Birds, old worms and an opinion
12 October
At its heart, birdwatching is an act of quiet rebellion. It is the gentle act of noticing – the willingness to see the world around you. And this simple act is, in itself, revolutionary. In a world that often teaches us to look past the natural world – to pave it over, cut it down or otherwise ignore it – birdwatching demands slowness and attention. It demands that we pause, that we listen, that we care, that we see.
(extract from Nature’s Last Dance by Natalie Kyriacou)
This week we have gone from a couple of days just shy of +30C sunshine to the first light frosts of the year. Plenty of sun for both though, so that’s good.
Waterfowl accumulations are out on the river as fall progresses. Some will stay as long as there is open water they can find feed in/under while others are pausing for the next stage of the journey southwards
Birds around us are changing. There are still a few of the travelling species that are passing through, though fewer and fewer of those, while the early arrivals from further north - Juncos for example - that will stay with us until next spring are settling in and finding food. Daily species counts in the garden are coming down.
Declining and sad trees are sporting some beautiful fungi
Insects, always insects somewhere
And, walking further, there are beaver lodges to admire
Creatures buried in soil for over a century burst back to life in Toronto waterfront
This is just splendid - and most unexpected. A project to restore coastal wetland in Toronto leads to the discovery of a host of life: seeds and plant scraps, as well as water fleas, worms, larvae and plankton that are over a century old
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/oct/09/toronto-waterfront-soil-plants-worms
When Shelby Riskin was handed disk-shaped samples of century-old soil from Toronto’s waterfront, the ecosystem ecologist was hopeful she might find trace evidence of plants – cattails, bulrushes, water lilies and irises – that had once populated a long-destroyed wetland. But when she and a graduate student peered through a microscope, they watched in astonishment as a brown wormlike creature greedily munching through green clumps of algae as if more than 130 years hadn’t passed since its last meal. Equally oblivious, a host of life – water fleas, worms, plankton – danced and spun around it. “We’ve been able to resurrect some of the ancient life that shows what this wetland was like prior to urbanization,” said Riskin, an soil expert at the University of Toronto who was called in to analyze the samples. “It’s hard not to get really excited about this.”
Disappointment - Snails Matter
Worrying political attitudes to conservation
After two and half years writing here about the lives that can be encountered by anyone “Whilst Out Walking” I think I can allow myself to have a first semi-political conservation observation.
Why am I writing this? Simply because, while I fully understand the need to provide more and affordable housing when those wishes come up against conservation projects and biodiversity loss to say nothing of plain pollution it is a simply wrong, wrong, wrong for politicians to ride roughshod over long established environmental protection laws to plant their houses and pipelines in sensitive and vulnerable areas.
Britain - small scale but hard to forgive
UK Chancellor (ie: finance minister) Rachel Reeves is pushing her build, build regardless agenda by changing the environment assessments that are part of planning law in the country. She admits that she is working with a developer she has a “good relationship” with (not a good message) and with shrug of her shoulders and sneer complains about development being held up by - quote - “Snails too small to see” (aquatic pulmonate gastropod mollusks in the family Planorbidae).
She described the planning blockage as being due to “some snails on the site that are a protected species or something”, adding: “They are microscopic snails that you cannot even see, and they haven’t been able to build there.” The chancellor appeared to be referring to the little whirlpool ramshorn snail, which is 5mm in diameter, and one of the rarest creatures in Britain. It is an indicator of clean rivers and ponds as it is very sensitive to sewage pollution … A Treasury spokesperson said “This government is reforming the outdated planning system that’s been holding this country back – so we can build the 1.5m homes and infrastructure that hardworking people need.”
Craig Bennett, CEO of the Wildlife Trusts, said: “For many decades in Britain we have had a proud tradition of following science and evidence when deciding whether to build things or not and that is what happens most of the time. It is therefore shocking to hear the chancellor boast allowing people with privileged access to try and circumvent some of these processes that have been put in place by parliament, and to hear the way that the chancellor just dismisses ecological science as if it somehow doesn’t matter.”
In an earlier statement on planning regulations
Officials say they have been told to do as little as legally possible to prevent approvals for housebuilding in England … The agency’s role in judging planning applications is enshrined in law, but Reeves is working on a planning and infrastructure bill that could rip up many of the rules around permitted developments.
That’s it - got it out of my system.
Found yesterday … link follows.
Your Habitat Destruction is My Habitat Destruction
We call the natural home of wild things “habitat.” Destroy that habitat and you destroy their homes. It’s that simple.
Clearing trees is habitat destruction, even clearing dead trees, which are an important part of the ecosystem.
Regular mowing is habitat destruction. Functionally, lawns may as well be deserts.
Occasional mowing is also habitat destruction. Mowing meadows once a year to fight back invasives and even woody natives can be a force for good when undertaken at the right time. But it too rarely is.
Destroying habitat drives wild things—the ones with the ability to move before being killed—into smaller and smaller parcels, which support neither adequate species richness nor vibrancy.
The fields we mow may belong to us in a legal sense, but the destruction of life we promulgate serves only the most narrow interests—if it serves any interest at all.
Habitat destruction is a tragedy that impacts our common good. Let’s collectively set out to rectify that mistake this fall by postponing brush cutting and field mowing until late spring, after the last frost warning passes.
We all—all living things—share the commons. Those of us with agency also share responsibility for not taking more than the native ecology can handle, and we’ve already exceeded that budget. We need to do better.
Rachel Reeves' attitude to nature is so astonishingly ignorant and tone deaf too as most people in the UK care about nature at least in the abstract. I didn't expect a huge amount of this new Labour government, but nor did I expect to be so disappointed in them so soon.
Typical profoundly ignorant politician (Reeves). Now that is a species I wish would go extinct.