It’s been a good week for ... birds
An ambulance service for pigeons has been launched in Aberdeen. Kevin Newell and Flo Blackbourn run Wiggy & Friends Animal Rescue and are on a mission to help the city’s injured doos.
They are asking people to help them map the city’s colonies so their Pigeon Patrol can check up on the birds’ welfare.
“We’ve created a rapid response first aid kit for pigeons," explains Newell. "If a pigeon is ill we’ll catch it and treat it.”
Newell, who has his own business Humane Wildlife Solutions, and Blackburn, a zoology student, run the rescue service from their home in Old Aberdeen. The centre is named after Wiggy the pigeon, who the couple treated when he had an injured wing.
“A lot of people absolutely hate pigeons but once you get to know them they’re all little people with their own characters and traits," says Newell. “We play pigeon noises to them so they feel like they have contact with other pigeons and not just us.”
Very Dr Doo-little.
It’s been a bad week for ... plants
Flat-sharing can be fraught with difficulties. The divvy-up of bills, the sharing of the limited hot water, the impromptu parties. And there’s always that nagging question: who nicked my last bit of cheese?
But rare plants don’t usually come into the equation – but they did for Lancashire ecology student Joshua Styles, who woke up to discover that his flatmate had vomited on his collection of rare plants and seeds gathered from more than 40 rare species.
And instead of a drunken student accident, Styles, 22, appears to think the vandalism was an act of retaliation. “My flatmate came in drunk at 3.30 in the morning with five girls making loads of noise. I’d had a bit of conflict with him already over not paying the bills, including the internet, so this time I cut off access to it.
“The next morning I woke up to find he had vomited over the plants I’ve collected for a project I set up in order to save them from regional extinction and poured bleach over them. I can’t tell you how upsetting it’s been. Those plants meant everything to me.”
But his faith in humanity has perhaps now been restored. Since writing on social media about his plants’ plight, supporters have launched a crowdfunding page to help raise £5,000 to repair the damage.
It seems there are seeds of hope after all.
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