Science – Page 46 – David Bradley

The Moon in Ely Cathedral

Somebody has only gone and squeezed the Moon into Ely Cathedral! Well worth a trip to the city to see it and while you’re there take a hike up the 288 steps to the top of the West Tower 90 metres above sea level for fantastic views of the cathedral and the surrounding fenland that stretches away to a 20-mile horizon.

Plenty of other lunar and astro exhibits for their Sky’s the Limit science festival in this the 50th anniversary year of the first man on the Moon, Neal Armstrong.

The views from the West Tower are stunning, 90 metres above sea level and 30 km to the horizon. The Cathedral’s famous and unique octagonal tower looked amazing from above. Those columns are lead-clad oak, and the whole thing is estimated to weigh a mere 200 tonnes, far less than it would if it were hewn from rock.

Oh and while we had our lunch break on the lawn, a Peregrine landed on the very tower we had ascended and descended just minutes before, which was nice. The cathedral staff were wholly unaware that they had Peregrines.

Lime Hawk-moth, Mimas tiliae

The Lime Hawk-moth, Mimas tiliae, is fairly common in Southern England, especially where there are avenues of lime trees, in London, for instance. However, the species has headed north, extending its range in recent years. This specimen was drawn to actinic light in our garden on the night of 17th May 2019. Specimens have been found in North Yorkshire, according to UK Moths.

Beautiful colours of greens and pinkish hues. although colour can vary considerably with a ruddier, rustier brown form out there too. The Lime Hawk-moth is a member of the Sphingidae, the Sphinx Moth family, which also includes the Hummingbird, Convolvulus, Privet, Elephant, Small Elephant, and Poplar Hawk-moths. Photos of specimens of Hummingbird, Elephant, Small Elephant (new 10th June 2019), Privet, and Poplar are in my Mothematical Gallery. 171 specimens as of 21st May 2019, with the addition of a new noctuid, Pale-shouldered Brocade, and a geometer, Oak Hook-tip, today.

I am hoping for Convolvulus, Eyed, and Deaths-head this year. In the British Isles, we have almost 20 species of Hawk-moth, also known as hornworms (because of the appearance of their larvae/caterpillars).

Using a Foldscope to check for #PondLife

As regular readers will know, I re-dug our old garden pond. Well, it’s just about half the size of the original, which was an oval about 6m long and 3m wide, but it’s finished, sort of, after a lot of hard work in the sun. It’s all terraced and lined and has a few plants and some clean gravel now. It was rained on heavily a few days ago, which should help with the eco-ness, and we have seen our first frog lurking behind a pot containing reeds. The original pond had dozens of frogs and plenty of frog spawn, which was donated and relocated. Might I hope for Great Crested Newts?

I am also keen to know what microscopic life might emerge and whether it needs “seeding” with water from a neighbour’s pond to help things along. In a very timely move, the team at Foldscope have just sent me one of their cardboard microscopes. This device was initially developed to help people in the developing world quickly examine samples of drinking water to ensure the absence of pathogenic creatures in the water. Of course, the applications are much wider than even that grand mission, with the wonderful notion of giving everyone inexpensive access to powerful microscopy, whether educator, student, hobbyist, (citizen) scientist.

The device is all you need, rather than a proper lab, with full-scale microscopes and chemical analysers, to check water quality in that context. It is several layers of carefully engineered card that you slot together (which didn’t take long at all) and then add a bead lens from the kit. Set up your slides and the platform can be adjusted to bring your sample into focus. The spherical microlens has an approximate enlargement factor of 140x.

I have carried out some tests with the sample slides provided with the kit, of a bee’s leg and fern cells and all seems to be working as it should. You can look through the microscope easily enough, but there is a relatively easy way to attach a connector to a mobile phone and then use the foldscope with a slide as the source for the camera, or actually, simply attach a lens to the phone with a spacer and a slide with a spacer and one of the other magnets to keep them in place. Seems to work quite well if you set the phone camera to maximum zoom and rock the slide slightly to bring the object into focus. This is a micro view of a beech tree leaf from our garden.

Next step is to prepare a #PondLife sample.

Counting on garden diversity, mothematically speaking

The range of moth species and the total number in and around the trap is picking up. Best night so far this year – 36 specimens of 21 species. There were a couple of species new for the year and at least one new to me.

Common Marbled Carpet (Dysstroma truncata), new for the year

Common Wainscot (Mythimna pallens), new for the year

The Shears (new to me, checking), Rustic Shoulder Knot, checking, Common Wainscot (NFY), Bee moth, Common marbled carpet (NFY), Garden carpet, SSD (4x), Common Pug, LBAM (3x), Brimstone, Muslin, Heart & Dart (2x), Turnip (4x), Twenty plume, Broad-bordered Yellow Underwing, Vine’s Rustic (5x), Common swift.

There were also three tiny, micro moths in the night two I have no photos and no clue, but one of them was very small and was perhaps this species: Apotomis betuletana, checking.

My Mothematics Gallery on Imaging Storm will have the latest lep stars with some details and their scientific names.

Pale tussock, Calliteara pudibunda

Long before I adopted mothing as one of the slightly weirder of my various hobbies (one that combines biology and photography with a bit of citizen science though), I still occasionally snapped lepidoptera if they turned up somewhere I had my camera. Back in May 2004, I caught sight of a huge, hairy moth in our conservatory. Got a snap and then spent ages trying to find out what species it was. Turned out to be Pale Tussock (Calliteara pudibunda).

The second time I saw one was 15 years later, on the corner of the actinic trap in the middle of May. As you can probably guess, it being the same month was no coincidence, the adults of this species fly May-June.

They’re a fairly common species in England and Wales, sexually dimorphic (the females are bigger and not so distinctively marked, but both have the forward facing hairy legs). According to the UK Moths site, the larvae feed on a range of deciduous shrubs and trees as well hops.

As ever you can keep up with the latest additions to my list either on my Moth Records spreadsheet or in the Mothematics Gallery on Imaging Storm.

One swallow doth not a summer make

One swallow doth not a summer make, but there are dozens to be seen around these parts now; have been for a couple of weeks at least. They’re relatively easy to photograph when they’re perched on a telegraph wire staring you out, but not so much when they’re flying over water hunting and drinking.

Barn Swallows (Hirundo rustica) at RSPB Ouse Washes 18th May 2019.

The Brood Parasite

The Brood Parasite…sounds like a schlock horror video nasty from the 1980s only available under the counter from your video shop on a dodgy, copied VHS (no Betamax). Of course, it’s a biological term to describe certain species that allow another species to raise their young as their own. For the duped species, this is a real-life horror story.

On the 18th May, 2019, Mrs Sciencebase and I once more visited RSPB Ouse Washes, near Manea, Cambridgeshire, and witnessed one such brood parasite, the European Cuckoo (Cuculus canorus), as it emerged from a reedbed where there were lots of Reed Warblers, Sedge Warblers, and Reed Buntings chattering and calling.

We can only assume this was a female, recently mated having arrived with the male cuckoos from Southern Africa in the last couple of weeks. As every schoolchild knows, the Cuckoo builds no nest, instead, it lays its eggs in the nests of other birds and then abandons them, leaving the hapless warblers to incubate the Cuckoo’s egg alongside their own. When the Cuckoo hatches it will commonly nudge out any warbler eggs in the nest and leave its tiny surrogate parents to run themselves ragged feeding it and raising it as their own.

Neither the surrogates, parasitised in the truest sense of that word nor the imprinted Cuckoo chick is aware that anything is wrong with this scenario…but we do…and it is horrific. I say the adult cuckoos are unaware…but if so, why do they look so guilty?

Two weeks later – #Pondlife Part the Fifth

UPDATE: 22 May 2019 – After another water feature rebuild, I think we have settled on how it shall now stay. The pump in the middle of the pond at its deepest point and I’ve encased the wiring in a piece of hosepipe and peeled back the turf to bury it. It forms an almost invisible seam in the lawn. That edge will in time become overgrown as I’m leaving the grassed area to the side and behind the pond to go wild and hopefully accumulate wildflowers with a little seed assistance.

The water is relatively clear, albeit with a green hue, but no layer of floating pond weeds nor algae, just a few mosquitoes and some of their larvae. I’ve not seen the frog for a day or two.

UPDATE: 19 May 2019 – We rebuilt the water feature and used a longer length of hosepipe to get the pump deeper and into the middle of the pond. During the work, we must have disturbed a new, amphibious resident, Mrs Sciencebase spotted it first, a large-looking Common Frog, Rana temporaria, seemed to have an almost pinkish hue in the greenish water. It’s a good sign of a healthy wildlife pond, we believe.

Well, we’re two weeks into PondLife, no sign of the frogs yet, but plenty of green matter forming a blanket in the bottom of the pond, and some algae on the top. The plants have survived so far, but maybe there are not enough to keep the algae down. A pump is now in situ and a few extra rocks installed to create a nano-Niagara.

The aerating, circulating effect of the pump and, probably more to the point, a bit of skimming of the surface with a sieve seemed to clear the algae, which hadn’t taken too much of a hold.

You can read about the initial work, the redesign, and the plants here:

Beginning – Part 1 – Operation Sciencebase Pond

Lining – Part 2 – PondLife moves on

Restructuring – Part 3 – A new landscape

Planting – Part 4 – Oxygenators and filters

Puss Moth, Cerura vinula

Last night was a very different nightÂ of mothing. It had been up to 20 degrees Celsius during the day but got down as low as 7 degrees Celsius in the night, it was still and dry, with a waxing gibbous moon. The haul one gets to an actinic light moth trap can never be predicted, but numbers were the highest they had been since the warm patch in April 2019, it’s now mid-May 2019.

I was very pleased to see one of the larger British moths sitting on the outside of the trap this morning, the very furry Puss Moth, Cerura vinula. This specimen was an impressive 4.5 centimetres long from front leg to wingtip and has the most striking patterning.

As you can see from my photos it is very furry, has broad white wings. The forewings have very dark concentric lines that look like indentations, there are dark cross veins on the wings and bronze lines radiating down the thorax. This specimen also has a greenish hue to its heads and black spots. Gently coaxing it from the trap into an examination pot was quite an eerie feeling, the large size and furriness make you think you’re handling a small, alien-looking mammal, rather than an insect.

Also new for me, potted as it approached the trap last night was a Coxcomb Prominent, Ptilodon capucina, a species common from Ireland to Japan in the Palearctic ecological zone.

It was the busiest night for moths in the garden last night for a month or so, also ticked this morning and last night, 12 species, 20 specimens:

Puss Moth, Red Twin-spot Carpet, Hebrew Character, male Muslin (2x), Shuttle-shaped Dart (6x), Turnip Moth (2x), The Streamer, Double-striped Pug, Common Pug, Heart & Dart (2x), Light-brown Apple Moth.

Incidentally, I remember seeing photos of the Puss Moth caterpillar in books when I was a child, it was often the cover star of a wildlife book, for instance. You may recognise it too. Incidentally, don’t annoy this larva, it can spray formic acid at you…

Hobbies at RSPB Ouse Fen

The Eurasian Hobby is back over RSPB Ouse Fen (May 2019), one of 6 or 7 seen hunting on the wing. The bird’s scientific name is Falco subbuteo means “falcon below the buzzard”. But, yes, that’s where the name of the football game – Subbuteo – comes from, the inventor wanted to call it “Hobby”, but the company said that couldn’t be trademarked, so he went all cod Latin.

As you can probably tell, they fit into a sequence of falcons found in the British Isles, from largest to smallest: Peregrine > Hobby > Kestrel > Merlin. Hobbies mainly eat dragonflies on the wing and you can see them clipping off the wings and discarding everything but the insects’ bodies as the bird flies over you. I have also seen them take swifts out of the air on a couple of occasions, both midsummer above our garden with the hobby flying out of the sun towards the screaming, circling swifts high above.

Taking photos of birds on the wing is difficult at the best of times, but photographic quality is also compromised at this time of year by atmospheric disturbance (you cannot filter out the heat haze, unfortunately).