by Rob Cowen
Derek Bromhall, Devil Birds: The Life of the Swift, Hutchinson, 1980.
Andrew Lack and Roy Overall, The Museum Swifts, Oxford University Museum of Natural History, Oxford, 2002.
Graham Appleton, ‘Swifts start to share their secrets’, British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) News, May–June 2012.
Håkan Karlsson, Per Henningsson, Johan Bäckman, Anders Hedenström and Thomas Alerstam, ‘Compensation for wind drift by migrating swifts’, Animal Behaviour, Volume 80, Issue 3, September 2010.
Johan Bäckman and Thomas Alerstam, ‘Harmonic oscillatory orientation relative to the wind in nocturnal roosting flights of the swift Apus apus’, Journal of Experimental Biology, 11 December 2001.
Elizabeth Day, ‘Revealed: how the swift keeps to its course at 10,000ft – even as it sleeps’, Telegraph, 14 March 2004.
Robert Furness, J. D. D. Greenwood, Birds as Monitors of Environmental Change, Springer (soft-cover reprint of 1st edition, 1993), 2013.
Bob Hume, ‘Learning About Birds: Swift’, Birds Magazine (RSPB), as it appears on http://www.stocklinch.org.uk/Swift.htm, accessed 29 July 2012.
Peter Berthold, Hans-Günther Bauer and Valerie Westhead, Bird Migration: A General Survey, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2001.
S. Åkesson, R. Klaassen, J. Holmgren, J.W. Fox and A. Hedenström, ‘Migration routes and strategies in a highly aerial migrant, the common swift Apus apus, revealed by light-level geolocators’, PLoS One, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22815968, 2012.
1 ‘They’ve made it again’: Ted Hughes, ‘Swifts’, as featured in The Poetry of Birds, Viking, 2009, edited by Simon Armitage and Tim Dee.
2 ‘Naturalist Richard Mabey wrote of being struck by an unavoidable allegory’: the article in question is from 2009 and appears in his collection A Brush With Nature: 25 years of personal reflections on nature, BBC Books, 2010.
W. Wiltschko, U. Munro, H. Ford and R. Wiltschko, ‘Bird navigation: what type of information does the magnetite-based receptor provide?’, Proceedings of the Royal Society, B 273 (1603), www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1664630/, 22 November 2006.
Mark E. Deutschlander, John B. Phillips and S. Chris Borland, ‘The Case for Light-Dependent Magnetic Orientation in Animals’, Journal of Experimental Biology, 22 March 1999.
For more on the common swift, its diet, migrations, habits and habitats, see (and support) the fantastic: http://www.swift-conservation.org.
Metamorphoses
1 ‘Now I am ready to tell how bodies are changed’: Ted Hughes, Tales from Ovid: 24 Passages from the Metamorphoses, Faber & Faber, 2002.
R.H Deaton, Small Rodents of the Harrogate District, Harrogate and District Naturalists’ Society, Harrogate, 1988.
M. Barnham and G.T. Foggitt, Butterflies in the Harrogate District, Harrogate and District Naturalists’ Society, Harrogate, 1987.
Joseph Moucha, A familiar colour guide to familiar Butterflies, Caterpillars and Chrysalides, Octopus, 1978.
Ferris Jabr, ‘How Does a Caterpillar Turn into a Butterfly?’, in Scientific American, 10 August 2012.
Editorial, M. S. Warren et al., ‘Rapid responses of British butterflies to opposing forces of climate and habitat change’, Nature, 414, 65–9, 1 November 2001.
2 ‘A biting east wind brought the temperature down to -1°C’: Newsletter No. 17 of the Bilton Conservation Group, Winter 1985/6, ‘The Wildlife of the Nidd Gorge in Winter’ (Secretary: Keith Wilkinson).
Newsletter of the Bilton Conservation Group dated ‘Spring 2007’.
Study by Cobham Resource Consultants for the Council of the Borough of Harrogate, ‘Nidd Gorge and Bilton Fields: Proposals for the Management of the Countryside on the northern and eastern fringes of Harrogate’, March 1983.
Peter Barnes (ed.), ‘Bilton with Harrogate – Forest, Farms and Families’, Report of a Community Archaeological Project by Bilton Historical Society, 2008.
Christopher Brickell (ed.-in-chief), The Royal Horticultural Society Encyclopedia of Gardening, Dorling Kindersley Ltd, 1992.
Richard Mabey, Flora Britannica, Chatto & Windus/Sinclair Stevenson, 1996.
David D. Stuart, Buddlejas (Royal Horticultural Society Plant Collector Guide), Timber Press, 2006.
For more information on SUSTRANS, the sustainable transport charity, see: http://www.sustrans.org.uk.
For more information on butterflies as an indicator species, including reports, see the United Kingdom Butterfly Monitoring Scheme: http://www.ukbms.org/indicators.aspx.
Last Orders
Various local history sources and websites proved invaluable in the research of the fate of the ‘Leeds Pals’ during the First World War. Few records prove as evocative however, as the words of Private A.V. Pearson, speaking about his battalion after the war: ‘The name of Serre and the date of 1st July is engraved deep in our hearts, along with the faces of our Pals, a grand crowd of chaps. We were two years in the making and ten minutes in the destroying.’ An overview of the battalion’s formation can be found on the Wartime Memories Project website (archived by the British Library), which also sheds light on the ferocity faced by its soldiers on their first engagement in the war: ‘The 15th Battalion, West Yorkshire Regiment (1st Leeds Pals) was raised in Leeds in September 1914 by the Lord Mayor and City. After training locally, the Battalion joined the 93rd Brigade, 31st Division, in May 1915 and moved to South Camp, Ripon and later to Hurdcott Camp near Salisbury. In December that year they set sail for Alexandria in Egypt to defend the Suez Canal before, in March 1916, the entire 31st Division left Port Said aboard HMT Briton bound for Marseilles in France, a journey that lasted five days. They travelled by train to Pont Remy, a few miles south-east of Abbeville, and marched to Bertrancourt arriving on 29 March 1916. Their first taste of action was at Serre on the first day of the Somme where they suffered heavy casualties as the battle was launched.’ For more information see: http://www.wartimememoriesproject.com/greatwar/allied/westyorkshireregiment15.php and http://www.leeds-pals.com.
For a comprehensive breakdown of the battle of Serre on 1 July 1916, see: http://www.ww1battlefields.co.uk/somme/serre.html.
Recorded losses for the battalion, sustained in the few minutes after Zero, were 24 officers and 504 other ranks, of which 15 officers and 233 other ranks were killed. Despite the Commander-in-Chief, Douglas Haig, commenting negatively on the performance of VIII Corps on the 1 July 1916 in his diary – Gary Sheffield and John Bourne (ed.), Douglas Haig: War Diaries & Letters 1914–1918, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2005 – the Official British History recognises the efforts made by the men, many of who had never been in action before. In Brigadier-General Sir James E. Edmonds, Military Operations France and Belgium 1916, Sir Douglas Haig’s Command to the 1st July: Battle of the Somme: Volume I, 1932, it states: ‘There was no wavering or attempting to come back, the men fell in their ranks, mostly before the first hundred yards of No Mans Land had been crossed. The magnificent gallantry, discipline and determination displayed by all ranks of this North Country division were of no avail against the concentrated fire-effect of the enemy’s unshaken infantry and artillery.’
Laurie Milner, Leeds Pals: History of the 15th (Service) Battalion (1st Leeds) the Prince of Wales’ Own (West Yorkshire Regiment), 1914–18, Wharncliffe Books, Barnsley, 1993.
Major and Mrs Holt, Battlefield Guide to the Somme, Pen and Sword Books Ltd, Barnsley, 2008.
Chris McCarthy, The Somme: The Day-by-Day Account, Caxton Editions, 2000.
Martin Middlebrook, The First Day on the Somme, Penguin Books, 1984.
Martin and Mary Middlebrook, The Middlebrook Guide to the Somme Battlefields: A Comprehensive Coverage from Crecy to the World Wars, Pen and Sword Books Ltd, 2007.
Paul Reed, Walking the Somme, Pen and Sword Books Ltd, Barnsley, 1997.
Dylan Trigg, ‘The Memory of Place: a Phenomenology of the Uncanny’, as it appears on academia.edu: http://www.academia.edu/355785/The_Memory_of_Place_a_Phenomenology_of_the_Uncanny.
Prepared b
y order of W. Patrick, Esq., ‘The Particulars and Plan of Bilton Hall Estate, to be offered for sale by auction by Renton & Renton, Wednesday the 4th day of June, 1924’, accessed at Harrogate Library, 2012.
‘North Harrogate Residents Consultative Group’, pamphlet detailing proposals for housing and relief road to Skipton Road through Knox, Bachelor Gardens, Bilton, Starbeck, 1985. Under ‘Fact One’: ‘The six miles of road is projected as a three-lane highway. It is more than an idea, it is an imminent reality’; under ‘Fact Two’: ‘The intended road will facilitate a huge housing and industrial venture, expanding Harrogate beyond recognition’, accessed at Harrogate Library, 2012.
Tony Cheal, Bilton Residents 1882–1899, listing document produced for the Bilton Historical Society, Harrogate, May 1996.
Jack Kerouac, On the Road, Penguin Modern Classics, 2000.
Revelations
Michael Clark, Badgers, Whittet Books Ltd, 1988.
Fiona Harvey, ‘Badger culling is ineffective, says architect of 10-year trial’, Guardian, 11 July 2011.
Patrick Barkham, ‘Slaughtering badgers is not the answer to bovine TB’, Guardian, 15 December 2011.
Damian Carrington and Jamie Doward, ‘Badger cull “mindless”, say scientists’, Observer, 13 October 2012.
Patrick Barkham, ‘Do we have to shoot the badgers?’, Guardian, 6 August 2011.
Richard Black, ‘Badger cull “may worsen problem”’, BBC News, Science/Environment, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11303939, 15 September 2010.
Angela Cassidy, ‘Vermin, Victims and Disease: UK Framings of Badgers In and Beyond the Bovine TB Controversy’, Sociologia Ruralis, Volume 52, Issue 2, April 2012.
1 On Owen Paterson tabling 600 questions regarding badger control in opposition, see Hansard, Common Debates, Column 1062, http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201213/cmhansrd/cm121025/debtext/121025-0001.htm, 25 October 2012.
Damian Carrington, ‘Owen Paterson: true blue countryman putting wind up green campaigners’, Guardian, 11 October 2012.
Damian Carrington, ‘Owen Paterson’s climate change problem: cock-up or conspiracy?’, Guardian, 7 September 2012.
2 ‘In a body blow to the new environment minister, thirty eminent British scientists’: Professor Sir Patrick Bateson et al., ‘Culling badgers could increase the problem of TB in cattle’, open letter, Observer, 14 October 2012: http://www.theguardian.com/theob-server/2012/oct/14/letters-observer.
‘In for the cull: A government that asks for independent scientific advice had best be ready to take it’: Editorial, Nature, 450 (7166), 1–2, 1 November 2007.
Stephen P. Carter, Mark A. Chambers, Stephen P. Rushton, Mark D.F. Shirley, Pia Schuchert, Stéphane Pietravalle, Alistair Murray, Fiona Rogers, George Gettinby, Graham C. Smith, Richard J. Delahay, R. Glyn Hewinson and Robbie A. McDonald, ‘BCG Vaccination Reduces Risk of Tuberculosis Infection in Vaccinated Badgers and Unvaccinated Badger Cubs’, PLoS ONE, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3521029, 2012.
‘Bovine TB: The Scientific Evidence – A Science Base for a Sustainable Policy to Control TB in Cattle – An Epidemiological Investigation into Bovine Tuberculosis’, presented by Professor John Bourne (chairman of Independent Scientific Group on Cattle TB) to the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, The Rt Hon David Miliband, MP, June 2007. This full version of the report, including John Bourne’s covering letter, appears on the Team Badger website and may be read in full at https://www.teambadger.org/pdf/final_report.pdf.
W.J. Stokoe (compiled by), Maurice Burton, D.Sc. (revised by), The Observer’s Book of Wild Animals of the British Isles, Frederick Warne & Co., 1958.
Gareth Enticott, ‘The Spaces of Biosecurity: Prescribing and Negotiating Solutions to Bovine Tuberculosis’, Environment and Planning A, Volume 40, No. 7, 2008.
3 ‘I know I’m not alone in wondering’: the insight and research of the Guardian between 2011 and 2012 were important in my investigations into the efficacy of badger culling. I am particularly grateful to Patrick Barkham and Damian Carrington and recommend Patrick’s subsequent book Badgerlands, Granta, 2013, as a definitive work on the period.
Margaret Blount, Animal Land, Hutchinson, 1974.
Timothy Roper, Badger, HarperCollins, 2010.
Hannah Kuchler, ‘Coalition clashes on wind farm policy’, Financial Times, 31 October 2012.
Kiran Stacey, ‘Allies warn Cameron of move to right’, Financial Times, 5 September 2012.
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), ‘Climate Change 2007: Synthesis Report’, as it appears on https://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/syr/en/spms2.html, 2007.
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), ‘Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis: Summary for Policymakers’, as it appears on http://www.slvwd.com/agendas/Full/2007/06-07-07/Item%2010b.pdf, 2007.
For explanations of climate-change science and rebuttal of misinformation, see: http://www.skepticalscience.com
Camille Parmesan and Gary Yohe, ‘A globally coherent fingerprint of climate change impacts across natural systems’, Nature, 421, 37–42, 2 January 2003.
Cynthia Rosenzweig et al., ‘Attributing physical and biological impacts to anthropogenic climate change’, Nature, 453, 353–7, 15 May 2008.
George Monbiot, ‘Bonfire of Promises’, Guardian, 28 May 2012, and ‘Shale Fail’, published on the Guardian website, 31 August 2011, also featured on his website: www.monbiot.com.
Graham Readfearn, Leo Hickman and Rupert Neate, ‘Michael Hintze revealed as funder of Lord Lawson’s climate thinktank’, Guardian, 27 March 2012: http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/mar/27/tory-donor-climate-sceptic-thinktank.
Steve Connor, ‘How the “Kochtopus” stifled green debate: behind the climate “countermovement” are two billionaire brothers’, Independent, 24 January 2013.
Ian Johnstone, ‘Nigel Lawson’s climate-change denial charity “intimidated” environmental expert’, Independent, 11 May 2014.
Bob Ward, ‘When climate change denial is promoted in mainstream news’, New Statesman, 20 August 2014: http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2014/08/when-climate-change-denial-promoted-mainstream-news.
‘Global Warming’s Denier Elite’, Editorial, Rolling Stone, 12 September 2013.
‘Climate Denial Machine Fuelled by Big Oil…’, Editorial, as it appears on ecowatch.com, 29 July 2014.
For more information on the campaign against climate change, see: http://www.campaigncc.org
George Monbiot, Heat, Penguin, 2006.
Epigraph
‘You showed me’: Martin Simpson, ‘Never Any Good’, Prodigal Son, Topic Records, 2007.
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ISBN 9780091954550
Map by Emma Lopes
Linocuts by Rob Cowen
; Extract from ‘Swifts’ taken from Ted Hughes: Collected Poems for Children © Estate of Ted Hughes and reprinted by permission of Faber and Faber Ltd
‘Never Any Good’ by Martin Simpson, quoted with kind permission from Martin Simpson