David Bradley – Page 65

Owl spotting

Short-eared Owl at Burwell Fen, photographed mid-January

One evening in late November, I was once again, hoping to catch sight of the Starling murmurations that occur over the Broad Lane balancing pond. As mentioned in a previous, issue the local Starlings and their continental counterparts will often roost in the reed bed there, last winter there were literally thousands. At the time of writing, just a few hundred are roosting, but that can change on a wind as arrivals from Europe turn up when the weather changes. Anyway, reader Alison waved as she passed the pond on her dog walk. I later heard that she’d seen a scuffle between a Kestrel and a Barn Owl close to the Fen Bridge. Typical, I thought, for me to miss the avian action.

Barn Owl over a barn at Rampton

Anyway, there are quite a few barn owls to be seen on the outskirts of the village. These dusk hunters of silent flight will range along the Cottenham Lode (a fenland drain), across rough fields, and alongside roads. Often you will see a ghostly Barn Owl sidle up alongside hoping to home in on voles and other small rodents turfed out of the undergrowth by the rumbling of tires, even on the fresh tarmac of Beach Road.

There are other owls around; while videoing a starling murmuration over Rampton, I could see a Barn Owl in the field, but could hear a little owl in the hedge in which the starlings were hoping to roost. There was little chance that they would settle until the owls had departed, which eventually they did. The whole point of the murmuration, aside from the socialising, is to reduce the risk to the individual bird of being picked off by a bird of prey, such as a peregrine falcon, or perhaps an owl. The Little Owl is not a native species, it was introduced to the British Isles in the nineteenth century.

Rescued Tawny Owl at Fen Edge Festival 2019

Meanwhile, there are places around the village, such as The Green where there are tawny owls to be heard, and if you’re very lucky and keen-eyed, perhaps even seen. Like the Barn Owl the Tawny Owl has very dark eyes, which help it see even in low light, and coupled with its excellent directional hearing make it a mean night hunter. Tawnies pair up from about the age of one year and stick together, monogamously. Famously, their call – the stereotypical “too-wit, woo-ooh” is two birds calling almost in the style of Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald. The female calls “too-wit” and the male responds by wooing her.

There are a few Long-eared Owls across East Anglia and the East Midlands although numbers are greater further north. Some readers may have been lucky to catch a glimpse of a vagrant Snowy Owl on the north Norfolk coast at RSPB Snettisham in March 2018. You have a greater chance of seeing the Short-eared Owl, however. This migratory species flies in from Scandinavia, Russia, Iceland, and we are lucky enough to have a patch of land not too far away where they can be seen hunting at dusk. Last winter, half a dozen or so “shorties” were often seen hunting at NT Burwell Fen and Tubney Fen, which are accessible by road from Burwell or on foot or cycling from Wicken Fen.

One of last winter’s shorties suffered a wing injury, and spent the summer on the Fen; it can still fly well, but presumably it felt that a trip back to the Steppes was not on the cards. As I write, this I have visited the fen twice this winter to see the shorties and reckon that there are four or so present. The numbers may have risen by the time you read this in early February. But, if you are reading it later in the year, beyond March, early April, you will have probably missed the chance to see them until next winter. Birding is very much about chance, timing, weather, and plain-old luck.

Long-eared Owl roosting in an owl box in the Cambridgeshire countryside

Short-eared Owls and Burwell Bull

TL:DR – In the late autumn, Short-eared Owls often migrate from regions far to the north and reach sites, such as NT Burwell Fen in Cambridgeshire where they will spend the winter, hunting small mammals in scrubby fenland.

Here’s looking at youA frosty start to the day, clear skies, little wind, would that be perfect weather for hunting Short-eared Owls at NT Burwell Fen, I wondered. Did a few chores, made a coffee, drove the bumpy ride to the reach bridge parking at the back of the fen. Another quick snap of the 2D sculpture there that looks like a rendition of the weirdest “distracted boyfriend” meme ever.

Too early for Shorties at the time I arrived so a short walk along the bank top that parallels Reach Lode. Lots of waterfowl and water birds and the water, as you’d expect (Mallard, Shoveller, Coot, Wigeon, Shelduck, Black-headed Gull, Cormorants, usual feathery fodder). A few large flocks spooked every now and then by a couple Marsh Harriers.

A tramp back to the bridge and then a walk across to our usual owl-spotting spot in the middle of the Fen. Hard-standing fossil of an old farm, with a drainage ditch and fencing to hem in the cattle and the Konik ponies, the deer don’t care about fences, of course.

Chatted to a couple who put me to shame with their endurance, my having arrived at about 12h15, they’d already been there more than four hours. They’d seen a single Barn Owl but no early morning shorties. The misidentified some Stonechats as Reed Bunts and endless contradicted by spartan field knowledge of the Shorties that spend the winters on this Fen. I told them that they’d be “up” no sooner than about an hour before sunset, they were insistent that people “on Facebook” had photographed them for weeks at all times of day. It wasn’t to be. So, with ever-patient labrador in tow, we all of us ended up snapping the cattle to pass the time.

I also got a bizarre shot of some ghost Mallard where I’d accidentally put my camera into HDR mode, which never works well with moving subjects as the camera is programmed to take three bracketed shots quickly, but not instantaneously. One is exposed for the blacks, one the highlights, and one for the mid-tones. The camera combines all three and discards areas that are over or underexposed to create the high dynamic range of the final photo, usually.

The quality of light was lovely, the only “clouds” in tke sky were the loop-de-loop smoke trails of a wannabe Biggles, the only sound aside from his propellor a distant pheasant shoot I’d passed on the bumpy ride in that was still ongoing. Fowl play, you might say.

No Shorties yet, but lots of cameras on tripods pointed at the scrub expectantly. Word on the Fen was that there were five over-wintering here. We’d seen three, possibly four, on our last visit, but the light had been low and the photo quality similar. Today it would be different, just needed the owls to show.

Fairly sure I was first to spot the first, at 15h08, which true to my prediction was an hour before sunset, give or take ten minutes. So, here it is, first of probably five individual Short-eared Owls that I’d seen on the Fen by the time I left, just after sunset.

There are five on the Fen, I cannot be sure if I saw all five, maybe just four of them, but definitely four. Two tussled with a Marsh Harrier and I saw a final one as I headed for the Sun.

The sun had almost gone when I looked back over the Fen after a chat with an old birder who didn’t seem to need binoculars nor ‘scope, and definitely didn’t have a camera. The light was fading fast and the resulting photo was at high ISO and so is very noisy, but it’s a record, so there.

Fading light on a final, fifth(?) Shortie

How I met David Bradley

I tell this tale over and over again, I think most friends and relatives have heard it at least three times by now. Still, my late Dad kindly used to laugh every time he heard it. Mrs Sciencebase just rolls her eyes…and not in a good way.

Anyway, we were on a camping trip to one of our favourite spots, Stiffkey, on the proper North Norfolk coast. It’s pronounced Stoo-kee by the locals although incomers and posh residents prefer it to be pronounced as it’s spelled. We were pitched just around the corner from the Red Lion pub, on the High Sands Creek campsite, where a couple of years later myself and artist friend Rog would almost drown trying to get that last rising tide photo. So, supping a Stiffkey Brew or too, erstwhile backing singer with my band C5, Jo, says, Oh look it’s that actor!

We all turned in concert to look where she was looking. Thankfully said actor had his head buried in his iPad and didn’t notice our less than discrete mass manoeuvres. That’s not just any old actor, Jo, I whispered loudly, that’s David Bradley, you know the guy who plays Argus Filch in the Harry Potter films?

Really? the others asked surprised. So, up I get, leaving my brew on the table, and head over to say hello to my namesake. Excuse me, I say, I’m David Bradley, just thought, I’d say hello to the more famous David Bradley. The far more famous DB stands up grabs my hand to shake it, looks me squarely in the eye and says, I know you, I’ve got your book! I was shocked, we both laughed, we didn’t do a selfie, proper famous people didn’t do selfies back then. But, I asked, might I have your autograph, it seemed the right thing to do. Certainly, of course, yes…but…only if I can have yours, David Bradley says to me.

So, we swapped autographs, said “tara”, like fellow Northerners do, and I went back to my friends waiting expectantly at our table with their brews (I think the ladies were drinking Hendricks G&Ts with slices of cucumber). I tell the tale, show them the autograph and they’re all fairly well stunned and pleased that I’d had a celeb encounter of that kind. I could almost hear Mrs _Sciencebase’s eyeballs rolling in their sockets in anticipation of years of repeated anecdote.

I should’ve asked him though whether, having had a copy of my book Deceived Wisdom, whether he’d read it or enjoyed it or even both. I doubt he’s the sort of fellow who posts on Amazon, and even if he did, there are so many other David Bradleys out there how would I know which…

David Bradley the actor is probably best known for his roles as Filch in the Harry Potter films, as William Hartnell in the Doctor Who biopic he plays alongside Brian Cox as TV producer Sydney Newman in An adventure in space and time. He’s also Walder Frey in Game of Thrones, he’s in both Hot Fuzz and The World’s End. Plays Jack Marshall in Broadchurch, he was Eddie Wells in Our friends in the north. Have a look at his IMDB page, he’s done masses.

This David Bradley is not to be confused with Dai Bradley (formerly known as David Bradley until EQUITY rules kicked in). He played Billy in the Ken Loach film Kes. Also not to be confused with martial arts star David Bradley.

There’s an odd ante-footnote to this tale. Before Mrs Sciencebase was Mrs and before Sciencebase even existed. She went with friends to Stratford-upon-Avon to see the RSC (not that one, the other one) performing Doctor Faustus with David Bradley as Mephistopheles. They’d all had tickets in advance, I tagged along for the ride, but did a walking tour of the town while they watched the play, instead of watching the play.

So, second encounter with a David Bradley from the RSC after this DB from the RSC for the pre-Mrs Sciencebase.

Carrying bituminous coals to Newcastle

This is one of those stories that somebody on social media will shout at me and say it didn’t happen. Well, it did.

When I moved down south, I didn’t have a car, didn’t even drive. So, I used to jump on a train every few weeks to visit my parents who were still living in my hometown. It was a three-hop journey: Cambridge to Peterborough, Peterborough to Newcastle, and then a Metro ride to the family semi-detached pile.

I always took a rucksack. The one that I’d taken around Europe Inter-Railling, the one I’d worked around the US with, same one that I’d tour Australia a year later with the ultimately-to-be Mrs Sciencebase, and then again backpacking in Botswana and Zimbabwe back in the early ’90s. I’ve still got the rucksack.

It is fairly spacious, looks very battered these days, but wasn’t quite so battered the time I was pulling it out from the luggage storage area on an Intercity 125 as we pulled into Newcastle on one of the aforementioned trips back to the homestead.

As I was manhandling my luggage, the train was slowing quickly. An elderly American gent who had been sitting with his wife and another American couple in their requisite pastel-shaded polyester slacks, shirts, and blousons, as well as attendant golfing type hats offered to help. “No, it’s fine, thanks, I can manage, I responded,” struggling to get the bulging back full of what was basically a laundry todo incarnate for my mother.

He turned away, appeased and retorted to his friends that, “Oh, look Newcastle…as in carrying coals to”. Gentle giggles from the other American gent, and a sniff from one of the wives not at all impressed by his knowledge of British idioms. The other woman, presumably a former mining engineer, then asked the group and pointedly looking at me as she did so, knowing that I was obviously about to disembark asked “So, is that coal bituminous?”

Her accent was so rounded, so American, almost Pythonian in the Idle sense of the philosophy restaurant and the weird scientific poignancy of the question startled me somewhat. Was I being pranked in some weird Candid Camera style jape? Was Jeremy Beadle about? It was several years before Harry Hill. I’d done a coal module with Harry Marsh in my chemistry degree at Newcastle, inevitably, you might say, despite the Thatcher years. But, did I know? No I didn’t.

I flung my now safely dislodged rucksack with its malodourous offering of sweaty cottons and woollen socks over my shoulder leaped from the train and dashed head first for the barriers that would lead me to that final Metro hop to the coast.

Bituminous? Why? Why were these four unassuming Americans with their knowledge of my hometown’s most famous idiom so intrigued by the type of coal it might have been that was being taken. Had I been hallucinating? Was I part of some live-action re-enactment of a Monty Python sketch that had never been screened? Obviously not.

Oh, and it would have been bituminous, I think, not lignite and most probably not anthracite.

Footnote
I ran this a ten-part-thread true story on Twitter, each par was edited down to fit the twitter character limit.

The invention of vaccines

Somebody just made the brilliant suggestion on an anti-vax discussion group that doctors, instead of injecting chemicals, should inject a tiny bit of the virus so that the body can build up natural immunity to the disease…

…basically, they just “invented” vaccination.

What do the antivax brigade think doctors are injecting now? Fairy dander and unicorn tears?

Betelgeuse pronunciation

TL:DR What is the correct pronunciation for the star named Betelgeuse. It’s not “beetlejuice”, it is Beh-tell-jerrz.

Betelgeuse is the bright red star you see in the constellation of Orion. It’s actually a red supergiant and looking at the constellation you might imagine it as the top of his right shoulder (top left of the constellation, assuming he’s standing facing you) It is a variable star and brightens and dims periodically. Betelgeuse is so big that if you swapped our Sun for it, it would reach as far as the solar system’s asteroid belt, engulfing the orbits of Mercury, Venus, our own planet, Earth, and Mars.

Betelgeuse is occasionally in the news because some astronomers think its recent unprecedented dimming might indicate that it is about to explode and become a supernova. If it did, it would be bright enough to be visible to the naked eye even during daylight hours if it were above the horizon during the day. Of course, because Betelgeuse is so far away, if we see it go supernova, then we know that explosion will actually have happened some time in the Middle Ages and the light has only just reached us after centuries of travelling across space to reach us.

Meanwhile, the far more controversial issue is how does one pronounce the name of this star. It’s definitely not Beetle Juice, regardless of the movie title, although far too many American astronomers and pundits do pronounce it like that.

The name comes from an Arabic phrase meaning “the armpit of Orion”

That phrase is pronounced ebt-el-jowzah, roughly. The “j” is a zh sound like the G in the name Genevieve. It’s not a hard j as in June and it’s definitely not the “g” of Gloria. Etymology does not define pronunciation, but the closer to the root we can be the better, I’d say, and astronomical writer Paul Sutherland agrees with my pronunciation and if it’s good enough for him, it’s good enough for me:

Bettle Jerrz – with that softer sounding “J”

Oh, and one more thing, despite all the hyperbole about Betelgeuse, Sutherland points out that by definition it’s a variable star and they vary, sometimes quite a lot. [UPDATE: My friend Paul, sadly died on 20th June 2022]

Meanwhile, check out my photography guide on taking snaps of the stars, including one about Orion’s Sword and the Orion Nebula.

The odour of ordure

If the manure they delivered with which you plan to fertilise your #AllotmentLife soil still smells of manure then it has not rotted down sufficiently to be a good fertiliser that won’t compromise the growth of root vegetables, such as carrots and parsnips, for instance.

I’ve not worked out exactly why, but a likely explanation is that you want root veg to probe deep and grow their tap root a long way into the soil, if the nutrients they need are near the surface and at high concentrations, then they won’t need to probe so deeply to feed the green part of the plant and to bloom so that they might reproduce. But that doesn’t really explain why if you plant carrots on soil with fresh horse manure as fertiliser they tend to bifurcate into two roots and roots with side-arms etc.

Anyway, allotmenteer friends had a delivery. The horse muck is apparently well rotted and we’re to take a dozen barrels if we want it for our own plot. Right next to that male is some bovine ordure, bullsh*t to you and me…although actually its from bullocks rather than bulls, a minor detail. It doesn’t look half as wholesome as the more pebbly horse dung though, more like a big pile of claggy brown mud full of straw. Not fun to shovel over the plot I wouldn’t have thought.

Unweaving the rainbow

Newton (in)famously split sunlight into the visible spectrum with his prism. His findings revolutionised optics but led to accusation of his unweaving the rainbow. As if that somehow subtracted from our appreciation of the natural world. To my mind, it does nothing of the sort. Knowing that white light comprises all the colours of the rainbow and these can be separated at the interface of two materials of different refractive index actually adds to the beauty.

Knowing a rainbow is photons of different frequencies stimulating the cells at the back of your eyes and impinging on your brain’s visual cortex does not detract from the fact that a rainbow is still a wondrous and beautiful thing. Those with the artistic aesthetic get that as do those of a scientific bent. Those with only the artistic aesthetic don’t get the bonus of understanding the science. I’d always choose being a polymath over one or the other and many in science are both scientific and artistic. Although it often seems that too many people in the arts are less interested in the flipside of the reality perception coin.

As you know by now (surely?), I take a lot of photos. Birds, moths and butterflies, flowers, trees, beaches, sunsets, moonshots, and more. Occasionally, I’ll post one on my Instagram with a sciencey caption just for fun.

Viz, a recent trip to the North Norfolk coast in search of avian visitors such as Snow Buntings and Shorelarks, had me snapping the waves too with a short shutterspeed on the camera to capture the action. I posted a frozen wave and captioned it as “Agitated aqueous sodium chloride solution”. It is what it is. One view offered a tongue-in-cheek response: “Looks much nicer than that description.”

Well, yes, admittedly, it does. But…I assume visitors can appreciate the little chemical joke alongside the photo. It’s not a great photo and I could’ve also talked of the fractal nature of fluids in motion, fluid dynamics, hydrogen bonding, and other such matters. Knowing about such things does not take away from how peaceful and wondrous it is to simply watch all those refracted solar photons skipping over the waves as they break on a windy shore as the sun goes down. It’s not gilding the lily, it’s not unweaving the rainbow, it’s adding new layers to our understanding and appreciation of the natural world. Do you get my meaning? Do you too aspire to be a polymath or do you prefer to sit in one camp only and ignore and miss the joy of the flipside?

I just searched the Sciencebase Science blog for the word polymath and discovered that I wrote a very similar essay to the above about a decade ago, here.

Snow Buntings at Holkham Beach

Second trip of the year to the North Norfolk coast. A much brisker, sunnier day than our New Year’s Day trip to RSPB Titchwell. Hoped to see Shorelarks, but apparently there are only five around the beach at Holkham at the moment and even the hardiest of birders who spent all day waiting yesterday saw none. We did, however, see 60 or so Snow Buntings, Plectrophenax nivalis.

The Snow Bunting is a relatively chunky bunting and in winter has what can only be described as a snowy kind of winter camouflage plumage. It takes on a sandy/buff appearance with more mottling of the males’ upperparts than its black and white of summer.

The “Snow Bunt” breeds in the Arctic regions from Scandinavia to Alaska, Canada, and Greenland and heads south in winter. They are an Amber species in the UK as they are quite scarce here in terms of breeding. So, very nice to see a relatively large number of 60 or so picking over the scrub on Holkham Beach.

Sighted today: Black-headed Gull, Brent Goose, Common Buzzard, Common Gull, Common Scoter, Cormorant, Grey Heron, Greylag Goose, Herring Gull, Kestrel, Lapwing, Lesser Black-backed Gull, Linnet, Mallard, Meadow Pipit, Oystercatcher, Peregrine, Pied Wagtail, Red Kite, Redshank, Robin, Rock Pipit, Sanderling, Stock Dove, Stonechat, Velvet Scoter, Wigeon, Wood Pigeon, Snow Bunting…

Lots of Common Scoter out at sea. 400 or so in this flock alone

Black-headed Gulls at sunset at Hunstanton

Norfolk seal deaths

Just before Christmas 2019 there were news reports of two seal pup deaths at a popular tourist site along the Norfolk coast. One pup had been surrounded by visitors to the beach and their presence had so scared the mother that she abandoned the pup. The second death was caused by children chasing a seal pup into the sea. The fur of such young pups is not waterproof and the animal could not swim and drowned.

This is not acceptable. Too many people get too close to the seals, often to get a selfie. They let their dogs and children run amok among the basking animals. I assume that there are moves to make this region a protected zone and perhaps even to close the beaches when there are pups present. I must admit prior to our visit, I had thought that was the case and that the only way to see them was from a dune-top viewing platform rather than walking on the sands.

I hope we were responsible during our visit. We wanted to see them but kept well away. While we were there we saw groups of people walking within a couple of feet of the animals and worse two people with an Alsation attempting to get a selfie on the rocks next to a pup and its mother.

In related news, a total ban on parking on Beach Road, Winterton, came into force on 13th January. Just so you know if you were planning on visiting the seals.