Everything is Permuted

The first shot of the day... a collared dove

Formation flying

The skies cleared when the sparrowhawk flew overhead

Greenfinch in his favourite place

A young newt was active this evening

And so was the young fox

Camera note: Collared dove taken with the EF70-300mm 4.5-5.6 DO IS lens; gulls, sparrowhawk and greenfinch with the EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L USM IS; and the newt and fox with the Sigma 105mm F2.8 EX DG macro.

We seem to be enjoying some fairly bright autumn weather this week. It's also moderately warm so I headed over to the dewpond today. it was quieter than in the summer (as you'd expect) but I was treated to a couple of darters frolicking over the water.



I then headed over to where yesterday I photographed a rook in flight. There were several jackdaws and rooks pecking in the fields, while the magpies maintained their usual patrol along the edge of the wood. But it was this crow that caught my attention.



On my way back to my office I stopped by the area where I've the green woodpecker several times recently. Today it was being flighty, zipping among a small area of trees and taking excellent care to avoid being in camera range long enough to focus. I'm pretty certain though that I've found its home territory, which is little more than a narrow strip of trees extending along the edge of a main road. It was on the adjacent grassy area this evening. It's quite gloomy by then, and being green they are hard to spot against the grass unless you know to look.



Meanwhile, on the home front the little wood mouse is still scavenging on the bird feeder, but my attention was diverted by a more extended visit than usual by the young fox. His foot seems entirely healed, and tonight he spent a good amount of time investigating near the fence, sniffing and pawing at it. It was only while checking the photos for this entry that I noticed this shot, which may give a clue as to his behaviour. There's a flash of eye-shine coming through the fence in the circled area!
A fox the other side?

Whatever it is, it's interesting

He did hang around for a while after those two shots, and i waited in hope of his companion putting in a rare appearance. I was out of luck, but he wasn't. After several more circuits of the garden he heard a noise (actually a loud thump as a large animal bumped into something in the next garden) and shot off in a hurry to investigate, running the length of our garden with his ears pricked high in anticipation.

More photos from today in my Autumn in Sussex album.

Camera note: daytime shots all taken with the EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L USM IS lens. The fox was photographed with the EF70-300mm 4.5-5.6 DO IS

I've been wondering how I should approach today's entry. Blog Action Day has an environmental theme and so the easy option would have been to keep with the usual array of wildlife photos and been done with it.

Somehow though that doesn't seem quite right. I thought about global warming (recently re-named 'climate change' to take account of the lousy UK summer this year), but I am old enough to remember being taught about the coming 'ice age' (big theme in the 70s, which even made it into a song by The Clash). I'll also admit to not being sure about the evidence (computer modeling is just that, and science is notoriously inexact in its premises). A serious issue, and not something to ignore. But there's little I can add to what is becoming quite a heated debate.

What I am sure about though is that our actions have an impact on our environment. And that western society's relentless quest for 'economic growth' has little to do with the quality of life. As Lou Reed once wrote: "Does anyone really need a billion dollar rocket, does anyone need a $60,000 car?". Or indeed, an on-life life?

I don't know how accurate these calculations are, but cyber communities are not energy-free by quite a long shot and it's claimed that a Second Life avatar consumes about as much energy as a real-world Brazilian. Those kind of stats don't take into account what else we might be doing with our time, but it's obvious that there's an environmental cost in being on-line. There's massive wastage in leaving your router running 24/7, or on leaving screens on standby even when you shut down. And the same goes for leaving digi boxes and TVs on overnight. So a simple thought: at the end of the day, just switch it all off.

I just checked, and apparently I need 1.8 planet earths to sustain my footprint of 3.3 global hectares. I also discovered that the UK average is 5.3 so I'm not doing too badly, but there's room to improve. The plus is that I don't fly. The minus is that I drive to work. Alone. That's not going to change easily. It's £1 to park or £3.20 to go by bus, plus it's about 10 minutes by car or a shade over an hour by bus. So some changes are embedded in our infrastructure and are going to be resistant to immediate reduction. That's no reason to avoid thinking about it though. There's plenty you can do. You can check your own footprint at the Ecological Footprint Quiz.

On a personal level my interest in the environment is recent, the result of observing a rather skinny fox which decided to enter our garden back in 2005.


Watching the fox got me interested in recording what I was seeing. Hence the photography. The camera took me further afield, and I started to see things that must always have been around me but which I'd simply not noticed. I had never seen a fox. I had never seen a kestrel, or buzzard, or peregrine. I'd never seen a wood mouse. That amounts to over 45 years of walking around with eyes tight shut.

So from being a complete urbanite I now see woodpeckers, kestrels, buzzards, wood mice and a wonderful array of native small birds on a daily basis. It's taught me a lot about what we risk. And a lot about how complex we make our lives. One of my favourite spots for wildlife photography these days is a small dewpond created as an environmental management project when a new medical school was constructed. It's a great spot for watching dragonflies.

Look up. Look down. Look around. It doesn't matter where. But do look. You'll be amazed at what's around you.

And look after it. These guys will thank you in their own way.













Images all from previous entries