36.2055 years in science communication
Not sure whether anyone else has used this term, but a screengrab, screenshot, captured during a video conference, whether Teams, Zoom, Skype, Jitsi or whatever might be called a screenie in a word akin to a selfie.
I tweeted the word here in this context on 3rd July 2020 for the sake of provenance.
We visited Somerset in the summer of 2019 despite neither of us being fans of cider. We stayed on a beautiful part of the county’s north coast and did a lot of walking and visited a few nature reserves in the hope of seeing bird and insect species we might not commonly see in Cambridge where we live.
The Silver-washed Fritillary, Argynnis paphia, was one of the Lepidoptera I hoped to photograph. The species is widespread over the South West and Ireland (see here) and we saw several on flowers in the gardens of a cafe we visited after a five-mile walk. Spotted them only after I’d taken off my walking boots to cool my feet, so I was painfully tiptoeing over their gravel walkways to get a close-up.
Turns out the butterfly’s range extends all the way up to Cambridge, so we needn’t have gone that far if “ticking” that one species had been the sole aim of the trip. Yoga buddy Celia sent me a photo of paphia she had snapped in Hayley Wood Nature Reserve just west of Cambridge earlier this week.
So, on Friday I drove the 13 or so miles to this Wildlife Trust reserve with the aim of getting some new snaps of the species. I tramped up and down its empty footpaths for two or three hours. I passed one other person, a jogger, the whole time I was walking and then saw a Dad with his two teenage kids when I was at the top of the reserve’s observation tower.
Anyway, I had seen very few birds, various butterflies (Comma, Meadow Brown, Peacock Red Admiral, Ringlet, Skipper, White (Large and Small) and having sat at the top of that tower was packing up my camera kit and readying to head home when I spotted a Hummingbird Hawk-moth flitting about among the fallen branches at the foot of the tower. This is the first one I’ve seen in this country since two of them were feeding on our Red Valerian in our back garden last September. Anyway, camera out, again…moth photographed.
Heading back to the car I took a 90-degree detour up a narrow and somewhat narrow footpath, which is when I spotted the first paphia of the day…and then another. They were too quick for me to raise my camera and get a shot, disappearing as they did into the overgrown foliage. I doubled back, maybe it’s a favoured spot, I thought…and thankfully it was indeed, another appeared, perched on a leaf, happy to be photographed at the requisite three metres of my 600mm zoom. Then another two.
Unless the butterflies had also doubled back, I hazard a guess that I saw five in this spot within the space of twenty minutes. I only ever saw two simultaneously, so it is possible there were actually between two and five.
The silver-washed fritillary butterfly has black spots on deep orange wings, and can be about 50 to 70 millimetres across when wings full open. The males are a little smaller and paler than the females. The name is derived from the character of the underside of the wing which is green with “artistic wash” silver streaks instead of the silver spots seen on other fritillaries. The adults feed on the nectar of bramble, thistles, and knapweeds, all of which were present lining the footpath.
Lots of Blackcaps and Wrens calling in the woods, but didn’t see much avian activity until I got back to the car, Whitethroat and a Red Kite overhead, quite low.
Fundamentally, we are still riding (just) the first wave of the global Covid-19 pandemic. If there are sudden spikes now, that’s still part of the first wave. Nothing has changed for the virus except that some people have been avoiding contact with other people, so the rates of infection in some places have slowed giving health services a bit of space to mop up and treated those seriously ill with the virus. But, at the time of writing half a million people, at least, have died from Covid-19.
I don’t really know how I feel about this coming out of lockdown, to be honest. I suspect that having asthma and being in my 50s might make me more susceptible to being badly symptomatic with the coronavirus. Colds lay me out sometimes for weeks. But, there are far worse off people.
The infection rate is very low in our neighbourhood, and indeed in our county as a whole, 51 in a million people infected as opposed to well over 140 in a million in Leicester, where a local lockdown has been implemented to try and reduce this number before it ravages the population there.
I run a website and social media for a local pub. They’ve announced that rather than open on the 4th July when they have permission to start serving again, they will open on Monday the 6th to allow them to ease into the week. It will be incredibly busy, people will feel unleashed and gasping for a pint. But, to my mind, it only takes one infected person to cough in your face to almost guarantee that you’ll inhale virus…and so I’ll be giving the pub I love a miss, at least for the foreseeable future.
I’ve hated lockdown, hated the lack of social life, hated the fact that it’s effectively dragging us down into a serious recession. I’ve tried to jolly along with lots of silly creative ideas such as my PondWatch series, spoof/satirical phonecall videos, Rock-around-the-Wok cooking with music, writing and recording some of my own songs, and creating a VE Day 75 video with various local singers and performers (all done remotely). Getting back together with C5 The Band for a socially distanced rehearsal last week and a trip to the coast with Mrs Sciencebase were much needed tonics as were sitting at a distance drinking at and chatting with some friends in their garden. My mood is nowhere near as swing low as it was two weeks ago, thankfully. I also got hold of a Canon 7D mk ii, which has made bird photography a joy once again with a much faster focusing capacity and the virtual upgrade in zoom lens from 600mm to 900mm by virtue of moving from the 6D full-frame to 2/3 of the 7D.
There was talk this morning of a secondary type vaccine that won’t stop you becoming infected but may well keep you asymptomatic. A normal vaccine would aim to block infection, but this might not be possible for coronaviruses. If that’s developed sooner than later we could all get back to something like a new-normal situation far quicker than we otherwise might, but it’s possible it won’t be ready until next year. We’ve got the coming flu season to get through before then too! There are a couple of drugs that seem to be working for seriously ill patients, which is a good thing, but I’d rather not have to be in such a state that I’d need either, thank you very much.
So…the long and short of it: Will I be going to the pub next Monday? No!
Thursday, 25th June…I believe it was the hottest day of the year, so far. So, as lockdown eased somewhat and we are allowed to cautiously travel away from our homes, we headed for the beach. Not Bournemouth nor Lulworth Cove…North Norfolk and specifically Snettisham. We saw barely another soul other than an RSPB Warden who was reminding people not to walk on the areas of the beach and shoreline where birds are nesting.
We also saw a handful of other birders and a dogwalker or two and nodded to each from at least 20 metres rather than the requisite two. The virus hasn’t gone away, governments and people visiting Bournemouth think it has…but…no.
Anyway, as we pulled into the car park there was a Sparrowhawk hauling itself into the air with a female Blackbird in its talons (sorry, no picture), and as we parked up, a Red Kit with a missing wing feather circling above.
Peregrine Falcon circling above the shoreline scaring the Oystercatchers with their nests and chicks on the lower ranks of the sloping sea defences as the high tide retreated.
Lovely Turtle Dove turring from a tree on the fishing lakes back inland. Also seen Ringed Plovers, Pied Wagtails, and Black-headed Gulls, all with chicks, Sedge Warbler. On the Lepidopteral front Ringlet, Whites, Meadow Brown (far fewer than Cottenham) butterflies, Cinnabar moth.
There were also huge numbers of ladybirds that seemed to be swarming in from across The Wash, an irruption perhaps?
Obviously, it’s not really Part 96vii/d (that’s just one of my perennial jokes). I think it’s probably the thirtieth or so post of moth garden safaris though…these are some of the varied species that made an appearance in the garden last night, drawn to the ultraviolet lure. My garden list is almost at 350 different species, there are some 1800 species in the British Isles overall, so still a long way to go and some species will never been seen in this little corner of England.
Again today, just seemed to be two Brassy Longhorns, Nemophora metallica, dining on the Field Scabious on the Cottenham Lode today. There are dining partners in several of the shots
Thankfully the people who have mowed the upper part of the bank (for some unknown reason) didn’t trim the scabious…
Sciencebase readers who also partake of my Imaging Storm website will know already that the moth season has taken off. Night-flying leps are coming to the ultraviolet lure at a rate of knots now; 120 specimens of 60 different species last night (night of 23rd June 2020, logged on the morning of the 24th, many of them NFY (new for the year) and some even NFM (new for me, or as some moth-ers do ‘ave it, NFG, new for garden).
For those who like the stats there have been 20 species NFM in 2020 so far, most of them in the last week. I have no photographed almost 350 moths mostly in the garden, but one or two on field trips (holidays and camping trips) where the opportunity arose. 2000 specimens logged and many photographed so far in 2020.
Metallica are performing out on The Fens – The Brassy Longhorns, Nemophora metallica, feeding and presumably breeding on the Field Scabious growing on the west-facing bank of one of the local fenland drainage ditches known as the Cottenham Lode.
TL:DR – There are numerous green moths, they have evolved to mimic leaves and so evade predators through a simple camouflage mechanism. Green Silver-lines is a lovely example of a green moth.
Some moth names are just so obvious. This member of the Lepidoptera is mostly green and has silvery lines on its wings, hence Green Silver-lines. It’s scientific binomial is a little more cryptic, Pseudoips prasinana.
With my blessing, the marvellous Mrs Sciencebase took one of my gig shirts and cut it into pieces, found a PPE mask template online folded and stitched, embedded a layer of silk and created a pocket for an additional filter. I can’t feel my breath through this when breathing hard so I assume it would work to reduce outflow of any viral-laden particles should I ever go out in public again.
Incidentally, it’s a good idea to make your mask with two different types of fabric, a tightly-woven cotton layer will catch most wannabe aerosol droplets from nose or mouth and they will be soaked up into the fabric. A synthetic, chiffon, or silk layer will act as an electrostatic and additional physical barrier to any smaller particles or droplets that might otherwise sneak through. Of course, any mask is only as useful as you are hygienic in your use of it, you must put it in place and leave it there for the duration of your time in relative close proximity to other people. You must also remember to wash your hands frequently and certainly before and after mask use.
Despite the claims from governments about it being safe to reduce social distancing, ending lockdown for the sake of the economy, re-opening non-essential shops, and getting people back to school and back to work, the virus has not changed, it has not suddenly gone away. The whole pandemic started with one infected person. It could cascade again and while we may have a better insight into how to control it with track and trace, social distancing, and homemade PPE, there are still huge risks to it taking many more lives in the months and years to come. Don’t risk it. Stay safe, stay well.
Regular Sciencebase readers have probably been wondering what happened to our newly re-dug pond, which I did in April 2019 after a twenty year filled in dry spell. Well, it has thrived and become quite the wildlife haven, attended frequently by garden birds for bathing and drinking. We have at least five frogs (I saw five sitting around the perimeter one evening early in the Covid-19 lockdown). [UPDATE 2022: Matt has been counting frogs most evenings, 19 in and around the pond one night in July]
There are endless aquatic snails now, they multiplied very quickly. Lots of plants, which are also thriving, and lots of invertebrates attracted including Common Blue Damselfly.
We had mimulus in bloom and yellow flag iris, I did mention them previously in an in-post update, and as of today, a solitary lily blossom. Here are a couple of closeups of the lily with invertebrate visitors.
Meanwhile, the wilding of the patch of garden next to the pond I’d attempted, and doubled in size this year by removing turf has worked quite well with lots of Purple Tansy, Viper’s bugloss, Foxflove, Cornflower, Earth Smoke, and various poppies, Purple Toadflax, and a few other nameless wild brassica species and more.
Finally, the common corncockle (Agrostemma githago) has grown and bloomed, I was worried I wouldn’t see any, but there it is, hopefully it will self-seed on this patch, but I will harvest some for next year and for the front garden wild patch too, which is three times the area it was last year. I wrote about it recently but the plant I’d seen in the wild patch was actually Viper’s Bugloss.
