Nature news
From pampered pets to birds, bugs and wild beasties we celebrate all creatures great and small…
this weatherresistant Window Bird Feeder this Dewdrop (£13.99) made of recycled Insect Hotel plastics. With an adjustable (£19.95), the perch, it can be attached to perfect safe a window haven for with butterflies suction and other insects in your pads and garden. Hang it near flowering holds any plants – it also provides an overwintering kind of space for butterflies that feed. don’t migrate.
■ Both products available to buy from the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust, call 01302 325736 or visit ywtshop.org.uk
This is my much-loved faithful friend, Becca, a nine-year-old Border Terrier who understands commands and fetches things for me. My proudest moment was when she was accepted as a PAT (Pets As Therapy) dog just before lockdown. Becca is so polite she won’t eat a morsel until I have, but she’s definitely not a cat lover!
Dora Paynton, by email
■ Send us a picture of your pet with personality, tell us their likes, dislikes and age and if we print it you’ll receive a £10 voucher
An Australian hotel discovered a burglar who kept triggering security alarms in its bar was a northern quoll (right).
The cheeky chap, who comes from an endangered species, was sneaking into the hotel unnoticed and setting off alarms.
An employee said: “We’d be getting calls from our alarm company in the middle of the night so I'd drag myself out of bed, go to the hotel bar and find no one was there.” Eventually, CCTV cameras caught the treeclimbing marsupial in the act. Clearly, he likes to enjoy his late-night tipple in comfort!
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are on the rise, and humans are to thank for the growing numbers. Up to 80 per cent of the country’s barn owl population nest in man-made boxes, with 20,000 boxes set up nationwide. Latest figures estimate there are now 12,000 breeding pairs in the UK, up from 4,500 in 1987.
t’s not uncommon to find Jane Howorth with a hen on her knee, tickling under its feathers, comforted by the sound of contented clucks. Jane knows all too well the joy of keeping chickens, and now makes it her life’s work to bring that joy to other families, while giving battery hens the chance at a happy, free-range retirement.
It all started when, as a teenager, Jane saw a documentary and became aware that battery chickens were routinely slaughtered after they came to the end of their useful life laying uniform eggs for the supermarkets. Despite having never met a live chicken herself, she started campaigning on their behalf. When the chance came some years later to own her own chickens, Jane searched the Devon countryside until she heard the sound of clucking coming from a barn.
“I politely asked the farmer if there was any chance I could take the hens he no longer wanted,” says Jane. “I intended to take a dozen but I came home with 36!”
In that 36, though, there was one special chicken who stole Jane’s heart. Named Vicky, this little hen stood upright, waddled like a penguin and was often picked on by the other hens. Jane gave Vicky a stable of her own and over time she built up an incredible friendship with her. Vicky loved to cosy up by the fire or sit in the kitchen while Jane ironed. “I’ve always
Iloved animals but never realised what a close relationship you could have with a chicken,” says Jane.
Shortly after this time, both Jane’s parents died within months of each other and Jane realised life was too short not to make her dream of helping more hens a
Having found a new home, Pico now likes to play a game of Scrabble!
’My ambition is to change hearts and minds so chickens aren’t just seen as cheap food’ reality. She started with a tiny slot in the free ads paper that said: ‘I’ve never seen the sunshine and never tasted grass. I’m a battery hen about to go to slaughter, can you offer me a free-range retirement?’ As the responses flooded in, Jane’s life changed forever – and it wasn’t long before she set up the British Hen Welfare Trust.
To date Jane, along with her amazing team of staff and 900 volunteers at the charity, has helped rehome more than 765,000 hens from battery farms who would have otherwise been killed. She insists one of the reasons she’s been able to help so many is by working with, rather than against, the farmers.
Little Jessica reading with her rescue hen, Jelly, rehomed by the British Hen Welfare Trust