Category Archives: Environment

Environment, Natural History, Nature Reserves

Of Wild Pigs and Stained Glass, yes it’s the Forest of Dean

Wild Boar diggings in Forest of Dean
Wild Boar diggings in Forest of Dean

It’s one thing to be used to seeing signs of wild boar in France, quite another to realize these fine animals have returned without any bureaucracy about release licences and experimental sites and suchlike. Whatever happened, whether they just escaped or were released by animal rights protesters or some other story, they are now out in the wild, and exuberantly breeding.

Wild Boar Prints of Different Sizes
Wild Boar Prints of Different Sizes

The many diggings beside the trails in the Forest of Dean show the presence of numerous family groups, while the splayed prints of different sizes leave no doubt about the families of pigs with all ages represented.

Stained Glass Window in the Forest: Sculpture Trail
Stained Glass Window in the Forest: Sculpture Trail

Casting pearls before swine … or at least, dangling stained glass over them. The forest is enlivened with a wide range of sculptures in the now very well established trail. The famous giant chair is becoming a bit wonky, and has been repaired with cement. The magnificent stained glass window adds glowing colour whatever the weather.

Orange and White Lichens on Birch in Forest of Dean
Orange and White Lichens on Birch in Forest of Dean

A lone birch in a clearing shines out with brilliant orange and white patches. The orange is not the common orange lichen (Xanthoria) which shows a leafy thallus: the orange patches here seem to consist almost wholly of fruiting bodies which are not circular apothecia with clear rims, but fuzzy tufts, presumably of spores.  And the white circular patches are also lichens, not just areas of bare bark: their fruiting bodies show up dark within the white circles.

Environment

Desert Dust in Britain … all the way from the Sahara

Desert Dust on Car
Desert Dust on Car

Yesterday the BBC explained that a high pressure zone over eastern Europe was bringing polluted air in on a southeast wind, picking up what smells like a sharp and acrid sulphurous dusty mess from the Ruhr. The same wind picked up desert dust from the Sahara and carried it straight across Europe. The dust has arrived with the dew and has formed a sandy smudge all over everybody’s car: it’s most obvious where the wetting has collected it towards edges of roof panels, as in the photo. Today the forecast is for very poor air quality, at warning levels 8 or 9 (out of 10 for worst possible), making life uncomfortable for asthma sufferers. The map shows it stretching from the tip of Kent in the southeast all across England to Dorset in the west, the Wash in the northeast and the North Wales coast in the northwest. Levels are ‘Very High’ along the south coast and up to Cardiff, and in a patch in the midlands.