Geoff Sales

Mainly birds, mainly in Staffs.

[Dr Julia Grace Patterson💙 @JujuliaGrace]

The politicians are finally back in Westminster today. If you don’t want Andy Burnham to advance NHS privatisation (like Starmer was doing 🚨), hit the like button and share this. Let’s see what everyone thinks… 🌟

[Geoff Sales @GeoffSales1]

That's brilliant!

[BELVIDE BIRDING𓅪 @BelvideBirding]

Just going through my images of the Stone Curlew from yesterday and this one stood out for me.

[Give A Shit About Nature @giveashitnature]

There is an animal that eats anthrax, botulism, cholera, and rabies for lunch and walks away fine. It doesn't have a good PR team, so most people have no idea what it's actually doing for us.

The turkey vulture's stomach acid runs at a pH of around 1, roughly as corrosive as battery acid, and hot enough to dissolve bones, hide, and virtually any pathogen that comes with the carcass.

A vulture eating a diseased animal isn't spreading the disease, but putting an ending to it. The infection chain terminates in the vulture's gut and goes nowhere else. Few other scavengers on Earth does this reliably.

Without vultures, things get bad for humans in a hurry. We've learned this hard lesson first hand.

In the 1990s, Indian farmers started giving their cattle a cheap painkiller called diclofenac. When vultures ate the carcasses, the drug destroyed their kidneys. The population collapsed by more than 95 percent in under a decade, one of the fastest declines of any bird species ever recorded.

The carcasses didn't disappear. Feral dogs and rats moved in to do the cleanup instead. Both species actually carry and spread rabies. Both brought the disease into contact with human populations in ways vultures never would have.

A 2024 study in the American Economic Review estimated the vulture collapse contributed to roughly 500,000 additional human deaths over the following decade. Not metaphorically. Counted deaths, linked statistically to the collapse of one bird.

The same thing is now beginning in sub-Saharan Africa, where poachers bait carcasses with poison to kill lions and elephants that might alert rangers. Vultures find the carcass first, as they always do. Six of Africa's eleven vulture species are now threatened with extinction.

The animal that shows up to the things nobody else will touch is doing more disease control than most of what we actively protect. It just has the misfortune of looking exactly like what it is.

[Micah Erfan @micah_erfan]

🚨 HOLY SH*T: Fox News just cut one of their reporters off as they seemed to indicate the shooting was a pre-planned false flag.

[Stuey Beef 🇬🇧🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 @stuey_beef]

Keir Starmer didn’t just appoint Peter Mandelson to Washington; he then walked into Palantir’s HQ with him – while Palantir was a paying client of Mandelson’s lobbying firm – and somehow “forgot” to log it as a ministerial meeting.

The Ministry of Defence, whose officials were also there, calls it a meeting, Palantir calls it a standard government visit, but Downing Street insists it wasn’t a meeting at all – just enough of a “non‑meeting” for the PM, his ambassador and a spy‑tech contractor to sit in a room together with no minutes, no transparency and, a few months later, a £240m no‑tender contract.

[Humongous Ape MP @apesahoy]

There are nineteen restaurants and nine bars in parliament, all serving subsidised alcohol. This is what happens when a person who has actually worked sees how MPs actually 'work'.

[Zero Hour @zero-hour.bsky.social @zerohour_uk]

🌍 It's #EarthDay—and the @BigGive’s #EarthRaise is LIVE!

🚨 Our ecosystems are being pushed to the brink, making our national security more fragile than ever. The time to act is now.

🎁 Every £ donated to Zero Hour will be DOUBLED until 29 April!

👉 https://t.co/PusztffSMb

[Canary @TheCanaryUK]

🚨 URGENT: Dr. Mohammad Hammad, a young doctor from Gaza, completed medical school during war, treating patients under bombardment despite loss and destruction. Now a medical intern, he aims to improve stroke care in conflict zones.

Support his journey 👇https://t.co/s6TXUAcMTk

[Geoff Sales @GeoffSales1]

Signed

[Geoff Sales @GeoffSales1]

Stop the Chattenden Barracks development and protect the nation’s Nightingales! - Sign the Petition! https://t.co/YyH13Z3N5O via @UKChange

[Geoff Sales @GeoffSales1]

Stop the Chattenden Barracks development and protect the nation’s Nightingales! https://t.co/ABcQNdfatS via @UKChange

[Geoff Sales @GeoffSales1]

Signed

[Pete Fontana @tighthead22]

This is something that's very important to me, this area holds a large proportion of Kent's Nightingales.

Stop the Chattenden Barracks development and protect the nation’s Nightingales! - Sign the Petition! https://t.co/6bkp7CGaOX via @UKChange

[Geoff Sales @GeoffSales1]

Stop the Chattenden Barracks development and protect the nation’s Nightingales! - Sign the Petition! https://t.co/YyH13Z3N5O via @UKChange

[Hedgehog Cabin @HedgehogCabin]

No please remove the chicken, that isn't good for hedgehogs!!
Chicken alone is as bad as mealworms as it's *very* high in phosphorus and very low in calcium, and causes Metabolic Bone Disease.
Please only give *balanced* food - complete cat or dog food that has meat as the first listed ingredient.
Decide on one (I recommend Iams Kitten or Purina One Kitten) and stick to it, as hedgehogs have such strong survival instincts they don't trust a change in food.

[Geoff Sales @GeoffSales1]

Berryhill - 2 wheatears by the mound.

[Geoff Sales @GeoffSales1]

https://t.co/RgeMh98shq

[Zarah Sultana MP @zarahsultana]

Kick US troops off UK bases NOW.

[Canary @TheCanaryUK]

Labour Minister attached to a review on foreign interference has failed to declare his affiliation with Labour Friends of Israel

Via @skwawkbox
https://t.co/EAvAKifPfc

[Geoff Sales @GeoffSales1]

https://t.co/yXkwJUd6XJ

[The National @ScotNational]

Wes Streeting has again accepted over £50,000 from a firm whose owner has longstanding links to private healthcare 🚨 https://t.co/dj5VsttQps

[Canary @TheCanaryUK]

🚨 NEW: UK arms exports soar to a record £9.2bn – as transparency declines