Well, apparently not. Though this weather is really getting on my tits now! The scenes around Weymouth have been quite extraordinary during the last 24 hours. The biggest disaster of course is the flooding of the Olympic park and ride drop off point. Well it is if you read the local and national papers and have seen the news coverage. How the hell can a bloody car park flooding be bigger news than a whole ecosystem being wiped out? Marsh Harriers chicks... gone. Countless Reed and Sedge Warbler nests... gone. Bearded Tit nests... gone. Thousands of inverts... gone. Reptiles and tons of small mammals... you’ve guessed it, gone.
This shot is of the concrete bridge at Radipole!
OK, this type of thing does happen from time to time and we just have ride it through and obviously the wildlife will recover eventually but it really does annoy how oblivious most of Weymouth was to the devastation unfold before their eyes.
Whilst at Lodmoor yesterday and this morning I was amazed that even birders were oblivious to the carnage right in front of them. Whilst there yesterday assessing the tern island situation (which was very bad) a birder wanders in and asked where the White-winged Black Tern was. I said that I had been counting tern chicks that were having to swim around desperately trying to find somewhere to pitch up rather than looking for the other tern. Instead of him saying something like ‘Oh God, that a disaster’ he said something along the lines of, ‘Oh, I’ll got further down the path to look for the Black Tern’. Admittedly, most birder I’m sure noticed what was going on but that just got to me!
In protest I’m not going to post a picture of the White-winged Black Tern but instead here’s a shot of some of the surviving Common Tern chicks at Lodmoor which managed to make to a bit of dry land.
