Author: David Bradley
What is social media like these days?
Here’s a quick summary to explain the feels on the various social media as I perceive them:
Twttr – Trolls, babebots, bigotry
Threads – Engagement bait, passive-aggressive putdowns
Facebook – Parochial whinging
LinkedIn – Needy networking
Mastodon – Mastodon discussions
BlueSky – Friendly chat, sharing, info
Guess where my focus is, right now. I know it’s what you make it, but it feels like BlueSky is the place to be, especially as there has been a big influx from other socials in the last week or so. Lots of the old gang from the early days of socials are reaching BlueSky now
Moth of the Moment – Black-spotted Chestnut
In my first couple of years of garden mothing, almost everything species that appeared was new to me, there were dozens and dozens. Well over 120 moths I’d never knowingly seen before. In subsequent years, there were the dozens of regulars, but even then still a few dozen species that were new to the garden each season, 38 in 2020, 40 in 2021.
By 2022, I was more experienced and becoming more fastidious when it came to recording some of the smaller moths, so the NFG (new for garden list) jumped to 69 in 2022. In 2023, it had gone back down a little to 44. It was likely that by 2024, I’d be recording my regulars and very few NFGs but I’ve still ticked 31 NFGs this year, including a nice surprise on 10th November, Black-spotted Chestnut, Conistra rubiginosa. Looks like a typical small, grey noctuid (owlet), the markings are almost like a broken-up version of the markings on the Setaceous Hebrew Character but with pale golden threads running through, somewhat resembling Lunar Underwing. The species has black spot on each shoulder. My specimen was more brown than grey. There is also a variation that lacks the black stigmata markings.
According to UK Moths, this species was not known in the UK until in 2011. It is now present across nine counties from Essex to Buckinghamshire and northwards to Huntingdonshire. Numbers are rising, which suggests that it is breeding in the UK. It was first noted here in Cambridgeshire in 2018, the Cambs Moths site tells me, with subsequent sightings in Fordham and Cambridge. And, as of my sighting on the 10th November, Cottenham.
The males are on the wing from late November to February, with sightings noted as early as October and as late as April in the UK. It’s usually found in central and southern Europe and north into Fennoscandia, Lithuania and Latvia and east to Ukraine and Turkey.
UK Moths says it’s hard to distinguish between the sexes in living specimens. However, the Wikipedia entry shows a clearly wingless female!
Back in the Fenland Study
Regular readers will know that I was recruited via my doctor’s surgery to take part in the Fenland Study. The study is taking a sample of the population in this area born between 1950 and 1975, and carrying out a raft of blood tests, body stature measurements, DEXA body fat and bone density and tests for diabetes, cholesterol, liver and kidney function etc.
I attended first in 2012 (the study had been running since 2005) and then again in 2017. I would’ve been due to have the third in 2022, but covid stymied their schedule. Many of us did some at-home monitoring and sampling for them during that period. I had the call back early in 2024 and opted to take part later in the year.
I’ve just been. Fasting from 10pm the night before. Blood tests, sugar test, grip strength, blood pressure, ECG, height, hip-to-waist ratio, DEXA scan, more blood tests, treadmill stamina, heart rate test.
My BP was good, much better than I’ve seen it in many years, 127/81 average of three measurements taken at rest a minute apart. It was 131/79 at Fenland Feb 2017 and 142/78 at my first Fenland in Feb 2012). My weight was a bit higher than I’d like it to be 86.8kg, but not bad for my age and height. Speaking of height, I think I’ve lost about a centimetre since the first tests in 2012, which might be expected given the years that have gone by since then. ECG was presumably okay as they let me do the activity tests, if that had come up negative, they would have stopped. Same with the glucose test, I assume if I had developed Type 2 diabetes since the 2017 tests, they would’ve halted me today.
Meanwhile, the grip strength was interesting. Average of two grips on the machine with each hand. Right hand was 45 kg, left hand was 52kg. Given that my right hand is my dominant hand, that seems odd. But, I do play guitar so perhaps have greater strength on that side because of that, I need to check my previous study measurements. Those are decent grip strength measurements for a man of my age, close to what they would be in someone a decade younger, perhaps. And most people would be biased to their dominant hand.
I had a quick glance at the DEXA scan, I didn’t look like a massive blob of fat on the slab and I didn’t see any nasty white patches in the ultrasound images of my liver, so hopefully, nothing to worry about there either. We’ll see.
Hand-me-down Parade – A song
It can be quite cathartic writing a song when a parent dies. This is my tribute to Dad who died in October. Maybe there’s a little Gerry Rafferty in here, a dash of ELO, there’s probably no Roy Orbison nor Buddy Holly in it, except in spirit, perhaps.*
Inevitably, it’s a song about life and death and legacy and the sea…but so are almost all my other songs, except the Xmas ones…but even then…
Wait a week, see what comes into your head
Give it time for inspiration to seep through instead
I don’t know that they’ll hold up a light to you, unpaid
I’ve got no answers, I’m on the hand-me-down parade
Did you see the waves, they rushed to crown the shore?
There were no lives to save they settled with an open score
Hand me down the things always left unsaid
Give us this very day, our daily bread, our daily bread
Hand me down exactly what it is I needed
Hand me down I’m tired I think I can concede that
you shine the light , I’ll play a while on this side
Until it’s time for me to hand it down, hand it down
I’ve been trying to take a picture in the shade
Why won’t you hand me down what I have made? What have I made?
’cause I’m on a mission to separate the right from wrong
But, I just don’t feel I need to write another highway song
Hand me down exactly what it is I needed
Hand me down untied I think I can concede that
you shine a light , I’ll stay ’cause you are by my side
Until it’s time for me to hand it down
Did you hope to turn the tide, that washed you on the shore?
You saved the souls, the brave, who lingered on that open score
Hand me down the words…better left unsaid
Take it back today, our daily bread, our daily bread
Hand me down exactly what it is I needed
Hand me down tongue-tied I think I can concede that
you hold the light, I’ll stay a while on the inside
Until it’s time for me to hand it down, hand it down, hand it down
*To be honest, there’s probably more U2, RHCPs, James Taylor and David Bowie in this, but they wouldn’t have been on his top 20 playlist I don’t think…
Bearded Reedling redux
The Bearded Reedling used to be known as the Bearded Tit. The name change wasn’t down to some odd political stance. After all, the Great Tit, Blue Tit, Long-tailed Tit, and even the Penduline Tit are all still tits.
No, the rationale for the rename is that the Beardie is not a tit all. It may have some of the charactertistics of the Long-tailed Tit, well, basically a long tail, but those are purely superficial similarities. The Beardie doesn’t fit into the tit family.
The Beardie is not in any genus in which the proper tits sit. In fact, the Bearded Reedling, Panurus biarmicus, (sometimes known as the Bearded Parrotbill) is the only known extant species within the Panurus genus. There are likely to have been others in the past, but those are extinct, not extant.
The British Trust for Ornithology, BTO, says 695 breeding pairs in UK. RSPB website says 630, although it said that back in 2018 when I wrote about the species back then. I don’t think their data are updated often enough, estimates on counts have presumably changed in that time.
Photographing birds from the comfort of the settee
Busy day, no chance to get out birding or togging, even. Moreover, it was dull and grey, so not great for capturing avian beauty. That said, I was setting up the new lens on my Canon R7 adjusting the customised settings buttons, a Canon RF 100-500mm F4.5-7.1L IS USM. Once I’d done that I snapped a cheeky Robin that landed on the bushes in the front garden after it was chased in by a male Blackbird. It sat on its usual perch and the Blackbird didn’t bother it again.
Anyway, photographed in low light from the comfort of the settee through the double glazing, the bird largely in shadow. Camera settings: shutter speed: 1/500s, aperture: f/7.1, ISO 4000, lens pulled to full extent 500mm.
I processed the image with DxO PureRaw4 as I generally do, see above. The reason I mention it so often is that it does an incredible job denoising job. I reckon it effectively pulls your image down 3-4 stops of ISO; my ISO 4000 is thus being cleaned to the noise levels one might expect at much better ISO of between 250 and 500. There’s no way I’d get a properly exposed shot with these light levels and that shutters peed at such a low ISO.
I then did a quick levels edit and crop in PSP to show a fellow togger:
Finally, I did a more detailed edit of the kind I would do before uploading to my socials:
Another mineral moon
Some time ago, I discussed the concept of a mineral moon shot. Basically, you take a photo of the moon, or a stack of photos, and then process them to bring out the colouration of different areas of the surface. Different areas, the seas, the mountains, the plains, have different minerals on the surface that scatter light of different wavelengths in different ways so that reds, blues, purples, and even yellows, can be brought out in a photo of the moon that will most likely have appeared as nothing more than fifty shades of grey to the naked eye.
Well, you may recall I had a Sigma 150-600mm lens that I originally bought to take photos of the moon but that became my mainstay through various cameras for bird photography. I have now traded-in that lens for one more suited to my Canon R7 mirrorless camera, the Canon RF 100-500mm L series F4.5-7.1L USM. The above moonshot was taken using that kit and denoised in DxO PureRaw 4 and levels adjusted to taste in PaintShopPro. PSP was then used to incrementally raise the saturation to reveal the minerals in the image below.
The quality of the photos with the R7 and this new lens are far better than the ones I was getting with this camera and my 8-year old Sigma lens despite, the additional reach of the Sigma at 600mm as opposed to 500mm. The photos are even better than those I’ve got with a smartphone camera clamped to the objective lens of a 5-inch reflector telescope! I’ve not successfully used a dSLR with my telescope, unfortunately.
Planet Earith: Great White Egret, Ardea alba
Another heron at RSPB Ouse Fen (Earith). There were 4 or 5 flying around. This is the Great White Egret, Ardea alba. It’s about the size of a Grey Heron, but white.
Quite a rarity in the UK, until maybe about 10 years ago, but like Little Egret, Cattle Egret, Glossy Ibis, and various other herons, it’s becoming an almost everyday sight in these here parts. I’ve seen perhaps 6 or 7 on the same patch at a different reserve, where there were also dozens of Little Egret and numerous Grey Heron. The GWE is not quite as common as the Little Egret now, but was removed from the “mega” list quite some time ago. It is far more common than the Purple Heron I mentioned recently.
Great White Egret is ostensibly an African/Mediterranean bird like those others. However, the species has been extending its range into Europe and the UK in recent years. Nudged by climate change, perhaps the main driving force is the presence of lots of crayfish in lakes in northern France that have given it a food source and the potential to hop across the channel. Once here, they find the old East Anglian gravel pits that are now full of water and marked as nature reserves a perfect home from home, it seems. Fairly common on the Somerset Levels these days too.
Local Purple Heron, Ardea purpurea
Back in June, we enjoyed seeing a lot of birds, butterflies, and moths in Greece. Many, if not most, of those were species rarely, if ever, seen in the UK. One bird we had a shout out from our skipper on Lake Kerkini was the Purple Heron, Ardea purpurea. I must confess I wasn’t quick enough to get a photo on the boat trip and not entirely sure I actually saw it among the Squacco and Night Herons that were in the reed as we rippled past.
Anyway, I was out looking for Bearded Reedlings at RSPB Ouse Fen (Earith), there were lots. A Bittern came up from the reeds briefly and ducked back down, as they do. There were also four Great White Egrets flying about. But, it was the odd-looking heron in the distance that was the most intriguing…it definitely wasn’t another Bittern, but didn’t look quite right for a Grey Heron.
When I got back to base camp, I checked the photos. It was obvious on zooming in on the photo Purple Heron, Ardea purpurea. Juvenile. The species is smaller and more slender than the Grey Heron, markings are different, and overall it has darker plumage. The species is more commonly found in Africa, central and southern Europe. However, juveniles do occasionally spread their wings from the near Continent between August and October and end up in East Anglia and beyond. Sighting now with the County Bird Recorder, Jon Heath.
Mrs Sciencebase remembered there had been reports of that species earlier in the year locally. I checked on Birdguides and she was right, there had been one here back in the summer of 2023 and a scattering of others over the last few years. Indeed, earliest Birdguides record I can see on the app is summer 2003 at Needingworth (which is now part of RSPB Ouse Fen).
Looking at the national sightings on the app, I can see sightings of Purple Heron in Somerset, Shropshire, Norfolk, Devon, Suffolk, Jersey during September and October.
This is one of my natural highlights of 2024. I will give you a full update of those on New Year’s Eve!