Decent Garden Birding

This delayed autumn migration continues over the Old Vic garden. Another nice bit of garden birding before work this morning HERE with Woodpigeons migrating, Siskins, Redpolls, a Brambling and Redwings. The most laziest and relaxing birding - so good. The fact that the rarest bird I've found this autumn (a Bucks Hawfinch) was while having a coffee in the garden reminds me of the old birding (and life) adage- 'Hard work rarely pays off' which became even more poignant as I watched a Sparrowhawk take a life before I'd finished my morning coffee. Life is short and annoying. 

The moth trap continues to attract odd bits (only four or five moths a night) including Cypress Carpet, Common Plume, Sprawlers, Light Brown Apple moths and Green Brindled Crescents.

Song Thrush

Woodpigeons on the move 

Blackbird cops it and Pied Wagtail legs it 

Cypress Carpet

Green Brindled Crescent 

Common Plume 

Got a new Siamese Fighter (a south-east Asian species) for Jacob's aquarium. In the broadest sense of biodiversity, pets and humans (and cities) are part of that biodiversity. According to LiveScience HERE this is how many pets there are in the US alone:  (Just for context here is total world biomass info HERE)

• 142 million freshwater fish
• 88.3 million cats
• 74.8 million dogs
• 16 million birds 
• 24.3 million small animals
• 13.8 million horses
• 13.4 million reptiles
• 9.6 million saltwater fish

I'm increasingly seeing the importance of domesticated, feral and pet animals in any nature reserve project we are doing. At the moment we have a Syrian Hamster, 3 dogs, a pony and now these fish in addition to the 1020 species in the garden (including domesticated plants). Some definitions of 'nature reserve' can be very limited and also not particularly interesting to the public. I guess the WWT have been pic and mixing this for decades and since Jacob has come along and we have been visiting all these zoos and wildlife parks it has certainly opened my eyes up to some of the broader definitions of wildlife and nature and about the jaw-dropping diversity of animals and plants knocking around the British countryside. I do think more appreciation of this aspect could help with dealing with the doom and gloom of the ecological and climate emergency and the anxiety that can generate. Certainly no excuse for complacency but certainly an excuse to have more fun with it all.  

Meanwhile COP26 rumbles along this week. Most interesting thing I've read is this piece HERE. Looks like I've found the nugget I was looking for out of all this. The capitalisation of the climate crisis while probably doing very little to actually stop climate change for the foreseeable is an investment opportunity which I will be looking to invest in.  At the end of the day getting money to be able to buy natural capital and land/ nature reserves is the best way of protecting nature and the least unethical way of making money is investing in 'sustainable' markets. Doesn't matter if it's a load of bollox- in fact that is probably a good indication that there is money to be made in this new wave of green capitalism and you either get hold of that money and do something good with it, like buying land for nature or someone else is going to get hold of that money and do something stupid with it. As long as that is part of a portfolio of campaigning against exploitation , moneyless projects, philanthropy and sustainable business and sustainable consuming I can't actually see any way of being more ethical and working for nature's recovery while still being in the game  (as opposed to being caught up in the Human Chicken Run).