Ingham’s W RLD
PATIENCE is not one of my virtues. Late trains, traffic jams, potty PRs, all make me fume. But when there’s the prospect of seeing wildlife I undergo a personality change. It’s not quite Jekyll and Hyde but it’s pretty profound. I suddenly acquire an almost saintly patience.
That’s why on a ship off Alaska’s glaciers last month I spent six hours on my own standing in rain and sleet in the hope of seeing whales.
I got frozen to the marrow but was very, very happy. I saw tufted puffins and Arctic gulls, watched the sea turn from grey to blue to limpid green to pea- soup, enjoyed double rainbows brightening black clouds, and time and again thrilled to see humpbacks coming up for air.
One stayed on the surface for about 15 minutes, spraying white plumes of water into the grey sky. He kept leaping out of the sea, his whole body clear, and indulged in a frenzy of tail slapping.
Over and over again he slammed his huge tail fluke down on the sea surface, possibly to stun salmon surging back to their birth rivers for spawning.
As I looked along the rows of dripping empty balconies, I could see that I was enjoying my own private wildlife spectacular. The wait and the chill were worth it.
But I had no need to go so far to see whales. A one- week UK wide survey this summer by 1,000 Sea Watch Foundation volunteers spotted 11 of Britain’s 29 species of whales, dolphins and porpoises.
And it just gets better. Last month the largest creature that has ever lived made its debut in English waters. The blue whale surfaced 250 miles off Cornwall on the northern edge of the Bay of Biscay right in front of an expert – Professor Russell Wynn of the National Oceanography Centre.
Last weekend dog walkers on Northumberland’s pristine sandy beaches were treated to a visit by two ghostly whales – all- white belugas nearly 2,000 miles from their Arctic homes off Spitsbergen and Greenland. By Tuesday the pair were off South Shields.
There have only ever been 17 UK sightings of belugas but this has been a good year for them here, with another turning up off County Antrim in July. And in February SWF says another Arctic species, a bowhead whale, was spotted in UK waters for the first time, off the Isles of Scilly.
Sometimes we know of these leviathans because a coastal walker has got lucky. But often our belugas and bowheads are identified because enthusiasts have deployed that rarest of qualities – patience. THIS year’s badger cull has begun in Somerset, Gloucestershire and Dorset as part of Defra’s flawed plan to control TB in cattle. But yesterday experts sent an open letter to Defra urging it to stop the “inhumane” slaughter.
Signatories include Lord Krebs, who commissioned a £ 50million 10- year trial cull, and Professor John Bourne who carried it out. In 2007 it concluded: “Badger culling can make no meaningful contribution to cattle TB control in Britain.”
Yesterday Prof Bourne said: “It is disappointing but predictable that Defra continue to either ignore, cherry pick or purposefully misinterpret the science.”
That’s what governments do: they pick the advice that agrees with them and call it the “best scientific advice”. GREEN TIP: Clean bird feeders regularly with a mild disinfectant to stop the spread of diseases that can kill birds using them. FAT faces can be babe magnets – for orangutans. Mature males with cheek pads father more offspring than slimmer rivals, says Behavioral Ecology And Sociobiology. The “King of the Jungle” in one Indonesian park had face pads and these moonlike accoutrements made him irresistible. A NEW monkey has been discovered in darkest Peru by conservationists funded by Blackpool Zoo. It’s amazing it took this long to find the Urubamba brown titi monkey. Every morning it announces its presence with a call that carries across the forest. At last someone has paid attention.