Here's the latest on the oil spill off Ainsdale yesterday - thanks to the Liverpool Echo newsdesk, and reporter Luke Traynor for supplying me with the copy.
By the looks of things, the incident doesn't appear too serious (if you can say that about any oil spill).
If anyone hears anything different, let me know....over to Luke:
by Luke Traynor
A 900- METRE-LONG oil spill has spread over the waters of Liverpool Bay, off the coast of Ainsdale.
The condensate release was estimated to reach the beach by around 9pm last night following the release near Billiton Petroleum's Lennox platform, eight miles offshore from Southport.
The Maritime and Coastguard Agency said the substance was likely to vapourise and disperse naturally before reaching the shore.
They stressed that the spill, which happened at noon yesterday, posed no threat to bird or sealife.
The standby vessel 'Vos Inspirer' is monitoring the light liquid based substance which has diesel like characteristics.
BHP Billiton Petroleum mobilised their incident response team and emergency squads at local councils were alerted.
Eyes to the skies everyone, eyes to the skies...
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Thanks to a Heritage Lottery Fund grant, garden birds in Merseyside get their first ever garden bird Ambassador. BTO celebrated the appointment of Ms Janet Grant to the post of BTO Garden BirdWatch Ambassador.
Janet commented, âÂÂI am delighted to take up this position. The Garden BirdWatch survey is dear to my heart. By taking part throughout the year, ordinary people are adding to what we know about how, why and when birds use our gardens. In the long run this can only benefit the birds. The more we learn now about MerseysideâÂÂs garden birds, the stronger position we will be in to protect them in the future.âÂÂ
For more information on how to contact the Merseyside Ambassador, to book a talk for your club, or to join the BTO Garden BirdWatch survey and make your garden count. Contact the GBW Team on 01842 750050, email; gbw@bto.org or write to GBW, The Nunnery, Thetford, Norfolk, IP24 2PU.
Janet Grant , who she? What's a "Garden Birdwatch Ambassador" supposed to do?
I've been looking for excuses to resign my BTO membership, the dumbing down of "BTO News" is one of them, this looks like another.
Hell's teeth, surely putting food and water out on a permanent basis is the absolute crux of birds and gardens.
"Ambassador", my a--e!
Lovely to hear a "crornk" from my bedroom window this afternoon and then to see a Raven scudding over Botanic Gardens,
Ron
Ron - don't resign your BTO membership. Do the opposite and get more folk to join! BTO does great work, don't leave.
Nice to get Raven, owt else in Botanic?
Leave the BTO? What other impartial organisation exists in this country?
What other organisation scientifically monitors birds without opinion and favour. They report what is what and leave the RSPB and others to battle it out politically.
Garden Birdwatch is an attempt to get others to start small and move onwards and upwards.
What better place to start watching birds than in your back garden, then the park, then the farm, then the pond THEN survey work and valid and scientific recording. Don't knock it simply because you have left it behind!
Not everyone can distinguish a Yellowhammer from a Siskin, or identify a Redpoll flying over.
They have to start somewhere.
Yes they could join the RSPB but how many of their <1M members report their records.
This is an attempt by the BTO to get people to scientifically record - and enjoy doing it.
Give it a chance - some children encouraged by watching the Robin in their back garden may just be the next finder of the Slender-billed Curlew.
Quite 'drbob", that's why I joined the BTO and why I am, still, a member.
Membership doesn't or shouldn't stop one having one's own views about the way an organisation may be heading.
I find the "BTOnews" in its current format irritating. I know they are trying to increase membership, and thus presumably feel a need to lower the common denominator, but I for one don't need a photograph of a Goldfinch and a Chaffinch to support an article on Farmland Birds. More text please and less of the snaps!
The RSPB "Birds" magazine is what it is because it has to be to satisfy a massive membership many of whom aren't and never want to be "serious" birdwatchers. I have no intention of resigning from the RSPB, and I would be quite happy not to receive "Birds", my copy of which, after a brief perusal, ends up with the reading material in the waiting room at the Churchtown Medical Centre. Better "Birds" (by far) than "Hello" or "Woman's Own"!
Ron
Graham,
Nowt else in Botanic but I've got Nuthatch, Grey Wagtail as permanents in my nearby garden with recently a couple or three Bramblings.
What is missing from Botanic is "our" Squacco Heron (J.Riding, Banks Marsh, 1930) from the "Pennington Gift".
I'll be raising this with Merseyside Museums w.h.y. but extremely disappointing if it's been knocked off.
A stuffed Squacco presumably not that valuable unless with a provenance like this one possesses.
The collection (of stuffed birds to those who don't know of it) looks pretty manky and needs re-labelling as a starter. I don't know what else, if anything, has gone missing. I recollect reading elsewhere a complaint about other exhibits becoming "lost" so?
As a sort of aside I can recommend to anyone who thinks they may have seen a Rough Legged Buzzard which may have been a Common Buzzard to go and look at the specimens of each in "The Pennington".
Chalk and Cheese, and far better demonstrated than in any field-guide.
Ron
Ron, for what it's worth, I too think BTO News has been dumbed down (and I will make representations at the end of the year to that effect).
But the nature of the organisation hasn't - yes it wants more members, but not at any expense!
I'm not really fussy about who is a member of what organisation - so long as they are a member of one and are adding their voice to the conservation effort.
Regards.