Wild Things columnist Eric Brown discusses activists' extraordinary measures to benefit wildlife and disable despised Ulez cameras while also featuring a hilarious case of mistaken identity in a column of odd wildlife titbits.

Here's another column of curious, serious and odd wildlife stories you may have missed when they first surfaced.

Campaigners opposing London Mayor Sadiq Khan's £12.50 a day vehicle surcharge have devised a clever method of neutralising Ulez cameras without lawbreaking yet helping wildlife at the same time. The identity of the person who first proposed fixing bat boxes on Ulez camera poles remains unknown. I don't suppose he/she will receive wildlife awards but what a great notion. Vandalising cameras or the poles that support them is illegal but fitting poles with bat boxes is not. It is, however, a criminal offence under the Wildlife and Countryside Act(1981)to disturb resting and breeding places of legally-protected bats. Anyone removing occupied boxes erected by activists could be prosecuted. This means engineers cannot legally climb a pole with resident bats to repair or replace faulty cameras without risking prosecution. Bat boxes sold by the National Trust and RSPB at around £10 have so far appeared on camera poles mainly in west London including Chessington and Kingston-upon-Thames. But they are expected to spread. Transport for London, caught off guard, were still considering their reaction when this column was written.

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Meanwhile conservationist Beth Gerrard of the University of the West of England is also concerned about bats. She has called for cat owners to keep their animals in at night to protect them. A quarter of a million bats are estimated to be killed by cats each year. Of Britain's 18 bat species, four are "vulnerable" and two "near-threatened." There is no statistic for bats killed by wind turbine blades.

Officials at Lincolnshire Wildlife Park hope swearing by a few African parrots will be masked from visitors' ears after introducing 100 more noisily squawking parrots. But they admit they could end up with 100 swearing parrots.

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Police are searching for a 30-year-old tawny owl believed stolen from his pen at a London charity stable yard in Wimbledon.

When a compassionate woman in her 20's spotted a long-time stationary hedgehog in Cheshire she scooped it up, put it in a box and rushed it to a wildlife rescue centre. There she was gently informed that the sickly "hedgehog" was, in fact, a pom-pom from a woolly hat ! Should have gone to Specsavers.