From Puffin Beaks and Wild Cattle to a walk in the bluebell wood

Idly watching Country Tracks on television whilst having a late breakfast, I was surprised to learn that there is a wild herd of cattle in existence in the UK, the Chillingham cattle. I invite you to peruse some of the paintings of manors and estates commissioned by their proud owners in the 18th/19th century and these will include majestic white cattle with lyre horns. Chillingham estate has the last herd of these truly wild and ancient cattle, thought to be distinct from the domesticated varieties. They defeated the threat of extinction in the 20th century and have subsequently recovered to a herd of 94 individuals by 2011.

The Chillingham cattle are claimed to be descendants of the wild ox or even of the extinct Aurochs. Frustratingly, the genetical analysis to determine their status and taxonomic relationship to either the progenitors of cattle or the domesticated breeds has not yet been conducted.

The question arose in my mind, where did our domesticated cattle come from? Research revealed that current theories are that they were domesticated from the Aurochs, which survived in Europe until 1627. They became extinct with the death of the last female in a Polish forest (Wikipedia: Aurochs), whose skull, incidently, was poached by the Swedes during some of the battles in the area.

There has been an attempt to revive the Aurochs, by breeding presumed Aurochs traits from different cattle into a characteristic new variety. These are called Heck cattle and their numbers are now in the thousands in populations spread through out Europe. A small herd was imported into a Devon farm in 2009, heralded as the invasion of the Nazi cows by the common press at the time, and Edinburgh Zoo has a sample of that population now too.

The same program, Country Tracks, answered a question long in the back of my mind, as to how Puffins can collect several fish in their beaks whilst hunting underwater and before returning to their nests. As an almost incidental aside, it was stated that Puffins have barbed inner linings to their mouth to hold the fish in place. This initiated an immediate search for a further evidence of this and I can only recommend that you look at this excellent visual demonstration in Mr Grant's photograph.

The last question was a challenge put to me by my neighbour Mr H. On a walk back to their house, Mr H's spouse found two credit cards in the grass, obviously lost by their unfortunate owner. Mr H had already conducted a Google search using the name on the cards and identified that they might be on Facebook. He had then come post-haste to me; could I find the owner's contact details?

Indeed I could. First, it was possible to send a message to the potential owner through Facebook. The same individual also appeared to have a LinkedIn account which mentioned their company. Pursuing this in a separate search led to the discovery of a mobile telephone number. I dialled the number immediately and left a message on the recipients answering system. Within minutes we had received a return call where we were able, through cautious questioning, to establish that the caller was indeed the real owner of the cards. Mr H and I were then able to meet that grateful individual a little while later for a handover.

Mrs T and I had also taken the glorious sunshine as an excuse for an afternoon outing, choosing Hayley Wood for the last of the Bluebells and protection from the gusty wind. In a remarkable coincidence, we met an old acquaintance at the woods, before setting off to explore along different chosen paths. The bluebells were still in evidence and it was indeed relaxing to walk amongst the trees of the sylvian groves, pausing to admire one flower here or the dancing flight of the woodland butterflies there. We took along a small camera and you can see some of the Hayley wood images here.