Kingfisher letter - fishing...

Lloyd Blakie's letter about the Jacob's River estuary got me thinking, especially where he describes seeing kingfishers nearby to his house. Living in the same neck of the woods as Lloyd, I've seen those birds often, perched on posts in the water or the branches of dead trees, watching for small fishes. I haven't though, seen them around the townhip of Riverton, even though there are plenty of whitebait and smelt in the water just behind the museum. Until today, that is. Thanks to whoever it is that's standing up sticks of driftwood in the bed of the estuary, the kingfishers have moved closer to the town. With something to perch on, the birds are coming in to where everyone can see them and they really are a beautiful sight.                                                                                                                        

Kaiteretere drowned

"It's the worst weather we've ever seen here. Very worst"

Goodness! Who'd ever have thought? Extreme weather events, here in New Zealand and all the while, Lord Moncky-Monckton declares shrilly,"There is no global warming!"

Kaiteretere is the golden-sand beach where I spent my childhood summer holidays. The rain didn't pound relentlessly down while I was there. Houses didn't slip off the hills and get buried under tonnes of mud.

I wonder what's going on?

Here come the kingfishers!

I've written a letter to the editor about the kotare I saw yesterday.

That's not going to upset anyone, is it?

Tainted milk

"Somebody" sent me this:

"You eat an animal that has eaten GE feed, you are eating an animal that has been changed. 

You drink milk from a cow that has eaten GE feed, you are not drinking ordinary milk.

NZ farmers use huge amounts of imported GE feed and Fonterra refuses to discuss the fact that their milk is now contaminated. 

Drink milk from the supermarket at your own peril --- it's that simple. 

Want clean milk? You need to find it for yourself."

Other caps

All fungal

The atmosphere breathes fungus at this time of the year. Here is a cluster I found yesterday, out behind the tool shed.

Roaring out to sea

It's wasted, says Nathan Guy. Water, roaring out to sea, wasted!

What a dangerous clown. What foolish thinking. That's the Nats. Rivers are un-exploited resources that could be turned into milk.
Water storage means irrigation which means dairying which means intensification which means greater pressure on the environment.

Macskasy on Farrar

"I occassionally read Farrar’s posts – but not the comments that follow. In my opinion, the majority are written by poorly educated yokels who simply repeat bigotry ad nauseum."

Poetry.

"Offsetting" is not "Mitigating"

This is interesting news indeed.
"Basically the High Court has ruled that the concept of “offsetting” by the mining company donating to pest control is not “mitigation” at the site of the mine. Essentially this means the effects of an open cast mine cannot be considered to have been lessened if money is spent on other unrelated environmental activities. The $22 million for pest control in the Heaphy area and on parts of the Denniston plateau will not be considered as a mitigation for open case mining an iconic landscape."
Read Catherine Delahunty's post here (Jeanette's finger-prints are all over this :-)

Foggy morning, Riverton

The McKibben talks

Tonight's 'televised' talk at No5, The Cresent was well worth the effort of going to town for. Filmed last night in Dunedin (I saw you, Hollie, aisle seat, on the left) Bill's talk, 'Do the math', was solid and instructive. His 'three numbers' message was graspable and useful, as was the call to divest. And wear a tie :-)
On Gareth Renowden's blog, Hot Topic, this comment from Rob Taylor summed things up nicely:

"Having been to both, I am pleased to report that the crowd for McKibben’s talk was twice the size and half the average age of that for Monckton’s!"

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