Ospreys

 

Ospreys (Pandion haliaetus)

Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons

The ospreys are returning to their UK nesting sites.

Rutland, Poole, Dyfi, Loch Doon, Foulshaw Moss, and others have all recorded ospreys arriving. Some still await their mates, while others are already mating. Some nests are currently unoccupied, as in Loch Arkaig, but this might change in the next few days.

For those who follow the birds, it can be an anxious time, wondering if the ones they watched in 2025, and often in years before, will return this year. Then there are the weeks of watching and waiting and hoping that breeding will be successful and the young birds will survive.

Eggs and baby birds are at risk from predators like the white-tailed eagle, large owls and corvids, and pine martens. Older, stronger siblings will often bully younger chicks, not allowing them to feed. The weather can also be a factor. Driving rain and fierce winds can chill eggs or chicks quickly, particularly if both parents are hunting for food. Sometimes, one of the parents dies, and it is extremely difficult for the surviving bird to source enough food for the chicks and itself. Exhaustion can be deadly.

Rutland Water ospreys at Manton Bay have been successful for thirty years, raising multiple broods of three and four. Ospreys in other locations often struggle to bring one chick to maturity.

They are stunning birds and there are a number of videos on YouTube – just make sure you get the birds and not the Welsh rugby team in Swansea!

Historically, ospreys have been known as sea hawks, river hawks, or fish hawks. They became extinct in Britain in 1916, but careful reintroduction has seen them increase from two breeding pairs in 1967 to over three hundred pairs in the twenty-first century.

Ospreys remain rarer than golden eagles in the UK.

Troglodyte

 

Troglodyte

Troglodytes troglodytes

Calling someone a troglodyte is abusive, but it’s not an insult that’s commonly used in the twenty-first century. There are other, far more stinging labels.

A troglodyte is a person who lives in a cave, the word primarily referring to prehistoric cave dwellers. It comes from the Greek trōglē  (hole) and dyein (to enter)

 In biology, the prefix troglo indicates how much a creature depends on caves. For example, bats and some insects can be described as ‘troglophiles,’ meaning that although they appreciate the shelter caves may afford, they can live outside them.

On the other hand, a ‘troglobite’ is an organism that is adapted to and dependent on caves, like the blind cave fish or cave salamander. Troglobites often have pale skin, poor or no eyesight, a slower metabolism, and heightened senses of touch, smell, or vibration awareness.

         The troglodyte I heard and saw in the garden this morning is more correctly Troglodytes troglodytes, the wren. It is the commonest breeding bird in the UK, but surprisingly rarely seen, at least by me! It feeds on spiders and insects, searching among leaves to find them. It can often be seen creeping mouse-like round plant pots, seeking food.

Wrens do not have huge reserves of fat and suffer appreciably in cold weather. They huddle together for warmth, and in the winter of 1969, 61 wrens were found in a nesting box in Norfolk.

They typically nest between March and July, and often produce two broods per season.

 

Invitations

 

Invitations

Increasingly, during news programmes, we are invited to ‘have a listen to’ an item or a speaker. Is it a friendly, informal way of introducing a snippet of news, or are we being patronised, or even infantilised?

It’s not discourteous to say, ‘Listen to the next item.’

Sometimes we are asked to ‘have a read of’ an article. It’s not a slice of cake to be held in the hand. I don’t ‘have a read’ of a book – I just read it.

We have always ‘had a look at’ things, though perhaps we should say, ‘Look at this,’ but asking someone to ‘have a taste of’ a dish would be more easily expressed as, ‘try this,’ or ‘taste this.’

Must we mangle the language so badly that it bears no relation to what we actually mean? Do we have to wrap every sentence in extraneous vocabulary to make them more acceptable? It’s not good to be peremptory, but it makes little sense to add unnecessary words. They don’t clarify matters.

After I had written this moaning, whingeing piece, I read an article by Giles Coren in The Times. He writes so well.

Samba

 

Samba

                                Capybara (Hydrochoerus hydrochaeris)

Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons

Samba the capybara, who escaped from Marwell Zoo, is still at large, evading capture, and hopefully enjoying her freedom. She and her sister, Tango, both nine months old, were transported from a wildlife park in Suffolk. On March 17^th, the day after they arrived in Hampshire, they both escaped. Tango was caught very quickly, but Samba is proving elusive.

Capybaras are the world’s largest rodents, and are best seen as giant guinea pigs, sharing the same docility and lack of aggression as their much smaller cousins. Adults reach an average length of 1.4 metres and a weight of around 60 kg. They are native to South America, apart from Chile. They are mainly predated on by jaguars, cougars, caimans, and anacondas, none of which they will encounter in UK.

They are semi-aquatic, with webbed feet, and are excellent swimmers, able to swim underwater for minutes at a time. They mate only in water and a female not desirous of a male’s attention, will either leave the water or submerge herself. Presumably, the male would also be able to submerge, so I can’t see how that would help. Maybe they have to keep their heads above water as they copulate.

They can also run at speeds up to thirty-five kilometres per hour for short periods.

However, Samba is one on her own, relishing the peace and tranquillity of the Hampshire countryside. Her putative keepers have used drones, sniffer dogs, and thermal imaging to track her, with limited success. They have subsequently sought and gained permission to bait humane traps with melon and banana for this gentle herbivore, foods which are unlikely to attract badgers or other carnivores.

Local residents have been asked to check their garden ponds, as capybaras are attracted to water. The last time two capybaras escaped from Marwell, around thirty years ago, it was two months before they were captured. They were found in the same area that Samba is in now, near the river Itchen. Staff from the zoo are patrolling the riverbank, but are prepared for a long period of searching.

                                Capybara with young pups

Dancing Queen

 

Dancing Queen

The two ‘Dancing Queen’ amaryllis bulbs that I planted on January 11^th are now opening their flowers. They have been growing for almost eleven weeks , so I was beginning to wonder if they would come up to snuff, but they have, and that is pleasing.The original conservatory bulb was far behind the one in the sitting room, but rapidly caught up after we moved it into the warmth to join its companion. 

Recently, Herschel caught sight of the unfurling frilly flower and leapt up to assail it. Maybe he thought it was an exotic bird set free in the house. We discouraged him, and he hasn’t attempted to attack it since. I was quite expecting to find the stem broken one morning, but that has not happened . . . yet!

I have been delighted with the amaryllis and will certainly grow them again.

Naked as a jaybird

 

Naked as a jaybird

                        Blue jay (Cyanocitta cristata cyanotephra) 

Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons

Debby from 'Life's Funny Like That' mentioned this expression in a comment the other day and it was unfamiliar to me, so, being incurably nosy, I looked it up. It is an American idiom, first recorded in 1843, but growing in popularity from the 1920s.

It replaced the earlier saying, ‘naked as a robin,’ perhaps because it seemed a more robust phrase. Some have suggested that the original idiom was ‘naked as a fledgling robin/jaybird,’ since such baby birds are naked on hatching, but this was dismissed by others who claim that the word ‘fledgling’ was never part of the expression.

Why was the saying never ‘naked as a jay’ or even ‘naked as a blue jay,’ which has a nice ring to it?

‘Naked as a jaybird’ can be used to refer to ‘jailbirds,’ or prisoners who were stripped and disinfected before being issued with prison garb. ‘Jailbird’ has been in use since the seventeenth century in England, conjuring rather fanciful images of miscreants as birds in iron cages, or gaols. Gaol was a standard English spelling until the middle of the twentieth century, but is rarely used now.

Something else I read suggested that the expression arose because young jay nestlings, before their feathers have grown, often push their siblings out of the nest, when they are naked.

In short, I’m almost as mystified as I was before I started looking at this idiom. Of course, it is shameful to be caught naked in public, unless you’re staying in a nudist colony or disporting yourself on a nudist beach.

Is a nudist beach one that doesn’t wear clothes? What is the well-dressed beach wearing this year? 

Flying colours

 

Flying colours

                                                Image source

Marlene at Poppy Patchwork, or rather, her little cat, Lilly, ‘passed with flying colours’ at her recent visit to the vet. That’s always an excellent appraisal, but Lilly wasn’t wearing any colours, other than her home-grown fur, so what did the vet mean?

The phrase is a maritime expression from the Age of Exploration, (early 15^th to early seventeenth centuries) when much of the globe was explored by European sailors. The ‘colours’ were the flags that ships flew to indicate their nationality and to communicate with other ships.

Ships would not legally fight unless their national flags were flying.

After battle, ships would return to port with flags flying to show that they had been victorious. If their flags had been lowered, it was a signal that they had been defeated. To pass (the harbour bar) with flying colours was a way of saying they had been triumphant, and was adopted by landlubbers as a phrase to declare success.

Sometimes, unfortunately, a ship would sink with colours flying, the crew having continued to fight valiantly despite clear defeat. Often, colours would be nailed to the mast, indicating a determination to fight until the bitter end.

To ‘nail your colours to the mast’ or ‘show your true colours’ means to show your true intent, your alliance.

Pirates and other malefactors frequently sailed ‘under false colours.’ They would hoist the sail of a friendly nation and thus be able to approach closely a ship in which they were interested, probably one carrying valuable cargo. The notorious pirate, Blackbeard, used such a ploy, but as the ships closed, he would then reveal the ‘Jolly Roger,’ (the skull and crossbones flag), and the crew would surrender the ship.

As Lilly and her family live near Portsmouth, it is appropriate that she ‘passed with flying colours.’