"Odds & Sods" (old version) - please add to the new thread 2020 instead !

THIS THREAD IS NOW DISCONTINUED,   please add to the new 2020 thread HERE

Often we don't have enough photos to create a full thread so thought I'd start an Odds & Sods thread where you may want to add a pic or two when you don't have enough for their own thread .    Feel free to add your rogues gallery here ! 

I only had a couple of pics today, one a Treecreeper and the other a very hacked off looking Great Egret huddled against the reeds trying to keep warm !

  • Unknown said:
    You are right about that Paul, I remember some time ago when we were last at Leasowe area on the Wirral there seemed to be a lot of plastics washed up on the beach including a large piece of open weave orange soft plastic barrier used when the cordon off the area around road works/drainage channels, etc., plus large water containers that they use on boats. Mike and I collected what we could (difficult with a camera and harness strapped round me and camera/lens dangling precariously as I stooped down ! ) there were a few plastic bottles washed up and general paper/plastic litter which we put into a nearby waste bin (can't believe people walk by when a bin is so close at hand and they are going past washed up waste by their feet ). There were quite a few people on the beach that day and a lot of dog walkers but not one person that I saw picked a single piece of rubbish up; if it had been a £5 note I'm sure it wouldn't have remained on the beach for long ! . I thought media were getting the message through about ocean plastics.....but require more than a well done from folk (or quizzical looks we got in our case ! ) Although there are days set aside for "clean the beach" , there are not nearly enough of them to be honest. We live a little bit far away from the sea but try do our bit when we are visiting the coast. Even if folk picked up just one piece it would make such a difference; we didn't collect much that day as we would have been there for a week (and also the bin was too small and car parked too far away) but the orange netting barrier was such a terribly dangerous item to have by ocean and beach waiting for the next tide to take it out again. btw, I'm one of those folk who also pick up items off the shop floor and return them back to the rail or shelf after someone else has knocked them down and then walked on !!! I'm not quite OCD but I am generally tidy, as is Mike lol

    We’ve noticed a small change in recovered plastics. There aren’t nearly so many cotton bud stems as there were a few years ago since a lot of the manufactures changed to rolled paper stems. There always seem to be lots of the plastic tubes off of aerosol cans (WD40 type things). Lots of fishing related plastics as well, not so much angling as commercial fishing stuff, nylon rope fragments, nylon type net materials. Still a lot of plastic drinking straws around but hopefully these will decrease with the bigger fast food chains changing to paper straws. Plastic bottles aplenty. The sad thing is that when you examine the shoreline really closely, there are innumerable small to micro plastic fragments everywhere. The product of long abandoned items broken down by wind and wave action due to becoming brittle with age. It’s quite disheartening I feel, but at least we can all attempt to do our bit and the waste material can possibly go for recycling (or more likely) landfill, which doesn’t really help the big issue as it's only being moved from once place to another, but at least gets some of it out of the food chain and marine environment. Huge issues which I’m afraid I don’t have the answers to. :-(

  • I so agree with all you Paul and Hazy have said. I get very discouraged with all the waste around and you are right Paul about the micro waste. I went earlier on this year to a beach on Anglesey where the Wildlife Trust were organising the clean up. We were directed on to the beach and advised to concentrate on those micro beads, well we didn't move more than a yard in an hour picking up these minute pieces, very disheartened more than anything else when we finished. When the binmen have emptied these days more often than not there is a residue left behind, walking the dog I often carry back plastic from the farmer's bales, it is black though so will it be recycled, I also have no answers.
  • Well done and thanks to all litter-picker-uppers! I'll never forget a little incident of over 30 years ago when I was walking home and watched a man on the other side of the street throw down a large, scrunched up piece of paper. I shouted across to him that ' 'Scuse me, but I think you've dropped something' and his reply was, 'Don't worry love, it's only litter!' And he carried on walking.
  • Ann, sometimes a long walking stick comes in handy, to whack 'em with. Only joking, you have to laugh or you would cry buckets.
  • LOL, Gaynor, I do have an expandable walking stick but I'm just not into physical abuse! While verbal abuse sounds a bit more do-able, you run the risk of the recipient getting physical! Perhaps a sandwich board with 'Please take your litter home!'?!
  • Being the smallest just isn't fair.!!

  • You mean you haven't even removed the seeds from the flower let alone extracted the hearts??? What a meanie!
  • Not only that, its a very small specimen & when its gone its gone!