January 2010 – Enviro-Mentalist

Big Garden Birdwatch

So, it was the time of year when all garden birds traditionally do a bunk to the hedgerows and rooftops so that they cannot be counted in the RSPB’s big garden birdwatch statistics. Well, that is often the way that it feels. Still, every year I sit by the window for an hour and try to count all of my little feathered friends.

There seems to have been extra publicity this year due to the concern that the recent cold weather may have done for half of the little birds that we would commonly find in the garden. Is it the case – we will have to wait and see, but, for once, my garden was brimming with life – I struggled to keep up as birds flitted from one side to the other. It appears that my tactic of early morning (9am) nature watching, when it was still cold, paid off.

I managed to see a total of 13 different species this year, more than the 10 that @naturesvoice for the RSPB tweeted. The count started with the ever reliable pair of blue tits, so it should because I think one of them roosts in the pipe from the boiler. They were sooned joined by blackbirds (I counted 5 at one point – not bad for a garden that is only 20’x30′) and chaffinches. The male chaffinches are certainly starting to get some more colour as we move towards Spring, but they are still hard to keep track of as they zoom from one side of the garden to the other, one minute on a feeder, the next foraging around in the undergrowth.

I was particularly pleased that the bullfinches turned up within the allotted hour – they tie with long-tailed tits as my favourite bird – they have been visiting the garden all Winter. I was worried that they would not show today, but, 3 turned up and stayed for a while. (Looking on Twitter it appears that these lovely birds are becoming more common in gardens and, indeed, have recently been removed from the BTO’s Red List). I was also particularly pleased when I saw some sparrows in the garden. I am sure that you have all read the reports about the disappearance of house sparrows, and I definitely haven’t seen very many since the Summer, but, I got a maximum of four, including a couple that turned up just before the end of the hour and stared pitifully at the saucer of frozen water (don’t worry, we went out with fresh water just after the hour).

The best surprise of the hour came from the song thrushes though. Before the Winter we had only rarely seen one young song thrush in the garden in the entire 10+ years that we have lived here, although we can usually hear them singing from the old railway track. However, this Winter one has started putting in an appearance, although he (or she) is usually chased away by a very territorial blackbird (as if there is any other type). But today I was delighted to see two song thrushes in my garden at the same time – partly because they are another bird not doing well, and partly because I am a keen organic gardener and they will certainly help my war against snails.

The total species count as mentioned before was 13 and consisted of blue tit, great tit, greenfinch, bullfinch, chaffinch, robin, dunncock, blackbird, song thrush, starling, house sparrow, wood pigeon, collared dove.

The only regular that did not put in an appearance was the goldfinch. Throughout the year we have up to 8 of these noisy, colourful characters in the garden, but, it appears that they are not very fond of the cold. Throughout the 2 weeks of snow they did not put in any appearance as far as we can tell, but reappeared once the snow had gone. Similarly, they appeared later on today, once the air had warmed up a little. I am not sure where they go, but they are still welcome when they come back.

Fish & Chip Shop Dilemma

We all know that fish stocks are declining, but we are told that we should eat two portions of fish per week, and most of us indulge in the (hopefully) occasional fish and chip supper – so are our food habits compatible with living an ethical lifestyle? In the second post trying to unravel the tangle that is the topic of sustainable fish I examine whether cod and haddock are OK to eat with a clear conscience.

Let’s deal with the easy bit first – unless you know where you local chippy is sourcing its fish from then, I am afraid, that the answer is a definite no. I believe that there are fish and chip shops that do advertise the origin of their fish – but none of these are in Daventry. If you can’t live without your take away, then I would suggest that haddock is a better choice than cod, but your conscience will still find you.

And so to the sustainability of cod and haddock. Stocks of both have been overfished and in many areas continue to be so. According to Greenpeace, most cod fisheries in the Northeast Atlantic are in poor condition, except for Iceland and the Barents Sea where there is better management. All stocks are however, ‘overfished or at risk of being unsustainably harvested’. Haddock has had a similar history, but there is a little more hope. Northwest Atlantic stocks were overfished in US waters until the middle of the 1990s, but since then there has been some recovery. Scientists now believe that some North Sea stocks can be fished sustainably, whilst West of Ireland and Icelandic fisheries need better management. They are also recommending the closure of the fisheries of the West of Scotland. A further complication arises from the fact that cod are also caught when fishing for haddock.

So, it would seem that maybe you can eat an occasional piece of cod or haddock with a clear conscience, but, as ever, it comes with a caveat. It also matters how your fish is caught. In common with lots of fish that live near the sea bed, a lot of cod and haddock is caught by bottom trawling. Not only does trawling result in a large bycatch (typically 30% of the catch by weight is thrown back dead or dying – these are mammals, juvenile fish, turtles and sharks) but it also damages the sea bed. Instead Greenpeace are recommending buying only line-caught fish – this is a more selective fishing method without the associated bycatch and the degradation of the seabed.

According to Greenpeace Atlantic cod and haddock should both be avoided unless the cod is from Waitrose or Marks and Spencer or is line caught or the haddock is Icelandic line caught. But wait a minute, didn’t the scientists say that the Icelandic haddock fisheries need better management – they certainly did, and that all stocks are at risk from overfishing? Does this help – I am not sure. What makes Waitrose and M&S fish so special? A look at Waitrose’s website and my local branch’s fish counter shows that the haddock and cod is indeed Icelandic and line caught, and this includes their prepacked breaded range. M&S’s website leaves me with more questions than answers though. Although M&S now source their cod and haddock from Iceland, their website states that the fish is air-freighted in – how is that sustainable? Their cod is line caught, but, apparently the haddock is trawled or line-caught, and smaller haddock are caught from the west coast of Scotland. This seems to go against the Greenpeace guidelines – maybe they just need to update their website? I hope so – as it makes me start to question the validity of Greenpeace’s advice.

My take on cod and haddock? Both are under pressure, fishing methods need to be changed to reduce the amount taken from the sea, and, we have to pay a little more, eat and waste a lot less and hopefully fish stocks may recover. Will I eat cod and haddock again? Probably, in the future, eventually, but I don’t need to eat fish more than every other month and I will insist on it being line caught. In the meantime I will stick to my pole and line caught, Waitrose own brand, tinned tuna.

Winter bird watching.

As you are no doubt aware Winter can be a great time for birdwatching. Not only do you get the Winter visitors such as Redwings and Fieldfares, but the numbers of our ‘native birds’ are swollen by imports from the rest of Europe – coming for our supposedly milder climate – I guess they have had a bit of a surprise this year, but it is still probably warmer than back home. In addition, they have fewer places to hide, unless they can find some evergreens.

Unfortunately I have found a couple of downsides to birdwatching in Winter – the weather is colder and, it is dark when I go to work and when I come home so ornithological opportunities are somewhat limited. However, I have noticed a large influx of redwings and fieldfares onto the industrial estate in the last week – they have found the sea buckthorn berries that I walk past each morning – yesterday I saw about 20 fieldfares on my way into work, not a good view in the morning gloom, but, good enough.

An added bonus for me, if not the birds this week is that a grey wagtail was tempted into the warmth of the warehouse (joining the wren and robin already there) affording rather nice views, I think it has been coaxed outside now though.

Of course, come the weekend and the opportunities for staring into the snow covered garden increase – this morning was particularly good – well, once I had replenished the feeders. As well as the usual suspects (i.e. blue tit, robin, chaffinch etc) I also spotted a total of 6 bullfinches – a record for my garden – three of each flavour and all there at the same time. We had seen three last weekend, one pair and a lone male which was tolerated by the other two. We had therefore assumed that it was one of the three chicks that had been about in the garden last summer, but to see 6 at the same time was sadly quite exciting after all, this is a bird that has just made it off the BTOs red list of conservation concern. These handsome little birds that spend their time in pairs and make a sound like a squeeky bicycle pump tie with long-tailed tits as my favourite birds. (They are edging into the lead at the moment as they are regulars in the garden so they earn extra points on the lovely birds register.)

None of these would be about if there were no food for them, so please make sure you feed the birds in winter, particularly when it is cold and the ground is covered and frozen – the ones in my garden are particularly fond of sunflower hearts.

Thoughts about Copenhagen and Kyoto.

Copenhagen left me puzzled, not by the lack of agreements from the parties involved, but by my own ambivalence towards the whole thing. After all, I am supposed to be an environmentalist, I should have been avidly following all the reports, debating the successes (if there had been any) and failures. In truth, I paid no attention to it, yes, I read some of the pre-meeting reporting, added a tck tck tck ribbon to my Twitter image, agreed that time was running out and we needed an international resolution, but I didn’t actually think that anything would happen there.

In the meantime I have just finished reading a book (Why We Disagree About Climate Change) which has helped me to clarify my thoughts about Copenhagen. The basis of the book is that everyone has different priorities in life, and perceive the risk of Climate Change differently depending on their circumstances, nothing that is not obvious there. However, one of the later chapters talks about how the idea of an all encompassing agreement at Copenhagen was flawed and was never going to happen. Climate Change has now been altered from a physical manifestation into something more, it is linked to world poverty, economic development and even to religious beliefs. With so many facets to the problem (a so-called ‘dirty problem’) how will we find one solution, a magic silver bullet that will fix everything. The plain answer is that we won’t and, while we are convinced that we will (i.e. we will get an extension to Kyoto) we will stop looking at the solutions to the parts of the problem that we can fix. OK, they may not be the ultimate best answer, but making some progress until something better comes along is surely better than waiting for a solution that may never come.

For example, why was deforestation under discussion? Surely most people believe that it is wrong, so why wasn’t an agreement made by the interested parties, does someone in Iceland have to agree about rainforest destruction? I am sure they agree that it is bad, but put it in with something they don’t agree with and they will vote against.

I have come to the conclusion that I, personally, if I am honest, don’t care about climate change. Any changes to be seen in my lifetime are likely to be already set in motion, I don’t have children and therefore have no future generations to directly care about. I do, however, care about other things that are affected by or do affect climate change. I care about needless waste, lack of energy resources, reduced levels of oil available for the important things because we have wasted lots for electricity and transport, loss of biodiversity, lack of water, lack of available education and the fact that there are just too many people on this planet to consume as much resource as we do, but climate change – not really. Start to look at solving these problems individually and then we will solve the problem that we perceive to be climate change and, if not, we will still be making the world a better place.