<yoink!> - I’m grabbing this quote from an article @GreyShuck posted: “There is a real need for us to inspire people to connect with nature and to make biodiversity a central part of their lives – particularly in urban areas and less affluent communities” Well I did just that the other day, in a l-o-n-g wait for a bus to turn up. There was a small raptor perching on the streetlights, avidly hunting just before sunset. One time he came over into the trees and dived off them into the undergrowth, but didn’t seem to catch anything. It was blunt-tailed, probably a sparrowhawk or a kestrel. This was right on the edge of the urban and less affluent community I live in, around a multi-laned highway. [Re the quote - why in “less affluent areas”?] 🪶
It’s great when you catch a little wildlife in an urban area. There are ravens near me, nesting in the cranes of the docks - there are quite a few crows around but I definitely saw one of the ravens once flying high in a straight line away from the docks with a kind of grim purpose.
Yes, it makes all the difference to any day. That reminded me of the raven (or jackdaw?) having a half-hearted peck at the raptor, at one point. It made zero impact. That fuzzy edge where the industrial world meets with the natural, fascinates me. It’s like a tide-line.
It’s magical.
Inside the dock complex is a kind of bird sanctuary that’s only accessible by ornithologists with passes (I know one of the leading amateurs in the region who does a lot of cataloguing who has been) and you’ll occasionally see a flock of more exotic migratory birds dive over the fence heading to the beach for a forage.
I dropped a friend off at his home which is on a side street off a busy road with pubs and restaurants, behind a tower block and right in front of me two foxes started running around playing with each other. I’d only ever seen individual urban foxes on two occasions before.
I assume the docks are still active. That’s the beauty of these large spaces where public access is limited. The creatures make the most of it while they can.
I’ve never seen more than one urban fox at a time, yet. My time will come, when I least expect it, like it did for you.
It’s the Seaforth Docks in Liverpool so it’s still very busy - it had large expansion for post-Panamax containers, so it’s got even taller cranes. Apparently ravens also roost in the Anglican cathedral.
I saw the two foxes a stones throw from the dock fence and my previous sighting of a large fox crossing the road to the beach was only a few tens if meters away on a parallel road. A friend informs me that there’s a large family of foxes that live in and around those docks and they are left alone by the dockers because they eat the rats.
So there is clearly quite a thriving ecology taking advantage of that interface between industrial, residential and beach environments. The Seaforth Nature Reserve is just on the other side of the fence and, despite being in a busy dock, there’s not much human interference.
Pop-up ecology!