Drama in the wings

I love this photo of the blackbird!

He was perching on one of the chopped top branches of the cherry tree.

The evening light, like the black against a clouded sky, lends itself to dramatic images. This is Tane.

Anyway, drama. And I'm not thinking of plays and TV so much as all the stuff that we do not actually see. I'm thinking of the email I received recently from Wild Justice. There are regulations in place that allow the use of rat poisons, under certain conditions, to protect human health. The poisons all fail safe environmental use tests, and these regulations are meant to prevent them poisoning wildlife. It's not working. Levels of the poisons in red kites and buzzards are higher than ever. A white tailed eagle - very rare in this country - was killed by these toxins.

Death isn't quick. It can take days, with the victims becoming increasingly lethargic. They may be predated or run over while feeling very ill and their deaths are then not assumed to be related to poison, so the situation is worse than we know.

You can see the full report here.

As the birds fall out of the sky, badgers are being trapped and shot on the ground. The badger cull is a carnival of fools. There is nothing about it that makes sense - apart from a political party traditionally associated with cities seeking to improve relations with the farming community. There is literally nothing else about this shit-show that bears any kind of analysis. You can read what the Badger Trust have to say here. Incidentally, they also argue that the vaccination will not help the situation: it is expensive and time consuming; it's not 100% reliable; it may increase the number of badgers testing positive for Bovine TB thus increasing fear around badgers; and farmers want badgers dead not dosed. What would make sense is cleaning up the dairy industry. Their excellent report is here.

Was it Chekhov who said that if you see a gun early in a play, you know it'll be used before the end of the play? Well, you see a non-human anywhere around these islands and you can guarantee some human means will threaten to kill it before the curtains would have come down on its existence. Yeah, rather shit analogy-thing, but, well... I tried.