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| On the twelfth day of Christmas, my true love sent to me | |||
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| 12 drummers drumming | 11 pipers piping | 10 lords a-leaping | 9 ladies dancing |
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| 8 maids a-milking | 7 swans a-swimming | 6 geese a-laying | 5 golden rings |
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| 4 calling birds | 3 French hens | 2 turtle doves | and a partridge in a pear tree |
In the Western church, Epiphany is usually celebrated as the time the Wise Men or Magi arrived to present gifts to the young Jesus (Matt. 2:1-12). |
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| HAPPINESS |
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| GRAY HAIRSTREAK
Hairstreak butterflies are named for the small, slender, hair-like tails on their hindwings. Gray Hairstreaks have a single tail on each hindwing, and near this tail is a bright orange eyespot. These eye-like spots, with their adjacent hindwing tails that look a bit like antennae, deflect the attention of predators toward the edges of the wings, which the butterfly can afford to lose, and away from the butterfly's actual head, which is definitely not expendable. |
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| CIRL BUNTING |
The dormouse pictured to the right is the "fat" or "edible" variety of dormouse favored by the Romans. | That the Romans were very fond of dining on dormice? The Romans were so fond of eating dormice that the upper classes raised them domestically. The rodents were kept in specially designed cages and were fed a mixture of nuts. 
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| THE ENGLISH DORMOUSE |
| Curled up in a cosy blanket of fur, tails tucked gently over their heads for extra comfort, whiskers neatly brushed, eyes shut tight to the world, the native dormouse is simply better at sleeping than anything else--especially when its hibernation begins. |
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| It can take a good 15 minutes to wake them up from a state of torpor. |
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| And after a good meal of hazelnuts, the tiny mice settle into nice mossy burrows for their winter dormancy.
And when they do finally feel like taking another bleary peep at the world, around May, after seven solid months of shut-eye, they have the enviable ability to go straight back to sleep if they don't like what they see. If there's too little food or it's too rainy, they simply snuggle back down again. |
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| Sweet dreams, even so, are by no means guaranteed. Dormice are endangered across much of the country.
Real life is perilous for dormice. Their numbers have fallen dramatically over the past 100 years, like so many other small British mammals and birds whose favourite habitats are ancient woodland and hedgerows, which have been devastated by modern industrialised farming. Although dormice can still be found widely in England--from Kent to Northumberland--and in some parts of Wales, there are thought to be no more than 40,000 left. (Compare that to the UK's 60 million rats.) It is not all bad news, though. The wildlife organizations Natural England and the Wildlife Trust have succeeded in reintroducing them to seven counties where they were thought to have died out. Wooden nesting boxes have been found to increase their chances of survival hugely, and there are now 150 sites equipped with more than 50 boxes. |
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| CLIMATE change is bringing animals out of hibernation prematurely, making them lose weight and causing them stress, Italian scientists say.
Spring-like temperatures too early in the year are waking animals sooner and putting their feeding and breeding habits out of kilter with the environment. Dormice, whose name comes from the Anglo-Norman word dormeus meaning sleepy one, now hibernate 5½ weeks less on average than they did 20 years ago. Marmots are also becoming prematurely restless in their burrows and are getting 38 days less slumber than before, according to the research. The breeding cycles of birds, reptiles, turtles and rodents are also changing. Great tits are laying eggs a week earlier and red kites 10 to 11 days earlier than they were nine years ago. Birds such as sparrows are losing weight as they struggle to adapt to the changes in the environment, according to Mauro Cristaldi and Germana Spunznar of the department of animal biology at Rome's La Sapienza University. "The eco system is a very delicate chain that is being disturbed by these unseasonal temperatures," Dr. Spunznar said. "Birds are suffering stress because they are being forced to fight for food. They are beginning their spring cycle much earlier when insects, berries, flowers and seeds are not as plentiful, so there is competition for nutritional resources." Another consequence of global warming, the scientists say, is that tropical marine life species are moving into unsuitable waters. They say 20 per cent of fish in the Mediterranean are immigrant species that have moved up from southern seas through the Suez Canal and the Strait of Gibraltar. In the Adriatic, they found 15 species of fish, including puffer fish, that the sea was previously too cold to accommodate. The research, conducted for Italy's National Research Council, is included in a report that deals with the issues surrounding the Kyoto agreement, the international treaty under which some industrialised countries have agreed to reduce their emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. |
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| Cambridge University Botanic Garden Location: Bateman Street, Cambridge, CB2 1JF Cambridgeshire, England | |
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| LADY OF THE NIGHT | |
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| FLAG OF BOLIVIA |
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| DOLOMITE MOUNTAINS -- ITALY |
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| VIEW OF DELFT |
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| Road to the Saint Simeon Farm Claude Monet |
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| SUBSIDING OF THE WATERS OF THE DELUGE |
| DISCLAIMER: Material used in Bitts and Bytes is gathered from various sources--mainly the World Wide Web.
Authorship cannot always be credited nor the source defined. Authenticity of material is assumed to be correct, but is not guaranteed. |  |