Arctic Wonders

Location of Colville River

Colville River Delta

Jim and Teena's house on Colville Island

One of the blogs I follow is Jim Helmericks - Arctic Smoke Signals. Jim and his wife live in one of the most remote places on earth - an island in the middle of the Colville Delta on the North Slopes of Alaska. The Colville river drains a wild part of Alaska, empties into the Arctic Ocean and is entirely above the Arctic Circle, it is frozen for 6 months of the year.

I stayed with Jim and Teena when I filmed the Spectacled Eider, a trip which has informed and influenced so much of my thinking. Jim and Teena are kind, solid people who have lived a life most of us can barely imagine, bringing up their 4 sons in a wild place that is totally isolated from the rest of the world. Their house is only accessible in the winter by a 2 day trek on a snow mobile, in the summer by plane.

Jim's father was one of the earliest bush pilots in Alaska and wrote a fascinating book about delivering mail across the North Slopes; he passed away in January.

Have a look at Jim's website, his extraordinary photos of astronomy and wildlife and marvel at people who really do live life at the edge.

Here are some recent photos from his blog:

Musk ox by the house

King Eider on the island

Jim fishing

Arctic fox pinching a fish Jim has just caught!

Common cuckoo - first sighting on Colville Island

Frozen boat with Aurora

purple finch

weasel

Psalms with a Difference

Steven Faux is an impressive composer. He writes music for TV documentaries and for Radio 4 programmes. He is also an ordained priest in the Church of England. He has recently produced a truly beautiful and moving CD called the Psalms Project, setting the first 40 Psalms to powerful music and voices. Have a listen to the short clips below taken from Psalms 1, 10, 16, 29, 40 - the CD is are available through Steven on his website.

Get your own playlist at snapdrive.net!


Get your own playlist at snapdrive.net!


Get your own playlist at snapdrive.net!


Get your own playlist at snapdrive.net!


Get your own playlist at snapdrive.net!

Some of the pieces have been put to images on YouTube

Hard Gardens

I've just learned that a housing association in Stoke-on-Trent are beginning a programme of ripping out the hedges and lawns of 3 houses a week, every week, for the next 5 years. The residents say they want low maintenance gardens and so privet hedges over 50 years old are going to be destroyed at the start of the breeding season.

Why is this legal? A team of youth on work experience are ready to start the destruction, being seen as "training", why can't they be trained to trim hedges and do basic gardens if that is what people are afraid of doing themselves?

We seem to have learned nothing from the destruction of hedgerows across farmland. As urban sites expand we have to fold the needs of wildlife into our own needs, even if that means the inconvenience of pruning and mowing just occasionally.

Birds use them to nest in, insects to shelter and breed in, hedgehogs can go through them (they find it hard to scale fences) and all kinds of small mammals can use them as shelter and for corridors.

Hedges are great for all kinds of wildlife. Come on Housing Association - do your bit and help make Stoke a better place, not more concrete wasteland.

Privet Hawk Moth: