Author: David Bradley

Australian bird of the year

UPDATE: And the winner is: The Australian magpie (Gymnorhina tibicen) with 19,926 votes, second place was the Australian white ibis (Threskiornis molucca) with 19,083 votes and the laughing kookaburra (Dacelo novaeguineae) gets the bronze with just 10,953 votes.

ClassicFM’s @TimLihoreau alerted me over breakfast this morning (via the “airwaves”, that is) that The Grauniad is publicising the vote for Australia’s bird of the year. Now, having visited and traveled several thousand miles through Australia back in October-December 1989, I can vouch for the abundance and have a few photos in my collection.

I mentioned to Tim that I remembered @Mrs_Sciencebase and myself sitting on the harbour wall in Cairns after our day’s diving (snorkelling, actually) on The Great Barrier Reef, when a huge pelican sat down with us…not six feet away. I don’t think we ever saw a Willie Wagtail but she claims to have seen a cockatoo…

Ahem, that aside, in our albums (remember those?) we do have photos of the magpie lark (Grallina cyanoleuca), also known as the peewee, peewit or mudlark. We saw great egrets, pelicans elsewhere (the one pictured above was snapped in Nitmiluk National Park), sulfur-crested cockatoos, and the highlight a salt water crocodile hunting and catching magpie geese. The guide on our boat in that particular billabong told us we would be unlikely to see a croc at all!

More of our photos of the birds of Australia in my blog post The Pelican Brief.

Photographing birds in flight

Unless, you have been avoiding me this year, you will know I have been photographing a lot of birds. Well over 130 native and migrant species in the UK so far. I am stockpiling the best photos for my forthcoming book: “Chasing Wild Geese“.

One thing that everyone but the most experienced photographers struggle with is catching a crisp photo of a bird in flight, specifically as it takes off from a perch. I have managed it once or twice, but the issue tends to be that you need a short shutter speed to catch the action. Unfortunately, that then either means that your depth of field is very short (so focus is in the plane at a given distance rather than spread from near to far, therefore only a point on the bird will be sharp. Or, if you manage to get the f-stop number higher, then the ISO will need to be higher too to allow enough light in to properly expose the shot, which means more sensitivity of your sensor and more noise.

Depending on your lens you’re not going to get good depth of field with a fast shutter speed unless the ISO is really high, but you can try and push it and put up with ISO noise or balance. My Sigma 150-600 on my Canon 6D at full extent will give me 1/1250s with f/9 but the ISO will be into the several thousand if I am lurking among trees trying to photograph goldcrests or treecreepers for instance or well up even out in the open on a sunny day. Shutterspeeds shorter than 1/2000s will freeze wing movements of small birds.

You have to be ready and steady, focused on the bird’s eye, with the bird perched and have the camera in burst mode. Hold the camera in landscape mode and have your frame with the bird to one side so there’s space for it to fly into in the frame. (Select a focus point in your viewfinder to the side and have that over the bird’s eye when you focus). Push the button as soon as the bird flutters (it might be a false alarm, reset your stance) but keep the shutter depressed while it takes flight. You can get some great shots. I don’t think I’ve achieved greatness yet, but I am trying! Another tip I’ve learned fairly recently – use the back focusing button with your thumb, this looks you on, and frees you up to be trigger happy at the right time with shutter release. Speaking of which, sharper is as sharper does – tripod and remote shutter control, might improve your outcome but make it harder to track and focus birds that are already in flight.

The Element in the Room

Festival of the Spoken Nerd’s Helen Arney and Steve Mould have a puntastic pop science book out now. All the science stuff staring you in the face.

From their website:

The Element In The Room takes you on a rib-tickling, experiment-fuelled and irreverent adventure to explain the elements of science that other books ignore, with plenty of DIY demos that you can try at home. Order yours online using the links above — or buy it at one of our live shows and get it signed in person!

And on 14th November 2017, it’s just 99p on Amazon UK/Amazon US (Kindle version). Of course you don’t need an actual Kindle to read that version, there’s a Kindle app for almost every phone, tablet, phablet, laptop, PC, Mac, and presumably even a Smart TV! By the way, you can’t polish a nerd…but you could roll them in edible glitter…let’s not.

What is quizbait?

Some time ago, I coined the term “quizbait” as a portmanteau of quiz and bait, along the lines of clickbait and linkbait, the kind of trivial endpoint you reach when you get suckered into following a URL to something trivial, untrustworthy or fake. It’s everywhere and as my incredibly social media savvy friend Jo Brodie points out it is a risk to privacy.

She tells me that every time she sees that a friend has taken one of these tests or quizzes on Facebook and shared their results, she blocks the app the friend used. This is good practice, “because, when you authorise the app to interact with your page, it is then able to interact with mine because you can see my page and the app can access what you can access,” she explains. She adds that it is a safe assumption to make from the common app terms and conditions and the way in which Facebook seems to work that the apps can even access your non-public information via the friend allowing the app into their account.

Worst are those “easy” quizzes that suck in a lot of users because they presumably want to check that they’re really clever…of course, the quiz, like any marketing/ad campaign or other intrusion doesn’t care that you take the quiz nor how clever you reveal yourself to be. It simply wants access to that prized commodity of the digital age – data. Data = Money. Giving access to all your data for free is a bad thing because you might not even realise just how much personal, private and sensitive information you have locked up in your Facebook and other social media accounts…but, of course, the algorithms can access that and work it out, pulling out all kinds of interesting titbits about you and your peccadillos, health concerns, relationships and finances.

Quizbait is insidious. Don’t fall for it. And, make sure you block the apps that friends share when they take the bait. Here’s the link – https://www.facebook.com/settings?tab=blocking

It occurred to me as I was writing this that once the app has access it will have harvested all the data within seconds or minutes. Blocking will protect only new data from that particular app.

Meanwhile, I defined quizbait for the Urban Dictionary.

From Ayer’s Rock to Uluru

As of the time of writing, November 2017, it’s almost 28 years to the day that Mrs Sciencebase and myself (although we weren’t Mr&Mrs at the time and Sciencebase didn’t exist) backpacked our way around Australia. Greyhounding from Melbourne to Adelaide, North through Coober Pedy to the Red Centre, Alice and Uluru, onward to

the Top End via Kakadu to Darwin, then back across to Townsville up to Cairns, Magnetic Island, and the Great Barrier Reef and back down the East Coast through Brisbane, Newcastle, Sydney, Canberra, and back to Melbourne.

The sacred site of Uluru was an important pilgrimage and at the time, the site told you it was hazardous to climb and that dogs, bikes, and camping were not allowed. Although the Anangu people had been encouraging visitors not to climb for a couple of years in 1989, they had not banned the climb and we were told that the Anangu got a percentage of the takings from backpackers and tourists visiting. Looking back, that’s probably unlikely given how the people of Australia have been treated historically.

As of 2019, climbing the sacred site will be banned. UPDATE: The last climbers took to the chain on 25th October 2019.

Are great tit beaks really getting greater?

Heard a news snippet on BBC Radio 4 this morning reporting on how Brits using bird feeders has apparently led to great tits (Parus major) evolving longer beaks. I read an article or two (National Geographic and The Guardian) to check out how the science was being reported elsewhere and then took a look at the original research paper itself.

The researchers talk of 26-year data set from live birds in Wytham and estimate a 4 micrometre ± 1 micrometre per year lengthening in this species. That seems like quite a small change, despite that their analysis of avian genetics in this species allows them to suggest some kind of correlation with bird feeder use compared to Dutch counterparts where no lengthening was observed. Could bird feeders really have had sufficient impact on brood size rates they discuss for great tits? For a start, is 4 micrometres actually significant at all in 2500 birds measured…that’s some pretty mean measuring but with a 25% error bar…?

Research paper is here: http://science.sciencemag.org/content/358/6361/365

Grace Darling

On the 7th of September 1838, having set out from Hull on a voyage to Dundee, the paddle steamer the SS Forfarshire with 61 aboard ran aground, with engine and other problems, in stormy weather on one of the Outer Farne Islands, Big Harcar (known locally as “Great Hawker”), off the Northumbrian coast.

A handful of those aboard escaped in a lifeboat but the lives another 9 were saved by the persistence of Grace Darling who persuaded her father, the Longstone Lighthouse keeper that they could row their 21-foot Northumberland Coble the 3/4 of a mile or so to Big Harcar and pick up survivors as the paddle steamer was torn apart on the rocks. On arrival, father William left Grace to hold the boat steady while he got three surviving crew and a passenger Mrs Dawson, whose children had been pulled from her by the sea, to the boat.

Darling’s bravery on that night became a national celebration of her heroism. The fame it brought her never sat comfortably even when the Duke and Duchess of Northumberland took her under their wing at their home, Alnwick Castle, and looked after the endless donations and the demands of portrait painters, journalists, and members of the public.

Tragically, just four years later, at the age of 26, Darling took ill and was sent back to her hometown of Bamburgh with its magnificent castle that stands majestically over the Northumbrian coast. She died of tuberculosis on the 20th October 1842.

As a coastal Northumbrian myself, I’ve carried this story with me since first hearing about Grace Darling at school, I even had some memorabilia in the form of a commemorative coin and booklet that was sold in aid of the Lifeboat Appeal in the early 1970s. There have been several songs about her over the years. It’s the 175th anniversary of her death this autumn (20th October 2017) so I have now at long last written and recorded my own homage to Grace Darling.

Grace

You were born by the castle on the sand
Although a child of the land your father lit the way
For every passing sail, and every steamer grand
But your life didn’t go quite as you planned
Though your end was not at sea

Oh Grace. You darling of the waves
Won’t you come and save us from the peril of the sea
Oh Grace. You darling of the brave
Now that you have saved us, won’t you stay with me

A ship was wrecked in ’38
on rocks that flanked the isle, despite the light
Your father gave. Though little more than a child,
you rowed across the waters bleak
To bring those souls to land
But all the fame you didn’t seek
Couldn’t save you from the sand

The night was black when you returned
to the castle on the sand
And all the life you ever lacked
consumed in your last stand

At 26 you’re laid to rest,
sea fret upon a distant deck
The light reflected in the eyes
of souls you saved from Longstone’s distant wreck

Popular on the Internet

I used to be popular on the internet, 20000 visitors every day to this website, but then web 2.0 happened and social media and hundreds of other science blogs and splogs…sciencebase diluted. But, there might be salvation…according to a recent marketing study, the subjects that people like to read about and share the most are celebrities, death, chocolate, coffee, cats, dogs, nostalgia and items with a musical connection.

So, all I need to do is write about some long-dead and much-loved rockstar who choked death on chocolate while drinking coffee and loved writing songs about their pets…

…that ought to bring the crowds back.

Why has the sun gone red today?

Odd weather we’re having right now. It’s 23 Celsius outside, albeit with a stiff windchill. The wind is apparently down to the ex-hurricane we know as Ophelia. The heat…definitely not what you’d expect for mid-October, more like late July, but probably a jet stream phenomenon combined with that tropical storm pushing warm air towards us (here in the South of England, anyway; your mileage may vary).

But, it’s 3 pm and the sun is looking distinctly like it’s a sunset but too high in the sky. The fact that the cars are all covered in desiccated, dusty raindrops from last night suggests we’ve had a load of dust blow northwards from the Sahara Desert. A quick Google confirms this. That said, there are forest fires in Spain and/or Portugal that would also generate plenty of dust.

Ophelia has stirred up a storm and carried megatonnes of dust into the atmosphere of the British Isles and elsewhere. As we know from high school science lessons (you were listening, weren’t you?) tiny particles of dust in the atmosphere scatter light of different wavelength to different degrees. So, the blue end of the spectrum of the white light from the sun is scattered away from your line of vision while the lower energy red is scattered so little it passes straight to your viewpoint.

Anyway, the fat ol’ sun, the hurricane sun, above was snapped at 3 pm on my Canon dSLR with a 600mm lens #nofilter. (Sunset isn’t for another 3 hours).

All that desert/fire dust might also explain the sore eyes Mrs Sciencebase and myself are both suffering today.

UPDATE: 17:25, half an hour before sunset, this is how it looks: