March 2019 – Page 2 – David Bradley

The Spate Gatherers

I was raised in the picturesque fishing village of Cullercoats on the North East coast of England at the southern edge of the ancient county of Northumberland.

NEVER MIND THE WAFFLE, JUMP STRAIGHT TO THE SONG

I recently caught sight of an intriguing painting by Henry Perlee Parker (1795—1873), a Devonport man who married a Woodbridge girl and eventually headed to Newcastle co-founding The Northumberland Institution for the Promotion of the Fine Arts. The painting I saw was of women, Cullercoats fishwives, handling the catch from the local fishing boats known as cobles and temporarily storing it in tidal pools to keep it fresh while they gathered the rest of their catch for the creels.

This sounded like a quaint tail to tell in a modern folk song, but when Cullercoats man Arnold Brunton told me of tales of theft and skullduggery reported in the 19th Century, a quaint Cullercoats tradition took a dark turn making it even more perfect fodder for a folk song. It seems that while the heavy creels were being lugged up the bank to the top of the cliffs by the spate gatherers, the fish left on the spate was often stolen.

One can imagine the rage of the fishermen and the ensuing brawls that might have taken place outside the tiny fisherman’s cottages in the streets above the rocky scarps. Some of those homes have long since fallen into the sea taking with them the ghosts of the spate gatherers and the fishermen. The Spate Gatherers’ story is one of hard lives for both the men and the women. The men had to face the rage of the North Sea, the women had the bairns and the catch to concern them on dry land and the ever-present worry that the menfolk might one day never return, having lingered a little too long with the sirens.

The Spate Gatherers

Well the cobles come in and the fishwives they grin,
and they take on the catch from their man
On the scarp they all stand and they pass hand to hand
To keep the fish fresh as they can

It’s heavier work, than the work in the boats,
the men get to roll with the waves
Singing reels to the sirens away out to sea,
while the wives tread the rocks like they’re slaves

Then they’re lugging a load to the tops of the cliff,
it’s not easy to carry a creel
Well, it’s only a catch, but it’s fresh and it’s naturally
feeding the bairns; dance a reel!

Singing aye-diddle-aye-dai, aye-diddle-aye-dee,
A spate gatherer’s life’s not for me
Singing aye-iddle-aye-dai, aye-diddle-aye-dee
Give’uz the easier life out at sea

There’s a scratching of slate with the numbers, the date,
then they carry it south ’round the bay
They scrape over the pier and then disappear
from the view of those hiding away

What’s kept in the pools north of Jakey’s and scrapes,
is enough to pay for wor rent
But the bastards dive down and they take it to town,
another load slips through the net

Now, the tide’s on the turn and the lads they return
And they know who it is that’s to blame
With their beer inside ’em and no lack of pride, them’ll
kick two shades of spate out of them!

The Sea of Tranquility from your bedroom

Here’s a shot of the waxing gibbous moon I just snapped from our bedroom window. It was just after 5pm. Camera settings: 600mm lens, f 9.5, t 1/1000s ISO 200, ev -1. Sigma 150-600mm lens handheld with no image stabilisation on Canon 6D full frame. Final image cropped to a square with side 768 pixels from original 5472×3648 for the website.

In July, it will be 50 years since humans first set foot on Earth’s biggest natural satellite. You did know we have more than one moon, didn’t you?

First (migrant) Chiffchaff of 2019

We heard an over-wintering Chiffchaff (at RSPB Titchwell on New Year’s Day this year, but today (18th March) I’ve just heard and seen the first one that has presumably migrated from Africa for the summer. It was calling with its plaintive, sound-of-the summer, onomatopoeic, metronomic and instantly recognisable ttt-tss-ttt-tss-ttt-tss-tss-tss call.

Snapped it quickly in Rampton Spinney as it was darting from tree to tree and calling in between. The Common Chiffchaff (Phylloscopus collybita) is a warbler and almost identical to the Willow Warbler (Phylloscopus trochilus), which I think I may have heard briefly on the opposite of this woodland at the beginning of my walk today. Very another sound-of-the-summer.

This is the call of the Chiffchaff. The first sound is the actual recording I made and it’s as you’d hear the bird in woodland or elsewhere. The bird usually repeats its chiff-chaff 11 to 14 times (in my original records, I’ve got 11 on one and 13 on a second sequence).

The second sound you hear in the video is that of the same bird’s call time stretched (slowed down) by about four times and then the frequency halved to take it down an octave in pitch. It reveals otherwise hidden detail in the bird’s call as well as allowing you to hear the echoing of the song from the trees of the woodland. The normal recording sounds cheery and chipper, the slowed down version rather more plaintive and melancholic, perhaps even eerie.

The fading scent of violets

TL:DR – The chemical ionone gives violets their scent, but the scent temporarily fades if you keep sniffing the flowers.

Savour the scent of violets for too long and the smell will eventually fade. In fact, you won’t be able to smell anything for a while after until the chemical, ionone, that give violets their scent has dissipated from within your olfactory cavities.

Close up of Violet flowers

The combination of ionones gives violets their sweet but dry and powdery smell. These chemicals (also known as rose ketones) have an interesting effect on your olfactory receptors, inhibiting them after initially stimulating them and this steals away your sense of smell. This was an effect that was once considered magical and immortalised in folklore for generations. But, it’s much more magical than anything supernatural, it’s chemistry!

Later early moths

Update: Adding at least one new-for-me species every couple of days now to my mothematics gallery.Â Most interesting and fascinating were the March Moth, the Twenty-plume, and the Nut-tree Tussock (which laid 47 eggs and I am going to attempt to get them to hatch).

Female Nut-tree Tussock (*Colocasia coryli*)

Previously, I posted about some of the early moths (early in the year, that is, as opposed to Early Moths, a species of that name) that have been attracted to the actinic light of the trap.

On the evening of the 14th March 2019, it was relatively uncold, cloudy and pretty much windless.

There was a definite upturn in numbers and diversity to the trap: 4x Small Quaker, 10x Common Quaker, 3x Clouded Drab, 1xEarly Grey, and Double-striped Pug. That was the first Pug of the year, saw lots of that species and its relatives during the summer of 2018. Diurnea fagella was hanging on the LED fairylights on a cultivated honeysuckle in our garden).

By morning, the Pug had gone but a Hebrew Character and a Twin-spotted Quaker were in residence in the trap (all ethically released after logging and photographing, of course.

The crop sensor magnification myth

I’ve just been watching a video that was downloadable from a link in a practical photography magazine. There was a professional photographer discussing zoom lenses and how they work on different types of camera and their pros and cons for photographing birds and other wildlife. He kept talking about “reach”.

The idea that if you put the same zoom lens on a full-frame camera (one with a sensor the size of an old 35mm type film camera) then your zoom is the equivalent of what it says on the dial. A 400mm zoom means a 400mm zoom on a full-frame camera. But, put the same lens on a camera with a smaller sensor (some times referred to as a crop sensor) and the same subject photographed from the same distance with the same zoom will fill more of the frame, they say, claiming it therefore has more reach. Depending on how much smaller the sensor you could see that 400mm lens looking at the distant subject as if it were a 600mm.

This is deceived wisdom, a myth, bovine ordure.

The same lens on the smaller sensor does indeed fill more of the frame, that is because the frame is that much smaller, not because the lens is somehow zooming in further or magnifying the subject. What is actually happening is that you’re not gaining zoom, you are narrowing the field of view. When you get back from the shoot, you can crop that full-frame photo in your image editing software to give you the same narrowed field of view. That is the equivalent of doing a digital zoom on a pocket camera as opposed to actual optical zoom and taking the snapshot.

There are, of course, differences in quality of full-frame and crop sensors and pixel count and pixel count to take into account when discussing the actual quality. However, given that, in general, full-frame cameras are targeted at the more pro than the consumer end of the market, the vast majority have a better sensor, better focusing, and better frame rate for so-called burst mode, when compared to crop sensor cameras. Things do change but the laws that apply to the branch of physics known as optics do not change just because you swap cameras.

Oh, the other thing that irritated me was that they were photographing birds from a bird hide, but they kept poking their lens out of the hide windows. Not the done thing. Kingfishers have pretty much 360-degree vision, you keep everything within the hide (lenses, hands, tongues etc) while observing QUIETLY!

Early moths

I started “lighting up” again for the 2019 season a couple of weeks ago. I don’t mean I’ve taken to smoking, I’m referring to moth-ing. I’m still using the borrowed and now bought homemade scientific moth trap. It is a 40-Watt actinic light Robinson style trap and was built by my cabinetmaker and amateur luthier friend Rob, whom I’ve mentioned previously (see Mothley Crew).

Anyway, despite frosts, wind, and rain there have been a few early moths turning up in the trap over the last fortnight or so. I should note the 12-year old UV-A bulb was looking worn when illuminated so I have replaced it and am hoping for great things over the coming weeks and months.

First to appear were the Common Quakers (Orthosia cerasi) of which there have been several over the weeks. I should point out that the first moth I saw this year was 15th February in the front garden and was what made me think it might be worth lighting up again, Common Plume (Emmelina monodactyla). After the CQs, there was the relatively rare Acleris cristana on the trap, but not in it, Pale Brindled Beauty (Phigalia pilosaria), again on the trap in the evening and then in it by morning light. Hebrew Character (Orthosia gothica) moths started to show up by 23rd February and I’ve seen several not to be confused with their bristly relatives, which come later, Setaceous Hebrew Character (Xestia c-nigrum).

Then, I had Oak Beauty (Biston strataria), which lives up to its name and gives me some hope that I might get other oak-loving species much later in the year, such as the elusive Mervs and Decembers. Next was Dotted Border (Agriopis marginaria) (also saw several of this species in the gents at NT Dunwich Heath), bizarrely, but perhaps not unsurprisingly.

Then Clouded Drab (Orthosia incerta), Small Quaker (Orthosia cruda), Twin-spotted Quaker (Anorthoa munda), and Early Grey (Xylocampa areola) on 8th March. Meanwhile, there was a Yellow Horned (Achlya flavicornis) at Dunwich, which I mentioned in my Dartford Warbler blog post about the site.

As new moths appear in the trap each evening, I’ll add them to my Mothematics gallery. I usually also post to the Facebook group UK Moths Flying Tonight.

Dartford Warblers at Dunwich Heath

It had been a long time since we visited National Trust Dunwich Heath on the Suffolk coast. It’s a beautiful place and aside from a warden or two in the hut there was barely anyone around, we had the place to ourselves, at least for the first hour and a half of our walk.

Anyway, we parked up, layered up and set off on one of the mapped out circular walks hoping to catch a glimpse of a Dartford Warbler (Sylvia undata). Amazingly, there were a pair flitting about close to the start of the circuit, too quick to photograph, but not 100 metres up the trail, we could see at least three more, and we inched forward, not straying from the footpath, of course, and I got a few snapshots.

You can think of this UK resident species of warbler as really being a North African bird that stretched its range northwards at some time in the past, on to the Iberian Peninsula and up to the British Isles. It can be found in Wales, the South West and in Suffolk (there are thought to be 37 pairs on Dunwich Heath). You occasionally see them on the northern perimeter of neighbouring RSPB Minsmere (seen one once there) and further up the coast on the outskirts of Dunwich Village itself. We didn’t see any more after the initial lucky burst of five or so. But, we did see quite a few Goldcrests and Treecreepers further up the trail and the usual mix of woodland/garden birds, Long-tailed, Great, Blue Tits, Robins, Blackbirds etc.

In the notoriously cold winter of 1962/1963, so I am told, the cold killed off most of the UK’s Dartford Warblers; they are very sensitive to the cold. There were ten left and the current population, which amounts to some 3000 territories is quite an astonishing recovery.

Incidentally, the name of this bird has a rather uncomfortable etymology. Back in less enlightened times ornithologists generally studied new bird species by shooting them and then examining and reporting on them, rather than netting them, ringing them, and setting them free. Two specimens of what eventually became known as Sylvia undata were shot in April 1773 on Bexley Heath near Dartford in Kent. They were examined and described by Welsh naturalist Thomas Pennant.

As a footnote, when we got back to base to use the facilities before heading off to RSPB Minsmere (me in the car, Mrs Sciencebase on foot with the pooch), there were four moths showing well in the gents– three Dotted Border (Agriopis marginaria) and a (new to me) Yellow Horned (Achlya flavicornis), pictured below.

Fenland Cranes

UPDATE: 5th November 2025, as I understand it from RSPB’s Rachel there are 85 Cranes on the Ouse Washes. 7th November, 83 reported on Welney.

UPDATE: 21st October 2023 68 now being reported at RSPB Ouse Washes

UPDATE: Species numbers seem to be on the up in East Anglia, with 60+ now as opposed to the 38 or so I first mentioned in the region. Spotted two at RSPB Ouse Fen (Earith) on the dogwalkers’ trail on 17th March 2022, having had a tipoff from Andy Hoy who had seen them on that patch several times for the preceding week or so.

Given this blog post’s title, if you didn’t know me better you might have thought I was going to discuss the interminable civil engineering and construction work that is going on in our vicinity – the construction of the new town of Northstowe and the widening of the A14 road.

But, no the topic is the avian Crane – specifically, the Common Crane (Grus grus). The bird whose scientific name simply means Crane crane, coming from the Latin for crane, funnily enough. It’s another tautonym where that means the name is doubled up to represent the archetype of the family.

Anyway, there are several dozen Common Cranes that spend their time flying between various sites and their surroundings around East Anglia – Namely: RSPB Lakenheath, WWT Welney, RSPB Nene Washes and RSPB Ouse Washes, RSPB Ouse Fen, RSPB Fen Drayton Lakes, Kingfisher’s Bridge Nature Reserve and nearby NT Wicken Fen. Presumably, once airborne, these large and graceful birds can survey a large area of the flatlands and head for whichever patch of wetland they fancy for any given period. I’ve seen them and photographed them from a distance at several of the spots mentioned above.

The largest number I’ve seen at one time is 37, I believe, but proper birders tell me that there are some 45 around and that there may well be at least one courting pair, which is good news for a species that was extirpated from the British Isles by the 17th Century. There is also a tiny breeding population in the Norfolk Broads and the bird was reintroduced to the Somerset levels in 2010.

Today, at least two were dithering about which direction to take over RSPB Ouse Fen (which nestles between the South Cambridgeshire villages of Needingworth, Bluntisham, and Over. It’s a converted gravel quarry site split in two by the River Great Ouse (a tautonym itself given that ouse simply means river, as does the word avon). A large part of this patch land is still active quarry, presumably providing gravel and sand for the aforementioned construction work.

I was walking the Reed Bed Trail, which is on the Over side of the river. Having seen 4-5 Marsh Harriers, a Snipe, and a Green Sandpiper, I was heading back to the car when a couple of birds almost as big as swans came into view, veering back and forth until they went out of sight. They were Common Cranes. Anyway, you might spot these large birds flying over any of the countless fens as they hop between feeding grounds and putative nesting sites.

Not to be confused with that far more common fenland icon, the Grey Heron (Ardea cinerea).