we can all blame ray harryhausen for that that's a mixture of lion and elephant and everything that's quite interesting isn't it yeah i didn't know that story and i'm glad that i've added it to my repertoire of t-rex information um of course as a uh when i well ad back in the 1960s watching valley of the grangy with those sort of stop motion adam you know plaster scene dinosaurs t-rex and stuff like that dragging their tails gray in color moving sluggishly one of the most exciting things that's happened in my life is that you know although they've laying in the soil for in the case of t-rex you know 65 million years they've changed more in the last 50 years than they have in all of that time because our understanding them has has increased you know profoundly i'd love to be here in a you know a hundred years time just for a day i don't want to be you know overstaying my welcome but you know just to find out what we know then about t-rex absolutely i always well i say jokingly i completely mean this it's the only celebrity makeover i care about is t-rex um and it's changed so much over the last few years as you say and it's gone from that upright sluggish thing where the tail would drag along the floor biomechanically that wouldn't work so we now know they were much more horizontal and suddenly that tail goes from this sluggish anchor into this lovely balancing machine and it's allowing it to be more dynamic suddenly suddenly that head that was right up there is in the danger zone and those little weedy arms that were completely rubbish that we all took the took the mickey out of they were a meter long and could effectively bench press about 250 kilos so the moral that story there is don't arm wrestle with a with a t-rex exactly okay i didn't know that i didn't know they were a meter long either yeah it's a meter long outside the body the actual the the shoulder girdle uh area was another meter so you've got this effectiveness two meter long uh lever with these two massive claws at the end and the reason we think they had just two claws rather than three is by losing that third floor increases the force of that uh movement of those two claws by up to 50 percent so suddenly these things are small but deadly um yeah as you say chris we're understanding dinosaurs more now than we ever have before fantastic stuff what's one clause maybe it's time to reveal the quiz then go on absolutely show us your objects let's well before you do let's see if anyone's got them right let's see um because my eyes are all it's a bit squinty it's a bit squinty so are we going for quiz number one quiz number one one okay people that got it right morgan lind uh lindo bay and janet only three people three people normally that must have been a tough one there ben wow so this first one is a central toe claw from a tyrannosaurus rex yes yeah i love that oh that is so cool if you look at them they're they're big chunky things these aren't for tearing and slashing these are weight bearing these are big solid stocky claws there these are for taking up to 14 15 tons of predatory dinosaur coming at you so that yeah it's one of my favorite claws there that's fantastic okay second call the longest claw ever you know what more people got this one did they yeah although i do think some people might have cheated and looked on google oh no i'm gonna name and shame here as well charlie rocco morgan ava rose sarah who admitted she might have had a sneak peek on google sarah and we've got fez god michelle wildlife rufus elaine sue samantha anis and kristen's daughter all got it right so well done okay ben come on then this is from an animal called therisinosaurus it lived around about the same time as t-rex so about 70 million years ago but it was found over in mongolia it's part of the theropod group so those big predatory dinosaurs but ironically this was a herbivorous theropod so this was a plant muncher but still had these massive claws on effectively with the hands and we don't know why they were there were they there for pulling down branches to get food were they there as massive defense weapons we don't know fantastic stuff isn't it that's so cool it's so cool i have to say this quickly as well because this is quite sweet um so we just played of course the sound of the t-rex and what we believe is the sound of the t-rex and a lot of people's animals have woken up during that and have responded to the t-rex call everyone's saying their dogs have all woken up and taken a bit of interest tom wilkinson top work spoken the nation's dogs are and also made us all think about t-rex and what it might have sounded like which i'm sure was his mission you can follow tom on instagram actually tom wilkinson underscore art it's on instagram at tom wilkinson underscore our top work there excellent stuff now ben if you're happy to stay with us for a minute i'm just going to jump on a soapbox um and then i'd like to come back to you if i may um look it's easter what do we think of when it's easter i think of yeah okay but chocolate bunnies chocolate chips and look i thought i'd show you this look here we are what a cutie yes it's a cutie isn't it it's a little cheeky wikiboo but unfortunately um it's not gonna have a happy future because this chip will in the space of just five or six weeks turn into this chicken this breed of chicken we call franken chicken and i'm afraid to say that they're being reared for sale in the uk in the most appalling conditions so i'm just going to tell you very briefly so there are housed indoors they never go outdoors in sheds of between 20 and 50 000. now they grow to maturity in just five or six weeks they grow so quickly in fact that as you can see here their legs can't support their weight and they collapse onto their chest except that they're collapsing onto the floor here which is covered in the poo of 20 to 50 000 chickens it's acrid and acidic and it eats all the feathers off of the chest and then peels away all the skin and many of these birds are living the final days of their lives in abject misery we have been campaigning for some time with something called the better chicken commitment and this you know tries to encourage chicken producers to give their chickens more space to use breeds of chickens that mature more slowly and altogether improves their conditions i i wouldn't say to the point of it being absolutely ideal but i would say significant improvement i'm very pleased to say that the better chicken commitment has been taken on board by quite a few significant corporations kfc uh leclerc the largest supermarket in france and around the world certainly in europe people have been listening and in the uk waitrose and marx and spencers have signed up to the better chicken commitment however tesco's morrisons co-op none of the other supermarkets have signed up to this commitment and the reason for that is that basically they want to make as much money as possible out of their chicken and be able to sell it to you as cheaply as possible if you're having a chicken dinner this easter this i'm afraid might be the price of it and i'm prepared to bet that many of you would never have known this it's out of sight and out of mind it's not your fault when you go shopping you're unaware that when you're in the supermarket looking at that packaged meat there is no way for you to know exactly we know the conditions that these animals were brought up in and as a consequence of that you're shopping blind but and i can equally imagine that if you did know you you wouldn't want to be party to this sort of horrendous cruelty um in connection with the uh a number of uh welfare charities open cages rspca et cetera um i've got a petition running on change.org and we're going to put that in the link i you know it's easter it's a look the sun's shining it's the sign of spring it's the time when we all think about new life and new hope just if you don't mind put your your your name on that petition to give some new hope to these poor chickens which are weird in these appalling conditions i mean i'm i'm personally really surprised when you said this morning that kfc had signed up to it and tesco's and you know co-op hadn't yeah you know if kfc are doing it yeah it says a lot doesn't it about our bigger supermarkets if they're not signing up for well i i think not just the consumers but i think many of these businesses are realizing that the tide is turning and people have greater expectations if they're going to eat meat at all then they want you know better quality meat and and quality is part and parcel of how that animal's lived it's husbandry so i think that they are aware of needing to make the change i just it's as we know tesco's are the largest supermarket chain in the uk and and we would like to put you know democratic peaceful pressure on them to change their policy so that people who shop there have you know have the ability to to buy chicken which has had a better life and it seems like a pretty fair request if you ask me but it's also what it's about the chicken meat it's also about eggs right because eggs of course battery absolutely horrific these animals are living in abject misery and squalor you know fed on a mixture of slushy hormones and antibiotics that i'm incredibly ill makes them grow muscle very fast they can't support all of that same stuff you know we've all seen those horrible images and those horrible videos and what we can do as consumers is choose more ethically whether that's meat or your eggs and i learned this yesterday i had no idea about this so when you go and you pick up your egg of course you know some people might by the big horrible packets of caged chicken or awful but then of course there are some which say organic and some which say free range on it and you've got the um red tractor label rspca assured now there are some issues with those all the labeling conspiracy if you haven't seen it let's you know the central to that is misinformation about labeling worth watching yeah labeling is a real big issue particularly when it comes to those stamps that say this is rspca assured or this is red um tractor i mean i don't know and others and others and of course amongst others all the kind of the stamps i mean it is a bit you know it's kind of become more about marketing than it has come about animal welfare unfortunately it's come something about green washing um but one thing i didn't know and um this is really interesting if you open up your carton of x what you'll notice on the top of the egg is a number of different numbers and letters now they really mean something in terms of where the chicken eggs have come from what type of farms they've got the farm code so exactly which specific farm they came from you don't have to remember all the codes but you can remember a really simple system so from zero to four means different things so zero organic one is free range two is indoor housing i.e the chickens are in those awful sheds never see sunlight and then four is caged now you just have to remember that and just look the first letter on that red sticker on printed directly onto the eggs will tell you exactly what type of number first number first number yeah we'll tell you exactly what kind of farm that's come from so i didn't know that either always look out for zero and one never go for three and four percent i mean i hate to say this it's a really top piece of information i'm glad you found it out but you know i still see it as being a little bit you know i mean people have got to open the packet look at the number it should be on me it should be there should be photographs like that on i'll tell you what listen if this you know like cigarette advertising where they used to put pictures of diseased human organs but you know after the effects of of of tobacco inhalation oh do they oh so i've never smoked i have no idea if this right was on the food packaging what do you think would happen what do you think would happen ben we're on the site box about chickens and and uh you're into your chickens as well and you've performed a rescue recently tell us a bit about that i did chris so when you played your t-rex sounds a moment ago i had one very interested girl this is violet and as you said megan violet came from a category 4 um facility a few months ago so again my neighbors and i we have as of yesterday 90 or 18 hens and a little cockerel um and most of them came from um quite poor conditions now in the uk as you say the meat and the eggs are produced in very different ways and i'm always going to bang on the fact that it's up to us as the consumers the the big industries will always listen to us if enough of us say something and it's up to us if you if you're the sort of person who goes out and looks at the kestrels and looks at the the great tits and all the wonderful wild birds we have there's no difference to the captive birds we have and the farm birds we have and i mean i love violets she's quite uh she's quite aggressive with the other girls she's a bit of a dominant girl she would have fit in quite well in the cretaceous i think um but the wonderful thing is we can see she's got a character she's got behavior and she's she's put on weight in the last well six months now and is a much happier healthy girl and yet she came from this this farm where sadly they're killed after 72 weeks because they're sub-optimal in terms of their laying ability and yet we've had eggs from our girls almost every day so it's it's a bigger picture yes i love my chickens partly because they're dinosaurs and partly because i love all animals but equally it's about being a responsible consumer and whether you're vegan or veggie or you're a full-blooded carnivore it doesn't matter we can all be a little bit more ethical and a little bit more conscious of what we eat where it comes from whether it's fish as you said chris or chickens um it's it's it's us being a little bit more aware of where your food is where it's from and what other animals give in order to do that excellent absolutely hang on ben a couple of last questions then before we go we've got to get um simon's filming as well this morning um firstly ben what are you up to next other than nursing and and and cuddling violet of course well as of today i'm settling in my new six my new six girls um in terms of next well as ever chris you know we can't always talk about our projects that are coming up i've got a couple of secret projects uh coming up over the next uh six months so watch this space that's all i can say did we see that then see we've gone full circle we've got a dinosaur paleo poo from millions of years ago and a very fresh one from uh from violet right now thanks guys excellent violet has left a deposit there of some note fantastic thank you ben so much for joining us this morning a treat a real treat i'm sorry it's taken us so long to get to you um if you want to check out ben on social media certainly do that i would also make sure you check out all these programs oh they're so good available on the iplayer if not some of them probably illegally on youtube but you know frankly it's certainly worth catching up with ben thanks ever so much for joining us it was lovely to meet you guys and catch you soon happy easter i would love you know to have chickens rescue chickens yeah that's one of my things i would really love that one one day get some rescue chickens excellent thank you yeah we've had chickens for quite a long time at the farm didn't we oh yeah well yeah but they were yeah yeah we did trying to keep them safe from the foxes with electric fences which worked we've got to say which which works and yeah which worked for ducks as well and the ducks yeah okay should we do some uh birthdays before we get into simon films i'll hand that over to you okay um so today we've got jackie towel who's 26 very happy birthday to you jackie celebrated with lots of easter eggs you know it might be quite good to have a birthday on easter yeah get all the chocolate be good to have someone who got up in the morning remember to bring the chocolate over though past that one where's my chocolate yeah no no seriously no it is no it's not yes it is rubbish okay you have not gone and actually okay i'm telling you right and and this can go on record this isn't chocolate there's already just been in the cupboard the last few months there's a specific chocolate that you've gone out and specifically bought is there a specific easter chocolate i don't believe you okay well you're gonna have to eat your words maybe i'll run and get it i would not buy it for you uh well oh so your dad brought chocolate you didn't do anything he did my dad bought some chocolate right rubbish yeah yes but that doesn't count it doesn't count anyway happy birthday to you jackie hope you're enjoying all that chocolate we've got joel from leeds is 35 today very happy birthday to joe all sent us this photo as well let's have a little look it's joel's photo let's see let's see if joel's photography is very sunny oh hello look at that back to nature in a red squirrel it's pretty good oh that's lovely i bet it chewed it up and made it and put it into its dry i hate that having a quality dry i like that yeah so i wouldn't mind that i'd like that a lot would you like a great photo thanks very much birthday joe next week we've got jackie who is 51 tomorrow this was sent into her by her husband chris uh so very happy birthday to you jackie we've got camilla's mom jane norton is 92 next week very happy birthday to you jane everybody else's birthday is on the 7th of april it seems so susan is going to be 50. her and her seven-year-old son are avid watchers of sibc broadcast thank you very much susan and your son we've got roz who's been with us since the beginning he's turning 52. happy birthday roz tony is 60 and this is from sophie hannah and harvey the last two being tibetan spaniels like that tibetan spanish spanish yes hannah and harvey very sweet happy birthday to you tony particular breed of dog no not tibetan spaniel just get on the glucose and look that up see what they look like but if they're from tibet presumably they're quite great yeah warm i like that i like it we've got mary davey who's 70 and that's from all of her family very happy birthday to you mary jenny wrote in for her husband bruce who has loved the show and has been which has been a great source of conflict to him it's very sweet thank you very much happy birthday to you bruce and last but definitely not least the lady as i've said before with more scrunchies than is feasibly possible the lady who always brings sunshine and smiles we love her to pieces michaela strachan is her birthday very happy birthday to you michaela all the way in sunny south africa um i hope you have a fantastic day on your birthday okay and there's one belated one here a special mention for ava rose he was eight on the 30th of march so sorry we're a bit late a bit late for that one over but uh happy birthday indeed now we know that quite a few of our uk birds are in significant decline things like uh turtle doves undoubtedly uh things like i would actually if i start a list i'll go on and on many of our species are in decline but a couple of woodman species uh lesser spotted woodpecker and willow tit and again when i were allowed they actually were significantly commoner and i remember cycling up someone's driveway to put a newspaper when i was doing a newspaper round through their letterbox and as i cycled up the driveway there was an apple tree on my right hand side and as the the cycle sort of crunched the the the gravel it's it stimulated the chicks in this uh in this in the nest that was in the tree to call and i noticed it so i put the newspaper through the door and i went back down the driveway and i stopped by the apple tree it was unless i spotted woodpecker's nest and and those were birds at that point you could find when you were doing your paper round very sadly they've uh significantly declined did hear one this week very fortunately i remember the last time i've seen one no yeah i really can't no but i mean we're lucky we live in an area where there's lots of ancient woodland in the new forest and so there are a few pairs hanging on here we're equally lucky that where we've lived up until relatively recently um we had another species the willow tip coming to our garden and uh paul stancliffe for me a bto came down once to see my willow tits in you know and there was quite a queue of people wanted to see the willow tits because they are now a bird that's so difficult to encounter anyway simon watts has made a beautiful film about the tame valley which is thankfully still home to the willow tits and in this you get to see a willow t and hear one and of course at this time of year listening for them it's far easier to hear find them from sound than it is to find them um by looking for them so you know tune this this this call in that you're here at the end of simon's film you never know you might turn up a willow tit if you've got any wet woodland near you over to simon the tame valley wetlands in wintertime a geographical riparian ribbon weave between logistical industrial and urban conurbations through to flood plains and agriculture [Music] dotted along its length the conservation stronghold managed by the likes of the westminster club and the rspb these providing ecologically rich islands wetlands that expand into wet woodlands dominated by living and decaying alder willow and birch and it's here within these damp aboriginal habitats we find a bird wholly dependent on them but sadly on the brink sedentary and extremely territorial it's their dependence on these niche environments that have obscenely brought them to the point that they find themselves today as britain's most endangered resident bird the willow tit but at this time of year will it stray just as far as they possibly ever will do in a search for local food sources this being predominantly seeds i had signs like lady walk where such provisions have provided great quantity and variety it's possible with perseverance and patience to see one briefly nervously taking advantage what lies ahead are five more crucial months but we see if the current placement of deadwood strapping and this buck's provision gives the willow tip population here enough opportunity to excavate their nest holes within the dead and dying timber [Music] i've been lucky enough to be asked over the next six months to document the ongoing efforts of committed and determined groups of people who are charged with not only preserving these small bulleted populations but expanding them through habitat regeneration along the tame corridor but only last week as my last day of january filming ended i heard something promising the distinctive and welcome calls of the widow tits where this will lead only time will tell what a beautiful bird i like the willow tip i think really underestimated subtle colors yeah small but just i don't know very elegant yeah a nice little bird and the thing is a lot of people when you know when you when if you haven't seen them you don't see them regularly and so few people would have that ability now um it's said that they're easy to confuse with the marsh tip and indeed their sort of shape and coloring is is very similar but the interesting thing is that when they started coming to the feeder um they stuck out like a sore thumb that they were different so if you're lucky enough to see willow t and marsh tip at the same time there is no you know they're really easy to identify because they're so obviously different that's when they're next to one another but the key thing is to call is the call because the marsh tits are all singing at the moment here and um and they uh have a very very different call so this is the time of year to pick them up simon thank you very much indeed for that beautifully shot film yeah lovely lovely pictures of drone stuff there yeah yeah yeah really good and um i like that idea of tying up birch logs to the tree the thing about willow tits you see is that you can put up nest boxes like blue tip boxes um but they don't like them because they like to excavate their own holes in rotten wood so people have tried putting up um you know blue tip boxes and filling them with sawdust wet sawdust so that the willow tits have to take the sawdust out um i think that might have worked i'm not entirely sure other than that they do like making their own holes in rotten wood which because it's in rotten wood which means the greatest spot this is easy you know hammers in yeah hammers straight into destroy yeah what about that sweat what about that oh yeah amazing listen i'm going to show you something i picked up this week because i'm really pleased with this i love picking stuff up on my rambles look at this now we've i've shown you before many times but this is um oak rotten oak wood that has been um exploited by the green elf cup fungus but what i liked about this was that these three pieces were laying together on the woodland floor and look how green they are look at the greenness it's a bit overexposed in the summer yeah i can tell you that when it's not bleached out on you know on a laptop camera these are really green i love leaves look at that i had four do not drop one in the woods because yes yeah actually anyway but what about that i don't know what i'm gonna do with it but i just couldn't resist picking it up and bring it home you can make something of it make a piece of art out of it it's pretty flaky yeah but you could you couldn't carve it i didn't know but you could you could like i don't know you could do something with that get creative well i did i brought it home and i'm loving it i look at it i've been looking at it every day and looking at the intense screen it's been bringing me joy right really quickly um some books have come out although in the process of coming out this one is the wild isles uh by our friend patrick barkum and what patrick has done here is collated um the wild words of an enormous number of authors who have written uh about wildlife here um i dipped into this and i read some fantastic stuff so there's science in here there's romance there's a lot of the writers there's thomas hardy they're not all contemporary writers gavin maxwell of course michael mccarthy fantastic author esther wolfson i read her bit um all about her life with corvids crows henry williamson tarq the otter gilbert white um isabella tree of course rewilding next weekend i mean the list the list goes on and on um it's a lovely book each essay yes each essay runs to about i don't know well somewhere longer than others esther's was about 10 pages some are shorter but it's one of those things you just pick it up and each one comes with a completely different flavor so i thoroughly recommend the wild isles uh by patrick barkum coming up i don't think this one's out yet or if it is out it's only just come out martin warren former ceo of butterfly conservation has done this fantastic book on butterflies it's an absolute beauty just yeah it's great to have these ideas at the id guide at this time of year because of course butterfly action is springing up into life indeed about recording butterflies with all sorts of data science but again you know this is a book which i think it's a book for everyone if i'd have had this as a young person i'd have been really happy resident times of adult british classified calculated from mark recapture data you see that table i love mark for capture data information but it's not all technical like that there's lots of you know great photographs as well here we've got fertility taking off and yeah the british wildlife collection is a a new collection of books which are coming out looking on the back here you can see mushrooms meadows rivers uh mountain flowers and a few others coming up very pleased to say martin warren has done his butterfly book very good and then slightly i mean this is going to surprise you chris can i ask you something quickly it's a cookery book what what is what is this word hot pop what is this do you know what those utensils are uh pot is a name for um a sort of cannabis it used to be called cannabis and pan is a mythical figure that used to pay pipes this is a anna jones the reason i've bought a cookery book okay yeah hold on to you hold on to your trousers yeah no hold on hold on hold on there's a very specific reason why i bought this cookery book one you apparently only need one pot green spot drumming you hear that it's really close let's put in that tree here right there love that okay that's fantastic the reason i bought this cookery book is because you apparently only need one pot or one pan not not as much washing up as you normally make um and also it's it's no listen it's all about right the uh this is also a way of the eating that's mindful to the planet and i suggest small changes in planning and shopping as well as ideas for using up the vegetables that most get flown away that's good it yeah so this is a book that considers each of your recipes carbon footprint and that's why i bought this book by anna jones a greener way for you to cook for your family and the planet yeah now you probably want it you start wrapping things up i'm gonna find this one recipe in here i really like the look of okay now last week of course you well we spoke to the wonderful luke massey who is in spain and his incredible farm and he's got so much wildlife going on there now they are of course running wild thinker and you can sign up to the newsletter and they are creating films uh i think every month to discuss life on the farm all living around all that biodiversity so you can subscribe to his uh newsletter and watch every episode as it comes out life on the farm um you head over to www.wild wildfinkafinca.comwildthinker.com and i think we have a trailer for the very first episode let's have a look at that luke katie and ron have made the spanish province of asturias their home just two years ago they moved into wild finka a dilapidated old farm their aim to live in harmony with nature join the family as they share their notes from wild thinker it's great isn't it yeah i really i'm looking forward to seeing that episode when it comes out and understanding more about what goes on on luke's farm and then yeah what an amazing thing so do sign up to that because you don't want to miss it no he's got some fantastic animals there on the farm as we've seen over the last year anyway look i've just found this is what this is what you know got excited my taste buds in um in this one pot pan planet anna jones's book a piquant piquant piquant smoke paprika pasta bakes bit of a tongue twister right smoked paprika paprika pasta bake just been looking down the list there they're not all vegan um recipes in here but this one gets to the end you can have 30 grams of manchego or you can go for vegan cheese finely grated so and look at that i'll tell you what i looked at that last night and you know i thought yeah okay and then who's going to be cooking it i honestly don't know why you're so rude about my cooking who's going to be cooking it will it be me or will it be charlotte or could it be you because if you're cooking if you're genuinely gonna cook a meal i will hang around today because that's a good entertainment i'd love to see that i might do i might work from here this coming from the person right that are you know slaved over a hot stove for for years heating up um beans and slide over in order to make sure that you had a healthy and nutritional diet yes i did yeah yeah i didn't think i did listen i didn't have any memories i remember us going to the takeout quite a lot i don't remember you cooking well it's just there's only one thing that you could cut just here the one thing you could cook was the tomato pasta back when you used to eat fish actually you used to put tuna in it that was years ago but that's the only thing that i can remember you ever making it's true oh this is our female kestrel there brooding away on what we think is two eggs look at that it's looking forward to it a bit like tron it's probably the miles going to bring in screening a bit of pasta for a scratch yeah yeah look at that what a beautiful thing that is actually stunning isn't it yeah yeah anyway we will leave you with that beautiful images of this kestrel yeah and you can keep up to date by looking at wildlife kate's cameras do you know what i was really enjoying today's yeah we got to a lot ben was fantastic yeah we talked about dinosaurs that really excites me i showed everyone my green wood yeah and the green wood's been really um exciting me too yeah um you know we did a little we banged on about the chickens i think that was really important i told everyone about my owls and then you put a real download all right okay see you next week bye everyone happy easter oh see you saturday remember saturday we'll be wilding conference on saturday we'll see you on saturday hopefully all right bye [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] you

Channel: The Self-Isolating Bird Club

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Length: 73min 12sec (4392 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 04 2021