DAVID ADAMS provides a round-up of some stories on the odder side of life…
Not a competitor in the fourth European Seagull Screeching Championship. PICTURE: Peter F Wolf/Unsplash
• Their screech may not be universally loved but there was no doubting the admiration for the cry of seagulls of those who gathered at the fourth European Seagull Screeching Championship in Belgium on the weekend. The winner was reportedly Portuguese scientist Simão João who scored 87 out of 100 points. Other winners included Cooper Wallace, a nine-year-old boy from Chesterfield in the UK, who won the junior section of the competition while wearing a seagull onesie and scoring 92 out of 100 points. Judges gives scores for both the screech and the behaviour of the contestant.
Chess pieces. PICTURE: Rafael Rex Felisilda/Unsplash
• A Nigerian chess master looks to have set a new Guinness World Record after playing for 60 straight hours. Tunde Onakoya reportedly played US chess champion Shawn Martinez at a table set up in New York’s Times Square in a bid to break the record and also raise $US1 million for Chess in Slums Africa, a charity Onakoya co-founded which aims to help educate a million children in slum communities. Guinness World Records had not, at the time of writing, confirmed the new record. The previous record of 56 hours, nine minutes and 37 seconds was set in 2018 by Hallvard Haug Flatebø and Sjur Ferkingstad of Norway. Nigeria’s President Bola Tinubu praised Onakoya’s efforts in “setting a new world chess record and sounding the gong of Nigeria’s resilience, self-belief, and ingenuity at the square of global acclaim”.
A toad. PICTURE: Laura Seaman/Unsplash
• In a nature reserve on the outskirts of Russia’s former imperial capital, volunteers are helping thousands of toads to cross a sun-dappled road so that they can reach their spawning grounds. Thousands of toads hunker down during the bitter Russian winter months in the swampy pine forests outside St Petersburg, awakening in the springtime to migrate to their spawning grounds in the lowlands on the Gulf of Finland, a few kilometres away. To complete their small but mighty migration, however, the toads must overcome grave danger: the traffic on a single-lane road. The nature reserve put out a call for volunteers this spring to help the toads cross safely and were astonished by the interest it received. “A huge number of volunteers responded in literally a few hours,” said Nino Natsvaladze, chief specialist for St Petersburg’s nature reserves. “Six hundred people registered in four hours.” Eager volunteers clad in neon vests patrolled the road on a recent day, stooping to pick up the slow moving toads, who are sluggish after the long winter, and ferry them across the traffic in bright green buckets. “I like volunteering in principle, and also helping toads is basically three times cuter,” said local resident Artem Semenov, who saw the advert about the toads in need in local media. “It’s much more interesting, more enjoyable and beneficial both for yourself in terms of spending time in the open air, for society and for nature, than sitting at home and watching TV.” – St Petersburg, Russia/Reuters
