• Ledbury Blog
  • Stuff
  • Who?
  • Let's Talk
  • Here nor There
    • Nature Corner
  • Contact
  • Ledbury Blog
  • Stuff
  • Who?
  • Let's Talk
  • Here nor There
    • Nature Corner
  • Contact
RICH HADLEY

Nature corner: fables and fancies

Buffalo: hasta la vista Baby

28/8/2015

0 Comments

 
Picture
It is always worth taking care around cattle for they are not as docile as they look. Only last week, I was seen off by an irate Hereford cow who really didn’t want me or Dora, my staffie dog, within a country mile of her precious calf. As she bellowed at us from the field gate, we didn’t argue back.

Out in the African savanna, from where all the world’s cattle came originally, roam vast herds of wild buffalo. Sadly now, most are corralled for their protection in national parks, depredated by poachers and psychopathic trophy hunters, but that’s another story. 

People should be wary of these mighty beasts: just like domestic cattle in our fields, they are exceptionally canny creatures, they watch and remember. Hunter turned conservationist Lindsay Hunt says touchingly of the Cape Buffalo, ‘they have exceptional memories. I have often been approached by buffalo that I have not seen for many years, which are tactile and demand affection.’ 

Female buffalos are social animals, bonded like close sisters, fiercely protective of each other and their young. Nor do they shrink from a fight: armed with formidable horns and neck hide several centimeters thick, they are magnificently fearless, and will drive off a pride of marauding lions with ease.

Satisfyingly perhaps, they can also exact a terrible revenge on their main foe: humankind. More people are killed in Africa, by buffalo than any other animal, barring human beings that is. They have great skill in seeking out hunters in particular, even stealthily setting out to ambush them. It is said that they can recognise and attack a person who had injured them, even years later. 

Be kind to buffalo, as with most creatures, and they will repay you with trust and respect. But do not expect to hurt or molest one and imagine that being stupid or brutish, you will ever be safe in its company.  As far as gun-toting macho men are concerned, buffalos never forget, nor do they forgive.

0 Comments

magnifence and dust: The dinosaurs' tale

24/8/2015

0 Comments

 
Picture
Childish playthings.
Nothing in this life is forever. 

Few species in earth’s history can surpass the dramatic tale of the dinosaurs: their majestic size, their carnivorous savagery, and most famously, their spectacular extinction 65 million years ago. 

From the slothful brontosaurus munching and wallowing in the swamplands, to the ferocious iron-jawed tyrannosaurus (an unfortunate creature said to have appalling halitosis), these lumbering behemoths ruled the planet for an eternity, a 100 million years or more, inhabiting land, sea and air.

Then something happened, and they disappeared, every single one of them; now just scattered bones and teeth, a few giant eggs buried in rock, are all that we know them by. 

Paleontologists disagree about their miserable end. Yes, there was an asteroid impact, perhaps several, which provoked first a nuclear winter and then a climatic greenhouse inferno. The fossil record also suggests another story: the age of the dinosaurs had been waning for millions of years before the coup de grâce. Their time, it seems, had come because other orders of life, more supple and adaptable than they, had evolved in the earth’s gently cooling climate and all the specialist food chains upon which the old order had depended were being choked off.

What did for the dinosaurs its seems was less a single cataclysmic incident, than a slowly unfolding evolutionary process. They had became supernumerary, ill-equipped, and incompetent in the face of contending forces and changing conditions. If only they could have downsized and changed their diets, have learned to adapt. Alas they were not as clever as the mammals, snapping at their evolutionary heels.

Their memory lingers in the popular imagination: the world’s most powerful creatures turned to dust, nothing much more these days than plastic playthings, an ignominious fall from glory.

Thus it is that the mighty and powerful, blinded by their magnificence, can rarely foresee their impending downfall. 

Note: these silly musings were suggested by reports of the Councillors Noel and Jayne Roberts playfully sporting plastic dinosaur toys at the Ledbury Town Council meeting on 22 July 2015. Ha, ha. What a delightful sense of humour they have.    

0 Comments

Lying Toads?

20/8/2015

0 Comments

 
Picture
Are toads the most misunderstood and maligned of creatures? 

Between frogs and toads, there is a fine taxonomic division. Amphibians both, they breed in water and can breathe through their damp skin, creatures of a demi-monde between land and pond. But frogs are smooth while toads are rough textured. Frogspawn is laid in untidy clumps and mounds whereas the toad’s spawn is strung out in elegant chains, like ghostly pearl necklaces. 

Across roads and car-parks, phalanxes of brave, strong toads march resolutely to their watery breeding places, undaunted by hazard.  No heroic migration attends the unruly frog, which lurks year round in the murky depths. Emerging from the mud when the weather seems clement, they set to their violent copulations in great frenzies of aqautic sex, three or four males clamped to a single hapless female. 

The toad seems an altogether more evolved, resourceful little beast, happy and thriving on land or in water. It can also deliver a toxic kick to any creature foolish enough to attack: those little textured bumps on its back are full of venom, sufficient to stop any predator in its tracks. Never squeeze a toad therefore. 

With beautiful eyes the colour of amber and a calm, docile temperament, it is strange and somehow tragic that gentle Bufo Bufo is forever linked with evil and moral ugliness in the popular imagination, a by-word for deceit and low cunning. 

Feel sorrow and pity for the lying toad. 

0 Comments

The Tale of the delicate, deadly spinning spider

1/7/2015

0 Comments

 
Picture
As we have observed before, nature is clever; species have evolved remarkable ways to outwit their predators and prosper.

Take the daddy long legs spider (Pholcus phalangiodes), bane of house-husbands throughout Herefordshire. Flimsy-legged, with a diminutive body, they spin prolific webs in corners and around beams. Looking hardly big enough to bother a fly, their venom packs a lethal punch. By winter's end, there won't be a single insect or spider remaining in their domain. All will have been consumed.

The thing about the delicate Pholcus spider is its remarkable ability to tackle prey much larger than its size would seemingly allow. With elongated front legs and the ability to throw the stickiest of silk threads from a distance, they can snare a comparatively massive house spider or a raging wasp with considerable facility. 

When alarmed, the Pholcus also has a clever trick up its sleeve. Dangling from a thread, the spider throws itself into a dervish spin and becomes an invisible blur. Confusion and deception is its friend. 

Yes, politicians and wrongdoers down the ages have emulated the crafty pholcus, surviving many a close shave.  But like every other living creature finally, they too will return to dust.  

0 Comments

There be Dragons

1/5/2015

0 Comments

 
Picture
There’s a lot to be said for Komodo Dragons. Handsome creatures, the world’s largest lizard, even so, they do have something of a halitosis problem it seems. This is because their mouths are teeming with lively bacteria, a useful biological weapon system.

What they do is quietly to approach their prey and then deliver an unexpected bite, not necessarily a serious one. The victim typically flees to somewhere it can lie low and lick its wound. Unfortunately its ordeal has only just begun for within a matter of a few hours, a terrible infection will have begun to take hold. The stealthy komodo meanwhile, with the keenest of nostrils, has been tracking the injured prey, and attracted by the scent of physical corruption, when assured that its prospective meal is sufficiently weakened, makes its move. 

Komodo dragons bide their time. They follow the whiff of rottenness. They do not give up because they know their moment will come. When they are satisfied that the time is right, so as to minimise any possible risk to themselves, they move in and overwhelm their adversary.

Nature is clever. Just when you think you have got away with it, your nemesis is waiting round the corner. Politicians might usefully ponder the ways of the komodo dragon.
0 Comments

    Archives

    August 2015
    July 2015
    May 2015

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

Site Visitors to www.richhadley.net
Proudly powered by Weebly