Month: October 2017

Treecreeper – Certhia familiaris

Back in June 2017, I spotted a pair of treecreepers (Certhia familiaris) creeping up a tree in the local, Rampton, woodland. I was too close to get a shot with the zoom lens and by the time I’d stepped back from the tree they’d crept around the back and out of sight, flying off when I took another step towards them. I framed the blurry tail of one of the pair.

Ever since, I walk through the same patch of woodland quietly in the hope that they’re there again, they never are. But, I did see another specimen on the edge of the wood close to the Cottenham Lode. Again, too close for the lens to focus, unfortunately. I’ve seen and photographed the unrelated nuthatch (Sitta europaea) which also creeps up tree trunks and along branches. Treecreepers only creep upwards though.

At last, 3rd October 2017, listening and spotting long-tailed tits in Rampton Spinney (again), I hear some high-pitched warbling among the whistles and chatter of the longtails. Look up at the nearest ash tree and there’s a treecreeper heading up to the canopy. Quick snap of it and then another lands. So, at long last, a decent shot or two of this active and resident British bird, which apparently tags along with tits in autumn and winter. Not to be confused with the short-toed treecreeper (Certhia brachydactyla), which lives in the Channel Islands (presumably for tax purposes)

Avant garde accident

Earlier in 2017, I wrote an acoustic rock song about homelessness. Specifically, it was about the streets of Cambridge and was a nod to the charity Jimmy’s Cambridge (donate now) for which we, as The TyrannoChorus, are choir in residence this year and raising funds and awareness for the night shelter.

Anyway, the song Bridges (Crossed and Burned) is online – SoundCloud and BandCamp, but I wanted to try and transcribe the melody and then arrange some harmony parts (SATB) for the choir. Not my strong point, to be honest, and I was hoping to find a shortcut. If I could record me singing the melody then perhaps I could use a file converter to turn the raw sound file into MIDI and so automate the first step and get the tune down as a score that I could then add harmonies to and flag with the guitar chords over which our pianist might ad lib the accompaniment. Too ambitious?

Well, I tried a wav to midi converter…and the results were interesting, to say the least. To my ear the result bears no resemblance to the tune I sang and is more akin to some kind of early twentieth century, dawn of jazz, classical avant garde crossover…have a listen. It’s quite entertaining:

And, here’s what the resulting MIDI file displayed as a score in my MIDI editor looks like:

I reckon if we are going to get to sing this before the end of the year, I somehow have to bribe, blackmail, or otherwise persuade our pianist Tim to take on arranging it…but that incurs the bigger assumption that our choir leader, Siobhan, likes the song and wants us to sing it in the first place…

Ghost of a pigeon at your window

Have you ever seen a grey feathery, pigeon-shaped outline on a window? It’s usually left when a bird has somehow not seen the glass and attempted to fly through. If you’re in the room when it happens it can make a surprisingly loud thud but pigeons seem to crash land after the collision, look very stunned, ruffle their feathers and move on, But, what exactly is that grey powder that they leave behind on your window? It’s known as powder down.

Down feathers are fine feathers found under the tougher exterior feathers. Chicks usually have only down feathers until they grow their adult feathers. Powder down, or pulviplumes, is somewhat different and occurs in a few unrelated groups of birds – pigeons, tinamous, herons, and parrots, for instance. In some species, the tips of the pulviplume barbules break up into a fine powdery form of keratin, which forms a “feather dust” among the feathers. In others, powder grains are generated by cells that surround the barbules of growing feathers.

Powder down is a known allergen and is one of the causes of “bird fancier’s lung” and related conditions in people who keep or work with birds, including pigeons, parakeets, cockatiels, budgerigars, parrots, and turtle doves.

The above picture shows the imprint left by a woodpigeon that had slammed into my office window recently, cropped from the photo is the big smudge of powder down left by its body. You might also like to note that our window cleaner has not visited for quite some time.

Several other species produce powder down too, including notoriously, parrots, although you’re less likely to have a Mealy Amazon slam into a back bedroom window in East Anglia than a Wood Pigeon.