Being a Beast by Charles Foster

 

 Charles Foster decided to spend time living as closely with wild animals as possible to find out how it would really feel like to be a badger, a fox, an otter, a red deer and a swift.

He lives in the woods and eats earthworms pretending to be a badger, he immerses himself in rivers pretending to be an otter, he hunts through rubbish bins in search of food as an urban fox does. He wants to get away from anthropomorphising animals, but inevitably his experiences are still human and his version of animal experience remains very much filtered through human eyes. He remains a human pretending to be an animal. He seems to have no awareness that an otter sprainting (defecating) on a stone by a flowing river is an entirely different thing than a human pooing on a stone by a flowing river. Whatever happened to the philosophy of Leave No Trace?

He doesn't even like otters, a fact which he reiterates several times, which clearly biases his views about their lifestyle. Plus it is of course impossible for any human to get at all close to the lifestyle of a swift, a bird that remains airborne most of its life and only lands to lay eggs and bring up its offspring. So the chapter about swifts is hardly anything about trying to be a swift.

This is a fascinating book but an infuriating one. The writing is often beautiful and interesting:

'The walls of our sett writhed around me... The earth twisted and fumbled and scrabbled and sprouted and spurted. A worm fell into my mouth. A badger would have welcomes it as a pasha on his couch welcomes a grape dropped by a slave, even though the worm is probably made of the badger's dead grandmother, entomed in the sett wall. I gagged quietly and went back to sleep with my face buried in the bracken bedding.'

But the very beauty and complexity of the writing acts as another barrier between us humans and the animals and makes Foster's experiences less authentically animal and even more eccentric human intellectual exploring the world. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but let's not pretend this helps us get into what it would really feel like to be a badger, an otter, a fox, a red deer or a swift. It just gives us a closer human eye's view of their lives.



Being a Beast by Charles Foster, published by Profile Books (2016)

Seasons Change - changing poetry for National Poetry Day

We've had another year of strange weather, including a very hot summer (we're not used to such things in Scotland!) definitely a year of climate change. I originally posted this poem back in June 2011 and am reposting it today for National Poetry Day. The theme of the Day this year is Change.

This poem is also relevant to the topic of change for two other reasons. Firstly, our mother has since passed away and I've rewritten the pome itself, you can read the updated version Weather Forecasting, here.  

***
As posted in June 2011
 
Spring is happening earlier than it used to and real winters have returned to the UK. Our last two winters have had thick snow and ice across the country, after years of mild winters. I wrote this poem a few years ago, at the time I never thought we would see white winters again! And though I like to post things seasonally on this blog, I thought, that given the changing of our seasons, it would somehow be appropriate to post this winter poem at the beginning of summer.


Winter Garden

Even if you had first met my sister today
you would recognise her from this photo
from the early 70s. Wearing a flowery
anorak and a red bobble hat, she's holding
our mother's hand. Mum has a bad perm but
looks pretty much as she does now, just
younger. But the igloo wall in the suburban
garden deep in snow, you wouldn't believe
without the photo. This is Manchester,
England, half a lifetime ago.

**

As ever, red text contains hyperlinks that take you to other pages where you can find out more. 

Update on Midmar Paddock

Last night was the first meeting of the group that will eventually become the official Friends of Midmar Paddock, celebrating this lovely area of Edinburgh's Green Belt and protecting it from future development.

Midmar Paddock is privately owned and currently up for sale, advertised as a good place to build housing (rumour has it that an offer has been put in). Local residents and all of us who value Edinburgh's green spaces want this to remain a green space, part of the greenbelt and a continuation of the beautiful nature reserve that includes Blackford Hill and the Hermitage of Braid.

At last night's meeting we discussed how we can protect the land from development including surveying how people use the area to mark out rights of way (which can be protected and can make development very difficult) and to record the value of the area for recreation, and surveying the wildlife of the area. People are also looking into how to protect the land possibly as a 'Field in Trust'. We also formed subgroups to take action forward (I joined the Publicity group).

The City of Edinburgh Council is about to start discussions on its next local development plan and we want to make sure that Midmar Paddock remains designated open space in this plan.

The group needs yet to be formally constituted but a Friends of Midmar Paddock group has been set up and can be found on Facebook here and the group is now on Twitter here. We're hoping to hold some events in the near future, which may include a demonstration of support for the area to remain greenspace and a BioBlitz to find out what wildlife is currently found here.If you have good photos of any wildlife you've seen in or immediately next to the Paddock, then please email them to savemidmarpaddockATgmailDOTcom so that the group can build up a picture of the local wildlife.

It would be tragic to lose this beautiful patch of land to development (the paddock is the field in the foreground, the hill in the background is Blackford Hill, part of the local nature reserve)

Autumnal Colour in the Dells

Today is the last day of our staycation, but I persuaded Crafty Green Boyfriend to come along with me to patrol the Dells along the Water of Leith, which I do almost every week. (It's a lovely place for a walk so he didn't need that much persuasion.)

The autumn colours are starting to come through beautifully

and the sunshine brought out the late hoverflies including this Syrphus sp on bindweed which seems to be one of their favourite flowers and also one of the nicest backdrops for a photo of a hoverfly

 and this Syrphus sp on ivy which is a great food source for hoverflies and other pollinators late in the season (which is a good argument for not removing ivy!)

Autumn is of course a great season for fungi and we were delighted by this display on the top of a dead tree stump

Plenty of birds around too, though mostly they were camera shy.

Crafty Green Boyfriend took the fungi photos in this post.

Recycle that Bottle - or even better reuse it!

Recycle Week has come to an end for another year!

Many environmental organisations have been all over social media talking about recycling shampoo bottles. This is of course great, but you can often go one better and refill these bottles!

In Edinburgh, both the Tollcross branch of Real Foods and the New Leaf Co-op in Argyll Place have refilleries where you can refill plastic bottles with shampoo or washing up liquid or multi purpose cream cleaner or many other products. You don't even need to refill a bottle with the same product as was originally in it and you can of course refill a bottle many times! This is a great way to cut down on plastic waste and it saves money too (last time I was in the New Lead I refilled three bottles with three different products and was quite astonished by how much cheaper it was than it would have been to buy new bottles.)

If you live elsewhere it's worth checking whether your local health food shop or similar offers this service. If you know of somewhere that does, feel free to let us know in the comments!

Staycation Weekend - Water of Leith

Today we had a lovely walk along the Water of Leith from Roseburn to Stockbridge.

There were plenty of birds to see including dippers

a grey heron

and goosanders

This part of the river walkway passes by the beautiful St Bernard's Well with its statue of Hygeia, the goddess of health

St Bernard's Well is open tomorrow as part of the Doors Open Day, as is Dean Gardens, a private garden on the opposite side of the river from the walkway. We visited St Bernard's Well as part of Doors Open Day in 2016, it's well worth the visit - you can see some of our photos on my Shapeshifting Green blog here. I visited Dean Gardens last year with one of my birdwatching classes (someone in the class has keys to the garden - you can see my photos from that visit here) another place well worth visiting on Doors Open Day!

Staycation Day 3: Braid Hills

Today has been a perfect autumn day, sunny, still and mild with a bit of a chill in the air. We took a walk through the Liberton Fields up to the Braid Hills.

There are lovely views across the Liberton fields to the University buildings with Arthurs Seat in the background

There were several skylarks flying about, though too speedy to be captured on camera. Some of them were even singing, which seems rather late in the season. There are often about 5 pairs of these lovely farmland birds nesting in these fields every year, which is great as they are declining across the UK.

There were also large numbers of rooks and woodpigeons flying round and foraging in the fields neat the Liberton Tower

We said hello to the sheep and goats at the top of the hill

then carried on over the road to the path that passes round the Braid Hill Golf Course and up into the hills the photo below shows the views across to the Pentland Hills to the south of Edinburgh.

 From the top of the hill

there are wonderful views across Edinburgh

and again across to Arthurs Seat

We also had wonderful views of a sparrowhawk as it soared above us

Again there were plenty of smaller birds around too including bullfinches

and a tiny goldcrest

Such a lovely walk, we should do it more often!