International Vulture Awareness Day

Vultures are an ecologically vital group of birds that face a range of threats in many areas that they occur. Populations of many species are under pressure and some species are facing extinction.

International Vulture Awareness Day has grown from Vulture Awareness Days run by the Birds of Prey Working Group in South Africa and the Hawk Conservancy Trust in England, who decided to work together and expand the initiative into an international event.

Cinereous Vulture

It is now recognised that a co-ordinated international day will publicise the conservation of vultures to a wider audience and highlight the important work being carried out by the world’s vulture conservationists.

On September 4th 2010, the aim is for each participating organisation to carry out their own activities that highlight vulture conservation and awareness.

The website, established in July 2009, provides a central place for all participants to outline these activities and see the extent of vulture conservation across the world

Griffon Vulture

I think most people know that I have had an involvement with The Hawk Conservancy Trust for about twenty years. Last year, the Trust asked me to prepare a website for International Vulture Awareness Day, which I was happy to do. An additional interactive element was added to the site by Gwendolen Tee in the Netherlands. You can find that at http://www.vultureday.org/wp.

Vultures are nature's dustmen. Their rôle is to remove dead and decaying animal matter; a rôle that they perform with astounding efficiency and effectiveness. So effective are they that, if they eat the carcase of an animal that has died from a disease such as anthrax, rabies or the like, not only are they unaffected by it (one wouldn't normally expect birds to be affected by a mammalian disease), but their droppings show no sign of the disease organisms.

King Vulture

They are not, as one often hears implied, dirty animals. There is little future for a soaring bird that has feathers caked in blood - feathers only work well when clean, and vultures do work hard to keep themselves clean and airworthy.

There are 22 species of vulture worldwide; fifteen outside the Americas (termed Old World vultures) that are in the same family as eagles and hawks, and seven in the Americas (New World vultures) that are in the same family as storks and herons.

The threats to vultures come from a number of sources. In Europe it is required, for Elf'n'safety reasons, to burn or bury dead livestock, thus depriving the vultures of a food source. In some areas vulture parts are harvested for medicines or for decoration.

African White-backed Vulture

In south Asia, veterinary use of diclofenac (a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug) has been reported to have led to a sharp decline in the vulture population in the Indian subcontinent, reported as 99.9% decline as of 2008. Vultures eat the carcasses of livestock which have been administered veterinary diclofenac, and are poisoned by the accumulated chemical. This use is now being phased out, but rebuilding the population - if it can be done - will take a long time. The following is extracted from Wikipedia:

"The loss of tens of millions of vultures over the last decade has had major ecological consequences across the Indian subcontinent that pose a potential threat to human health. In many places, populations of feral dogs have increased sharply from the disappearance of Gyps vultures as the main scavenger of wild and domestic ungulate carcasses. Associated with the rise in dog numbers is an increased risk of rabies" and casualties of almost 50,000 people. 

African White-headed Vulture

The Government of India cites one of those major consequences as a vulture species extinction. A major shift in transfer of corpse pathogens from vultures to feral dogs and rats can lead to a disease pandemic causing millions of deaths in a crowded country like India.


The loss of vultures has had a social impact on the Indian Zoroastrian Parsi community, who traditionally use vultures to dispose of human corpses in Towers of Silence, but are now compelled to seek alternate methods of disposal.


Vultures do an important job. The job of International Vulture Awareness Day is to bring that fact to the public consciousness.

All the vulture photographs were taken at the Hawk Conservancy Trust.

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In other news, as they say, Tania arrived back from Tanzania today, having really enjoyed her trip. We welcome her back, and shall take her dogs back to her during the week.

That apart, it has been a quiet week. I have plenty of work on my web projects - that will take care of the days that are too hot or too wet for me to do what I need to do in the garden, as well as those days when I frankly cannot be bothered with anything resembling physical work.

Belgian Grand Prix this afternoon - I shall be cheering on Lewis and Jenson, with a little for Mark Webber, because he is a nice person and deserves to do well.

Have a good week.
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Crafty? No flies on me!

We've had some cracking weather this week - temperatures in the high thirties and loads of sunshine. It was so warm on the terrace that Tinkerbell (the one who doesn't do the daily walks because he is too lazy small) started panting like a real dog!

Not wishing to be left out and having demonstrated panting and other real dog skills (like attacking Trevor on a regular basis) on the walks, Shitsu attempted to reinforce her credentials as a real dog by playing with a stick

Trevor and, to a greater extent, Ulysse have spent time in the doghouse this week. Ulysse chases cars. Not, we believe, aggressively, but so he can scrounge a lift somewhere. Like all of his breed, he loves riding in cars. Whenever we see a car approaching whilst on a walk, we need to get Ulysse back on the lead and keep him there until the car is out of sight and earshot. Release him before then and he will try to catch up with it - and Trevor will try to catch up with him.

One afternoon during the week, the three dogs were chasing each other around a field of probably about four acres, playing with a stick we had thrown for them. We saw a car coming up the lane, and the dogs didn't seem to notice. We positioned ourselves by the gate anyway knowing that, if Ulysse saw the car, he would try to give chase. We were blocking the gate so we could stop him.

He saw the car and came running towards the gate at full speed, saw us, and immediately found a way through to the next field from which he escaped and gave chase. Trevor followed, and they both disappeared out of sight, running furiously and barking maniacially. Some minutes later they reappeared, both looking sheepish because they knew they were in trouble. Trevor submitted to the lead straight away, Ulysse started running home. We caught up with him about fifty metres short of the house, put him on his lead (not at all gently, I have to confess) and bundled him into a room on his own for half an hour. When we let him out, Trevor and Shitsu gave him a hard time, and Tinkerbell would have joined in, were he not so pathetically small.

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Clare and her Mum have been highly industrious, one might even say crafty.

First Clare knitted a garment for a friend's new baby - very nice, but whether it is wise to introduce children to the dreadful hoodie concept at such an early age is definitely open to question!

She and her Mum then did something very strange; something I can only think of either as a form of occupational therapy, or as the kind of non-job that the last government invented by the shipload simply to reduce the number of people claiming unemployment benefit. You know, people whose sole purpose is to invent politically correct regulations and forms and hold endless meetings to make people with real jobs less productive so they have to increase their numbers just to do the job to the standard to which they were doing it before these timewasting jobsworths were appointed. Then, of course, when you try to get rid of them to make everybody's life more pleasant and everybody's job more doable and to save vast sums of money, you are accused of throwing people out of work and wrecking the economy.

But I digress.

What they started doing was to cut up perfectly good pieces of material and stitch them back together again. I'm sure there is a job title in local government for that, one that will give prestige, a good salary, a nice office, a gold-plated pension and everything. Perhaps Resources Apportionment and Cohesion Officer - although one of them would have to be Manager, Resources Apportionment and Cohesion. As far as I could tell though, Clare and her mum were doing it for fun, and they are very proud of the result.

 

In the meantime, I busied myself taking photographs of flies - none of which landed on me (not like the horse flies we have been seeing recently - they're big and they bite)

There was a reason for that, though. Read on!

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I have decided to join the smartphone revolution. Clare has an iPhone that was given to her, so I thought I would try one of these Chinese iPhone lookalikes. I have to admit that it is very good, but falls short in one important area. I could not persuade it to do browsing and stuff over Wi-Fi. It makes a connection and does some things, but not the things I need it to do. Basically, I want to use Wi-Fi rather than expensive 3G or EDGE connection. It's a good machine, but not what I want - so it will be up on eBay soon.

Tania's contract with Orange gave her a new Blackberry, so she gave me her old one. Old, that is, as in previous, not as in aged. We have a pay as you go arrangement with LeClerc Mobile which is very advantageous for those of us who don't use mobiles a lot. We pay one and a half Euros per month, for which any credit we buy is valid for one year and, when we top up at the end of that year, the existing balance is also validated for another year. The downside is that data calls cost one euro per magabyte or part thereof. That means that each data call will cost 1€ minimum, so if you only use email, never actually receive any, but check every hour, it will cost 24€ per day! Not good.

So, I bought a modest contract with Orange, 24€ per month for one and a half hours talk time per month, 200MB data and unlimited texts. I fed it into the Blackberry thinking that I could use Blackberry messaging, which is free. I tried to register for Blackberry internet services but found that I could only do that if I had a different contract - one costing a minimum of 40€ per month. I do not want to pay that much. Without that registration, things like the Blackberry Application store were also not available, and I couldn't register any email address or collect any email. In short, it was effectively crippled. Added to that, the display on the Blackberry is such that I was having difficulty reading the thing so, on balance, I decided the Blackberry was not the ideal one for me. I shall give it back to Tania on her return from Africa.

After doing a lot of research, I concluded that my best answer was to bite the bullet and buy an iPhone 3GS through eBay. These are quite plentiful now that the iPhone 4 has taken off.

The phone arrived, jailbreaked and unlocked. I allowed iTunes to upgrade it to iOS4, which undid the jailbreaking and unlocking. I reapplied jailbreaking and unlocking. A lot of digging revealed that it is common experience that, following jailbreaking and unlocking, the battery life appears to be significantly reduced.

As it is, natively, tied to Orange, and as my contract is with Orange, there seemed to be little benefit in jailbreaking and unlocking so, when offered a security upgrade to iOS4.02 (with the caveat that it negates jailbreaking and unlocking) I decided to go ahead.

I am now finding that the iPhone, with the contract I have with Orange, suits my needs well. I can keep in touch with Facebook, Twitter, Skype and Yahoo Messenger, and I shall set up on it one of my email addresses that is relatively spam-free. It works well in any free Wi-Fi situation and the monthly allowance of 200MB of data should be enough for those occasions when I need to use an EDGE or a 3G connection.

The flies? That was a test image using the iPhone's camera. Not displeased.

Have a good week.
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Double trouble!

On Friday, I received a request from a friend to help with one of the family PCs. There are three PCs in regular use, two of which are general purpose machines, with Avast AntiVirus installed; the third is connected to a HDTV and is used only for Skype and internet TV.

A couple of movies were downloaded recently, after which began some unwanted behaviour on the PC. Basically, nothing would run, as multiple alerts were flashing up, claiming the machine to infected with all manner of nasties. Every programme they attempted to run was said to be infected, and the helpful message that accompanied the alert offered for sale the very software needed to clean it.

My friend, being suspicious of the thing, called me for advice before committing to spend the money.

I put on the most appropriate T-shirt and set off, armed with a CD containing a selection of tools.

The alerts were coming from Antimalware Doctor. According to bleepingcomputer.com, "Antimalware Doctor is a rogue anti-spyware program that is installed through malware. When installed, Antimalware Doctor will be configured to start automatically when you login to Windows. Once running it will scan your computer and detect numerous infections, but will not remove them until you first purchase the program. These infections, though, are all fake. The real infection are the Antimalware Doctor program itself and the malware that installed it."

Bleepingcomputer.com offers removal instructions here, which I duly followed, until I found the MalwareBytes' Ani-Malware product, which they recommend, will perform a very lengthy scan of the PC, list out all the problems found, then ask for payment if you want it to remove the offending software.

I fully understand that software of this kind costs money to prepare, maintain and distribute. However, to scan, report, then require you to pay to remove malware, I consider to be unacceptably dishonest, as I do all the ads and links for 'free downloads' of software which is either time-bombed or functionally crippled. Better to state clearly, up front, before installation (better yet, before download), what is actually being offered. It is very likely that many people, faced with that, would download the software, scan the PC and, if the scan is positive, buy the full version. I probably fall into that camp. However, when it acts the way MalwareBytes' Ani-Malware product does, I remove it after the scan and look either for an alternative product, or the information to enable me to remove the malware manually. Rant over.

So I did the latter. I eventually managed to get Task Manager to respond and, using the details contained in the bleepingcomputer.com page, disabled and removed Antimalware Doctor.

Flushed with success, I rebooted and tried to install Microsoft Security Essentials - currently, in my view, one of the best of the free antivirus etc. products, and certainly one of the easiest for the average user to deal with. A message told me that "mssefullinstall-x86fre-en-us-xp.exe is infected with a virus". I detected the unmistakeable whiff of the output from the rear of a bovine - and I'm not talking about methane here! Further investigation showed the PC was also infected with AV Security Suite.

According to bleepingcomputer.com, "AV Security Suite is a scareware and ransomware program from the same family as Antivirus Soft and AntiSpyware Soft. The developers of this program are distributing AV Security Suite through the use of hacked sites, spam, and Trojans that install it onto your computer without your permission. Once installed AV Security Suite will be configured to start automatically when your computer starts. Once started it will scan your computer and state that there are numerous infections, but will not let you remove any of them until you purchase the program. All of these scan results are fake and are only being shown to trick you into purchasing the program, which you should obviously not do."

Detailed instructions for the manual removal of AV Security Suite are here. Again, it was difficult to persuade Task Manager to run, as it, too, was reported as being infected but, once running, the process could be stopped and the rest of the removal was not too onerous. A quick reboot, and Microsoft Security Essentials was installed.

Four hours after arriving, the PC was usable again.

The moral to this story? Any computer that is connected to the internet or connected to another computer that is connected to the internet is at risk. Good antivirus software that constantly updates itself is essential, as are regular scans with that software. Equally important is to ensure that the operating system is patched up to date and regularly updated, and that any software installed should also be maintained up to date. That doesn't necessarily mean upgrading to the latest expensive release, but it does mean that bug-fixes and security patches should be applied as they become available.

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The tent that we had ordered has been resting in the barn for a while and, last Sunday, we finally got around to erecting it. Here it is:

It is plenty big enough for two of us and two dogs and, next time we have a spell of appropriate weather, we shall disappear off and loiter within it. As I said in June, provided we can keep Trevor from barking manically every time someone walks by within half a bloody kilometre, we can camp anywhere in Europe.

Watch this space for our adventures.

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Meanwhile, we are trying to put the dogs to good use. We currently have four of them. Tinkerbell doesn't join in our long walks with his four inch legs, so we really have three that we can put to work. Here they are making themselves useful on a walk, pulling Grandma's wheelchair.

It has been pointed out to me that Ulysse was not pulling his weight, and Shitsu doesn't have much weight to pull. Fortunately, that well-known thug Trevor was there. When he is pulling, his determination and "upper body" strength put me in mind of Sir Ranulph Fiennes' description of Dr. Mike Stroud who accompanied him when they made the first unsupported walk across the continent of Antarctica in 1992, each man dragging a 500-pound sledge. If you haven't read Ranulph Fiennes' "Mind over Matter", I can certainly recommend it.

I have had my copy since 1997 when I met Sir Ranulph after he had given a keynote speech at a software conference.

Have a good week.
À la prochaine

Everyone knows what a "Simpsons sky" is

... and here is the Auvergnat version, taken at 1:45pm on 7th August when the temperature was 27°C on its way to 32°C later in the afternoon.

But that's not how the week started! On Sunday there was a small amount of thunder - annoyingly, right in the middle of the Hungarian Grand Prix, and enough to lose us the satellite signal for about half an hour. This picture was taken at 5:41pm on Sunday whilst walking the hellhounds, and shows the "steaming jungle" effect either of  very low cloud, or of evaporation from the trees.

Late on Monday afternoon we heard the first rumblings of thunder rolling around in the distance. By mid evening we were all in batten-down mode with lots of lightning; very close, very loud thunder and, of course, no signal - either on FreeSat or on the French TNTSat. With the son et lumière show in the sky came rain, the like of which I have not often seen outside of monsoon zones. It lasted pretty well all night.

We do not panic quite as much these days, as we have lightning protection on all of the electricity sockets that power sensitive equipment, and the ADSL line is routed through the UPS that protects the ADSL modem/router, network switches, my main PC and the networked disk and printer. However, Tuesday morning came, and we had no broadband connection. This is not unusual after a major storm, so we waited until mid-afternoon (to give them time to locate and fix the problem) before calling Orange. 

I called them at about 3pm, and told them I had no ADSL signal, but that the telephone is OK. I also told them that I had replaced both ADSL filters. "What lights are showing on your Livebox?", they asked. I replied to the effect that I don't use the Livebox as it only ever works intermittently and I have replaced it with something more robust and reliable. It turns out they can't test the line unless there is a Livebox on the end of it. They asked me to connect the Livebox and call back.

The Isle of Wight ferry is not the only thing that is brown and steaming and comes out of Cowes! That my nice, reliable, robust Cisco/Linksys modem was not able to detect an ADSL signal would seem to indicate that the Livebox wouldn't be able to either, ergo they would not be able to interrogate the Livebox, nor would they be able to detect that the terminating equipment was not of their supply.

I didn't think of that at the time.

I disconnected the Linksys, connected the Livebox and called back. To my complete and utter surprise, bewilderment and amazement, they couldn't detect the Livebox, but sensed that the line was OK as far as the house. They arranged for an engineer to come on Thursday.

The engineer arrived at about 8:30am on Thursday - a very pleasant young man (did I really say that? That's the sort of thing old people say, and I'm not old, am I?) with a very impressive tool, into which he plugged the ADSL line and detected nothing. I told him the ADSL signal was routed through the UPS, that I had tried a direct connection on Tuesday morning but that didn't work either. Of course he could take the line from the wall socket directly into his impressive tool. "Voilà", says he - of course it bloody well worked. Why didn't it on Tuesday morning? Gallic shrug! He pointed out that the indicator lights on the Livebox suggested the line had been found, but the Livebox was not logged in. CHECK. I brought up the web interface to the Livebox which had, as its opening screen, a statement that "There is an internal fault in your Livebox. Please reboot." It had only just been restarted. Livebox unplugged, Linksys reconnected, all is good in the 'hood. CHECK AND MATE.

In the engineer's opinion, the Livebox is quite fragile, and my Linksys is much more robust and reliable, but I should still have the Livebox replaced (it being faulty) and continue paying rental for it!

At this point, I need to thank Rik and Lieve, who live just under six miles away by road, for allowing me to invade them and use their ADSL connection for three days so I could keep reasonably up to date.

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By Friday things were back to normal, he rain water had drained away, the sky was pretty much clear and temperatures were returning to sensible numbers. OK, it was too hot to do any heavy work in the garden for most of the day but we did, on Friday and Saturday afternoons, clear most of the scrub (mainly a mix of nettles, brambles and bindweed)  from around the little pond as the before/after pictures below will show. By the way - neither of these images has been Photoshopped.

We may now tackle some of the other overgrowth!

Meanwhile, no new viewings and no response from those who came before.

Have a good week.
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