Rover looking at me

Standing in the food bowl

He started to follow us. I thought it was just a coincidence, but then he flew to catch up, landing just behind us, and walking determinedly in our direction. This happened a couple of times until we got the message, he wanted to be with us.

Why he chose to follow us, we don’t know, but we figured there must be something not right for that to happen. So we turned round and headed back home, to see if Rover would follow us. He did! He kept pace with us back along the road, into our car park, past two cats that were not sure what to make of it all, and onto our terrace. I felt like I’d just taken a dog for a walk, so I decided to call him Rover.

Rover stayed for some time, happy to be near us and avail himself of some of the birdseed we put out in the mornings. When we came indoors to leave him in peace, he made a point of looking up to see if we were still there every few minutes, as you can see in the photos.

Looking at me again

I guess he’s recently fledged and finding his way in the world, and has had a near-miss of some sort. Why he should turn to us for help I do not know, maybe word has gotten round that birds are welcome in our garden.

Rover made himself at home, even settling down on the ground to sleep right next to us. Eventually, he decided to move on, and flew away. We wondered if we’d see him again, and sure enough, he came back that evening.

He’s become a regular visitor now, morning and evening. A couple of days ago we met him on the street again, when he tried to land on my hat as we were returning from our walk. I think he likes us.

Taking a drink

Rover indoors

He proceeded to investigate much of the living room, flying from one place to another. We had some difficulty persuading him to leave, I’m sure he would have happily spent the night if we’d let him. Eventually we coaxed him outside, where, after a decent meal, he flew off into the trees.

He’s been back since, and I hope he continues to visit. I don’t want him to become tame, that wouldn’t be fair to him, but I do want him to know that he’s safe and welcome here, and that we’re happy to see him.

Pigeons have something of a bad reputation, but once you’ve met one in person, you realise that they’re every bit as pretty and elegant as other birds.

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Deer in the undergrowth

Deer close-up

Just occasionally, off in the distance, we’ll see a deer making his or her way slowly back up the hill, leaving us humans to our noise and bustle. We don’t often see them, and they don’t tend to stay long.

This fellow, however, has become something of a regular. He’s been here several mornings of the last two weeks, ambling around slowly in the bushes right next to our terrace. He’s nowhere near as shy as other deer, and doesn’t run away at the sight of people. He takes his time, wandering back to the trees and away into the forest as if he owns the place.

Maybe he does.

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magpie on nearby barn roof

magpie coming for peanuts

Sure enough, we were being spied on by this magpie. He’s watching us to see when we put out peanuts on the garden wall. As soon as we do, the moment we turn our backs to walk back indoors, he comes down, takes one, and flies off with it. He has to be quick, because he is not the only one who knows about the peanuts. Someone else knew about them first.

We first put out peanuts for a crow that started visiting us in late winter. He took an interest in our garden when he saw the peanuts we were putting out for the birds. He would perch on the fence, looking in, trying to summon up the courage to come into the small, enclosed space. Sometimes he would come down and take one. Often, he was too wary to actually come down, so missed out on a treat.

magpie departing with a peanut

We noticed that the crow has a damaged leg. He hobbles on it and is clearly somewhat handicapped, which we think may have made him more shy and cautious than he would otherwise be. So to make things easier for him, we put the peanuts on the corner of the garden wall, a more exposed place where he would feel safer coming to get them. He would fly to the fence, take a look around, then hop down to the wall and take some nuts.

crow sitting on the fence

He soon learned that if there weren’t any peanuts there, we could be trained to put some out for him. All he had to do was come to the fence, make sure that we knew he was there, then retreat to safety while we came out into the garden. He would watch us through the window, sometimes calling out to get our attention, and only fly off when he saw us get up. Not stupid, this bird!

For a while, the crow had things to himself. Free peanuts for breakfast, and through the day whenever he wanted them. Ahh, the good life! Eventually, however, the magpies, nesting nearby, spotted what was happening, and came to get in on the act. After that things got really interesting, watching how the birds behaved. The magpies would watch the crow come for his first peanut, and as soon as he left, they would come down and help themselves to as many of the remaining nuts as possible. From there, things just escalated.

crow coming in to land

crow looking for peanuts

The crow would often eat his first peanut there on the wall, with the magpies sitting just a beak-length away. The crow is bigger, so can keep the two magpies at bay. After his first peanut, he would pick up two more in his beak, and fly off to enjoy them at leisure. The magpies then came in for the rest.

Then the magpies chicks fledged, two of them, making four magpies in the family team. The crow had to be quicker coming in, and also tried to be more discrete. Sometimes he could get most of the nuts before the magpies spotted him from the trees, but if he was slow off the mark, the magpies would take the lot very quickly.

Eventually he took to sitting on the roof of the barn at dawn, watching for me to open the doors to the terrace and put out the first peanuts of the day. Then he’d be in like a shot, the moment I turned round to walk away. If the magpies weren’t around, he’d take his first peanut away and hide it in the nearby bushes, then come back for more. If the magpies got there before him, they too would often take some away to hide, and often in the same bushes! There must be quite a stash of them there by now, if they haven’t forgotten about them. Or maybe they’ve all been found by our nightly hedgehog visitors, they doubtless patrol those bushes too.

crow with one peanut

magpie back for more

In case anyone is worried that we may be taming these birds, we’re not. They remain as wary as ever of people, and won’t stay anywhere near when we’re outside. Our role is strictly that of peanut-providers, and we know our place!

Jasmine with some apple

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That sounds pretty awful, but it’s not, it’s actually very good news. You can hear all about it in this video of a talk by Dan Barber. Dan is a New York chef who is quite outspoken in his views on the way we produce food today. He’s also a nice guy, which comes across clearly in the video. If you’d rather read a transcript, here it is.

The farm Dan talks about is Veta la Palma. It’s a fish-farm on the Guadalquivir river, in Spain. It produces 1,200 tonnes of sea bass, bream, red mullet and shrimp each year. Miguel Medialdea, the farm’s biologist, explains that they don’t need to feed their fish because of the way the farm is set up.

Miguel himself says that he is not an expert on fish, but he is an expert on relationships. By working with nature to build a sustainable ecosystem, instead of working against it to maximise profit, Veta la Palma produces fish in a way that also benefits the wildlife of the region.

In fact, their farm is one of the most important private estates for bird life in Europe. Before the farm, there were only 50 bird species there, now they count 250 species. This includes flamingos that commute 150 miles daily from their nesting sites to feed there, following the A92 highway.

If that’s not a recommendation for the quality of the fish, I don’t know what is!

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scorpionfish

When it comes to taking photographs underwater, there’s lots of good advice out there about technique and equipment. I don’t consider myself to be an expert in underwater photography, but I’ve picked up a few simple tips that I haven’t found mentioned anywhere else, so I’d like to share them with you.

I’ve used two cameras underwater, a Nikon Coolpix 990 in an Ikelite housing with an attached strobe, and a Canon Ixus 400 in Canon’s own WP-DC800 housing.

The Ikelite housing is a work of art, but it’s big, and when you dive with it, you can’t ignore it. The controls are big and chunky, easy to manipulate even if you’re wearing thick gloves – which I wasn’t, since I only used it in the Maldives, where you’re not supposed to dive with gloves. It doesn’t wobble around in your hand, you can get a good grip on it thanks to its large handles.

The Canon housing is much smaller, and has correspondingly smaller controls. It could conceivably fit into the pocket of your BCD, though I wouldn’t recommend that as it can be uncomfortable when you inflate your BCD. I prefer the Canon housing for it’s compactness, though I found the Ikelite easier to use in some ways, precisely because of its size.

Clownfish at Giraavaru Thila

Your buddy can help in other ways too. For static subjects, having your buddy illuminate the scene with a diving-lamp is a great help. You shouldn’t rely on flash alone to light your subject for several reasons. For one, it’s not nice to the fish to just set off a flash in front of them, if there’s a constant source of illumination they can at least adapt to it, and the flash is then less of a glare. Using flash to supplement the light, instead of as the main source of light, is kinder to them.

Whitemouth moray (Gymnothorax meleagris) at Giraavaru Thila

If you’re relying on autofocus, again, a well-lit scene is important. But even then, modern cameras can easily get confused underwater. Floating particles in the water can distract the camera, and it may have a hard time identifying the subject. This is especially true if you are trying to photograph something at the back of a hole, or hidden away somewhere in a coral reef. If you know what you are looking for before you dive, you might want to lock the camera focus at an appropriate distance, and simply press the button when you are at the right distance from your subject. That still leaves some guesswork, but at least the camera isn’t hunting for focus, draining the battery all the time.

If you do leave autofocus enabled, you can help the camera by setting it to focus only on the centre of the scene, instead of letting it guess which part of the scene you are interested in. It’ll probably guess wrongly underwater, and you can always crop the finished photograph to re-frame the subject.

The reef at Kihaa Rock

No, seriously, if you haven’t used the camera housing for a while, since your last diving holiday for example, consider taking the housing down without the camera in it first. That way, if there are any aging defects that will cause leaks, you get to find out about them without ruining your camera. You should test the housing to the maximum depth that you intend to use it, just to be sure. Thanks for the advice, Antonio!

These suggestions may not help you take the greatest photos ever seen, but I find they increase my success-rate for casual shots considerably. I hope you find them useful!

Giant moray (Gymnothorax javanicus) with cleaner shrimp

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two hedgehogs eating peanuts

They first appeared a couple of months ago, not long after the last snows melted here. We first found evidence of them in the droppings they left behind. When it comes to animal droppings, I don’t know – much, but a few minutes with google confirmed that these were likely the work of those cutest of creatures, the hedhehog.

Sure enough, it turns out that we have not one, but two (at least!) that come round for a nightly visit. Around 10pm each evening they squeeze under the garden gate, help themselves to a meal (breakfast?) of peanuts and sunflower seeds, then set off on their rounds.

(These photos are rather poor quality because they were taken without flash, so they are several-second exposures. I don’t like to use flash on animals, especially nocturnal ones.)

When we realised who it was that was visiting us at night we started putting out more nuts for them, instead of just letting them have the leftovers from the birds. After all, the birds don’t leave much! At first we left peanuts in their shells. The hedgehogs made short work of them but also left something of a mess, with bits of shell everywhere. After looking around the internet for information on how to feed hedgehogs, I found very little that talked about peanuts. So I contacted the British Hedgehog Preservation Society, to ask their advice.

Fay Vass promptly replied, telling me that unsalted peanuts are fine, but that they should be chopped or crushed, as whole or half-nuts can get stuck in the roof of their mouths. Thanks for the advice, Fay, they now have a diet of chopped nuts and sunflower seeds to start their evening.

You might think that the British Hedgehog Preservation Society is a small group, tucked away in some quiet place in the English countryside. Small they may be, but that hasn’t stopped them from taking on McDonalds over their hedgehog-unfriendly packaging, successfully persuading them to redesign it so hedgehogs can’t get stuck in it. Good for them!

So now, thanks to the British Hedgehog Preservation Society, our local night patrol is well and safely fed. They eat for 15-20 minutes, then they’re off on their rounds, keeping our terrace slug-free.

And the best thing of all is that they work for peanuts!

...still eating...

...and off on patrol

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Mystery plant

It appeared in pots filled with fresh compost this year, so I’m assuming the seed was in the compost. It started growing as soon as I filled the pots, in March, so it seems to be pretty hardy. I left it there, because the leaves look pretty, and I wasn’t ready to plant anything else there, but now the time has come to decide it’s fate, so I’d like to know what it is!

Here are a couple more close-up views. The leaves have no scent, even when crushed. If anyone has an idea what it might be, I’d love to know!

close-up

another close-up

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Some people believe that there is no level of exposure which is safe, and that any radiation of any kind must be avoided. Some believe that nuclear power stations emit radiation, much as coal-fired stations emit smoke. Political parties like Europe Ecologie even claim, in their manifesto, that we should abandon nuclear power in France because of the radiation it puts out. These views are very widely held, but is there any truth in them?

I don’t think so. I think that radiation exposure can be perfectly safe providing the level is low enough, because zero exposure is simply not possible. You and I are exposed to several sources of background radiation on a constant basis, and I feel just fine, thank you very much! Let me tell you about some of these sources.

One source is my own body. No, I don’t glow in the dark, but like all people, my body emits a low level of background radiation. Potassium and carbon isotopes present in the body contribute about one tenth of the total radiation we receive.

Radiation also reaches us from outer space, and it comes up from the ground. It varies from place to place, but there’s nowhere on earth that you can avoid it. Medical procedures, such as x-rays and scans, also contribute to our exposure.

What if we stay indoors, and never go to the doctor? Alas, that might not help. Many things found indoors emit low levels of radiation. Granite, which we might use for our kitchen workspace, is one example. Natural gas, which we use to heat our homes and cook our food, is another. Radon, a naturally occurring radioactive gas, can build up in confined spaces such as homes. Radon accounts for fully half of the exposure we get. So staying indoors might well increase your exposure!

Many buildings, such as Grand Central Station in New York, have higher than average background radiation levels, because of the materials they were constructed with. The radiation emitted by Grand Central Station exceeds the levels allowed for a nuclear power plant. Think about that next time you’re waiting for a train!

Taking the plane may not be much better. Airline pilots and frequent flyers can receive twice as much radiation as those of us who stay on the ground, because the thinner air at high altitude provides less protection against radiation from space.

What about nuclear power stations, how much radiation do we get from them? Not much. About 0.014%. That means that, of your daily dose of radiation, nuclear power accounts for 12 seconds worth. Nuclear power plants may actually reduce your radiation exposure, because the fossil fuels they displace emit more radiation than they do!

Of course, too much radiation is dangerous. Radiation can and has killed people. But it’s the dose that makes the poison. You can enjoy a beer or a glass of wine from time to time without long-term effects, but drink a bottle of whisky a day and you can expect your liver to pack up. You can smoke the occasional cigar with no worries, but smoke 40 cigarettes a day and don’t be surprised if you end up with lung cancer. So many of the things that we encounter or enjoy in everyday life are toxic in large quantities, yet we don’t notice any adverse effects if we keep our exposure low.

So, you and I are surrounded by radiation, wherever we are and whatever we do. It’s not because we have nuclear power stations, either, the dose they give us is nothing to worry about. Is there any form of radiation that does cause me concern? Well, yes, there is. I try to avoid getting sunburn.

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dust in the air over the Geneva valley

Geneva airport is closed, of course. The “Service de protection de l’air” says there’s no need for the population to worry, and that they will let us know if it gets bad. Why is it, then, that at Geneva airport they have put plastic film over the aircraft engines? They need protecting but we don’t?

Maybe the service de protection de l’air thinks that, what with all the industial VOCs that make Geneva smell so bad these days, an extra volcano or two won’t make much difference?

I don’t think I’ll wait for them to tell me the air is bad. We’re keeping an eye on the level of fine pariculates in the air. We’re staying indoors as much as possible with the windows closed and our air filters running.

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my garden in 2009

That’s actually a rather complex question. A garden is a place where we meet nature face to face, where we try to grow things and so does nature. Nature has had a lot of practice at this, and for us to impose our will may take some considerable effort. Alternatively, we could give nature a helping hand, working with it, instead of against it. That way, we can have a beautiful garden which is good for the environment, and which may even take less effort to maintain than we would otherwise expend.

We maintain our gardens with lawn-mowers, hedge-trimmers, fertilisers, herbicides and pesticides. Machinery requires energy (electricity or petrol) to run, and the chemicals we use have to be refined, bottled, and shipped to us. Herbicides and pesticides are obviously not environmentally friendly, they’re designed to kill things after all. Many of them are also harmful to humans, so careless use can have serious consequences for you or your neighbours.

We might think that fertilisers can’t be bad for the environment, after all, they’re supposed to make things grow. But many fertilisers rely on minerals mined somewhere in the world being processed and transported during their manufacture, much like many of the things we buy these days. Fertilisers that wash off the land and into rivers and lakes can upset those ecosystems by causing excess growth of algae, which can in turn kill fish and other aquatic animals. So even fertilisers come with an environmental cost.

cricket on beetroot

One easy way to keep weeds under control is with a plastic ground-sheet. This is a sheet that covers the ground, you cut holes in it to plant the things you want. The sheet prevents weeds from growing, and your plants have no competition. You may have seen them at the side of motorways, where they are often used. If your plants are low and spreading, they will soon hide the sheet from view. Otherwise, you can cover the sheet with bark or gravel to hide it.

Another good way to control weeds is with mulch. Mulching means putting garden waste onto the surface of the soil. There it forms a dense mat as it decays, which helps protect the soil from drying out and makes it hard for weeds to grow. Grass-cuttings are ideal for mulch, but you can also use autumn leaves, straw, vegetable peelings from the kitchen, or anything that will pack down densely over time. Mulching also feeds the soil, as the mulch decays and releases its nutrients, just like it would in a compost heap. If you use enough mulch on your garden, you may never need to add fertiliser to your plants, the mulch will provide everything they need. That’s easier (and less smelly) than managing a real compost heap!

Alternatively, if you choose your plants carefully you can get the same effect from the plants themselves. There are many low-growing, fast-spreading plants that are very effective at preventing weeds from getting established. If you have only a small area to cover, hardy alpines will do the job nicely. Your local garden centre can help you choose some that are good for your situation. Once they have covered the ground they need very little maintenance. Plants which are taller than the cover-plants will not be affected, so you can have your roses growing quite happily surrounded by living weed-control.

You can also use plants such as clover and alfalfa, which serve double-duty as green manures. This means that they actually enrich the soil as they grow, so you will need less fertiliser to encourage your plants. Either grow them all year round, or just scatter the seeds on the ground towards the end of summer and let them grow through the winter, then dig them in in spring when you prepare to plant for the coming summer.

orange butterfly

Actually, that’s one reason why pesticides are a bad idea. They kill all species of insect, not just the ones you want them to. But the ones we want to kill will bounce back first, and multiply rapidly. That’s because they have no competition for their food (i.e. your plants) and nothing to keep them in check.

Birds are very easy to attract, just keep putting out food for them. They will still take the insects from your plants, especially in the breeding season, because they feed them to their young. Raising chicks is hard work for the parents, so if they can get a quick snack from your bird feeders and then find a juicy fat caterpillar for their young all in one place, they will appreciate it. We’re not the only ones to appreciate one-stop shopping. If you put up some nest boxes too, you can have resident pest-control working for you, all day long.

Frogs and hedgehogs will eat slugs, and they and lizards eat insects, so they can also be very beneficial to your garden. You don’t need a pond to attract frogs, they will be happy with any permanently damp and overgrown area. A shaded spot covered in weeds might well do the job. They can travel quite a distance too, so you may find them even if the nearest pond or stream is some way away. You can attract lizards and hedgehogs by creating spaces where they can hide from predators, such as piles of stones or branches, or leaving part of your garden overgrown. If you leave such shelters available in the winter, they may hibernate there, so they are ready to go to work for you as soon as the spring sun stirs everything into life. Hedgehogs will come regularly if you put out food to attract them, so why not spread some peanuts around your lettuce instead of slug-pellets?

sunflower

verbascum thapsus

You can also choose plants that are less susceptible to pests in the first place. Maybe a honeysuckle will go nicely on that wall instead of a climbing rose, which is likely to suffer from aphids. Need tall flowers for the back of the garden? How about collecting seed from Common Mullein (Verbascum Thapsus) and planting that. They look just as good as any expensive hybrid you’ll find in the garden centre, and being a native species, they’re probably more tolerant to pests.

great tit and goldfinch on sunflower

If you really want to go green with your garden, and can invest some effort to do so, growing your own vegetables is a great idea. By growing your own you can really cut down your carbon footprint by reducing your ‘food miles‘. That means that, instead of someone in the next country growing the stuff, packing it in plastic, and driving it to your local supermarket, you just get it from the garden, and all that plastic and fuel is not needed.

So, making our garden environmentally friendly is not difficult, it only takes a little planning and foresight. Our own environmental footprint, and the quality of wildlife in and around our garden, can vary a lot depending on the approach that we take. You might even save yourself time, money, and effort, and end up with a more satisfying garden as a result.

field of flowers

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