Yellowhammer – Emberiza citrinella

Often the way, you’re looking for one bird, when you hear and then spot another. Happens a lot with the yellowhammer (Emberiza citrinella). Today, I was walking a short distance along the Aldreth Causeway and could hear avian jostling over the floodbank, scrambled to the top, saw nothing but flittering wings heading into the scrub, turned around and encountered this yella fella, sitting among the seed heads, not twenty feet from where I stood, making his call…

It’s distinctive call, Mrs Sciencebase’s Dad always told her, sounds like the bird was passing out the post-war rations: “two-slices-of-bread-but-no-cheeeeese” (Story No. 237). But, Richard Smyth, my E&T stablemate, also shows his age in his book A Sweet Wild Note by suggesting it’s more of a “chika-chika-chika-chikaaaah”. It sounds very similar to the pine bunting with which it interbreeds and like a different avian dialect version of the reed bunting’s call. Either way the yellowhammer is a lemon-coloured bunting and definitely not a canary as one fellow dogwalker insisted!

The hammer part of its name comes from the German word for bunting, ammer, first recorded in 1553 as yelambre. Oddly enough the “Emberiza” part of its scientific binomial (the name a lot of people refer to as an organism’s “Latin name”) also comes from the Old German embritz, meaning bunting. Citrinella is an Italian word for a small yellow bird.

I got reasonably close to this male yellowhammer and perhaps captured the best few shots of this species I have taken to add to my bird gallery.

Just your average graduation ceremony…but what this student does next will make you ROFL

Graduation ceremonies are rarely exciting affairs…except for family members watching their beloved chill roll up in a mortarboard and cape to grab their scroll. But, watch one student, Alexander Godfrey, at his graduation ceremony as he exits stage right…you won’t believe what he does after the ceremonial handshake with the dignitaries…


Alex is a first class graduate of Birmingham City University’s BSc in Sound Production and Engineering and now works with a music software and hardware company.

Mum, Wendy Godfrey, was more than a little bemused whilst videoing her son’s graduation on her phone. “I didn’t know he was going to do it,” she laughs. “As he was about to leave the stage he raised his mortarboard and I thought he was going to throw it in the air, like they do, but then he did this victory roll across the stage, almost everyone in the auditorium, was laughing!”

She adds that, “Nothing my boy does surprises me, I blame the acting lessons we spent a fortune on over the years. Give him a stage and he’ll take a mile. He’s always the centre of attention because of his antics, he’s got an album coming out soon, you know?”

Speaking of which Alex confirmed to Sciencebase that his album based on his Acid Tea music project will indeed be out at the end of 24th August. “It’s an ultra-colourful, poem-filled CD album of my psychedelic electronic jazzy/bluesy/rock experiments…” Alex enthuses.

Wake up Maggie!

Apparently, magpies (Pica pica) are invoked in Christian allegory because they look like a composite of a white dove and a black raven…they were alleged to have perched on the prow of The Ark during the Biblical flood and to have cackled and laughed whilst the world drowned…

Then there’s the nursery rhyme, made famous for British children of the 1970s by the ITV rival to Blue Peter, Magpie. The theme tune for the show perhaps usurped earlier, traditional versions of the nursery rhyme from our collective psyche.

One for sorrow,
Two for joy,
Three for a girl,
Four for a boy,
Five for silver,
Six for gold,
Seven for a secret,
Never to be told.
Eight for a wish,
Nine for a kiss,
Ten for a bird,
You must not miss.

There are versions that begin:

One for sorrow,
Two for mirth,
Three for a funeral
And four for birth

and

One for sorrow,
Two for mirth
Three for a funeral,
Four for birth
Five for heaven
Six for hell
Seven for the devil, his own self

Why the magpie gets such a raw deal in mythology and folkore is perhaps down to the sound it makes, the cackling laughter, and perhaps also because it ties together white and black, day and night, good and bad, light and shade…either way it’s just a bird, a corvid, or crow, albeit a clever one.

Listen:

Hobby – Falco subbuteo

A pair of hobbies (Falco subbuteo) took up residence in an abandoned rook’s nest at “The Lodge” RSPB reserve some time ago. They hatched three chicks which are thriving and providing hours of entertainment for birdwatchers and staff at the reserve.

It’s probably another week before they fledge. Their diet seems to consist of mainly dragonflies from the moorish land around their lonesome pine although one photographer (Colin Severs) I met had footage of an adult tearing apart a swallow (Hirundo rustica) on a branch near the nest to make bite-sized nuggets for the offspring.

These birds are spectacular enough to have made it worth the trip to the reserve but there were also several buzzards (Buteo buteo) around including at least one juvenile, green woodpeckers (Picus viridis), common whitethroats (Sylvia communis), the family of bullfinches (Pyrrhula pyrrhula) purportedly also nesting near the hobbies remained elusive.

Also remaining hidden were the nuthatches (Sitta europaea) and treecreepers (Certhia familiaris). Apparently, a pied flycatcher (Ficedula hypoleuca) that had been showing well was predated last, perhaps by a jay (Garrulus glandarius). I’ve only ever seen one of these birds, dead on a footpath, many years years ago. Attending the birdfeeders around the site were blackcaps (Sylvia atricapilla), dunnocks (Prunella modularis), chaffinches (Fringilla coelebs), blue tits (Cyanistes caeruleus) with young and great tits (Parus major), and a solitary robin (Erithacus rubecula) and a lone magpie (Pica pica).

Baskets of wild stone

UPDATE: The song got a new name – Turncoats

All along the North Norfolk coast you will come across galvanized baskets piled high and filled with great flint stones, such baskets of stones are known as gabions. Strategically placed, these are part of the sea defences. It’s fairly well known that Britain is tilting downward into the sea along what one might imagine is its north-south axis and so the east side. This tilt means the coastal margin of East Anglia is gradually dipping further and further into the North Sea with concomitant coastal erosion. If climate change leads to rising sea levels and worsening winter storms, then it is perhaps only a matter of decades before much of this marshy land and drained and reclaimed land is taken back by the beautiful briny.

On a recent trip to the poetically named Overstrand (a few photos here), we were all looking for inspiration. I had the phrase “give her all you take” in my head and was imagining the fishing boats and the sea, but as we contemplated the rising tide and the crashing waves and the previous night’s storm, one friend point to the baskets of stones. The same stones that are used in this part of the world to decorate the very homes that are so vulnerable to the whims of time and tide. It seemed like a good theme…baskets of stones, indeed, baskets of wild stones, as Rog had it…to save the land from the sea. A few local ales and a bit of a strum on my oldest acoustic guitar outside our tent and I had something of a chord progression, some words, and a basic tune. Recorded on a phone it was just enough to let me retain a post-camping demo to work on back in the home studio.

I’ve made a lyric video for this song, can you tell what album I’m spoofing on our record player?

Of course, the original demo is course and sweary as was a live rendering I attempted with other friends in a deconsecrated church at the weekend…it helped peg out how the song might work but I ended up with a half-decent studio demo that seemed to last far too long and didn’t get to the chorus anywhere nearly quick enough. So, despite a fairly positive response from the SoundCloud crowd, I ditched the original and started again, working up a much stronger vocal, re-ordering it from an unconventional verse-bridge-verse-refrain-chorus-verse-chorus-reprise-chorus to a more traditional structure. That coupled with a slightly higher tempo and no middle-8 meant it was about 4’30” rather than 5’30”. Not quite a radio mix, but closer. Since writing this blog post, I also whipped out my Tele and did some big shouty octaves for the later choruses. It’s all got a bit heavier…heavy rock stones you might say.

Turncoats

Baskets of wild stone to save the land from the seas
What would carry me home? Not the tide nor the breeze!
Give her all you take till she brings you to your knees
And the wind will catch your breath brace you for the peace

Fleshing out the rust that decays by the shore
Wonder if I’ll find the way home just a little bit raw
You face the pain, but it turned you pale
Your wounded sigh, You hide behind a veil

Storms and fights and endless bloody wars
Dreams of lights and turncoats on the shores
Screams at night are nothing but a bore
Then you turn away and ask for nothing more

Kicking up the sand by the shore
Picking at the strands a little bit more
But it all unravels when you sail against the wind
I’m a long way looking back, your blame is under my skin

Storms and fights and endless bloody wars
Dreams of lights and turncoats on the shores
Screams at night are nothing but a bore
Then you turn to me and ask for a little more

Storms and fights and endless bloody wars
Dreams of lights and turncoats on the shores
Screams at night are nothing but a bore
Then you turn to me and ask for nothing more

Baskets of wild stone to save the land from the seas
What would carry me home? Not the tide nor the breeze
Give her all you take and she’ll bring you to your knees
And the wind will catch your breath brace you for the peace

Storms and fights and endless bloody wars
Dreams of lights and turncoats on the shores
Screams at night are nothing but a bore
Then you turn away, then you turn away, then you turn away
And ask for nothing more

Baskets of wild stone to save the land

—-

Reviews just in:

You present great vocal dynamics in this one. It's sung boldly with energy. The narrative is crammed with powerful themed imagery which keeps the listener captive.
Nothing richer than a good acoustic/electric mix. Fantastic vocal work.
Fantastic singing
Brilliant rock!! So cool!
Great lyrics and a lovely melody to carry it all along. Guitar is beautifully bright and love the double tracked vocals. Excellent and nicely reminiscent of early Bowie.

Prisma – the goose that lays golden photos

I tried the Prisma app when it first launched, a year or so ago, but then quickly forgot about it. A few friends have been playing with the app recently though and producing some nice filtered photos, so I thought I’d have another play. I picked a recent closeup of a greylag gosling I snapped in Milton Country Park north of Cambridge.

It seemed to be the perfect sort of shot to apply the various mosaics and filters that go by the quite esoteric names of Thota Vaikuntam, Wave (Hokusai-like), Mononoke, Mondrian, Femme (Picasso-like), The Scream (Munch-like), Roy (Lichtenstein-like), Heisenberg (ink sketch) etc. Top left in the contact sheet is my original photo, the others are various Prisma treatments picked to taste from the first few and applied with 100% of the processed image showing rather than blending with the original

Although this is a mobile app I ran an Android emulator known as Blue Stacks on my Windows 10 desktop machine and loaded the app in that to make it easier to pick and choose and to save files rather than messing around with the tiny mobile phone screen and shuttling files using the cloud. Montage was made with “paint.net” and my “dB” logo applied, as ever with Paintshop Pro. having mentioned a hack for uploading photos to Instagram from a Windows desktop machine, Blue Stacks is another alternative, run Instagram as an app within BlueStacks.

The Heisenberg filter, emulates an ink pen sketch and is styled for that TV programme, Breaking Bad

Birds on a summer’s evening dog walk

Evening dog walk in and around Rampton Spinney, pair of bullfinches (only one photographed), willow warblers, long-tailed tits, great tits, blue tits, and robins, all with juveniles. Reed warblers, reed buntings and whitethroats on the Cottenham Lode. Song thrushes in song, wood pigeons (obvs), yaffles (heard not seen), great spotted woodpeckers (seen my Mrs Sciencebase), blackbirds seen and heard, but blackcaps (maybe not even heard)…

Green flash at sunset

If you’re watching a sunset or a sunrise, occasionally you might see a green flash or green rays from the edge of the sun just as it disappears from view or begins to peek over the horizon. This a purely atmospheric, optical phenomenon, nothing to do with surface activity on the sun. By pure chance I seem to have caught a bit whilst photographing a sunset on the North Norfolk coast recently (one of the only places in the UK where, in the middle of summer, the sun both rises and sets over the sea on the “east coast”. I don’t remember noticing the green flash whilst taking the photos, it’s only now in scanning through the files that I spotted it.

Earthsky has as interesting explanation of the phenomenon:

The green flash is the result of looking at the sun through a greater and greater thickness of atmosphere as you look lower and lower in the sky. Water vapor in the atmosphere absorbs the yellow and orange colors in white sunlight, and air molecules scatter the violet light. That leaves the red and blue-green light to travel directly toward you. Near the horizon, the sun's light is highly bent or refracted. It's as though there are two suns — a red one and a blue-green one — partially covering each other. The red one is always closest to the horizon, so when it sets or before it rises, you see only the blue-green disk — the green flash.

American migrant – Pectoral Sandpiper

The pectoral sandpiper (Calidris melanotos) is a migratory wading bird that breeds in North America and Asia, winters in South America and the South Pacific, but also spends time in Siberia. However, you can see them in the UK and Europe. They’re often caught on Westerly winds and hit the British Isles from North America and on Easterlies that bring them in from Siberia.

Most commonly, they’ll be seen in late summer and autumn. There were quite a few on the wetlands at RSPB Titchwell in North Norfolk when we visited in mid-July. According to the RSPB, “It is the most common North American wading bird to occur here and has even started to breed in Scotland very recently.”

The sandpiper name refers to its call and to its shoreline existence while the pectoral refers to the bird’s brown breast band. The scientific binomial is from ancient Greek: kalidris or skalidris was a term used by Aristotle to refer to some grey-coloured waterside birds while melanotos is from melas meaning black and notos meaning backed.

Originally, in this post, I’d displayed a photo I took of what I assumed was the Pec Sand, but on later inspection turned out to be a Ruff, so I’ve removed the photo.

Who is the thirteenth Doctor Who?

I am really pleased that Broadchurch actor Jodie Whittaker is to be the next regeneration of Doctor Who (I know it’s a kids programme, just to be clear). But, there’s a lot of talk about her being the 13th Doctor, I don’t think that’s even vaguely correct. Ignore Peter Cushing and Paul McGann who both played the Doctor in films and ignore the fact that Rowan Atkinson, Richard E Grant, Hugh Grant, Jim Broadbent and Joanna Lumley have all played the Doctor in TV comedy.

You still have John Hurt and my namesake David Bradley who have both played the Doctor in the TV series, albeit in parallel worlds/times rather than as regenerations. Still.