Hello Ontbirders.
I started the morning at Col. Sam Smith Park. At the lakeshore I had a
flock of 26 WHIMBREL fly over, and a COMMON LOON in the bay. Elsewhere in
the park there were a few warblers around in low numbers, nothing out of
the ordinary. WILLOW FLYCATCHERS were singing everywhere.
At Humber Bay West I saw the male HARLEQUIN DUCK from the boat launch area.
In the 2 minutes it took me to return to the car for my camera he
disappeared and I couldn't relocate him. This bird has been in the area for
several weeks (months?). At Humber Bay East a lingering COMMON GOLDENEYE
was of interest.
At Bronte Harbour the RED-NECKED GREBES are easy to see, with at least 3
pairs present. One grebe is sitting on a nest.
Directions:
Col Sam Smith Park is located at the foot of Kipling Ave in Etobicoke. Exit
the Gardener Expressway at Kipling Ave and go south.
Humber Bay East is at the foot of Park Lawn Ave, south of Lakeshore Blvd.
in Mississauga, Humber Bay West one road to the west of Park Lawn.
Bronte Harbour is at the foot of Bronte Road in Oakville. Exit the QEW at
Bronte Rd and follow the road south until you see the harbour and
Lighthouse Restaurant.
Carol
Carol Horner
dendroica at sympatico dot ca
Photo galleries at:
http://www.pbase.com/carolmhorner
Toronto, Ontario
Canada
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Subject: [Ontbirds]Raptor conservationist Derek Ratcliffe dies
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Hello fellow birders,
This sad news came to me today. Those of us who have a special interest
in conservation
and raptors will be well aware of Ratcliffe's work. His research and
writings on the Peregrine Falcon from the 1958 article in "British Birds"
"Broken Eggs in Peregrine Eyries" through the 1980 monograph led the efforts
that recognized the role of chlorinated hydrocarbons in the species' decline
aand reversed the process with the development of captive release programmes
such as those in Manitoba, Ontario, and North Dakota. Let us honour his
memory by re-dedicating ourselves to ecosystem conservation in our daily
lives. Apologies if this is slightly off-topic for the list.
Wayne Neily
Sainte-Anne, Manitoba
----Original Message Follows----
From: "Chris Monk" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: [birdbooklist] Derek Ratcliffe dies aged 75
Date: Fri, 27 May 2005 16:58:33 +0100
From the Daily Telegraph web site:
Derek Ratcliffe
(Filed: 27/05/2005)
Derek Ratcliffe, who died on Monday aged 75, was the most influential
British naturalist of his generation; he was the first to link the decline
of birds of prey with agricultural pesticides and was the architect of the
1977 Nature Conservation Review, which identified the most important
wildlife habitats in Britain.
Ratcliffe was also the well-informed and outspoken civil servant who took on
the powerful forestry lobby in the 1980s and effectively persuaded the
government to halt the tax-breaks that made possible the afforestation of
the wild Flow Country in northern Scotland.
At a time when most ecologists are specialists, Ratcliffe's mastery of a
broad range of subjects was remarkable. He was one of the great
ornithologists, a world authority on the peregrine falcon, as well as an
incomparable nest-finder. He was an equally accomplished plant ecologist, a
pioneer of methods of describing and classifying wild vegetation and an
authority on peat bogs.
A day in the field with Ratcliffe was an extraordinary experience. He seemed
to know everything and miss nothing. But he was also good company, a kind
and generous friend and an amusing, sometimes waspish, raconteur.
Ratcliffe's quietly-spoken manner concealed a deep-rooted sense of anger at
the widespread destruction of his beloved uplands by drainage, tree-planting
and over-grazing. As chief scientist of the Nature Conservancy Council in
the 1970s and 1980s, he was an unconventional and troublesome civil servant
but a first-rate lobbyist, persuading the compromise-inclined quango to
stand up for nature.
In Nature Conservation in Britain (1984), Ratcliffe publicly reminded
government that the conservation of nature was less a matter of science than
a value judgement, and that it deserved the same consideration in a
civilised society as historic buildings and works of art.
The report described in horrifying detail how agricultural intensification
had damaged or destroyed the wildlife value of 95 per cent of lowland
grasslands since 1935. Some 80 per cent of the sheepwalks of chalk or
Jurassic limestone country had been significantly damaged, largely by
conversion to arable or improved grassland; around a third of hedgerows had
been uprooted, and half of the lowland fens, valleys or basin mires had been
lost or damaged through drainage operations, reclamation for agriculture and
chemical enrichment of drainage water.
Ratcliffe won the argument decisively but was shown little gratitude. Not
afraid of making high-powered enemies, and regarded as irritating grit in a
well-oiled machine, he was denied an honour by the state.
Derek Almey Ratcliffe was born in London on July 9 1929. His family moved to
Carlisle eight years later and Ratcliffe always regarded himself as a
northerner. As a member of Carlisle's Natural History Society, he found a
mentor in Ernest Blezard, curator of natural history at the local museum.
Blezard taught him the importance of accurate field records and the
pleasures of "seeking after knowledge". In his company, Ratcliffe became an
adept climber and hill-walker in search of birds. He made a practice of
scribbling on eggs with an indelible marker pen to make them valueless to
collectors.
The young Derek attended the local grammar school and won a scholarship to
Sheffield University where he read Botany, obtaining a First in 1950. After
graduating, he was offered a bursary from the newly-established Nature
Conservancy to study upland plant communities. He enrolled for a doctorate
at Bangor under Paul Richards, using techniques developed in Europe to
relate natural vegetation to its physical environment. In his spare time he
would go off on his bicycle studying mosses.
After National Service as an Army education instructor, Ratcliffe was
offered a congenial, if intimidating, job with Nature Conservancy in
Edinburgh to extend his studies of Welsh mountain vegetation to the whole of
the Scottish Highlands. The survey took him to every corner of the Scottish
hills, where he systematically recorded flowers, mosses and lichens, as well
as the soil, in thousands of sample plots. In the process he discovered many
plants in new places, perhaps the most famous being his record of the very
rare rocky cinquefoil growing just beneath a peregrine's nest in Sutherland.
Until Ratcliffe's arrival the bird had scared off any botanist that
approached too near.
By the time his work was published as Plant Communities of the Scottish
Highlands (jointly written with Donald McVean) in 1962, the 32-year-old
Ratcliffe was probably the most experienced hill naturalist in Britain. The
work is a masterpiece of ecological description, and enabled Scottish
vegetation to be compared with that of Europe for the first time.
By this time he had begun the work that made him famous, a nationwide study
of the peregrine falcon. Though the falcon stood accused of massacring
racing pigeons, Ratcliffe found that it was in fact "in the middle of a
headlong crash in numbers", and had declined to less than half of its
pre-war population. More alarmingly, it was failing to breed successfully.
Ratcliffe discovered the reason by comparing the weight of eggs from old
collections with the addled eggs he was finding. The shells had grown
substantially thinner and had become more prone to cracking. Moreover, they
contained residues of agricultural pesticides. His meticulous study of the
effects of pesticides on these birds (which he later extended to golden
eagles, merlins and other raptors) has become a classic, and made the
peregrine an icon of nature conservation.
The 1977 Nature Conservation Review, which was edited and largely written by
Ratcliffe, drew on his knowledge of Britain's wild places. Although it had
originally been intended as a "shopping list" of nature reserves, Ratcliffe
and his helpers produced the cornerstone document of nature conservation for
the rest of the century.
In 1970 Ratcliffe had been promoted to deputy science director of Nature
Conservancy, and three years later to chief scientist of the reorganised
Nature Conservancy Council (NCC). Until his retirement in 1989 he headed the
council's programme of commissioned research and provided it with the
science that underpinned its work.
Beyond his formal role, Ratcliffe was easily the outstanding intellectual
force in the NCC at that time. He was behind the work on habitat loss that
persuaded Margaret Thatcher's government to pass the Wildlife and
Countryside Act of 1981, which provided improved protection for SSSIs.
He also edited the meticulously researched reports which exposed the
environmental damage being caused by tax-breaks for forestry, and made the
case for preserving the Flow Country as a world-class wilderness. Such work
smacked suspiciously of zeal, and in July 1989, just a week after
Ratcliffe's retirement, the then Environment Secretary, Nicholas Ridley,
announced the breakup of the NCC into three, more compliant, bodies.
Ratcliffe saw it as a betrayal, but he never did hold politicians or
placemen in high regard.
In retirement, Ratcliffe wrote a series of books, and, with his wife
Jeanette, made an annual birdwatching pilgrimage to Lapland. The book of his
travels, Lapland: A Natural History, comes out in August. He finished his
last book, about the southern uplands of Scotland, just four days before
suffering a fatal heart attack in his sleep while on the way to Norway.
His wife survives him.
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