skinnywhiteboy

a green roof for my shed - it was something to do on the easter holidays…

Brighton green roof workshops announced for 13 and 14 June. Visit building green for more info.

I found these yesterday between St George’s Road and Percival Terrace, Brighton.

Other saddos:

Drainspotting
Manhole group on Flickr
Japanese manholes. Wow.

And while I’m on a sad tip, what the hell have the council done to the green walls and shrubberies along the Esplanade? Tested Agent Orange?

Complaints to parks@brighton-hove.gov.uk

Brighton & Hove Building Green are running a workshop, so you can learn how to do a green roof yourself - on a shed or something like that. Go - it’ll be fun. Saturday 17 May.

Bookings via Brighton Permaculture Trust - but it isn’t just for hippies.

A new website has just been launched for people interested in green architecture and sustainable living. Building Green (www.building-green.org.uk) is about green roofs and green walls, and has information about how to do them yourself and various buildings that use the technology in Brighton & Hove.

I bet few people own a record of wildlife sounds. I don’t.

Then I found the Listen to nature archive, where you can listen to some of the beeb’s millions of recordings. Well worth a browse for an hour or two - you can browse by location or species, and you can find some truly inspiring stuff. Brent geese at Chichester Harbour, for example, or the masked crusader, the Black redstart, at Kings Cross.

If you live in London, you can hear the sounds of the city through Wildweb - a great way to explore the capital’s wild spaces and noises.

Inspired, I said (hmm) - so I put together a top 10 of wildlife-related tunage.

10. Heavy horses, Jethro Tull
9. Halfmole halfbird, Deerhoof LISTEN
8. Wake up little sparrow, Devendra Banhart
7. Birdhouse in your soul, They Might Be Giants
6. Rats, Birddog LISTEN
5. Blackbird, The Beatles
4. Pumpkin gets a snakebite, Animal Collective
3. I Saw The Apeman (On The Moon), The Lillingtons LISTEN
2. Cold turkey, John Lennon
1. Porpoise song, The Monkees (why? see previous entry)

Digging around afterwards, I found Eric’s list, and felt a lot less nerdy…

Chalk grassland roof at the Crew Club, Whitehawk, blending in well to the winter downland.

The timber bonanza from the wreck of the Ice Prince was in full swing on Brighton beach today. The city was out gathering arms and cars full of the stuff, but not everyone was so lucky.

On our walk to the marina, we found a harbour porpoise carcass amongst huge drifts of the ship’s timber at the high tide line. It was badly ripped and scraped - half the tail had been torn off and the nose was bashed in. A very sad sight - my guess is it had drowned whilst trying to surface amongst the huge raft of wood at sea, which has reached as far as the east coast of the States already.

The Ice Prince went down off Portland Bill on Tuesday - over half the Swedish cargo is still on board but they reckon 2000 tonnes has been spread far and wide by the wind and swell. If you take it’s supposed to be reported to the receiver of the wreck. Not much chance of that happening, methinks - some industrial quantities were leaving the beach today.

Cetacean live strandings or carcasses should be reported - the latter to the Natural History Museum, the former to British Divers Marine Life Rescue, RSPCA or the Environment Agency. Dolphin Care has more details. I didn’t have a phone so went to the RNLI station at the marina. Hopefully someone will pick her up and find out for sure how she died.

Come to a talk tomorrow night

Just climbed Monte Perdido - the lost mountain - the 3rd highest peak in the Pyrenees. Great trip, enhanced by stumbling, tired, at 2am, on ‘Le Mirage’ hotel/casino (was it real?); only just making it to the refuge before nightfall thanks to a closed mountain tunnel; taking a wrong turn up the mountain and getting the fear on the edge of a long and very sheer drop…and seeing a load of new wildlife including snow finches, arctic choughs, ermine, red squirrels, marmots and isards.

Isards are Pyrenean chamois, graceful goat antelopes with rust red coats and black masks. They danced across the paths in front of us, and glided up rocky scree slopes like they were on wheels. It’s their elastic deer hoofs that do it, apparently. Anyway, turns out some wankers aren’t content with nearly hunting them to extinction in the 1940s - you can pay up to £4800 to shoot your own isard and take the skull home to show the neighbours.