Several of you have recently been searching for the following phrase and reaching sciencebase.com: “webtoons about stem university”.
I couldn’t work out what that might be about specifically, but had some thoughts. First, if you’re searching for “webtoons about stem university,” perhaps you were looking for web comics or digital comics that are related to STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) fields and set in a university or college setting. Perhaps not…
Maybe you were interested in finding engaging and entertaining ways to learn more about STEM subjects, possibly with a focus on university-level education. Seems unlikely…
As I was typing the above introduction, it suddenly occurred to me that what you might have been searching for is the well-known comic XKCD or something similar. XKCD posts regular jokes and satire with a mathematical and educational bent. It actually describes itself as “A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language”, but taken broadly that could be synonymous with “webtoons about stem university” could it not?
If it wasn’t XKCD specifically that you were after, then maybe it was one of the following alternatives:
PhD Comics – This webcomic is written by Jorge Cham, a former mechanical engineering instructor turned full-time cartoonist. PhD Comics features humorous depictions of life in academia and graduate school, including research struggles and the challenges of pursuing a PhD.
Piled Higher and Deeper (PHD) TV – This is the sister site to PhD Comics, featuring videos that cover a range of topics related to research and higher education, including academic conferences, grant applications, and interviews with academics.
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal (SMBC) – This webcomic by Zach Weinersmith covers a range of topics, including science, philosophy, and pop culture. While not exclusively focused on research or higher education, SMBC often includes witty commentary on academic life and scientific research.
Abstruse Goose – This webcomic by cartoonist Ira is a mix of science, math, and technology humor, with a focus on research and academic life.
Dinosaur Comics – This webcomic by Ryan North features the same images in every strip, with the dialogue changing to address different topics, including science, philosophy, and technology.
The Awkward Yeti – This webcomic by Nick Seluk features humorous depictions of the human body and medical science, often featuring characters such as the heart, brain, and stomach as characters.
The Oatmeal – This webcomic by Matthew Inman covers a range of topics, including science, technology, and current events, with a humourous and irreverent tone.
Questionable Content – This webcomic by Jeph Jacques follows the lives of a group of young adults, with a focus on relationships, music, and technology.
If this wasn’t what you were after, please let me know what you meant by “webtoons about stem university”.
TL:DR – Focusing my social media attention on Mastodon and Sciencebase.
I’ve had an account on a Mastodon instance almost as long as Mastodon has existed. Nominally, my start date was November 2019, but my account told me I’d logged on in 2016 just after the first instance was launched. Anyway, I may have been an early adopter, but I really didn’t recognise the relevance of this distributed, federated system until April 2022, when it started to come up on the radar as a good alternative to Twitter, when talk of Musk buying it was headline news.
In November 2022, just after Musk took over Twitter, a lot of people started signing up, I imported many of the people I was following on Twitter who did so. But, in the months since it would seem that a lot of those newbies have left their accounts inactive, many for a month or two, but many more since that November. Presumably, many of them saw the advantages of the federated system, as deficiencies and opted to either head back to the Twitter or else seek out other social media platforms.
Indeed, in recent weeks, several have emerged, Spoutible and Substack’s version of Twitter, known simply as Notes, for instance. I see a lot of the people I’ve known on various social media over the years having given Mastodon a try and now jumping over to those centralised sites. Many of them are very enthusiastic about their chosen destination. Unfortunately, it seems, as with Twitter, those sites will inevitably suffer from the problems of being centralised. Inevitably, if any of them become very successful, they will succumb to the business tide and likely be sold off to the highest bidder for some ludicrous amount of money, the likes of which could solve real-world problems rather than simply lining an entrepreneur’s pockets and funding their rockets.
Anyway, I do generally sign up for any and all new accounts as they appear, so I have a presence on some of these other Twitter alternatives, but fundamentally, I maintain Sciencebase as main virtual residence as I have done since July 1999. In the meantime, I am hoping to reduce fragmentation and may well focus entirely on Mastodon (and perhaps Medium where I have a couple of thousand followers), rather than trying to engage with people on those newer sites.
TL:DR – How to fall in love with moths and mothing.
Regular Sciencebase readers will know only too well that back in July 2018 I got hooked on moths. An enthusiastic friend lent me a moth trap he had built himself for his children many years ago. The trap is basically a wooden box with a plastic funnel and an ultraviolet light supported by stiff plastic vanes).
Moth trap
The UV light attracts the night-flying creatures, some of them bump into the vanes, drop into the funnel and then find a cozy corner in one of the empty egg cartons put inside the box before “lighting up”. The amateur, or indeed professional, lepidopterist examines the catch at dawn, recording species and species number and later releasing the moths off-site back into undergrowth or bushes.
It’s fascinating and fun and at the time of writing almost five years since I first “lit up”, I have seen, photographed, and logged well over 450 different species of moth in my Cambridgeshire garden. The variety and diversity of shape, size, colouration, and patterning is incredible. I must admit that I had always been a little irrationally wary of moths despite the fact that they are completely harmless. After all, unlike many other types of insect, they don’t bite and they don’t sting.
Poplar Hawk-moth on Rob’s hand on that fateful day in 2018
It was a test run with my moth-trap maker friend, Rob, who had stopped trapping moth and turned his hand to making guitars, that got me hooked. He lit up one July evening and invited me to the grand opening the next morning. There must have been 100 or more moths in the trap, a few that were simply dull and grey or brown, but among them some huge hawk-moths, some shiny green moths, orange ones, red ones, patterned ones, ones with daggers and arches, all kinds.
Having got a little up close and personal with the Poplar Hawk-moth in Rob’s trap, allowing it to perch on my hand while I took a close look, this single dose of informal aversion therapy, seemed to cure my mild phobia about moths, my mottephobia. I had previously photographed one or two moths that turned up in the house, but essentially I made 180-degree about turn from aversion to addiction. I borrowed Rob’s trap from him permanently as summer turned to autumn, and paid him an honorarium for the privilege.
Convolvulus Hawk-moth
I have trapped regularly in all that time since. I’ve also acquired various other UV sources including a LepiLED. The low-wattage LepiLED runs off a USB battery pack and is entirely portable, so I have taken it on a few excursions with an adapted, portable Heath trap I bought off another ex-mothing friend. My pots for managing the morning moths came from yet another ex-mother friend!
Hummingbird Hawk-moth
I have also bought pheromone lures to attract various species, including Emperor and some of the clearwing moths. I have planted wildflowers and various scented flowers in the garden to attract species like Hummingbird Hawk-moth and Convolvulus Hawk-moth. A recent addition to my mothing measures was to buy a bottle of amyl acetate (used in aromatherapy apparently despite it being toxic). It has a strong fruity smell and is entirely harmless to moths but attracts various species.
Is it a kind of madness, this mothematical obsession? Maybe. Am I happy to be part of #TeamMoth and to regularly declare that #MothsMatter? Too right! I have written about the ethics and importance of moth-trapping as a citizen science effort and I have also written about why moths really do matter. Would I recommend it as a hobby or citizen science project? By my scaly wings, I would, of course!
A moth known as a Clouded Yellow butterfly
Incidentally, butterflies are just one grouping within the Lepidoptera, just like the less publicly familiar groupings, the noctuids, hawk-moths, erebids and others. Indeed, butterflies are grouping within the broader clade we know as the micro moths (an unfortunate term that doesn’t always reflect their size but is rather connected to their evolutionary ancestry). The other major clade is the macro moths, but there are some micros that are bigger than even the biggest macros.
Male Emperor moth
The tragedy is that their numbers and diversity have declined considerably since my childhood in the 1960s and 70s. Perhaps even in the last five years since I started mothing. First full year, I would see a couple of hundred moths of 70 or so species, but in the last couple of years those numbers have been much lower even on peak summer nights.
TL:DR – I prompted ChatGPT to write me a personal brand pitch.
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I haven’t mentioned ChatGPT for a while. There has been something of a backlash against the hype and the scaremongering. But, I have still been using it for various small jobs, such as quick website tweaks and summarising documents that are TL:DR (too long, didn’t read). Latest prompt I gave it was to act as my personal brand manager and write me a pitch based on the Sciencebase homepage. This is an edited version of what it came up with:
David Bradley Science Writer
As a multi-award-winning freelance science writer with over three decades of experience, David Bradley has a unique talent for making complex scientific concepts accessible and engaging. He has written for a diverse range of outlets, including countless newspapers, magazines, research, industrial, educational, and academic organizations, and websites, covering a wide range of topics from astronomy to zoology and almost everything in between.
As a wannabe polymath, he is also an accomplished musician with an enormous passion for photography. He combines his science, snaps, and songs to create a website and blog that offers a fresh perspective on the natural world, showcasing his stunning wildlife photography, and sharing the latest cutting-edge research as well as occasionally offering incidental music. With his wife, Mrs Sciencebase, he is a keen allotmenteer, wildlife garden pond manager, and garden rewilding enthusiast.
David’s writing style is approachable and engaging, and he loves to sprinkle a little Geordie wit and charm into his work. He has bylines in New Scientist, Science, Nature, The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph, Popular Science, American Scientist, and many others. In 1995, he set up the first-ever chemistry webzine, which morphed into the Sciencebase site in 1999.
If you’re looking for an experienced freelance science writer with a passion for making complex concepts accessible, look no further than David Bradley. Connect with him on social media, or shoot him an email at [email protected] to start a conversation…
TL:DR – It was learning some of the common names for the macro moths that helped piqued my interest in being an amateur lepidopterist and citizen science moth-er.
There are around 1800 moth species seen in the UK. A large proportion of these are the so-called micro moths (which isn’t about size, but rather their position in evolutionary history) and they are usually referred to by their scientific name rather than a common name although some do have colloquial names too. But, almost all of the macro moths have an intriguing common name. Here are some of my favourites
The Clifden Nonpareil (Catocala fraxini) – This large moth is known for its striking appearance, with its black and white wings and a powder blue band across its hindwings. Its name, “Nonpareil,” means “unrivaled” in French and the Clifden, is the archaic spelling of Cliveden, as in Cliveden House the site where it was recorded scientifically in the early days of formal entomology.
Clifden Nonpareil
The Buff-tip (Phalera bucephala) – At rest, this moth look like a piece of broken silver birch twig. The Buff-tip of its common name refers to the colour of the ends of its forewings.
Buff-tip
The Merveille du Jour (Griposia aprilina) – This moth’s name comes from French, meaning marvel of the day. It’s a stunning green moth with intricate black patterning on its wings, it blends in well with lichen-covered surfaces.
Merveille du Jour
The Coxcomb Prominent (Ptilodon capucina) – When at rest this otherwise brown and relatively innocuous moth has a profile shape resembling the a cockerel’s comb. The colouration and shape make it otherwise resemble a curling autumnal leaf.
Coxcomb Prominent
The Herald (Scoliopteryx libatrix) – This moth is known for its stately orange orange wings, when at rest it looks like a shield or perhaps the penant that might hang from a horn player’s instrument at a ceremony.
The Herald
The Old Lady (Mormo maura) – The Old Lady is named for its resemblance to black or dark-brown silk commonly worn during mourning by widows of the late 18th Century when the species was named. It is sometimes known as the Black Underwing or the Grave Brocade, although both those archaic names are frowned upon.
The Old Lady
The Vapourer (Orgyia antiqua) – This moth, occasionally known as the Rusty Tussock, is as that latter name would suggest largely brown, although the males have a white spot on each forewing which gives something of the appearance of eyes staring back at wouldbe predators. It is known as The Vapourer because the wingless and so flightless females exude pheromones, producing a vapour trail to attract the day-flying males.
The Vapourer
The Shark (Cucullia umbratica) – This fairly large moth gets its common name from its grey and sleek appearance when at rest and its thoracic crest adds to the allusion of a shark-like shape.
The Shark
The Ruby Tiger (Phragmatobia fuliginosa) – This moth is known for its striking appearance, with its bright red colour and furry body. It bears little resemblance to the other “tiger” moths, which have a more butterfly-like appearance, although only the Jersey Tiger as stripes, the others are spotty.
Ruby Tiger
The Nutmeg (Anarta trifolii) – This moth is named after its speckly grey appearance, which must have reminded the early entomologists of the spice, perhaps the face of a piece of nutmeg after grating.
The Nutmeg
I reviewed Peter Marren’s excellent book about the names of the Lepidoptera, Emperors, Admirals, and Chimney Sweepers, on Sciencebase some time ago. I still refer to it on an almost daily basis during the peak mothing season.
TL:DR – There is no evidence that Blackcaps that overwinter in the UK are “demigrating”, they all tend to leave by mid-April. That said, much of their migratory behaviour remains a mystery.
I’ve written about a warbler species we see here in the summer known as the Blackcap, Sylvia atricapilla, several times on Sciencebase. Commonly, for many, many years, thousands in fact, Blackcaps that migrate to the UK in the summer have spent the northern winter in Iberia or North Africa. They migrate north to south and back again, year in, year out.
There is, however, a number of Blackcaps that tend to spend the northern summer in mainland continental Europe, Southern Germany and Austria, for instance. Those in the western part of that region then head somewhat west for the winter to spend the colder months on the Iberian peninsula or in the northern parts of Africa. Those in the eastern part head South East presumably to Serbia, Croatia, Greece etc.
Overwintering Blackcap on mistletoe
In the last 20-30 years or so there has been a shift in behaviour among these German Blackcaps, ast least the ones in the west. Some of them seem to have lost their internal compass calibration and have been turning up in the UK for the winter instead of the slightly balmier climes of Spain and Portugal. Their internal compass is genetically programmed into these short-lived migratory birds though and so this “mistake” has proven beneficial as it has proliferated in a sub-population of the birds that find well-stocked garden feeders in British gardens. They have thus taken to over-wintering here and then find their way back to the continent for the summer come late March or early April.
Over the last few years, we usually have a male in our Cambridgeshire garden, and one year recently we had both a male and a female. They seem to join in the stripping of mistletoe berries from the trees as well as partaking of the fat balls we hang in the garden. Previously, they have departed in the spring not to be seen again until the winter. We never see Blackcaps in our gardens in the summer, but we do see them in local woodland and these would’ve been birds that overwintered in Iberia and North Africa.
Blackcap visiting for the summer
There is now some intriguing evidence that the UK overwintering Blackcaps are not mixing so well with their Iberian counterparts and that we might begin to see speciation taking place. In this, they might ultimately stop interacting and mating and begin to diverge genetically into two sub-species. If the evolutionary pressure is sustained they might one day split into two distinct species.
Now, the male that has been in our garden through the whole of the winter of 2022-2023 has recently been singing rather vigourously from our rowan tree. It was as if he was attempting to establish breeding territory although given his shyness at the feeders compared to the sparrows and even the tits, maybe he was just singing with frustration. Of course, the males do start to sing, or at least partially sing, in March under normal circumstances, perhaps rehearsing for their leading role once they get back to their summer breeding grounds.
I asked Greg Conway of the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO), who has undertaken a lot of research on Blackcap migration about the misinformation that seems to be circulating that claims some overwintering Blackcaps are becoming resident. You can read about work on Blackcap migration in a paper from van Doren et al. on which he is co-author here: https://doi.org/doi/10.1111/gcb.15597
“Virtually all the wintering birds do migrate in the spring and head across the Channel,” he told me. “Currently, there are just a handful of British-bred birds that have remained here to winter, amongst the more than 1000 of ringing recoveries.” He adds that “The winter tracking work did not reveal any resident individuals.”
The bottom line then is that demigration is not happening in Blackcaps. Conway expanded on what I suspected about the behaviour of my own overwintering Blackcap:
“Typically, the wintering birds depart between mid-March and mid-April.,” he explains. “And, just before they go, they gorge themselves at the garden feeders to build fat stores for their long journey. So you might see a bit more feeding activity this week.” He added that I should expect my Blackcap to depart in the next spell of fine weather. Indeed, by the 9th April our overwintering Blackcap had departed.
We know a lot about bird migration and movement but much remains a mystery. I’ve previously discussed the cases of Little, Great White, and Cattle Egrets, Spoonbill, and Glossy Ibis. All of those species have extended their range into the UK over the last few decades. Of course, many migratory patterns have been altered by the ice ages, shifts and changes in environment and food supply, and in the modern age climate change.
“There is still so much we don’t know about Blackcaps and their migratory behaviour,” adds Conway. Licensed ringing and citizen science observations and reporting from birders, of course, are helping build up a picture of what happens. Hopefully, one day we can expect to get a clear understanding of this little bird’s comings and goings. Conway adds that there is also an initiative for reporting ringed Blackcap sightings. If you see any ringed individuals you can send date and place details and whether male (black cap) or female (brown cap, also juveniles have a brown cap) to [email protected]
UPDATE: 24th March 2024 – Having not seen any Blackcaps in our garden this winter, sudden sighting of a male feeding on our mistletoe. So, maybe he’s been around but just not visible. The Merlin app has certainly heard him a couple of times in the last few days when I stick my phone next to our open bedroom window some mornings at 7am-ish. (Our overwintering male Blackcap had departed our garden by the end of the first week of April 2023).
TL:DR – Advice on selling a book in the age of influencers and podcasts.
A friend of mine, Greg Gbur, has a new book out. It looks fascinating, its title is Invisibility: The History and Science of How Not to Be Seen. I needn’t tell you much more about it, it does what it says on the tin, as they say. Gbur is a physics prof who specialises in optics and has a way with words. It’s a guaranteed great read.
Anyway, Greg was lamenting on social media how hard it is for a popular science author with a book out to get that very message across. There are so many books published every week, so many people chattering and chuntering on about those books. Any attempt to promote it and get the book into people’s shopping basket or onto their Kindle seem doomed in this age of influencers and endless podcasts vying for our attention.
It was different back in my day, says the grand old man whose book Deceived Wisdom was in book stores back in 2012! Actually, it wasn’t that different, I did my best with promoting it as did my publisher, they got me spreads in various papers and there was an option to do radio interviews (they’re like olden-days podcasts but you can’t pause or rewind them, hahah).
I thought about some of the things I did to help sell my book and at one point it was riding high, above books by Sir David Attenborough and Professor Brian Cox that were on the market at the same time. Indeed, I think the relative rate of sale on Amazon outstripped those two giants for at least a week or two. My publisher was pleased. They reported back that sales on an amazon promo day had outstripped what most publishers expect from their bestselling crime authors. Which was nice.
I’ve put a list together for Greg, just off-the-cuff thoughts to help raise the visibility of his book about invisibility. The same advice would hopefully work for other types of promotion. Anyone’s welcome to give them a try. I’d even suggest A/B testing some of them on your different socials, see what happens. One bonus piece of advice: Do not read the reviews on amazon or any other sales site, there will always be the contrarians, the fakers, the trolls, it’s unpleasant to see, and you as an author, do not need it.
Cover of Greg Gbur’s most excellent book on Invisibility
First – get a photo of you on all your social media, no cartoons, no logos, no graphics. A mugshot, smiling or otherwise (no hat, unless that’s your trademark look)
Second – make your display name your real name rather than your website name or pseudonym, the name that’s on your book cover.
Third – update all bios and introductory pinned posts and such to mention your new book and provide a link to the main site where people can buy the book in all formats in which it is available
Fourth – Change all the banners and headers on your social media to include a graphic of the book with the title and your name clearly visible.
Fifth – Write a call to action for the book and pin it on those accounts that allow pinning
Sixth – Do an executive summary of the book blurb and pin it to your website
Seventh – directly contact some friendly people you know in the media and science who will be interested and who you might describe as influencers/social media hubs and get them to give it a mention. Thank them when they do.
Eighth – Send copies to a select few, ask them to read it and give you a testimonial, one-line review. Thank them when they do. Post the five best at the top of your socials and on your website.
Ninth – Invite yourself on to relevant podcasts and do a good job explaining why the book is so great, push it, push it, push it.
Tenth – Don’t give up and keep your fingers crossed for the day amazon sells the Kindle version for $1 and when it does share the promo link like mad on the day on all socials. Don’t apologise for spamming. It’s not spam. These are your socials for you to use as you see fit. Apologies just dilute the promo.
TL:DR – Advice on how to improve your chances of attracting birds to your garden.
Sciencebase reader Michelle messaged to ask how she might attract more birds to her garden. There are plenty of things she can try to see more of our feathered friends on her patch. Some things will have an almost immediate effect others might take a little longer. The rewards are always worth the effort to see the variety and numbers of birds that can appear. I have an article about the birds you might see in an English country garden. Here’s my garden tick list.
Blue Tit
What to do
The most obvious thing to do is to ask what the birds need and then try to fulfill those needs: water, food, shelter/cover, somewhere to nest.
So, you could put out a couple of shallow, but wide, bowls and fill them with water. One could be at ground level another on a stand. Of course, there are plenty of birdbaths of different kinds to be bought at garden centres or online. A more ambitious approach might be to dig a wildlife pond, stock it with a few native pond plants and let it thrive (avoid using a pump, don’t add fish). Birds need water to drink and to bathe and it’s always a treat to see them doing so. It’s a good idea to clean birdbaths and bowls and to refresh the water often. Birds are not particularly hygienic and will often leave poop in the water, which can spread disease to other birds.
Brambling on a feeder
Bird food is the next easy way to attract birds. There is a massive variety of feeders and food available for garden birds. I’ve found that it can take a week or more for birds to find a new feeder, but other people tell me birds are drawn immediately as soon as they hang one out even if they have never done so before.
Feeders designed for particular foods are usually needed. Suet and seed balls (great for Blackbirds, Blue Tits, Great Tits, Cole Tits, Robins, Starlings, overwintering Blackcaps). Nyjer seeds and a feeder that mimics a plant seed head will be a draw for Goldfinch and perhaps even Redpoll.
Black sunflower seeds (husk still on) need a strong bill and will tend to be eaten by Greenfinch and Goldfinch but sunflower hearts (dehusked) can be eaten by a wide range of additional species. Peanuts also need a special feeder that forces Blue Tits and others to break off tiny pieces of nut rather than grabbing a whole nut that might choke them or a chick. It’s important to use good quality peanuts sold for birds to avoid feeding them peanuts with toxic and cancer-causing black moulds.
Greenfinch
Dried mealworms are tasty and attract different species. You can put them in a hanging feeder or on a ground feeder (use a refuge if there are cats that visit your garden or you have a dog). Products such as “Flutter Butter” come with special wall- or post-mounted dispensers and encourage birds to stay at the feeding station as they cannot easily grab a morsel and fly off to a tree to eat it.
Longer-term plans might involve that pond or if you haven’t already got native bushes and trees in your garden think about planting some. I’d be keen to plant bushes that produce lots of berries to provide a winter food supply for Blackbirds, Mistle Thrushes and visiting Fieldfares and Redwings. Also, let any ivy go to flower (attracts lots of insects) and produce berries (again, feeds those birds in the winter). The bushes and trees in your garden provide shelter and potential nest sites for a wide variety of species as well as hosting insects.
Goldcrest
Adding a couple of strategically placed bird boxes also gives the birds another reason to visit your garden. They need to be placed fairly high up on a post or tree in a relatively small garden and generally have a line of sight from a post or tree opposite and several metres away if possible. If you have large windows, consider adding some decals, perhaps bird-shaped stickers, to the windows to help flying birds see that there is an obstacle and so avoid collisions with the glass. I wrote about Wood Pigeons leaving behind a powder down imprint on our windows back in 2017. Look into installing swift boxes or swift bricks too and perhaps adding a squealer to attract the birds arriving in the spring.
What NOT to do
A couple of things not to do. Don’t hang or install shiny, moving ornaments that glint and shimmer in the sun, these might shock easily startled birds and discourage them from enjoying your garden.
Also, don’t trim and prune too hard, in fact, don’t tidy your garden too well. If you leave the bushes and trees to grow a little wild and allow wildflowers (weeds!) to show through, you will encourage insects and that means an additional food source for the birds in terms of the adults and their larvae and caterpillars.
I’d also avoid pesticides and herbicides, these are generally easily avoidable in a small garden. Also, don’t put down ant powder or ant traps in the garden, ants are the staple food of Green Woodpeckers (yaffles). If there are no ants in your garden, you’re unlikely to see that bird visit.
Great Spotted Woodpecker
I don’t recommend scattering bread or other cooked products for birds in your garden and no bacon rind. These are generally too high in sugar and salt for birds to cope and can also attract rats.
If you notice birds looking ill or with lumps on their heads or bodies, it’s a good idea to remove all feeders, discard uneaten contents, wash thoroughly in soapy hot water and leave them to dry. Don’t put the feeders out again for a couple of weeks so that the diseased birds might disperse.
Don’t use Astroturf and don’t pave over or gravel too much of your patch.
More on ponds
Your garden wildlife pond can be as ambitious as you like, but you can also create a great micro ecosystem using a half barrel or a Belfast sink. You might need to line them, you can sink them into the ground or leave them free standing. Let them fill with rainwater and then get some native pond plants (it’s best not to acquire materials from other garden ponds to avoid sharing disease).
Garden Pond
Put some pots or stones within strategically placed to allow any frogs that turn up to easily get in and out and to avoid trapping hedgehogs that wander in. Terracing and shelving is essential for a full-size pond in this regard too.
An additional thought about ponds is to create a spillover area behind your point that will provide a permanently muddy patch, this will provide habitat for plants and organisms that favour something in between dry land and deep water. Again, increased natural diversity for the sake of the wildlife and for your own interest is the aim.
TL:DR – Recent research has demonstrated that adding the volatile organic compound amyl acetate to a scientific moth-trap can boost the number of moths attracted to the UV light by almost a third.
A social media discussion about UV light sources for scientific moth-trapping, the type of vanes on the trap, and the environment in which one traps brought up some interesting thoughts. Several moth-ers use double sources to give them a better chance of enticing numbers and diversity to their traps. Although moths have been shown almost always to simply opt for the most energetic (higher frequency, shorter wavelength) when given a choice. There is evidence that black lights (UV bulbs painted black) are not so effective for attracting those species that are drawn more to visible light.
December Moth
Also, it seems that white plastic vanes seem to work better than other types of vane and certainly better than rain-shield supporting rods on the commonly used Robinson and Heath moth traps. It also seems that the specific terrain and vegetation can affect numbers and diversity in some ways more than light source or other factors. There was also some recent work on how low-wattage UV light sources have a very limited range of attraction, but also the range varies among macro moth families, some attracted from 30 metres others from just 10 metres.
Merveille du Jour
Anyway, in the discussion, fellow moth-er Stephen Roughley mentioned a paper by Chris Tyler-Smith and Yali Xue in the journal Ent Rec, “Amyl acetate increases macromoth catches in light traps” 2021, 134(6), 315-321, that looked at how lepidopterists might boost their haul for scientific and citizen scientific purposes. They suggest the use of a simple organic molecule that smells of fruit, called amyl acetate, amyl is an alternative name for the five-carbon alkyl chemical group pentyl, to augment one’s trapping. They demonstrated that amyl acetate boosted the number of macro moths drawn to the UV trap by up to about a third. Strictly speaking, the product contains 3-methylbutyl acetate, so five-carbon group but not in a straight chain.
The ester amyl acetate smells fruity
The molecule, sometimes known as pear oil, is used as a flavouring agent, as a paint solvent, and in the preparation of penicillin. It is also the fuel for Hefner lamps. But, it is also found naturally in the volatile organic compounds exuded by ripe pears and presumably other fruit and fermenting or decaying vegetable matter.
I asked author Xue about the work. “We only tried amyl acetate from Etsy, but suspect that moths would not care about the grade, and any that smells like pear drops to a human would be fine, they told me. “We used enough to moisten a cotton wool pad and placed this beside the trap in a metal bowl as the solvent dissolves plastics.”
Beaded Chestnut
Many species of moths are known to be attracted to the odours given off by ripe fruits and flowers. There is a suggestion that some female moths may well be particularly attracted to such odours, including amyl acetate, as they seek out ripe fruit in which to lay their eggs. Indeed, it’s worth noting that a lot of moths that are not necessarily interested in light can be drawn to a strong-smelling sugary solution made from molasses boiled with beer or wine and various other concoctions. Most moths use their olfactory senses to locate food, mates, and suitable habitats, so this is perhaps not surprising. It was the technique of sugaring to attract moths that inspired the team. (See also wine roping). Amyl acetate mimics fruit odours and so should attract moths. Indeed it has been used in the past as a sugaring ingredient.
Black Rustic
The team suggest, however, that the chemical simply applied could substitute for sugaring concoctions and might boost moth trapping where scented flowers are not present at a site. It all adds to the useful data that might be gathered to feed back to moth recorders for scientific purposes and to show where and when various species appear around the country. I have previously discussed the pros and cons of moth-trapping on Sciencebase.
TL:DR – I wrote about bird migration and so I thought I’d write a poem about it too.
I have a post in which I discuss the intriguing and changing migratory behaviour of the Blackcap, Sylvia atricapilla. For several years, we have seen this species spend the winter in our garden. One year we had a male and a female.
The likelihood is that these birds flew from their summer breeding grounds in southern Germany and instead of reaching Iberia or North West Africa they got slightly lost and ended up in Old Blighty…England. It’s been happening like this for a couple of decades at least.
The male that overwintered with us 22/23 has departed and soon the Blackcaps that migrate from sub-Saharan Africa will arrive in our woodlands to breed in the summer.
Anyway, I wrote a poem for Sylvia.
Overwintering
She came in from the East. Her compass quite askew
Should’ve spent the winter in Iberia, but Old Blighty will have to do
Her chestnut cap is fluffed up. And her buff breast is scruffy too
Those chilly winds chill the feast, there’s nothing else that she can do
but peck at firethorn berries behind sparrows in the queue
And sulk among the mistletoe. Till Christmas takes its due
This land beyond the floodlands, with a date she’ll take in lieu
No nest, no mate. No direction yet, a Blackcap looking blue
When seasons change, they’ll send her back to the place where once she flew
And with the spring and high on life, she’ll bid us all adieu
Then find a mate, and build a nest for now she takes her cue
She’ll live her life and raise her brood with not a thought for you
But the world will turn and the winds will change as always they will do
Bring her back to Old Blighty. Yet, with no different a point of view
She’ll sulk and peck at mistletoe. The winter she’ll see through
And bravely hide from Easterlies, there’s nothing else that she can do
