A wildlife snapshot can have many flaws…look at this photo of a Carrion Crow I took today at RSPB Fen Drayton…not so great…but it has two redeeming features that can serve as top tips.
First, the eye is photographically “sharp”. Unless there’s a reason to focus on some other aspect of an animal, whether bird, lion, human, the eyes have to be pin sharp in the photo to make it work. Moreover, in a portrait where you can see both eyes, the “leading” eye, the one nearest the camera needs to be sharp.
Secondly, for an animal that is pretty much completely black, including its eyes, it’s wasted shot if you haven’t caught a catchlight. What’s a catchlight? The tiny pinprick of light reflected from the eye. For birds that have black heads, it’s essential for anything like a half-decent shot to have catchlights in the eyes. Moreover, strictly speaking, the same applies to all eyes in any photo, wildlife, pet, human portrait. If you haven’t got that sparkle, that glint in the subject’s eye, the rest of the photo can be perfect, but it will ultimately look lifeless, dead in the eyes.
You can use flash, off-camera flash or natural light, manual or autofocus, but if you’ve snapped the subject a dozen or so times and only one of the photos has a catchlight in the eye, then that’s the one to share, print, publish, pretty much regardless of any other technical aspect of the shot.
TL:DR – Birds you might see or here in an English country garden. My Cambridgeshire garden ticklist is below.
Some time ago, my dear friend and fellow bigMouth singer John Stanford asked me to put together an article for our village newsletter about the birds we are likely to see in our gardens here in South Cambridgeshire. Your mileage will vary depending on where you are in the country, what kind of habitat your garden offers, feeders you use or don’t (it’s not essential and not always recommended). But, I do have an article on how to attract more birds to your garden.
Robin, seen most days in our garden
Of course, which of our feathered friends turns up in your garden is down to many different factors, the size and layout of your garden, tree and other plant species, the presence of cats, whereabouts you are relative to patches of woodland, farmland, and whether or not the visitors find a useful supply of food in the form of berries on your bushes, seed feeders and bird tables, coconut shells full of suet, and whatever else you might put out to attract them.
Dunnock, often in our garden
Some birds will arrive in great numbers to feast on fatballs for instance. Most of us have been perplexed to see expensive fatballs disappear in a matter of minutes when a flock of starlings turn up. Other food, such as nyjer seeds in a specialist feeder will draw in Goldfinches and occasionally for some Redpolls. Sunflowers seeds with the husk intact, sometimes referred to as black sunflower hearts, will keep Greenfinches, Blue Tits, Great Tits, Coal Tits, and Long-tailed Tits busy, and if the nyjer seeds run out the Goldfinches too.
Redwing, one snowy winter, a few in our back garden
Robins, Blackbirds, Wood Pigeons, Collared Doves, Dunnocks, will spend much of their time pecking around under the feeders, although the Blackbirds will join Mistle and Song Thrushes plucking insects from the lawn. And, Thrushes will famously grab snailshells and smash them on the ground to get at the occupant. If it’s very cold out on the farmland, the winter thrushes – the Fieldfares and Redwings – will come into the warmer more urban areas and attempt to snaffle berries from your bushes and trees much to the consternation of the Blackbirds who will attempt to make them flee.
Redpoll, once on nyjer feeder in back garden
You might also spot Bramblings during the winter. They are another finch resembling the Chaffinch but brighter and more orange colours. I have heard from people living on the edge of our village who see them in their gardens occasionally, but they are more likely to be elsewhere.
Blue Tit, commom in our garden
Unusual but increasingly common in the winter are Blackcaps, a type of warbler normally considered a summer visitor, but turning up in our gardens from Germany and Eastern Europe rather than heading to the Iberian Peninsula and North Africa. Speaking of summer, by the time you read this birds that you might see above your garden or heading into your eaves may have started to arrive: House Martins first, then the Swallows that don’t necessarily a summer make, and finally the Swifts. Listen out for Cuckoos too. Certainly, houses on the edge of our local village green backing on to farmland have regular cuckoos visiting for the breeding season.
If you have ants among your plants, you might see Green Woodpeckers, also known as Yaffles for their scoffing call in flight. Ants are the staple diet of yaffles, so hold off the powder if you want to see them pecking at the ground in your garden. And, speaking of woodpeckers, there are quite a few Great Spotted Woodpeckers around, which will often come to garden feeders. Of course, if you’re attracting lots of small songbirds to your garden you might also attract predators including Sparrowhawks and less obviously egg-eating Magpies, and chick-chomping Jays. Great Spotted Woodpeckers will also peck into birdboxes to eat baby Blue Tits and the like.
Here’s our garden ticklist of the 60 species we’ve noted) during the last quarter of a century, in, over, or very close to our small, relatively “sub-rural” garden. Some of the species we see often, many less frequently, I’ve added notes if there was something interesting about a particular appearance:
Barn Owl (daytime neighbours 2 Jan 24, prev. Merlin app app late Oct 23)
Blackbird (Common, seen using the pond for drinking and/or bathing)
Blackcap (some winters, male and female)
Black-headed Gull (common, overhead)
Blue Tit (common)
Buzzard (raiding Blackbird nest behind shed, 2000s, often overhead)
Chaffinch (less common these days)
Chiffchaff (bathing in pond, 2022)
Coal Tit (occasional sightings)
Collared Dove (Usually present, seen using the pond for drinking and/or bathing)
Cormorant (occasionally overhead)
Dunnock (Often seen, also using the pond for drinking and/or bathing)
Fieldfare (Beast from the East winter)
Goldcrest (early 2019 first time, occasionally hear them still)
Golden Plover (once, overhead)
Goldfinch (fairly often, also seen using the pond for drinking and/or bathing)
Great Black-backed Gull (overhead)
Great Tit (frequent visitors)
Great Spotted Woodpecker (2023, possibly also late 90s)
Green Sandpiper (once heard)
Green Woodpecker (perhaps once)
Greenfinch (not so common now
Grey Heron (taking frogs, 2021, but also seen since 2017, often on roof)
Hobby (overhead, 2x taking Swifts consecutive years, early 2000s)
House Martin (attempted nesting under rear gable early 2000s)
House Sparrow (Fairly common, seen using the pond for drinking and/or bathing)
Jackdaw (occasionally)
Jay (once, perhaps)
Kestrel (occasionally overhead)
Lapwing (occasionally overhead)
Lesser Black-backed Gull (overhead)
Linnet (once overhead, mid-Sep 24)
Little Egret (very occasionally 0verhead)
Long-tailed Tit (periodic flock)
Magpie (regulars)
Marsh Harrier (some time after 2018 overhead?)
Mistle Thrush (two on rowan mistletoe and at no. 16)
Oystercatcher (once heard overhead and on Merlin night 28 Mar 24)
Pheasant (spent a winter in our and the neighbours’ gardens)
Pied Wagtail (snowy winter in back garden 2018
Prize Pigeon (present, summer of 2023?)
Redpoll (once to new nyjer feeder 2018)
Redwing (3 or 4 one snowy winter)
Red Kite (common overhead now)
Redshank (heard and seen overhead once)
Robin (Regulars, also seen using the pond for drinking and/or bathing)
Rook (Once to bacon rind on bird feeder, commonly on rooves)
Song Thrush (quite rare visitor now)
Sparrowhawk (feeding once or twice, but occasionally see flying through)
Spoonbill (fast along Pelham Way above roofline, 3pm, 18 Apr 23)
Starling (common)
Stock Dove (once)
Swallow (once or twice, overhead in summer)
Swift (every summer, overhead)
Tawny Owl (hear frequently on Pelham Way and behind us)
Whitethroat (Tricia saw in pyracantha, 2 Aug 23)
Willow Warbler (once, but may well have been Chiffchaff)
Wood Pigeon (Common, and seen using the pond for drinking and/or bathing)
Wren (Often, and seen using the pond for drinking and/or bathing)
Merlin pickups, for some can hear bird on recording
Brambling (Merlin app, late Oct 23)
Raven (Merlin app, late Oct 23)
Grey Wagtail (Merlin app, late Oct 23)
Marsh Harrier (Merlin app, late Oct 23)
Ringed Plover (Merlin app, Oct 23, end of Pelham Way)
Waxwing (Merlin app, early Nov 23)
Meadow Pipit (Merlin app, early Nov 23)
Reed Bunting (Merlin app, early Nov 23)
Yellow-legged Gull (Merlin app, early Nov 23)
Siskin (Merlin app, late Dec 23 and again Mar 24)
Black Redstart (Merlin app early Jan 24)
Ring-necked Parakeet (Merlin app, 14 Jan 24)
Tree Sparrow (Merlin app early Feb 24)
Hawfinch (Merlin app early Feb 24)
Yellowhammer (Merlin, mid-Nov 24)
Stonechat (Merlin, mid-Nov 24)
Nuthatch (recorded one at All Saints, Cottenham, 11 Apr 21
I could add a lot of other birds to this list if I were to consider my village sightings rather than just my garden sightings: Little Owl (farm next to Les King Wood), Great White Egret (Cottenham Lode), Little Egret (Cottenham Lode), Whooper Swan (Fen Bridge Farm and behind Smithy Fen), Corn Bunting (Broad Lane), Peregrine (Rampton Spinney and Broad Lane farmland), Kingfisher (Cottenham Lode), Black-winged Stilt (Smithy Fen Flood), Little Stint (Smithy Fen Flood), Little Ringed Plover (Smithy Fen Flood), Snipe (Smithy Fen Flood), Teminck’s Stint (Smithy Fen Flood), White Stork (Smithy Fen Flood), Grey Wagtail (Smithy Fen Flood), Red-legged Partridge (farmland).
Waxwing, I missed the one in Cottenham in late 2023
I was grateful for everything I had with you
But then the winter came and their paucity of truth
Too many questions, so many trials they put me through
And all the forces that would hold me back,
I pray we can still pull through
I put our futures in my pocket,
there’s nothing else that I could do
In days of clover, I thought you would show me how to compromise
Think it over, then we’ll get out under the bridge of sighs
Give me a moment I can explain to you the hows and whys
Then under cover, our life anew, we can but fantasize
There was a journey
The price was paid (You couldn’t see through your fears)
A boat will take us. (Beyond your tears)
It’s time for you to be brave
I gave them everything
but they wanted more for passage on that wave
Someone to save us. There is no wreck.
We escape the salty grave
I took our futures from my pocket,
really nothing else that I could do
In days of clover, I thought you would show me how to compromise
Just think it over, then we’ll get out under the bridge of sighs
If you give me a moment I can explain to you the hows and whys
Then under cover, our life anew, we can but fantasize
I put our futures in my pocket…
Words, music, guitars (Martin and Taylor acoustic six strings, Fender Telecaster, Yamaha bass), lead vocal, harmonies, production, mix, and mastering by Dave Bradley
I’ve featured Dave Gilmour’s guitar chords before in the Classic Chords series, specifically, the arpeggiated G-min-13 (Gm13) that opens Shine on You Crazy Diamond, the homage to erstwhile and founding member Syd Barrett who was the one who roped in Gilmour all those years ago. Another iconic song from the band, the one that held The Police off the Xmas Number One slot in the UK as the last dying embers of the punk era that was to “get rid of the rock dinosaurs” faded: “Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2)”.*
It’s classic rock but, it’s funky, it has an awesome bassline, beautiful bluesy guitar solo (that Rich in my band plays sublimely, and because it’s a track about school produced by Bob Ezrin it has a kids’ choir singing, just as he’d done with Alice Cooper’s School’s Out seven years earlier.
Now, ostensibly it’s a D-minor chord at the fifth fret that opens the funk in that song. But, listen carefully and you can hear it’s not always quite a simple D-minor, with its D-A-F, I-III-V triad of the D minor scale. Aside from the out-of-phase phasing of Gilmour’s Black Strat in the “between” pickups position, there’s an extra harmony. Obviously really, it’s a C note on the third string, the G-string. This makes it a D-minor 7th chord: a seventh chord with a minor third, perfect fifth, and minor seventh. Minor seventh chords are everywhere, they add a little extra to any funky riff that would otherwise be the plain or vanilla minor chord, they also lend themselves to substitution and progression so that, for example, the Dm7 easily goes to an F major and you might use either depending on exactly what you want out of your chords. It’s mainly the D-minor, but the 7th note creeps in occasionally.
Incidentally, Gilmour is auctioning off most of his guitar collection to raise money for his Foundation. The auction will include the 12-string on which he wrote Wish You Were Here at EMI Abbey Road Studios, the 1955 Gold-top Les Paul that was used for the solo on Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2), and of course, his famous black Fender Strat, which he bought at Manny’s in New York on his first trip to the States when TWA lost his Fender Telecaster (a 21st birthday present from his parents apparently). There’ll also be the chance to be the first Fender Stratocaster, serial number 0001, which is in Gilmour’s collection.
Was Ian Dury being facetious about Floyd’s partwork in Reasons to be Cheerful (Part 3), I can well imagine that he wouldn’t have been keen to listen to the other parts or the whole album. But, who knows? Odd though that Chas Jankel and The Blockheads in general were funk driven just as is this Floyd song.
I’d consider this a quite rare sighting over our usual Rampton (Cambridgeshire) stamping ground but we saw a large hawk flying over a sheep-laden field adjacent to the spinney. Looked like a big Sparrowhawk (Accipiter nisus) and indeed that is what it is. Not a Goshawk (Accipiter gentilis), wrong underwing patterning, apparently.
One of my RSPB bird books actually describes the Goshawk species as “essentially a giant version of the Sparrowhawk” but also points out that a large female Sparrowhawk would be about the same size as a small male Goshawk. Both birds are adapted for the same niche: hunting prey on the wing in woodland. So, not a new one for us, after all; we’ve had Sparrowhawks in the garden nomming on the tits).
UPDATE: This was backfilled and reverted to what looks like farmland a couple of years ago. The opposite side of the drove is now being excavated and has attracted a few interesting birds just the same on the pits that fill with water and the margins. Presumably, this area too will be backfilled once they have extracted all the sand and gravel they can.
Yes, for they are men driving those diggers and lorries on the Cottenham quarry north of Cambridge. Didn’t see any women there. And, The proto-Beatles allusion in my title referencing The Quarrymen would have failed if there had been…
I drove down Long Drove once again, yesterday, dog and bins in tow, in the vain hope of spotting the Hooded Crow and the Iceland Gull that have been hanging around with the other corvids and gulls in this part of our village for months now. No sign in the fields opposite the dump and no sign on the quarry.
So, herewith a few snaps from the Drove of the quarry activity (they’ve shaved away the raised edge along the drove so you can see clearly into the site just standing alongside dog and car. There were a few gulls and crows but nothing Icelandic, despite the snow and nothing corvid.
As I understood it, as with virtually all of the East Anglian gravel and sand quarries, there might have been aspirations from consverators and ecologists to see this quarry converted into a nature reserve once they’ve scraped out everything they want from the Earth here. Unfortunately, there are no plans in place to make that happen and the contractors will simply “make good” the land and the scars they’ve created, which is a crying shame.
TL:DR – Many people experience a condition known as synaesthesia where some of their sensese are mixed up and colours have smells, smells are associated with textures, and some words trigger a particular description.
Julie McDowall (@JulieAMcDowall) usually writes about nuclear war, in fact she’s got a book on that subject coming out soon. But, a few days ago she mentioned on Twitter that she has synaesthesia (the condition where the senses are “mixed up” so that a person with synaesthesia can smell music or see colours when they touch different textures). She said that to her different names conjure up different tastes. Needless to say, everyone who follows her on Twitter wants to know what their name tastes like.
The thread has gone viral, she has had 6 million twitter interactions as of 29th January. She has been truly overwhelmed by the response and the requests, thousands of them, and is now only offering her synaesthetic insight if a person with a name she hasn’t already tweeted about comes along and offers a donation to a worthy cause (her podcast).
Here’s a taste of the names and what they suggest tastewise to McDowall:
Aaron is a stale chocolate bar
Danielle is spaghetti hoops
Sam – tuna
Madison – earwax with chocolate
Jesus – Maltesers
Susan is a zip, but Susannah is a zippable banana
Hannah is a tasteless banana
Paddy is a fat, damp squishy notepad
Ross tastes like sausage rolls and rubber gloves
Simone is a slice of Spam
Shane is a mouthful of furniture polish
Nicky is a biscuit dipped in vinegar
Violet is a perfumed cream
John, is a leathery button on an old man’s cardigan
Apparently, it works for abstract concepts too, as well as personal names:
Brexit is a snapped KitKat
Remain is a Jammy Dodger
Now, this whole concept of synaesthesia? Perhaps you’re thinking how can such a phenomenon be real? Well, it most certainly is, as can those people with the condition attest and almost everyone who has tripped on LSD where such effects become part of the whole hallucinogenic experience. Fundamentally, of course, it’s obvious that it could arise. After all, our senses sample the “outside” world of tastes, sights, sounds, textures, smells, but the input to the brain from our sensors (tongue, eyes, ears, skin, nose) is nothing but an electrochemical signal transmitted along nerves. The brain has to somehow interpret the input as being different given the sensor that sent it the signal. If there’s crosstalk between the wiring or the brain’s circuitry doesn’t interpret the signal properly as arises on an LSD trip or in synaesthesia then the input from the tongue might be interpreted as a sound, a sight given a reference smell, or any combination of the senses and what they are supposed to be.
The infant brain receiving signals from all the different sensory organs is wired up as the baby develops, but prior to that it’s turmoil, the signals are crossed, the balance distorted, and some people deviate from the norm, even into adulthood.
One more point about sensory input and what the brain does about it. I wrote a piece for Discover magazine many years ago about a blind German who had a light sensor surgically connected to the nerves in part of his tongue. Eventually, with some training, his brain could eventually interpret a pattern of light hitting that sensor as something he could “see”. He had not been blind from birth, but it just shows that even if the brain “knows” which sensory organ is being stimulated it can work around that to interpret those electrochemical neuronal signals and a novel way.
I suspect we could learn a lot from synaesthesia and the people who have this remarkable condition.
Oh, by the way, McDowall thinks David/Dave has an amazing taste: “plastic spade dug into the damp sand on Blackpool beach”.
Also check out the twitter thread from a friend who is also a synaesthete, Alice Sheppard. She experiences sounds in colours, and so can give you a colour for your name. “People love to hear how synaesthetes experience their name,” she told me. I asked her to “do” my name:
“David: overall bright apple green, but with an orangey yellow stripe fairly early on, and a small white one a bit later. Bradley: strong bright mustard yellow, tapering off to soft greyish pale blue towards the end.”
Apparently, the jazz group California Guitar Trio have a taste/sound synaesthete friend who cooked them a meal based on the tastes of their album…
Mendeleev used the periodicity of the chemical elements to organise a chart that we now refer to quite obviously as the Periodic Table of the Chemical Elements. He did it 150 years ago. This anniversary year chemists are celebrating his “invention”. Trouble is lots of them don’t think the classic PT is the way we should display the chemical elements and have been arguing the point for years and years.
Periodic debate in Chemistry Views
And, just to prove the point about how much they want to argue this topic, my article entitled “Periodic Debate” which featured in Chemistry Views magazine back in June 2011 has been read by more than 122000 people!
The arguments made by my interviewees in that piece are all still active as far as I know, they each have a view about how the Periodic Table should be arranged, the exact order of the elements and even whether it really ought to be a three-dimensional spiral array rather than a flat grid.
Several birders I’ve bumped into over the last couple of years have mentioned Lynford Arboretum in Norfolk as being a good place to see Hawfinches, Crossbills, Siskins, Firecrests, Bullfinches, and other bird species. We took a trip there on a very grey day (which means high ISO, noisy photos) and so quite a few bird species but no Firecrests, no Crossbills and no Hawfinches, unfortunately.
Young BramblingMarsh TitBlue, Great, Long-tailed TitsLong-tailed TitsCoal Tit
On the list of 26 species we did see were, in no particular order:
UPDATE: He was showing well this morning, eating black honeysuckle berries, got a half-decent shot of him from the back bedroom window.
I have mentioned the Blackcap (Sylvia atricapilla) before. It’s a warbler and a summer migrant. We usually only expect to see them in the UK in the summer. But, those that spend their summers in Eastern Europe and Germany sometimes end up migrating, not to the Iberian Peninsula nor North Africa as we expect, but to the UK. Here, they will often find a decent food supply in feeders in the relative shelter of our gardens.
Above is pictured a male Blackcap (the females have a chestnut brown cap) taking flight the instant a Blue Tit (Cyanistes caeruleus) lands on the black sunflower seed feeder hanging in our apple tree.
Photographed from my office window on a very dull, grey day where light levels are treacherously low and the camera’s ISO disarmingly high.
You can read a little more about the scientific explanation as to why Blackcaps are over-wintering in the UK and not the Mediterranean as was once their wont: Glob Chang Biol. 2015 Dec;21(12):4353-63. DOI: 10.1111/gcb.13070. This is the takeaway from the paper:
“Increased availability of feeding resources, in the form of garden bird food, coupled with climatic amelioration, has enabled a successful new wintering population [of Blackcaps] to become established in Britain.”
