Greg du Toit, amazing under-pond photographer, 02.03.10

This is the latest newsworthy wildlife photograper, Greg du Toit. He spent months of his life submerged in an African drinking pond to take some stunning photos. He contracted malaria and verious nasty parasitic conditions best not even thought about.
Here are some of his photos tomorrow. He seems an honest man. But so did the winner of the Wildlife phoo competition,Luis Rodriguez, whose wonderful Iberian Wolf photo can be seen below. It’s just it has turned out that Luis had a tame wolf. It was less hard than we though. But, Elizabeth remarks that it is hard to train wolves and we should not despise Rodriguez all the same, he put a lot of time into the photo, just it was training time, not following the animal around... It is still a stunning shot of wolf and wolves are now hunted again even in civilized countries such as Sweden. They need people on their side!

Here is the wonderful Winter Olympic entrant: Snowfox. Perfect take-off, near
perfect entry into the snow. Gold medal? 16.02.10

This handsome Polarbear waves goodbye 02.03.10
 due to all the dust in the air from the shrinking glaciers. At least we can stop all the futile dusting of our houses, it is Global Warming, not Poor House-keeping that is causing the dirt.
Polar bears are indeed very endangered.
To see some, as above, floating out to sea, is not so surprising. This has always happened to these ice-experts. Sometimes you misjudge things and your home turns out

to be unsafe. It happens to humans too.. Look at Haiti, look at Chile, look at France at this very moment. But the bears can cope surprisingly well. They carry blubbery fat and have large feet, well adapted to swimming.
They are also very clever at getting good publicity for themselves, they look much more worthy of effort and money in their kitty than the poor French, stranded in their kitchens..
It is a bit sad really but the English prefer to rescue old donkeys to rescuing starving African Children.
it is probably because the donkeys can’t talk and can be presumed to be eternally grateful whereas the children will grow up and complain..or,even become politicians...

 Polarbear Photography, Part One

Many people are enchanted by the lovely polar-bear photos we have been putting up. The bears look cuddly. The snow looks fluffy. It all looks so lovely in the fresh cold air, and it makes such wonderful photos. This gentleman had saved for 16 years to make a phot-trip to the Arctic.He certainly got some unforgettable results...07.02.10

The result can be seen below.. He will not forget this trip. Next time we hope he takes our advise and saves up again, for a trip in a submarine. It is safer...

Cold weather and snow are very photo genic, if not very cosy.Here are some excellent photos of polar bears. Good job that these don’t live in Sweden, where they would soon have faced a bear-cull, no doubt. The Swedish language refers more to wolves tha to bears, a chilly winter is a ‘varga-vinter’ a wolves winter. Suits bears well, thanks! The photos below tooks months to take. 07.01.09

Steve Bloom wants to show us that the world out there, in the wild, is just that.
 Untamed. Wild.
He’s right.We are very fond of giving the animals human names and suiting them to our perception.
The British are exceptionally fond of rescuing animals. Sometimes we forget that the nature of the beast may be such that it prefers to go it’s own way..If we had resued the dinosaurs, history might have looked totally different.

Local News:

The sad news from Mid Devon is that the swallows left last week. On the Friday they were at home, packing, but on the Saturday morning they were all gone. The country side is the poorer without them. There are many buzzards swirling around at the moment and it is good to see how successfully they are breeding. The swans have reared a magnificent 8 cygnets on the Canal at Tiverton. They are a fine sight at the moment.

 A Fisherman’s Tale. Fishermen always exagerate, don’t they?

 The deer was released upon landing and was very happy. He was tired but not injured. Well done, fishermen!

photos, A. Ratcliff

This bird is an unusual one, a Striated Caraca. These come from the Falkland Islands or Tierra del Fuego. They are very similar in theri habits to our buzzards in that they walk around a lot and feed maily on small things on the ground, carrion, etc. They don’t go in for daring dives at all. Caracaras are very easy to train, this one going to heel better than many a dog. A slight problem is that they are very intelligent and the handler was very worried his bird would leave him for one of the beef-burger stands. Our reporter, who ate one of the hot-dogs, thinks he had nothing to worry about, no self-repecting bird of prey would eat those hot-dogs

The Caracara declined to fly very high,it probably prefers Ryan Air.

Swan Water-skiing.

Now that spring is here we can take up water-sports again. Swan water-skiing is very exciting. If suitable locations can be found it may be demonstrated at the Season’s Beater Trials during the lengthy break for Soup.It should be very popular with the large crowds who might otherwise possibly get a trifle bored at times.

 The First Swallow was seen yesterday, the 13th of April,on the mid-Devon Hills. This always gladdens the heart. Let us hope the Swallows and the swifts have a better breeding season than they did in the miserable summer of 2008 when they didn’t rear many young at all.

Meals for sex, what’s new?

Below we see a chimp. it has been discovered that male chimps give gifts of food to the females, in the hope of sex later. Well, not totally unexpected, they are our close relations after all and I’m sure many of the girl-grooms in Sex in the Countryside have experienced similar behaviour.

 The same seems to go for Birds, who are on the look-out for real estate: Offer up a fine country home and you’re more likely to find yourself a bride...

A Deer-stalking Walk with the Camera:

Far from idling whilst on strike, Game Bird took the opportunity to go on a deer-stalk with the camera.She managed to find a herd of deer who were very sensibly sheltering from the bitter wind under a hedge. She managed to get several photos before they got wary and departed out of sight.They are not as good as the widebeeste photos, but then, the light is known to be better in Africa.

24/04/09

 I recently watched an excellent Wildlife Program about Wildebeeste. There was only one thing wrong with it: It was about a pride of dim lions that stayed put and waited for a takeaway to be delivered whilst, all the time, there was a nearby McDonald’s open.

But, how can one announce a program to be about the migration of wildebeeste and then never mention the animals again, apart from the now compulsory sequence of them being eaten at a water-crossing by crocodiles?

How long does a wildebeeste live, in the wild? How many are there in the groups? Do they stay in their families?
It is the same with the Zebras: Do we ever get to follow a few radio-tagged zebra in the huge migrations and the large herds? How long do they live? How many foals can a zebra mare(hinnyjinny,zebby?) produce in her life-time and what percentage survive? Does anybody know?
Oh, you say, it’s not interesting, they are grazers and flight animals. Yes, but they are still crucial to the eco-system and they are interesting in themselves. Looking harder at herd-behaviour and groups within groups and families within that group may well help us understand our domesticated horses better, just as looking at wolves helps us understand dog-behaviour better.Maybe looking at chimps would help us understand ourselves better too, the variation in the DNA is minimal, after all.
 And why the stripes on the Zebra? I think it is too confuse the predator so it finds it hard to focus on it’s selected animal.. I bet zebra are like sheep and horses, they hate that feeling that somebody has their eye on them... So they have taken the precaution of dressing in a fashionable and confusing manner.

Here we show one of those obligatory photos, making it seem like the wildebeeste spends all it time in  synnchronized diving contests

Moose or Elk? Canadian or Swedish?

 Many thanks to Gunilla from Sweden who pointed out Gamebird’s error of putting a Swedish Moose into the Beating Line Hazards. The Editor wishes to clarify matters. Elk in Canada are apparently Wapiti Deer.
To the left we can see Canadian Moose and below, left, is a young Swedish bull Moose. These are similar but are different subspecies. A Wapiti Deer can be seen below, for comparison.

On the Beating line page we now have some English Red Deer. We hope to have an article on deer-stalking soon, at least stalking for photographs.
We have to wait for better weather as our reporter is overun with both reporting and other work. Bear with us and we hope to go stalking. Possibly without Wolfi!