David Bradley Sciencebase - Songs, Snaps, Science This is an RSS file. You can use it to subscribe to this data in your favourite RSS reader or to display this data on your own website or blog.

Why do some moths have eyes on their wings?
Lots of animals and even plants have evolved to have a visual resemblance to other organisms. The flowers of the Bee Orchid as the name would suggest look like female bees and as such attract roving male bees who alight on the “female” hoping that they’ve found a mate. In so doing, they inadvertently pick up pollen from the male part of the flower and this is transferred to female parts of the next “mate”, thus pollinating the plants. Bee Orchid complete with fur and pollen sacks There is a bird that has evolved to look like a snake and so ward off predators. Indeed, not only does it look like...
Source: David Bradley Sciencebase - Songs, Snaps, Science - April 6, 2023 Category: Science Authors: David Bradley Tags: Birds Lepidoptera Science Source Type: blogs

Why do we use QWERTY keyboards?
TL:DR – Contrary to deceived wisdom, the QWERTY keyboard layout was invented to increase a typist’s words per minute (wpm) rate and reduce errors, rather than to slow them down. Fellow science writer Jo Brodie was recently discussing how the standard QWERTY keyboard layout has been adapted for different languages. Thankfully, she doesn’t repeat the #DeceivedWisdom regarding the invention of this layout. It is known that when the typewriter was invented in the 19th Century, the designers tried various layouts for the letters, numbers, punctuation marks, and controls before settling on the very familiar Q...
Source: David Bradley Sciencebase - Songs, Snaps, Science - April 6, 2023 Category: Science Authors: David Bradley Tags: Technology Source Type: blogs

Mastodon attrition
TL:DR – Just some notes on the attrition that has taken place over the last few months since the first big exodus from Twitter to Mastodon. I signed up for my first Mastodon account in August 2016, although mastodon.social reports that I joined in November 2019. Whatever. I didn’t do anything with it until the April of 2022 when rumours about Leon Umsk taking over Twitter were rife. They seemed to fade away until the November of that year at which point I took another look and became properly active as lots of people abandoned the musky place in favour of the tusky place. I pulled in quite a lot of followers ...
Source: David Bradley Sciencebase - Songs, Snaps, Science - April 5, 2023 Category: Science Authors: David Bradley Tags: Social Media Source Type: blogs

Hacking your own link shortener
TL:DR – You can set redirects on your server so that you can give people a shortened URL that takes them to a resource with a much longer URL. Most of us are familiar with the various link shorteners that have been with us for well over twenty years now. I think tinyurl was the first one I used, but there are many more like ow.ly, bit.ly, goo.gl, t.co etc. Some of them are hard-coded into websites and apps so that any link (URL, uniform resource locator) you post gets shortened to save resources and allow the app to track. To hack your own link shortener, you need your own domain name. That can be your website domai...
Source: David Bradley Sciencebase - Songs, Snaps, Science - April 3, 2023 Category: Science Authors: David Bradley Tags: Social Media Source Type: blogs

How to organise your photos
Organizing a collection of tens of thousands of digital photos can be a daunting task, but there are some steps you can take to make it easier and more efficient. Here’s a workflow that might work for you: Gather all your photos in one location: It is important to have all your photos in one place so that you can easily see what you have and begin organizing them. This might involve copying photos from various devices or external hard drives onto a single computer or cloud storage service. Remove duplicates and unwanted photos: Go through your collection and delete any duplicates, blurry or out-of-focus photos, or ...
Source: David Bradley Sciencebase - Songs, Snaps, Science - April 3, 2023 Category: Science Authors: David Bradley Tags: Photography Source Type: blogs

How to organise your photo collection
I have tens of thousands of photos in my archives, some stretching as far back as the pre-digital era (working in and touring the US in 1988, touring Australia in 1989, southern Africa in 1992, and so much more in between, mostly prints, but lots of scans too). My first digital camera (an Agfa ePhoto 307, provided by Agfa itself in 1997). It had a VGA sensor (one third of a megapixel) and no screen. After that I progressed to pocket digital cameras, notably the Canon Ixus 500 and from there to the digital SLRs (Canon 20D to 6D to 7D mark ii. Before you ask, I’ve not gone mirrorless and don’t yet feel the urge t...
Source: David Bradley Sciencebase - Songs, Snaps, Science - April 3, 2023 Category: Science Authors: David Bradley Tags: Photography Source Type: blogs

My approach to processing digital photos step-by-step
I recently discussed my photo processing workflow and gave a working example using a photo I got of a beautiful Short-eared Owl. I’ve now summarised that workflow into a step-by-step system for fellow photographers who might want to compare their approach and see if they can get better results with their photos. Here are the basic steps I usually take with an image downloaded from the camera to give me a photo that’s ready for my blog or to share on social media. Fundamentally, you should be shooting RAW and using the RAW file from your camera. Feed the RAW file to a denoise software like DxO PureRaw3 to remo...
Source: David Bradley Sciencebase - Songs, Snaps, Science - April 2, 2023 Category: Science Authors: David Bradley Tags: Photography Source Type: blogs

Nocturnal pollination #MothsMatter
2018 was the year I took a serious interest in studying moths in my garden having been loaned a scientific mothtrap by a friend in the village. It was late July that year that I fell in love with the “nocturnal” Lepidoptera. December Moth By the September, I’d recorded about 120 species of animal I’d never noticed, seen, nor observed ever before. In subsequent years I added yet more species. There are about 1600 moth species in the UK and I have ticked 464 (as of 1 April 2023).  That same month there was some research demonstrating once again why moths matter and why we should not dismiss these rem...
Source: David Bradley Sciencebase - Songs, Snaps, Science - April 1, 2023 Category: Science Authors: David Bradley Tags: Lepidoptera Source Type: blogs

Trip to Teesdale
We spent a lovely couple of days with wonderful friends at their place in Teesdale…unfortunately I’ve been struggling to walk with an ankle injury so the usual long country walks and sightseeing were off the agenda, but we did get to toddle around the fabulous Bowes Museum in Barnard Castle and to sample some local ale at the local pub for local people (and their friends). Through-window shot of male Great Spotted Woodpecker Our friends had also arranged a fabulous selection of birds to use their garden bird feeders while we were there: Brambling, Nuthatch, Coal Tit, Great Spotted Woodpecker (M+F), Redpoll, Gol...
Source: David Bradley Sciencebase - Songs, Snaps, Science - March 31, 2023 Category: Science Authors: David Bradley Tags: Birds Source Type: blogs

ChemistGPT
There was lots of talk of ChatGPT apparently deciding to teach itself organic chemistry…now…ChatGPT is language model, it’s not really an artificial intelligence (AI) in the strict sense, all it really is is a sophisticated autocomplete that analyses your prompts and weighs up the most likely combination of words with which to reply. I wondered whether the only chemistry in all that hype was the chemistry between olfactory receptor and odourant molecules in bovine ordure. So, I set it a challenge, giving it the following prompt: You are to act as an expert organic chemist. You need to devise a reaction sc...
Source: David Bradley Sciencebase - Songs, Snaps, Science - March 27, 2023 Category: Science Authors: David Bradley Tags: Artificial Intelligence Chemistry Source Type: blogs

Red-green Carpet
TL:DR – It’s spring and at least one hibernating moth, the Red-green Carpet, has arrived in our garden so far this year Lit up with my Heath trap again last night and despite the rain, but perhaps because it didn’t drop below 9 Celsius there was a small clutch of moths to ID and record this morning. Specifically, 2x Clouded Drab (new for the year), Common Quaker, Early Grey, 2x Hebrew Character, and a Red-green Carpet, also NFY. Red-green Carpet, Chloroclysta siterata The Red-green Carpet is usually on the wing in the Autumn, the males die, but the females can hibernate to lay eggs in the spring. To my e...
Source: David Bradley Sciencebase - Songs, Snaps, Science - March 24, 2023 Category: Science Authors: David Bradley Tags: Lepidoptera Source Type: blogs

The northern lights aren ’ t in my eyes – Aurora borealis
Lots of lucky locals, by which I mean people a bit further north in Norfolk saw the northern lights, the Aurora Borealis, in Norfolk and elsewhere. There is a slight possibility of seeing them in Cambridgeshire although finding somewhere with little light pollution around here is a tough call, but more to the point it’s been cloudy and wet when other places have had their lightshow these last couple of nights. In recent years they have been observed from Devon and Cornwall. Aurora borealis at Vestrahorn, Southern Iceland (Credit: Simaron) So, what are the northern lights? The northern lights are a natural phenomenon ...
Source: David Bradley Sciencebase - Songs, Snaps, Science - March 24, 2023 Category: Science Authors: David Bradley Tags: Astronomy Source Type: blogs

Early Oak Piercer just for FUN
TL:DR – Pheromones are a useful tool for discovering what day-flying moths are in your neighbourhood. As regular readers know, I do a bit of mothing…I have had a FUN lure, a pheromone lure aimed at attracting Grapholita funebrana. It’s been sighted in the garden for a couple of weeks with nothing appearing until 21st March 2023 at which point I was lucky enough to catch a couple of micro moths, Pammene giganteana (known to some unofficially as the Early Oak Piercer) not the target species but nice to see, nevertheless. The micro moth Pammene giganteana (Early Oak Piercer) The larvae of the Early Oak Pier...
Source: David Bradley Sciencebase - Songs, Snaps, Science - March 23, 2023 Category: Science Authors: David Bradley Tags: Lepidoptera Source Type: blogs

Alpine Swifts in the UK and Ireland
Back in 2019, we took a trip to Greece, the first in many years, we saw lots of wildlife, including Alpine Swift careening way above our heads in Athens. The alpine swift is a medium-sized bird with a wingspan of around 540-600 mm. It has a dark-brown body with a slightly paler throat and underbelly. In flight, it is easily identified by its long, narrow wings and its distinctive white belly patch, which contrasts sharply with the dark body. It is a skilled and agile flier, capable of catching insects on the wing with great precision. Indeed, it rarely touches down, spending almost its whole life, once fledged on the wing,...
Source: David Bradley Sciencebase - Songs, Snaps, Science - March 22, 2023 Category: Science Authors: David Bradley Tags: Birds Source Type: blogs

Careers advice from ChatGPT
I gave ChatGPT the following prompt: You are to act as a careers guidance counsellor with many years experience. I added some personal career history and hobbies and asked it to come up with some advice for what I should do in the latter part of my career. This is what it had to say: It sounds like you have had a very successful and diverse career as a freelance science journalist over the past 30+ years. Given your current situation and interests, there are a few different options you could consider. Diversify your writing topics: Since you are already a skilled writer and journalist, you could try expanding your repertoi...
Source: David Bradley Sciencebase - Songs, Snaps, Science - March 22, 2023 Category: Science Authors: David Bradley Tags: Artificial Intelligence Psychology Source Type: blogs