My mum just felt the need to text me and tell me that ‘Authumnwatch’ are doing a competition, where you need to send in photos of massive spiders you’ve found and whoever sends in the biggest one wins! WHAT KIND OF SICK SADIST COMES UP WITH THIS this sounds like the most disturbing job anyone would EVER be given. Sit and leaf through all these photos of spiders like HMMMM which one of you most resembles an actual monster?
I wish I’d got a photo of either of the two that sprung into my life in our chalet over summer before they met an untimely death. Because I’d have definitely won this competition. I’ve never seen anything like it, they were like mutants. If anyone staying in the chalets either side of ours were in at the time, they most probably thought someone was being stabbed in ours. The scream that escaped from somewhere within my lungs came as a shock even to me. “What the god damn hell is that? Mothering cunt get that the shitting fuck away from me” I think were my words. But like screamed. So no one really knew that’s what I was saying. I didn’t know I was capable of making the shrill kinds of sounds that I produced that day. Whilst screaming at the spider I then started screaming at myself hahahah in fear of my own noises. WHAT IS THIS.
So I think that’s communicated to some extent the enormity of this particular spider. I’m just horrified anyone would WANT to find the country’s largest house spider.
There’s some seriously mentally unwell people running tv these days.
Redstarts - living 'wholly and enviably to themselves'
I was watching BBC’s Springwatch last week, and Chris Packham read an extract written by ornithologist John Buxton in 1943 while he was a prisoner in a war camp in Bavaria. Apparently much of what we know about Redstarts (pictured) has been gained from this man’s observations. I was really struck by the extract, and thought I’d share it.
‘One of the chief joys of watching these birds in prison was that they inhabited another world than I. They lived wholly and enviably to themselves unconcerned in our fatuous politics, without the limitations imposed all about us by our knowledge. They lived only in the moment, without foresight and with memory only of things of immediate practical concern to them.’
Imagine being in prison, and living your life through the birds you see flying free out of your window? It would keep me sane, I can tell you. I often do it from my own bedroom window! I can’t explain why I love birds so much, but I would say it is because they seem to have this sort of philosophy as described above. Philosophy is the wrong word here, as Buxton has just said that it is in fact our ‘knowledge’ and ‘love of knowledge’ that imposes the limitations on us… Their way of life then, the way they live only for the moment, and deal with things as they happen. To take every day as it comes, and to enjoy it. To sing, to fly, to eat! Basic functions, but so delightful. We don’t take delight in these basic functions ourselves, not really. We think too much for our own good, and we’re always in a hurry to get to something that is always ahead of us. I think we should take a leaf out of the Redstart’s book, and enjoy every day, and concern ourselves only with our own little patch. If everyone looked after their own patch themselves with patience and dedication, the whole world would be a much better place.
See this blog by Squeak’s Wheel for another meditation on the same extract.
Cameras and kit: best buys for wildlife photographers
guardian.co.ukWe turn our focus on the best-value digital cameras and equipment to help capture that perfect wildlife shot
Photograph: Jill Insley
We are surrounded by foxes: there is a smart-looking vixen sitting a couple of yards in front of us looking hungry, while an old dog fox is just to the right. Another couple are sitting on the road to the left and when I carefully look to the rear, there’s another squatted behind us. I know foxes are getting more confident around humans, but this is ridiculous.
We are at Pitsea landfill in Essex, a site run by Veolia Environmental Services and the location for part of the BBC’s Springwatch this year, with Chris Gomersall, who was staff photographer for the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds for 14 years. Gomersall is showing us how to make the most of wildlife photography opportunities in the hope that we can take a picture worthy of entering the next Veolia Environnement wildlife photographer of the year competition.
We start off on the landfill site itself, which is quite tricky. The background is a load of rubbish, quite literally, and not the plain canvas that is ideal for showing wildlife in its full glory, while the sky is a leaden grey colour. On the plus side the bulldozers keep obligingly putting the flocks of gulls into flight.
guardian.co.uk
