299 : Cardinal Woodpecker

Cardinal Woodpecker - Dendropicos fuscescens

I was debating whether I can get out with my camera this week and when. It really is the business end of the youth rugby season here in the UAE so its all semi-finals and tournaments and so on. Thats just an excuse really. Anyway I am left scrabbling around in holiday photos trying to find the forgotten ones - little snaps that when blown up remind me that I did catch a glance of a new bird.

So here we have a Cardinal Woodpecker - a small green woodpecker of Sub-Saharan Africa told apart from the Nubian Woodpecker here  by the black/dark brown moustachial stripe rather than red. The colouration on the back is different as well with these creamy golden spots rather than fine barring/white spots. This is the female bird with a darker crown.

These are typical woodpeckers which busily feed in the canopy on beetles and insect larvae by probing and hammering at loose bark. So that's 299 and I really owe it to myself to make a special trip for 300 and to just try and cap off this set of 100 with a new discovery and post it on the day discovered. That will mean a road trip, planning and time.

I was listening to a radio 4 podcast - "The Infinite Monkey Cage" in the gym just now. I am now sure how that one passed me by but it is both funny and fascinating. Professor Brian Cox of "Wonders of.." fame and then the usual couple of comedians and scientists. They have a discussion about a scientific question each week and the topics vary -  I have listened to a couple so far and the topics have been paleantology and specifically what they can now work out about dinosaurs from different types of fossils (bio-mechanics from footprints etc.) but most recently a half hour discussion on bio-diversity called "Why do We Pander to Pandas". I never knew this but the Chinese basically rent out Pandas to the world's zoos and take a kick back which is then used to preserve the bamboo forest. They are obviously a pin-up conservation animal and the black and white logo was useful for the WWF but mostly are blessed with teddy bear good looks. Tigers, dolphins etc all poster boys for conservation but if we just focus on these we miss a trick. Whole eco-systems without a pin up animal are on the verge of disappearing.

There was a botanist on the show talking about plants and how we haven't discovered probably 20 % of what is out there still - on a recent trip she discovered 5 new plants. But as quickly as we are discovering new diverse niches of habitat we are recognising that they are under threat. Not just the amazon or rain forest but spiny forests, cloud forests, dry forests and so on. They still are finding new monkeys - little Tamarinds and then working out that most of where they used to live has been cleared and that there are only 200 left - what chance do they stand. If the emotional argument doesn't win out - i.e. what a shame to wipe out 1,000 unique plants and a species of our cousins then the practical arguments or selfish arguments get interesting. The bulk of new pharmacological compounds that are being discovered today are derived from plants - and with 20 % of plant species still unknown we have our best chance for finding cures to all sorts of illnesses that affect us. Big business needs to get involved.

Overall though I have to say that I sympathised with the description of us as mammalian weeds - that we just come and strangle whole tracks of beautiful land and turn it to monoculture. If there are hundreds of thousands of plants we use only 8 as a basis for 80 % of our calorific intake.  Rice, Wheat, Palm Oil, Potato - I cannot guess the rest but I assume those 4 make a good start.

Compare walking in a field of freshly sprayed oil seed rape with walking in a piece of pristine habitat even in the UK in the Spring when butterflies, birds, beetles, trees and plants are all exploding - or a rich piece of African Savannah. Another argument was raised that without physical and natural diversity we just will lose our imaginations - language even - poetry.

I keep coming back to the same place - that there is little I can do except try and be a good citizen with my rubbish and consumption (but fail) - try and give as I go along to conservation groups and hopefully one day try and give back to some little corner and preserve a little piece of poetry. By saving the Panda the Chinese have also saved the Red Panda - and no doubt a few birds, and beetles and a species of bamboo - and even a louse that specialises on pandas !  Its the whole shooting match we are playing for. I think I will just buy a wood and dig a pond and have done with it and as my circle collapses in spend a good ten years just logging everything that is there from a rabbit down to a buttercup. I can't think of a better way to spend a few years - thats a website and a half.

300 next - that might be this weekend if I can defeat my urge to camp on sofas !

Cardinal Woodpecker, Dendropicos fuscescens
Tanzania, Ruaha National Park
July 2013