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Me

Hay fever and climate change

Last year on 28th February I wrote this:

Last year it wasn’t until March 12th that I complained about hay fever. Nearly two weeks earlier, this year.

Well, it’s only the 9th, and my eyes have been painfully sore for days. Because of these little buggers I took a picture of yesterday:

catkins

It’s not really fair to make year-on-year comparisons, because I haven’t consistently blogged at the first sign of any symptoms. But I’ve been getting hayfever for about 15 years now, and this is ludicrously early. I think of it as starting in March; this year the first itchiness at the back of my throat was at the end of January.

So I was interested to see this article. Basically the guys at Kew Gardens are making the same observation. They link it to climate change, and it certainly feels like yet another warning, along with the ibises and egrets and spoonbills, that climate change is happening right now and it’s not only affecting glaciers in Greenland.

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Me Other

The Thames path, Charlton to Greenwich

The Thames Path is what it sounds like: a walking route that follows the Thames. It runs 184 miles from the source in the Cotswolds to the Thames flood barrier. I walked from the Thames barrier to Greenwich. My plan is to do the London part of the route in occasional sections; I’m not planning to walk all the way to Cirencester. Though it might be quite an interesting long-term project.

Thames Barrier

The section I’ve just done started at the Thames Barrier itself and went along the south bank, looping around the Greenwich peninsula past the Millennium Dome, with all the skyscrapers of Canary Wharf just over the river, and ended by going past the Royal Naval Hospital.

Despite the engineering marvels of the barrier and the dome and the shiny pointiness of Canary Wharf, it really was not a glamorous walk. The shipping which once would have made that stretch of river one of the busiest in the world now goes into more modern, deeper ports that are equipped to deal with container ships, and heavy industries have largely moved overseas, but despite a few outcrops of upmarket apartment blocks it’s still a working part of London. I noticed a Tate and Lyle factory, probably making sugar from EU-subsidised sugar beet, and an aggregate recycling plant; there were various yards that seemed to be stockpiles of gravel and sand for the construction industry. But most of the time I had no idea what businesses I was passing. I would guess some were chemical processing plants; at other times I was probably just passing behind warehouses. It was dusty and sometimes smelly, and for several sections of the walk the Thames Path ran between eight foot high chain-link fences, and felt like a peculiar and frivolous intrusion on the area.

bit of industrial stuff

Even so, it wasn’t without bits of wildlife. There were little groups of teal on sheltered spots all along the river, and hundreds of gulls. And hopping around in that most urban of shrubs, a dust-covered buddleia,
was my best bird of the day: a chiffchaff. These little greeny warblers are supposed to be in Africa at this time of the year, but a few stay for the winter. The RSPB suggests 500-1000 birds overwinter here compared to 800,000 pairs in summer.

gulls

I won’t be rushing to walk this route again—once was enough—but it was interesting, even so. From here on I have a choice of which side of the river to take, so I think I’ll probably cross over the river (well actually under the river, via the Greenwich foot tunnel) and walk around the Isle of Dogs side as far as London Bridge.

» I’ve started a Flickr set of pictures from the Thames Path. All the pictures in this post come from there. I’ve also posted a picture from the walk to Clouded Drab.

Categories
Me Other

Arglwydd, arwain trwy’r anialwch…

Wales beat England at rugby this afternoon, which (don’t tell my father) I quite enjoyed. I keenly support England when they’re playing South Africa, Australia, New Zealand or France, but against other teams I often find myself rooting for the opposition.

I guess it’s largely support for the underdog (today was Wales’s first win at Twickenham for 20 years, so I don’t think it’s too patronising to call them underdogs), but I never feel the same way when England play soccer. I don’t know why I don’t feel the same emotional connection to the rugby team, but there it is.

Of course if you’re English you have to have flexible sporting loyalties anyway: English during the World Cup but British during the Olympics. And it’s amazing how golf clubs suddenly become hotbeds of European solidarity during the Ryder Cup.

It always seems like it ought to be a healthy model of patriotism. Lots of overlapping loyalties which come to the fore at different times in different contexts, none of which insist that they have to be exclusive. And yet oddly enough British sports fans aren’t known for their flexible, easy-going tolerance and sensitivity to cultural nuance.

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Me

Something I learned yesterday:

I share a birthday with Joseph Vissarionovich Djugashvili, the Man of Steel. I’m so proud.

Categories
Me Nature

RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch 2008

It’s that time of year again. I haven’t been looking forward to it particularly because it has just been a rubbish year for birds in the garden. I don’t know why. I’m not sure we’ve ever had quite as many birds since we moved all the feeders onto a pole in open space nearer the house (to make the birds easier to see and keep off the squirrels), but the feeders were busy enough in the summer, so I don’t know if that’s it. Anyway, in the event my results were about comparable to last year, with the difference that last year I felt I’d been really unlucky whereas this year it seems about right.

Blackbird – 3
Blue tit – 3
Great tit – 2
Dunnock – 1
Feral pigeon – 4
Woodpigeon – 4
Magpie – 2
Robin – 1
Wren – 1
Siskin – 3
Chaffinch – 2

No goldfinch, no greenfinch, no coal tit, no great-spotted woodpecker, no jay, no crow. Let alone any of the relative long shots like long-tailed tit or goldcrest. I didn’t even get any parakeets during my chosen hour, although they’re the one bird we’ve been getting a lot of.

For comparison: 2005, 2006, 2007.

If you’re in the UK, you’ve still got until the end of the weekend to take part. Please do!

Categories
Me Nature

Night owls

I dreamt last night that owls had started coming to the bird feeders.