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Earith Beardies
Lots of Beardies at the Earith side of RSPB Ouse Fen, the site represents a nicely growing colony of the species. Bearded Reedlings I counted at least a couple of dozen today. I’d first heard a lot of pew-pewing (or ping-pinging) in the reeds close to the car park. The sound is reminiscent of a low-power sci-fi B-movie laser gun or a twee little ringing bell. But, when there are lots firing off it once it’s quite wonderful, like a live-action video game in the reed beds. Beardie is an affectionate nickname for the Bearded Reedling, formerly known as the Bearded Tit. It was misnamed on account of its passing res...
Source: David Bradley Sciencebase - Songs, Snaps, Science - September 29, 2022 Category: Science Authors: David Bradley Tags: Birds Source Type: blogs

My Non-avian Dorset Holiday Snaps
Mrs Sciencebase and myself were celebrating a significant wedding anniversary last week and so took a trip to Dorset. I didn’t carry a proper landscape lens with my birding camera, so these are just a load of highly processed phone snaps. (Source: David Bradley Sciencebase - Songs, Snaps, Science)
Source: David Bradley Sciencebase - Songs, Snaps, Science - September 26, 2022 Category: Science Authors: David Bradley Tags: Photography Source Type: blogs

Birding in Dorset
We took another trip south in September. Stayed some way inland in the historic town of Corfe Castle but couldn’t keep away from the coast and visited RSPB Arne, RSPB Lodmoor, RSPB Radipole Pond, NT Studland, and took a boat trip in Poole Harbour up the Wareham Channel, and a train journey from Corfe to Swanage where we were plagued by Geography Fieldtrips measuring the groynes on the beach. White-tailed Eagle RSPB Arne is the English homeland of the Dartford Warbler and plenty of other wildlife, although we saw very little of it on our visit for some reason, apart from some “wild” pigs and distant waders...
Source: David Bradley Sciencebase - Songs, Snaps, Science - September 26, 2022 Category: Science Authors: David Bradley Tags: Birds Source Type: blogs

On being anything but elite
There are almost 8 billion people alive on the planet, right now. Eight thousand million humans. That’s 8,000,000,000. It’s a big number. Arthur C. Clarke famously wrote that “Behind every man now alive stand thirty ghosts, for that is the ratio by which the dead outnumber the living.” There have been at least 100 billion humans since the first of our ancestors made that one giant step down from the trees for mankind. However, look to the future now, we’ve only just begun…there will come a point, where total membership of the human race, living and dead, may well be numbered in the trill...
Source: David Bradley Sciencebase - Songs, Snaps, Science - September 16, 2022 Category: Science Authors: David Bradley Tags: Sciencebase Source Type: blogs

Clancy ’ s Rustic – Caradrina kadenii
As the year rolls by, the number of new moth species a novice moth-er with 3-4 years experience is likely to see on any given night declines with the arrival of autumn. All the moths I saw in my first season were pretty much new-for-me (NFM), about 127 species. In 2019, lighting up for a longer period, I recorded 125 NFM. 2020 wasn’t a great year not many moths at all after an unseasonably warm and sunny pre-Spring and I recorded just 30 NFM. Similarly, 37 NFM in 2021. However, despite odd weather again in 2022, I’ve recorded 49 NFM in the garden and a dozen with the LepiLED in the New Forest. Among those NFM s...
Source: David Bradley Sciencebase - Songs, Snaps, Science - September 15, 2022 Category: Science Authors: David Bradley Tags: Sciencebase Source Type: blogs

Hairstreak butterflies
There are so many “hairstreak” butterflies around the world, members of the Theclinae, with lots of tribes. Indeed, nobody knows for sure how many of these delightful little creatures adorn our world. In the UK, we have just five of them as native species, and they’re quite rare and tend to live and breed only in small pockets. In 2021, I saw my first Green, Purple, and White-letter Hairstreaks with a little bit of guidance from some butterflyers I’ve mentioned before. In 2022, I made a concerted effort to try and find at least one of the two others that are not too far to drive from home – t...
Source: David Bradley Sciencebase - Songs, Snaps, Science - September 8, 2022 Category: Science Authors: David Bradley Tags: Lepidoptera Source Type: blogs

The Convolvulus second coming
Usually, one relies on Attenborough and his marvellous army of photographers and researchers to bring the dramatic natural world closer to home. At a push Spring Watch and its ilk can give you a slightly less educational fix with their low-level narrative and low-level cameras. But, nature impinges on even the most urbane of urban gardens at times. Indeed, we see various butterflies in the garden on warm and sunny summer days – Comma, Painted Lady, Red Admiral, Peacock, Whites (Large and Small), Holly Blue, very occasionally Common Blue and Small Copper, even (once) Marbled White. Hummingbird Hawk-moths turn up duri...
Source: David Bradley Sciencebase - Songs, Snaps, Science - September 1, 2022 Category: Science Authors: David Bradley Tags: Lepidoptera Source Type: blogs

Patience – an internal app to help you take better wildlife photos
My very good friend Vicki who is a fellow birder, former moth-er, and archaeology enthusiast, suggested I write about photographing wildlife for my next column in our village newsletter. So, putting proverbial pen to paper while inspiration struck, here’s what I came up with in fifteen minutes… What’s the one thing you definitely need to get a decent wildlife photograph? There are myriad answers that come to mind – an expensive camera, a big zoom lens, a portable hide and a Ghillie suit, a fancy tripod and a Bluetooth shutter release app? Those things might help and you could always put them on your...
Source: David Bradley Sciencebase - Songs, Snaps, Science - September 1, 2022 Category: Science Authors: David Bradley Tags: Photography Source Type: blogs

Common-as-muck Buzzards
When you get wind of something unusual in the birding world, the temptation is often to head for the site as quickly as possible binoculars slung around your neck and camera in the rucksack on your back. It’s often not the best strategy, birds fly and even if you think you’re being quick off the mark, often the update you saw may be out of date within minutes or hours of it being posted. So, when I heard there was a large number of Common Buzzard* (Buteo buteo) gathered in a field not 20 minutes’ drive from home, I didn’t jump into the car and slam the pedal to the metal. I waiting until the next u...
Source: David Bradley Sciencebase - Songs, Snaps, Science - August 31, 2022 Category: Science Authors: David Bradley Tags: Birds Source Type: blogs

Let ’ s twist again with the Garden Rose Tortrix
Having written about one of the bigger moths we see in the UK, Connie, the migrant Convolvulus Hawk-moth, it only seems fair to give a mention to a micro, as opposed to macro moth. So, here’s the Garden Rose Tortrix. Garden Rose Tortrix Now, the macro versus micro label may well have been historically about size. The larger moths being macro, the smaller moths being micro, as you might imagine, but there are so many enormous micro moths and so many tiny macro moths in the world that this really doesn’t hold. In fact, the division is one of evolutionary history, the micro moths being a much older grouping. The m...
Source: David Bradley Sciencebase - Songs, Snaps, Science - August 30, 2022 Category: Science Authors: David Bradley Tags: Lepidoptera Source Type: blogs

Singing with THE gospel choir
Earlier this year, our choir got invited to sing (again) with The London Community Gospel Choir, you know, the choir led by the Reverend Bazil Meade that are on the original Tender by Blur and have also worked with Justin Timberlake, Madonna, Gorillaz, and Kylie Minogue. Amazing, yes? What an opportunity. Big crowd too as we would see. Anyway, there was a powercut during soundcheck, so we didn’t get as much of a chance to run through our supporting set before the show as we’d hoped. No matter. It would be fun, we’d have to wing it, and the crowd were there for the LCGC not us. We also had to run through...
Source: David Bradley Sciencebase - Songs, Snaps, Science - August 30, 2022 Category: Science Authors: David Bradley Tags: Music Source Type: blogs

Egging on Toadflax Brocade caterpillars
As regular Sciencebase readers will know by now, this once workaholic science writer is now a highly dedicated mother. As in I am an enthusiastic amateur Lepidopterist. A moth-er, like a bird-er, birder, someone keen to see, observe, understand, and perhaps photograph the subject. This year and last, I’ve also been a bit more focused on being a butterflyer too. Toadflax Brocade larva with one of its foodplants, Purple Toadflax Anyway, part of being a mother usually involves finding ways to see moths. Commonly that involves some kind of lure – a pheromone bung or an ultraviolet (or other) light. And, again, as y...
Source: David Bradley Sciencebase - Songs, Snaps, Science - August 29, 2022 Category: Science Authors: David Bradley Tags: Lepidoptera Source Type: blogs

Convolvulus Hawk-moth in Cambridge
The Convolvulus Hawk-moth, named for its larval food plant convolvulus (bindweed) and its hawk-like appearance, is a rather rare visitor to the UK from mainland Europe. Convolvulus Hawk-moth, Agrius convolvuli The books usually say it migrates rarely and will be seen only in the South West of England if it does, but it has appeared elsewhere, often carried in on the same weather as other migrants, such as the Hummingbird Hawk-moth. The Convolvulus Hawk-moth likes to nectar on tobacco plants and ginger lilies among other flowers and I have been growing the former in our back garden since I started mothing in the hope of se...
Source: David Bradley Sciencebase - Songs, Snaps, Science - August 27, 2022 Category: Science Authors: David Bradley Tags: Lepidoptera Source Type: blogs

Mothing in the New Forest
FINAL UPDATE: Back home, checked through the records. 12 species I’d not seen before, at least two of which are usually confined to the South coast and hinterland. Lesser Swallow Prominent The list of moths I’d not photographed before our New Forest 2022 trip is as follows: August Thorn, Black Arches, Chequered Fruit-tree Tortrix, Cydia amplana,  Hedge Rustic, Lesser Swallow Prominent, Lesser Treble Bar, Light Crimson Underwing, Plain Wave, Dark-barred Twin-spot Carpet, Rosy Footman, Six-striped Rustic. August Thorn Records now dispatched to Hampshire County Moth Recorder, Mike Wall. UPDATE: Seventh Night: A ...
Source: David Bradley Sciencebase - Songs, Snaps, Science - August 20, 2022 Category: Science Authors: David Bradley Tags: Lepidoptera Source Type: blogs

Mothing the New Forest
First night off-site with the LepiLED and a portable Robinson-type moth trap was in North Poulner in the New Forest. We ate fairly late but there were Pipistrelle bats circling the trees in the garden overlooking the valley long before dusk feel. Chequered Fruit-tree Tortrix I lit up with the trap right under an oak tree, I had high hopes. Numbers weren’t huge, but there were a couple of species I had not seen before – Six-striped Rustic (Xestia sexstrigata, one of the many noctuid, or owlet moths) and Chequered Fruit-tree Tortrix (Pandemis corylana). The latter is also known as the Hazel Tortrix Moth, the Filb...
Source: David Bradley Sciencebase - Songs, Snaps, Science - August 20, 2022 Category: Science Authors: David Bradley Tags: Lepidoptera Source Type: blogs