Whale freed after being stranded at lock along River Thames in London - video
But having been freed it now seems to have got stuck again: [S]potted near Teddington lock just after 10.20am, heading downstream towards Chiswick and back towards Richmond: “Its condition is deteriorating. It’s not acting the way it did last night. It’s basically lost ( Read more... )

The Bogglemen have found their mascot:
Boggle the Wombat
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In a world where, on top of everything else that's going on, we have four earthquakes in two weeks in Bedfordshire (that's Bedfordshire, UK), orcas attacking boats off the coast of Spain, mass beaching of pilot whales in Tasmania -
- all of which makes me anticipate reports of lionesses ( Read more... )

2 'People: weird':
Okay, maybe she gets a slight pass for 'we're all a bit stressed at the moment, luv', but, really: 'It devastated me': Bristol mum's fury after gender-reveal party 'ruined' - the sonogram operator '“blurted out” that the foetus was a boy during a scan'.
You could not make it up: Man acquitted of entering a home with a weapon ( Read more... )

[T]hird beaching of a dead whale on the Thames in two months: 8-foot minke whale made it as far as Battersea Bridge before expiring. British waters boast one of the most diverse ranges of cetaceans in Europe, with 22 species living around the UK - a quarter of all cetacean species in the world.
This does not, however, as far as I can see, include ( Read more... )

Another large aquatic mammal disporting in the Thames: Humpback whale spotted in Thames east of London. Very unusual, and apparently not in any distress.
I suppose it is not very likely that it will swim all the way up to Westminster and then spectacularly beach itself in the vicinity of the Houses of Parliament in a symbolical fashion.
Whales ( Read more... )

Rare fin whale stranding in Norfolk puzzles scientists: “It should not be in those waters,” he told the BBC. “We see fin whales occasionally on the southern coast or more the west coast of the UK, so Ireland, right up to Scotland. But you never get them in the North Sea, so what it was doing there, we have no idea at the moment.”

Not the first ( Read more... )

Crocuses already coming up in the pocket park behind the house.
Also possibly under the same heading, sperm whales beaching themselves along the shores of the North Sea.
These days you don't lure the tourist trade to Skegness with the promise that it's so bracing: you offer dead whales instead. Thousands of people have flocked to the tourist resort ( Read more... )

More rus in urbe: the wildlife of London (mammalian).

Okay, you have to trek out to Richmond to see stags at bay (there are deer in other London parks, but those tend to be in enclosures: at Richmond they roam free, which is why every year some nitwit sustains injury through trying to get a close-up of a rutting stag). There have also been ( Read more... )

Crime-writers names their favourite authors/shamuses: yay for Paretsky naming Georgia Strangeways!

It's a pity that the Guardian's crime reviewer seems to think a tired old trope that probably got name-checked in the Detective Club's list of don't along with mysterious arrow poisons, is a new hot thing: 'amnesia is set fair to become the crime ( Read more... )

Shout-out to the purblind doomsters to plz b knocking it off.

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In spite of rain and gloom, houndz of spring were going arf at the sight of masses of croci (and a few snowdrops) in Gordon Square today.

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Book-related PSAs:

Nancy Mitford's Wigs on the Green is being republished, happy dance! She, one gathers, refused to let it be reprinted on ( Read more... )