Creature Feature: Breaking News from the Black Lagoon - A Report by Gilbert Mann

 

In a further remarkable development emerging from the Buxton Lagoon that was the recent focus of an ecopolitical furore [click here], it is being reported that a Professor of Cryptozoology, Dr Corinne Locke-Downe, has shocking photographic evidence - seen here for the first time - to suggest that the local beauty spot may be harbouring a horrifying secret:

"When I heard of police officers in hazmat suits polluting the clear blue waters with a sinister dark substance reminiscent of the black oil that X-Philes everywhere will be all-too-familiar with, I had the dreadful feeling that they were meddling with nature in ways that might have unintended consequences for the local community and which could far eclipse the threat posed by Covid-19 – which, for the record, I believe to be of alien rather than terrestrial origin." 

In response, Derbyshire Police have issued a precautionary warrant for the arrest of Dr Locke- Downe, who was last spotted by drone acting in a non-essential manner outside her local Tesco, clutching a family size pack of Andrex Classic Clean toilet rolls and straying dangerously close to several other shoppers, thereby contravening new laws designed to maintain social distancing. 


Note: additional reporting by Simon Solomon.

Every Little (Act of Animal Cruelty) Helps ...

A nest full of swallows 

Photo by Amy Sancetta / AP

The shocking tale of retail giant Tesco using nets to prevent returning swallows from nesting in one of their trolley parks, was widely reported in the press earlier this month and rightly caused a storm of protest from bird lovers up and down the country and across social media.   

As the writer and conservationist Kate Blincoe rightly argued, this isn't just a small inconvenience for the birds, but an action that can have fatal consequences, as swallows - a species that, like so many others, has suffered a significant decline in numbers during recent decades - return faithfully to the same breeding sites year after year.

At best, therefore, the extensive use of netting in this case - making the birds' summer home completely inaccessible - will result in no eggs being laid (and thus no young being raised); at worst, the adult birds may become trapped and die. What it doesn't do is encourage the birds to find alternative nesting sites, as some spokescunt for the supermarket suggested.

Thankfully, after Kate and others started an online campaign to save the swallows - and after hundreds of customers threatened to boycott the Norwich store at the centre of the row - Tesco relented and removed the netting, allowing the birds to find refuge after their long migratory flight from Southern Africa.    

Unfortunately, however, just as one swallow does not a summer make, nor does one happy ending mean the national scandal of bird netting has been resolved. For this incident in a Tesco trolley park is by no means an isolated one. Farmers and developers all over England, are covering trees and hedgerows with nets in order to prevent birds from nesting, so that they can then dig the trees and hedgerows up - a practice that is not only perfectly legal, but increasingly widespread as more and more land is set aside for new housing.     

I agree entirely with Ms. Blincoe, using nets in this manner is not only vile and pernicious, it's anti-life. And every little act of animal cruelty such as this helps reinforce my misanthropic contempt for Man.  

See: Kate Blincoe, 'Are nets to stop swallows nesting any way to treat the natural world?', The Guardian (21 March 2019): click here to read online.

See also: Samantha Fisher, 'Why are nets appearing over trees and hedges?', BBC News website (23 March, 2019): click here. 

Sign: the petition to make netting hedgerows to prevent birds from nesting a criminal offence: click here.