Wildlife 2007

[ranunculus]

I think it otter be better known .... then people might tarka more notice of such a beautiful statue!

OK....I'm making the appointment....Dr Fritzheim, 10.30am...I'll bring the medication.

Look after Sue....she deserves better!

[Lesley Cox]

It certainly IS of interest Tom. "A Ring of Bright Water" is a beautiful and moving book, one of my old favourites.

I like Rafa's snake too. Their total absence from NZ is perhaps the only reason I'd like to live somewhere else - Australia for instance.

[Carlo]

I have to confess...when I first read Tom's "this might be of interest to older..." and saw the thumbnail of the otter statue...it looked like a dinosaur--and I wondered where we were going....

(shameless 'Wildlife 2007' post: read "Squirrel Angst..." at my website for a gardener's take on the furry beasts...).

Carlo

[fermi de Sousa]

Hi Mark,
As I was trying to intimate in the text, the swallows should be just visitors, but they don't leave! we started with a single pair a few years ago (just after the carport was put up)and the numbers have grown. During the summer there can be about 4 dozen of them roosting all over the carport. It means a lot more car washing!
Leslie,
as pretty as they are Aussie snakes are best admired from a distance! Or preferably in a photo!
I think my fondness for Scotland started when I read Gavin Maxwell's books.
cheers
fermi

[Rob]

I've got a plastic bowl in the garden which has filled up with rain, and caught this pic of a frog using it for a quick dip.



Rob

[Lesley Cox]

"Twenty froggies went to school
Down beside a rushy pool.
Twenty little coats of green..."

For the remaining lines of this delightful verse, email me privately. It is is entirely "clean" and was the verse my mother used (and so did I) when applying Vicks Vaporub to small chests to relieve the miseries of a cold in the head. Every household should know it.

[mark smyth]

- insert swear word - cat damage

[mark smyth]

Fermi which swallow are they?

[mark smyth]

meet a Nathusius' pipistrelle

[Rob]

Do you wear gloves to handle the bats?

It looks like a bare finger in the back ground, but it's not in focus enough to tell.

Rob

[mark smyth]

every time! but I lie. I dont use gloves because it's not fair on the bats. The best and only glove I would use is the pig skin glove that fighter pilots use. The chances are being bitten by a rabid bat in the UK and Ireland is very slim because only one species is known to carry it and it stays away from people. The Myotis bats - Daubenton's, Whiskered and Natterer's - raely come in to contact with people. So far the disease is confined to the Daubenton's bat but it doesnt stop me visiting a huge roost that I can walk in to

[Rob]

I have just googled rabies in bats and it seems a very tiny risk.

Strange that it was in the back of my mind as a risk, I guess the media give bats an unfair reputation.

'The report revealed just 2% of one species of bat - the Daubenton - could carry the rabies disease after antibodies were found in its blood.

Deaths from bat rabies are extremely rare and since 1977 there have been three deaths in Europe attributed to EBVL infections, including that of Mr McRae'

Rob

[mark smyth]

It's recommended that bat workers wear gloves. I've seen people using thick leather gardening gloves that are so unfair to the bats. I'm sure all the members have used them in the past for pulling nettles

[TC]

Having a predilection for posting items that have a tenuous link with the subject matter, here goes again !
Yesterday was a beautiful warm Summer's day - at last -so we went to Turnberry lighthouse for a spot of sea watching
Some porpoises off shore and the usual Gannets etc.  The paddle steamer Waverley turned up on its way to Ailsa Craig - a trip we had taken a week ago.  So this feeds into a few shots of the Craig.  Even from the half mile from the shore, you could hear the passengers enjoyong their trip "doon the water" as the Firth of Clyde is known to Glaswegians.

[Paul T]

Mark,

That Nathusius' pipistrelle is such a cutie!!  I wish we could easily find bats around here, but they're not that common a thing hereabouts unlike you guys up there.  I see in the UK magazines the adverts for how to build shelters for the native bats, and the native bees etc.  That would be so cool.  We don't have many of the little solitary bees here, although there are a few.  We get plenty of wasps, but they're mainly the larger colony types you don't want to mess with.  Wish we could have bat boxes inhabited here.  Then again, if we could I probably wouldn't be as interested in them because they were common!!     I'm a fickle one I am!!