Urban Seabirds June 17, 2004
Posted by Andy Roberts in : soundvideo, wildlife, London , trackbacklarge
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Urban foxes are well known these days, there’s probably one in every street and they seem to be getting more and more casual about walking around in broad daylight. This little film is about urban seabirds. Since living in London I’ve started to notice more kinds of birds making themselves at home in the city, birds which would normally be associated with the ocean, countryside or other environments. Kingfishers on the canal in Hackney, increasing numbers of Heron too. Sparrowhawks circle the tower blocks and Terns swoop down to fish the waterways. 
I first saw Cormorants as a child around the Isles of Scilly, way out at sea or sitting on inaccessible rocks drying their wings. So I didn’t associate them with inner city estuaries like the Thames. Around London Bridge they can be seen most days, flying past, bobbing about in the waves or diving for fish. Just before sunset seems to be good time to catch them doing this, on my way home from the evening sessions but I sometimes spot one flying over from my morning journey too. It makes me feel good and smile whenever I spot one, I don’t know why. I even wrote a few verses about them, on an airoplane bound for Bilbao. It’s one of the batch waiting for another clear week in order to compose the music. The video is realtively lengthy at just under 3 minutes with sound, so I’ve made two versions available, one at 6.2Mb and one at 9.5Mb for broadband users.
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Lovely film Andy:-) I can’t get the big version to play though. It hangs up after a few seconds. Says “buffering” and then “stopped”. Shame, I’d love to see the whole thing at a higher resolution. I used to like watching cormarants, terns and kittywakes when I worked at St Andrews Castle. Here in Lancaster I don’t often see them, but there are lots of herons and I love them too.
Thanks Linda, if it won’t buffer fast enough to play from webstreaming then you should be able to right-click ^w sorry Ctrl click and then “save target as” or download to desktop. Once you’ve saved the movie file you will be able to play it from your computer instead of over the net, which will be much smoother. What I really need is a copy of media cleaner pro which should make give options for more efficient compression and conversion to quicktime.
Kittiwakes are lovely, another change I’ve observed is the advance of Fulmars around the Crnish coast in recent years, and the arrival of those white heron things - ibis.
Urban deer have been reported on the outskirts of East London, burrowing through people’s gardens - it’s a small species from Asia, forget the name now.
Lovely film Andy. I’m just about to move from Weymouth and will miss the gulls, but that’s all there ever is around my house, gulls. So it will be good to see other birds occasionally. The penetration of wildlife into cities is wonderful. I was reminded of it in seeing Vin Garbutt last week and his beautiful song about life returning to the Tees in Middlesbrough.
I hate not being able to remember a name so I looked it up. “Muntjac”
“The only deer really moving in to London is the muntjac, although fallow deer appear to be in Havering. Muntjac were introduced from China in the nineteenth century and escaped from Woburn Park in the 1920s. Muntjac are the smallest of the wild deer. They have very small antlers and a glossy red-brown coat with some white patches on their thighs. Their most distinctive feature is the pair of “tusks” (in reality, long canine teeth) which stick out from below their upper lip. They are small, secretive, solitary creatures which can easily live in an area unnoticed.
Muntjac have probably been able to colonise the outskirts of London because they can eat a variety of food and only need very small woodlands in which to survive. Bramble is ideal for them to both eat and hide in. They also eat roses, ivy, honeysuckle, clematis, peas, beans and even bluebells.
from http://www.wildlondon.org.uk/wildinfo/probdeer.htm