Thames Wildlife Super Highway

[maceo]

Anyone see this at 10pm on the 'Blighty' TV channel last night?

There was one episode covering the source of the Thames in Glos up to Oxford and then another covering Oxford to Kingston.

It was presented by some jolly hockey sticks type called 'Miranda Krestovnikoff' of whom I've never previously heard. Still, it was pretty interesting in parts. They showed some electro-fishing and a section with EA fellas going around checking rod licences.

They caught one guy with 3 rods out and only one licence and another who's wife/gf was with him and she didn't have a licence. Seemed a bit harsh really. Not sure if they prosecuted them, but in those two cases perhaps a bit of discretion and a warning might have been in order rather than a fine. Both of them had bought a licence after all. It's the ones who don't have a licence at all who need to be prosecuted.

They also showed a section about the flocks of parakeets that apparently live around the Thames. Some say they escaped from the studios where they were filming 'The African Queen' whilst others claim they were released by Jimi Hendrix for reasons unknown! I'll certainly be keeping an eye out for them anyway.

One other thing I didn't know was that 50 years ago the Thames was declared completely dead of wildlife. Not sure if that would have applied to the upper Thames where I fish. Credit where it's due, there's certainly been a turnaround since then....

 

[barbelboi]

Thanks, I've +ed it for later as it's on again now and repeated throughout the day - not sure if it's the same two episodes you saw last night.
Jerry

 

[markhib]

Those parakeets must be doing well. There's a flock of them where I fish in Enfield, just south of the M25.
Mark

 

[Jeff Woodhouse]

They've (parakeets) have got to Marlow on one side of the river, but so far we haven't had any up the hill. We are sworn to buy air rifles if we see them and shoot every one on sight.

The progs were on the BBC originally a few years back. Interesting, but a bit too brief for my liking.

 

[geoffmaynard]

One other thing I didn't know was that 50 years ago the Thames was declared completely dead of wildlife. Not sure if that would have applied to the upper Thames where I fish. Credit where it's due, there's certainly been a turnaround since then....

Don't believe that nonsense. I'm 61 now. When I was a little kid you could catch a fish a chuck on the most basic of tackle all the way down to Richmond. Look up the old Angling Times for the 50s and 60s and see the catch reports, published every week. It's true the lower Thames in central London had rafts of detergent floating down it (I asked my dad if they were icebergs!) but the fish life in the main river upstream was excellent. In 1969 (I think?) I saw the first spun news story about how clean the Thames was and how the salmon were returning by the zillion. In fact, I think the boss of the Thames Conservancy then was a guy named Fish (which is why I probably remember it) and when he died, his Obit in the Times credited him for being responsible for the repopulation of Thames salmon!!

Green parrots nest in the garden next-door but one to me in Thorpe Park, a huge flock of them. I was told they were lorakeets.

 

[barbelboi]

It can be like a scene from Hitchcock's film when we fish the Ember and Mole at Ember Court - the place is teaming with parakeets .
Jerry

 

[Paul Boote]

Ring-necked parakeets, they are mostly, frequent waterside companions as I fished mahseer in northern India, then greeting me on my return to Britain whenever a girlfriend and I walked the Thames near our home in the Old Windsor - Runnymede area. The birds don't do any harm, unlike the far less-common Monk parakeets - Monk parakeets in UK to be culled over dangers to electricity and native species | Environment | The Guardian - that do things like strip the insulation off power cables. The former are not doing any harm, so are probably left alone (unless you are some immo-wildlife basher and get off on killing such things - start on pheasants first, I reckon), the latter, the Monks, do do harm and have been getting some stick as a result.

 

[Jeff Woodhouse]

Don't believe that nonsense

I think the film refers to the tidal Thames below Teddington, which was certainly very dead at that time.

 

[Paul Boote]

The rise and rise of "diffuse" nitrate pollution in the Thames revealed in an interesting BBC piece here - BBC News - Thames record traces nitrate pollution rise

A major cause of the upper and upper-middle river and its tribs' decline (together with hugely increased abstraction to feed and water the many millions of us), in my opinion.

 

[stu_the_blank]

A major cause of the upper and upper-middle river and its tribs' decline (together with hugely increased abstraction to feed and water the many millions of us), in my opinion.

Paul, I think that you are probably correct. Combined with Endocrine Disruptors, very applicable to the Thames due to the number of times the water is 're-cycled' through the sewage system.

On the subject of the Parakeets, reached us in Dartford two years ago and still spreading.

Anybody got any idea which species they displace?

Stu

 

[peter crabtree]

Paul and Stu, I think the main threat is nesting sites usually occupied by native species.
Noisy bu@@ers though.

 

[Paul Boote]

I live in West London with a remnant farm and its once-countryhouse well-treed parkland thirty yards away from me and a municipal park sixty yards further on adjacent to them. In the past five years or so, un-noticed by the local suburbanites (too busy having episodes of road rage, needing to do some serious feel-good shopping etc), Ring-necked parakeets have arrived and prospered, with the local crows and magpies (and a pair of kites, one time) chasing and mobbing them and, on one occasion, grounding a parakeet then going on to peck it to death in the field outside my window (watched through the little 8x20 Olympus bins I have in the desk drawer ten inches away from my left knee as I write this). Parakeets make a lot noise, love the flowers on chestnut and walnut trees in the spring, but, as yet, are not impacting on our native species.