Greetings!
However excited I
might be at the advent of spring, I am nothing compared to the
wildlife at The Mill. It is cacophony season here.
The day starts well
before dawn with mother otter leaving her pup for one last feeding
foray, the pup eeking (it is just a single offspring this time)
with the regularity and volume of a car alarm. I promise you it
is as intense as it is noisy as the young otter seeks to reassure his
or herself that they will not be abandoned by mum.
By the way we had a
unusual visitation by a mink in broad daylight, the first one in some
years, otters usually being a good deterrent for mink. As you will
see from the video it was more fascinated by me than scared, popping
its head out from a water vole burrow. What you do not see in
the video was the warm up act. The mink had been on the island,
checking out the goose nest, it being the honking of that pair that
drew me outside to witness the aforesaid mink being chased off the
island, across the lake and then along the bank.
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Next up are the
ducks, fewer in number again this year, but every bit as vocal,
quacking as they relocate at dawn from river to lake, then back
again. Then back again, again. Then back again, again, again. Why? I
have no idea. The native mallards have been joined by a very odd
looking, solitary, Indian runner duck. He is now part of their duck
tribe, but as a non-flying member of the community, he is a bit of a
waddling fool. As the mallards fly from one point to the next he
follows like a cripple in callipers as fast as his hips will allow,
apparently about to tumble at any moment, before lunging gratefully
into the water where he does at least look half graceful. As yet
our Indian arrival has not twigged the value of fish pellets looking
on with some bemusement as the others compete with the trout for our
daily offering. Into this mix, until a few days ago, you had to add
two competing pairs of geese but they seem to have disappeared,
perhaps discouraged by the mink.
The rising of the
sun naturally impels the numerous songbirds to add their tuppence
worth to the growing bird orchestra which I would say reaches a
crescendo about an hour after sunrise, at which point things calm
down a bit during the day, though it will all kick off again at dusk.
In between it is the high-pitched chirrup of the kingfisher,
strangely not dissimilar to the otter eek, that will punctuate the
passage of the day at regular intervals as they zip like flaming blue
Exocets from one feeding perch to the next, to both seek food and
mark territory.
As I say, come dusk
the morning chorus hits a sort of repeat but more restrained and less
intense as everyone goes about their business in seeking safe refuge
for the night ahead. Once it is almost dark the first out will be the
bats who, in contrast to just about all the others, are mercifully
silent, weaving in the air to capture their daily diet of insects
until the chill drives all the bugs to bed and the bats follow to
their tree roosts favouring, just now, the many holes and cracks of
the ash trees on their final throes of dieback life.
For a while it will
be silent but the nighttime crew will not be long coming. Maybe some
fighting foxes, who scream at each other like wounded infants, will
kick things off. If not, the eeking with percolate up from down
the valley, drawing ever closer until it is right beneath my window.
The next, and eternal, cycle at the wildlife park will have begun.
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Dawn at Nether Wallop Mill -
not as silent as it looks
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The cost of river
water
You may have seen
the articles in the papers earlier in the week that reported the
quandary the Canals & Rivers Trust finds itself in with regard to
the River Usk and the Monmouth and Brecon Canal. The latter relies on
the former for water which has essentially been free and unregulated
since the canal opened in the early 1800’s. Clearly, at times, this
abstraction has been to the detriment of the Usk, once a great
Atlantic salmon river. However, new laws that protect rivers will
force the Trust to pay for the water at a potential cost of a
£100,000 a week in dry periods.
I, like I suspect
you, am having a hard time feeling sorry for the canal users. Why
should one party benefit from a resource taken from another to the
detriment of that other? My other question is the destination of that
£100,000. Not the River Usk but rather Welsh Water! In what mad
universe is the Usk water the property of Welsh Water to sell for a
profit? Of course, I am sure there is some cost to the physical
transfer of the water from river to canal but I would confidently bet
a pound to a penny that most of the infrastructure that Welsh Water
inherited for free at the time of privatisation was built by
the canal engineers in the 18th century.
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The other thing
that struck me was the grant the Canals & Rivers Trust, one of
the UK’s largest charities led by a CEO who pockets £215,000 a year,
receives from the government each year which is an impressive £53
million to maintain 2,000 miles of canals and associated structures.
Would that our rivers be treated so generously. The Environment
Agency spend on rivers in 2023/24, aside from flood defence, was a
paltry £22.3m of which you contributed £20.9m in fishing licences
fees with the government chipping in an additional £1.4m. Whoopee!
And just so you know, at least half of that £22.3m went on overhead
and administration, with no more than £10m actually spent on what
most of us would regard as worthwhile boots-on-the ground effort.
As ever, fishing,
fishers and rivers find themselves at the unpleasant end of the dirty
stick.
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In slightly better news
It did not get the
coverage it deserved but the long running David vs. Goliath legal
battle between the Pickering Fishing Association and the Department
of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) came to an end last
week when the Court of Appeal handed victory to the Association,
throwing out the appeal by the Department to overturn a previous
High Court judgment.
In a nutshell, the
previous judgment had concluded that, following many years of sewage
pollution to the Costa Beck in North Yorkshire, the measures put in
place by the Environment Agency (EA) on behalf of Defra to protect
and restore the Beck were essentially window dressing that
failed to fulfil the duties of care required under the Water
Framework Directive.
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This rather dry
ruling may be one of the most significant in decades forcing
government to put real measures in place through its agencies such as
the EA and Defra, to properly restore rivers damaged by pollution
rather the than the box ticking, nothing-more-to-see-here actions
that so inflamed the Pickering Association to take the legal action
supported by Fish Legal.
Some wondered why
Defra battled this to the grim and bitter end, spending what is now
wasted money running to hundreds of thousands of pounds, by going to
the Court of Appeal. My guess is that the mandarins in Whitehall saw
this as one last roll of the dice for, very soon, a Defra file will
land on the desk of Rachel Reeves detailing the billions required to
fulfil the letter of the law. And high time to.
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Back to the
normal random collection of questions inspired by the events that
took place on this date in history or topics in the Newsletter.
1) Which ship left left Queenstown, Ireland, for New
York on this day in 1912?
2) Which is the longest canal in the UK?
3) Which is the loudest bird in the UK?
Answers are at
the bottom of this Newsletter.
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A bit ahead of
time, but Happy Easter!
Best wishes,
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1) The Titanic
2) The Grand
Union Canal, spanning 137 miles and connecting London with
Birmingham.
3) The bittern
who’s ‘boom’ travels as far as 3 miles.
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