Laburnum: poison to people, dogs, not deer
Laburnum (Laburnum anagyroides), a small deciduous tree with pea-like, golden yellow flowers densely packed in pendulous racemes, sweet scented, and typically blossom in May (although the specimen growing in our back garden and the ones in our neighbour’s garden bloomed in the middle of April. The tree has smooth bark, dark green spreading branches and pendulous twigs, trifoliate and oval with long petiole leaves, smooth on the upperside and hairy on the underside.
The black seeds contain cytisine, an extremely toxic alkaloid. Poisonous to humans, dogs, goats, and horses. Hare and deer can feed on them with ill effe...
Source: David Bradley Sciencebase - Songs, Snaps, Science - May 10, 2017 Category: Science Authors: David Bradley Tags: Science Source Type: blogs
Great spotted update
Earlier in the year, I snapped and blogged about the great spotted woodpecker (Dendrocopos major) in local woodland. Recently, there has been a lot more activity and there are at least two pairs around. I suspected one pair was using a dead tree with lots of big holes in its trunk and by chance spotted one bird clambering up towards one of those holes before disappearing inside. It emerged a few seconds later after peering cautiously from the hole before darting across the field and beyond the tall hedgerow, presumably in search of more food for its chicks. Meanwhile parent two arrived a few moments later, at some times th...
Source: David Bradley Sciencebase - Songs, Snaps, Science - May 9, 2017 Category: Science Authors: David Bradley Tags: Science Source Type: blogs
Grey wagtail – Motacilla cinerea
A couple of weeks ago I spotted a pair of grey wagtails (Motacilla cinerea) feeding at Bottisham Lock on the river Cam at Waterbeach, a few miles north of Cambridge. I was rather pleased to have snapped them in the evening sun. Several weeks later I saw the female foraging a few hundred metres further down river at the pumping station that helps control the flow of water along the lode there to the village of Bottisham itself. She was flitting about on the accumulated debris at the smaller lock on to the lode where river plants and detritus at accumulated, snatching at invertebrates, flies, mayflies, beetles, crustacea, an...
Source: David Bradley Sciencebase - Songs, Snaps, Science - May 8, 2017 Category: Science Authors: David Bradley Tags: Science Source Type: blogs
More British Birds
I’m endessly amazed at just how many different birds there are around if you care to look and have the patience to prowl around woodland, fen, mountain and moor, and the coastal margins. Of course, there are endless sparrows and chaffinchs, starlings, blackbirds, thrushes, robins, goldfinches, collared doves, wood pigeons and the like in our gardens. But there also wheatears, meadow pippets, cormorants, swallows, house martins, sand martins, swifts, sparrowhawks, willow warblers, chiffchaffs, jays, whitethroats, kingfishers, turnstones, stonechats, redwings, fieldfares, wagtails (pied and yellow), redstarts, buzzards...
Source: David Bradley Sciencebase - Songs, Snaps, Science - May 7, 2017 Category: Science Authors: David Bradley Tags: Science Source Type: blogs
Delia Derbyshire
Electronic music pioneer Delia Derbyshire, perhaps best known for creating the haunting theme music for Doctor Who based on Ron Grainer’s original composition, would’ve been 80 today, she died in July 2001. Derbyshire’s work at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop laid the foundations for modern experimental recording and sound manipulation techniques, she sampled and re-sampled with tape, used delays, sequencing, loops, minimalism, the lot.
Quite extraordinary experimentalist and technologist, a trailblazer who even managed to turn the Greenwich pips into a piece of music, long before highly repetitive musical f...
Source: David Bradley Sciencebase - Songs, Snaps, Science - May 5, 2017 Category: Science Authors: David Bradley Tags: Science Source Type: blogs
Bearded tit (Panurus biarmicus)
On a visit to WWT Welney, Welney Wetland Centre at the beginning of the year Mrs Sciencebase and I, we were introduced to a couple of new bird species by more experienced birders there: the Reed bunting (Emberiza schoeniclus) and the Bearded tit (Panurus biarmicus). I don’t think either of us had seen these species before. Picture directly below is of a female (left) and a male (right) reed bunting.
We were in a hide at the centre watching the reed buntings flitting about and I was trying to get a decent snap of both male and female, when a new entrant in the hide pointing out a kestrel just behind us said, “...
Source: David Bradley Sciencebase - Songs, Snaps, Science - May 5, 2017 Category: Science Authors: David Bradley Tags: Science Source Type: blogs
A Brief History of the Moon
The Moon was in its first quarter phase earlier this week. Looking beautiful, hanging in the sky, at dusk. If I see it, I snap it. So, with my trust camera and a biggish lens (150-600m), I fired off a couple of shots. Cropped the image straight out of the camera to “zoom” in even further and to give the shot a nice composition, adjusted the histogram using curves in my photo editor, applied a little sharpening (actually an unsharp mask process) and a couple of other tweaks, just as one would in the darkroom with wet photography and an enlarger.
I posted the shot to social media and got a few complimentary comm...
Source: David Bradley Sciencebase - Songs, Snaps, Science - May 5, 2017 Category: Science Authors: David Bradley Tags: Science Source Type: blogs
Whitethroat – Sylvia communis
Sylvia isn’t a communist, as far as I know…she’s a wee bird…yes, I know another one. More to the point, this Sylvia is a male. Spotted him darting around the reeds on the Cottenham Lode. Made the dog sit still and then stalked him so I could get a better shot…several snaps, none great, one in flight then he was up a tree away from the reeds and wondering what on earth I was up to.
Medium-sized warbler, sam sort of size as a great tit (Parus major), summer visitor to the UK; spending the northern winter in sub-Saharan Africa. S communis avoids urban and mountainous areas (so unlikely to se...
Source: David Bradley Sciencebase - Songs, Snaps, Science - May 4, 2017 Category: Science Authors: David Bradley Tags: Science Source Type: blogs
When the mood takes you
When the Mood Takes You by Dave Bradley
I came up with a funky little riff in my head Monday, thought: I’ll never be able to work that out on guitar. But, had a go anyway…it was just a single not pull-off, hammer-on thing…so I figured out simple chords that seemed to fit: F, Em, Am, G…and a turnaround F Em, D, Am, G, with a few embellishments, minor 7ths, the odd dominant 7th, a sixth here and there, maybe even a 9th, at least in the harmonies.
I also had this lyrical phrase in my head: How can you be lost in the light? It’s easy to get lost in the dark…but not so much in the light?
Well...
Source: David Bradley Sciencebase - Songs, Snaps, Science - May 3, 2017 Category: Science Authors: David Bradley Tags: Songs Source Type: blogs
Eurasian bullfinch – Pyrrhula pyrrhula
The male bullfinch (Pyrrhula pyrrhula) has an almost salmon-pink breast and cheeks, grey back, black cap and tail, and a bright white rump, a plaintive call and a shy demeanour. I’ve probably only ever seen this bird half a dozen times. I spotted this one about a week ago and got a very poor shot, I heard him before I got to his territory this time and crept up to where I imagined he’d be, he still darted away hiding among the rapidly obscuring leaves of the trees. Still got some. A security shot. Proof he was there.
RSPB suggests that you’re most likely to see bullfinches in Woodlands, orchard and hedger...
Source: David Bradley Sciencebase - Songs, Snaps, Science - May 3, 2017 Category: Science Authors: David Bradley Tags: Science Source Type: blogs
It was 60 million years ago today …
Well, circa 50 to 60 million years ago during the Paleocene, present-day County Antrim near Bushmills in Northern Ireland was intensely volcanic. Highly fluid molten basalt oozed through ancient chalk beds to form an extensive lava plateau. As it cooled, the material contracted causing fractures just as does drying mud with cracks propagating down as the mass cooled, leaving the pillar-like structures of the Giant’s Causeway (Clochán an Aifir or Clochán na bhFomhórach ). These pillars are also fractured into “biscuits”. The extensive fracture network produced the distinctive columns seen today. Here...
Source: David Bradley Sciencebase - Songs, Snaps, Science - May 2, 2017 Category: Science Authors: David Bradley Tags: Science Source Type: blogs
Goldfinch – Carduelis carduelis
We’ve often put food out for the garden birds. Usually it’s starlings, house sparrows, and wood pigeons that attack the feeders, years ago we may have had one of the local black squirrels having a go. The dunnocks and our labrador hoover up the seeds that fall to the ground. I’d seen goldfinches (Carduelis carduelis, yet another tautonym meaning that this is the “type” of the family) flitting around the houses and occasionally landing on our TV aerial, but never landing on the feeders.
It seems the goldfinches are not so keen on sunflower seeds and other delicacies found in the generic 20 kg ...
Source: David Bradley Sciencebase - Songs, Snaps, Science - May 1, 2017 Category: Science Authors: David Bradley Tags: Science Source Type: blogs
Overselling the microbiome award: Marie Claire for its "article" on Mother Dirt
Wow. And not in a good way. Marie Claire has bough in to the Mother Dirt sales pitch wholesale. Here are some quotes form an article by Roxanne Adamiyatt published today in Marie Claire (see Probiotic Mist - Cleansing Body Mist)"Like Febreze for your body, Mother Dirt's AO + Mist is a live probiotic spray that restores essential bacteria to our microbiomes. How? In short, the ammonia-oxidizing bacteria works to consume sweat on your body and turn it into a beneficial byproduct your skin can use."Ugh. No that is just not true. This is what the people from Mother Dirt may claim. But I have ...
Source: The Tree of Life - May 1, 2017 Category: Microbiology Authors: Jonathan Eisen Source Type: blogs
Pen y Fan and Corn Du
Pen y Fan (left in my photo) in the Brecon Beacons National Park (Parc Cenedlaethol Bannau Brycheiniog) is the highest peak in south Wales at 886 metres above sea-level. The twin peaks of Pen y Fan and Corn Du (on the right) is 873 m. The pair were formerly known as Cadair Arthur meaning Arthur’s Seat.
Pen y Fan comprises rocks of the Old Red Sandstone (which isn’t always red and isn’t always sandstone) laid down during the geological era known as the Devonian period (a 60-million year epoch spanning the end of the Silurian, 420 million years ago to the beginning of the Carboniferous, 360 Mya. The Ol...
Source: David Bradley Sciencebase - Songs, Snaps, Science - April 30, 2017 Category: Science Authors: David Bradley Tags: Science Source Type: blogs
Brimstone (Gonepteryx rhamni)
This brimstone (Gonepteryx rhamni) was so obvious as it fluttered around the woodland understory at Wandlebury with its sulfurous wings. However, as soon as it settled and closed it was suddenly as well camouflaged as any insect might be while feeing on a periwinkle (Vinca minor).
According to Wikipedia, across much of its range, G. rhamni is the only species of its genus, and is therefore simply known locally as the brimstone. I’m dubious about their claim that the word “butterfly” comes from this insects in that its yellow upper wings led early British naturalists to call it the butter-coloured fly. Mu...
Source: David Bradley Sciencebase - Songs, Snaps, Science - April 30, 2017 Category: Science Authors: David Bradley Tags: Science Source Type: blogs
