Photography – Page 2 – David Bradley

Hopping to the island of Menorca

We took a quick and easy flight to Menorca with an offsetting airline, first visit there since 2000 and first flight since our trip to Greece in the autumn before COVID…

the-sciencebases

Anyway, we half-planned a lazy week of traditional sun, sea, and sand, and maybe some sangria. Temperatures were high – well into the 30s – the sky was blue and clear every day and at dusk full of Common Swifts, and at least one or two Alpine Swifts as well as quartering Booted Eagles.

Swallowtail nectaring on Lantana camara (American plant species) — Swallowtail nectaring on Lantana camara

We spent some time by the pool, but the town of Cala’n Porter which overlooks a beautiful bay and is backed by a marshy gorge was irresistible in terms of hiking. Our first trek was pre-breakfast on the first morning after we arrived.

It was already almost 30 degrees before we’d reached the turning point to head back in time for breakfast. There were numerous Pied Flycatchers catching…flies…endless Cetti’s Warbler calling from the reeds, a Red-backed Shrike or two, and possibly a Black Redstart.

Dave Swimming Llucalari, photo by Tricia — Cala Llucalari

Post-breakfast, I took a closer look at the large patch of bougainvillea opposite our hotel and spotted numerous insects nectaring, various wasps and flies, several Hummingbird Hawk-moth, two or three Swallowtail butterflies, a couple of Cleopatra, a Clouded Yellow, and a possible, but unlikely, Two-tail Pasha, Southern Blue(?). I managed to grab photos and video snippets of one or two of those with an old Lumix bridge camera.

Cleopatra butterfly nectaring on Bougainvillea

Second morning was a repeat trek, but the following day we headed further East and up into the clifftop garrigue (bushy scrub) in the hope of seeing, or at least hearing, a Hoopoe, Upupa epops. We were out of luck on that sighting for the whole week. Any boop-boop-boop call would’ve been drowned out by the cicadas in the pines, anyway. We were loaded up on water and got as far as we could go on this walk, the clifftop overlooking Playa de Cales Coves (8km round trip). The rocky cove is, we would learn later, more readily accessible, and ultimately swimmable, if you hike in along the Cami de Cavalls bridleway from our base in Cala’n Porter.

We turned back after watching and listening to several Booted Eagles over the cliffs and saw skittering lizards and hopping grasshoppers and crickets, some looking ruby red in flight (I’m assuming it’s the Red-winged Grasshopper Oedipoda germanica), another insect almost the size of a small bird (Egyptian Grasshopper, I think) but largely brown dashed about while we rehydrated along the clifftop. We inadvertently detoured a little too much heading back but eventually found our way back to the edge of Cala’n Porter and an astroturf sportsfield overlooked by a telecommunications tower. It was only another 20 minutes back to the hotel pool and we had the dregs of the water to just make it.

The next expedition was westward. We started along the edge of the Cala’n Porter marsh heading in the direction of Cala Llucalari and Son Bou beyond that. We didn’t expect to get as far as Llucalari, it would seem like a long (18.6km there and back), trek in the heat more suited to undertaking on horseback given the rocky terrain and the ups and downs. On the way, we spotted Large Copper and the southern races of Meadow Brown and Speckled Wood butterflies as well as a species that has been ubiquitous in England during the summer of 2023, Red Admiral.

Mediterranean subspecies of Speckled Wood — Mediterranean Speckled Wood

Looking back while heading for Llucalari

Regardless of the terrain, we kept going and we espied the Mediterranean as we crowned a patch of “farmland” beyond some new olive groves being tended in the height of the heat. It was then downward to the rocky beach of Cala Llucalari.

Respectar la natura graffiti — Mrs Sciencebase admiring the “Respectar la Natura” graffiti

The beach was a sight for sore eyes but without beach shoes getting into the water was a little tough on bare feet but truly worth it once we were submerged. There were lots of Blue Rock Thrush darting about, Cleopatra butterflies, Small Copper, Large Copper, several of the aforementioned “blues”, as well as Scarce Bordered Straw, Silver Y, and Palpita Vitrealis moths. Highlight has to have been sighting of a pair of Egyptian Vultures, which circled overhead while we were swimming. I managed to get back to the shore and grab my camera for a snapshot just as they disappeared over the cliffs. A Lesser Kestrel came over minutes later.

A school of kayaks — Looking over the cliffs at a school of kayaks

The hike back from Llucalari back to Cala’n Porter was hard work, hot and tough on the back and ankles, but we made it in reasonable time to grab our evening meal. We decided to have the next day off from walking and the risk heatstroke.

Our next adventure/expedition was to take the “correct” footpath to Caya de Cales Coves, the Cami de Cavalls. We headed up and out of Cala’n Porter to the aforementioned sportsfield where we discovered that post number 1 on Stage 17 of the Cami is right there. It was a mere fifty-minute hike (6km there and back) to the beach via several lizards and a tortoise, The cove is flanked by natural and manmade caves that were used as a necropolis at least as long ago as 1500 BCE. It’s a beautiful beach, a kayak and yachting target, so a little bit busier than Llucalari, but we found a spot to swim from and to watch the Booted Eagles once again soaring above the clifftops. There was a flash of Kingfisher blue that darted through a rocky arch on the shoreline and almost collided with me before veering off across the water. We headed back after that for more…you guessed it…more pool time.

calas-coves-boats — Yachts at Cales Coves

I should, at this stage, point out that afternoon pooltime usually involved a bit of swimming, at least a couple of cervezas as well as an occasional survey of that bougainvillea opposite the hotel. The cervezas and the hummers kept coming, but there was no second sighting of Swallowtails sadly.

Evening entertainment was provided by the setting sun over the clifftop opposite our hotel balcony, the waxing moon, an evening meal at the hotel and an occasional foray into the relatively quiet bar and restaurant area of Cala’n Porter to take in some of the “interesting” musical artists. These included a “singer” called Niko (Megastars), who was by turns Elvis, Tina, and Freddie and on our last night ABBA Seagull who definitely did that band’s repertoire justice with just enough finesse and plenty of tongue-in-cheek. Acts back at the hotel included a solo singer with a stetson who strangled The Eagles and murdered Merle Haggard and Afrodiviac who enraptured at least one youngster staying at the hotel with her Gloria Gaynor.

It spat with rain towards the end of ABBA’s performance and the forecast for Sunday was looking cloudy, potentially very wet, and with a serious risk of flight-delaying lightning. We packed up and headed for our last breakfast in the hotel, no more Spanish omelette, but plenty of fuet sausage to send us on our way.

There seemed to have been something of an irruption of Pine Processionary moth in the hotel corridors, perhaps driven in by the change in the weather. There were various others hanging around too (Rush Veneer, Light Brown Apple Moth, Small Dusty Wave, Rusty Oak/Birch Button), and a roosting Hummingbird Hawk-moth. Our final morning awaiting transport was thus a bit of an ad hoc mothing expedition around the hotel lobby. There was always the tiniest of chances of spotting something big and squeaky, but no such luck.

Hotel-Playa-Azul-at-Night — Hotel Playa Azul by night

The weather seriously broke as we sat at the airport, not sure we’ve ever experienced such bad turbulence before take-off. Thankfully, our departure was only delayed by a couple of hours. There was genuine turbulence at 36000 feet, but nothing too exotic. Landing, security, baggage reclaim, customs, and back to the car park were smooth. We were home not seven hours after the morning’s nothing. As the sun went down Mrs Sciencebase and myself were musing on whether to start packing for our next trip…

Cala'n Porter cliff bar - Cova d'en Xoroi — Superzoom view of Cala’n Porter cliff bar – Club Menorca

Our first view of Cales Coves from the clifftop hike! — Cales Coves from the clifftop…no way down

Hummingbird Hawk-moth

Cala'n Porter Lumix Zoom

Superzoom view of hilltop villas, Cala’n Porter

balcony-view-arrival — Our balcony view of Playa de Cala’n Porter

hotel-from-beach — View of the hotel from the beach

morning-glory — What’s the story, Morning Glory?

waymarkers

Calan Porter Gorge — The Cala’n Porter Gorge – apple and pear orchards

Southern Common Blue, Polyommatus celina

Egyptian Grasshopper/Locust, Anacridium aegyptium

Biker Blinds in the gorge — Biker Blinds

Record shot: Egyptian Vulture — Egyptian Vulture (One of two over Llucalari)

Cotton Bollworm moth, known as Scarce Bordered Straw in the UK where it is a rare migrant

Mrs and Mr Sciencebase

Composite image of Booted Eagle and Menorcan Sunset — Menorcan Sunset

Photos with the white, skew dB/ logo were taken on my phone. The ones with my “proper” dB/ logo were taken on a Lumix DC-FZ82, which I originally bought for that Greek trip but never used. Those with the tricia logo were taken by Mrs Sciencebase on her phone.

Festival Friends added to Four Missing Keys EP

I wrote an instrumental inspired by attending the Cambridge Folk Festival at the end of July and not only taking in a lot of great acts, but taking part in a Nigel Wearne guitar workshop and performing with the Festival Choir.

UPDATE: 3 Aug 2023 – Nigel had a listen via my Insta and had this to say, which is very kind of him:

“Beautiful! So glad you put that tuning to great use. Fantastic playing!”

The track is called Festival Friends and is the incidental music to my video montage from the festival. The final mix is also now part of my Four Missing Keys EP, which was originally a triple A-side of three songs, written September 2022, January this year, and then March. The latest tune uses open-G tuning, the sound of which you might recognise from various artists and songs, not least the Rolling Stones (see Classic Chord #20).

<a href="https://davebradley.bandcamp.com/album/four-missing-keys-ep">Four Missing Keys (EP) by Dave Bradley</a>

Four tracks written and recorded during late 2022 and 2023, quotes are from listeners:

Festival Friends (Cool as Folk) is an acoustic guitar instrumental in open-G tuning inspired by the Cambridge Folk Festival.

“A gorgeous little instrumental”

Ticking Clocks – A simple jazz-rock fusion track was recorded in January 2023 with C5 drummer Adam Stewart on percussion and synths

Take the Waters – Gentle post-covid singer-songwriter vulnerability.

“Take the Waters wouldn’t be out of place on the Neil Young album Harvest”

“Gorgeous, vulnerable vocals. Great harmonies. Lovely acoustic guitar solos.”

Old Nick is Quick – Quick quasi-new-wave Americana. Wine is fine but whiskey’s thicker. Written and recorded in March 2023.

A bridge camera for troubled authors

Back in August 2019, before our last trip abroad (a wildlife and yoga holiday organised and run by friends), I bought a bridge camera. Much lighter in the luggage and easier to handle when trekking about in the Greek heat.

Well, that was the plan. In the end, I couldn’t bear not having a decent camera and lens for all the birds – Eleanora’s Falcon, Bee-eater, Sardinian Warbler, Blue Rock Thrush, Red-rumped Swallow, Lesser Kestrel, Honey Buzzard, Black Stork, and many others. So, I took my old Canon 6D and the Sigma 150-600mm. I wouldn’t have realistically got the shots I did even with the so-called 60x zoom of the bridge camera I’d bought – Panasonic Lumix DC-FZ82. That 60x zoom means it goes from the 35mm-frame equivalent of a very wide 20mm to a superzoom of 1200mm, on its tiny sensor. The purchase was at the time a mistake; the camera has languished in a cupboard unused and unloved ever since to my chagrin.

However, something changed in the air this summer and I thought I’d dig out the camera again to do some experiments. What had changed? Well, the wind picked up and the overnight temperatures dropped meaning that moth diversity and numbers in the garden have plummeted in the last few days . So, apart from a couple of micros, I’ve not really had any new species to photograph in my macro studio with dSLR setup (Canon 7Dii and Tamron 90mm 1:1 macro lens). The most exciting moths in the trap* last night were a couple of Box-tree moths, the very familiar grass veneers, a solitary Scalloped Oak, and just one Large Broad-bordered Yellow Underwing (LBBYU).

I thought I’d dig out the Lumix and see how it fared with macro photography on these two specimens. Obviously, I have half-decent photos of both of those with my dSLR macro kit from previous seasons. The macro mode on the Lumix is pretty good, it lets you get to within 10mm or so of the subject. Obviously, that was too close to get the whole of the Scalloped Oak, perched on a matching chunk of wood, in the frame. But, I took a few shots anyway. They were okay. The quality of the basic single-frame shots doesn’t really match my dSLR setup but the focus stacking feature is handy and I gave that a try with the Scalloped Oak. To be honest, it works, but the image quality isn’t as good as the macro function on my phone.

Focus stacked image of Scalloped Oak moth using Lumix

Scalloped Oak moth using Samsung A52s phone camera — Scalloped Oak moth using Samsung A52s

I then turned to another perhaps more useful feature I’d remembered on the Lumix – recording a 4K snippet of video from which you can then pick the best single frame and save it as a 4K photo. Now, this is something that’s not available with old dSLRs like my Canon 7Dii or the older 6D.

In order to test this feature and see if I could get a decent shot of the LBBYU’s yellow-marked rear wings, I released the moth from its and let it fly up against my studio window. I’d set the camera EV to somewhere between +2 and +3 above neutral exposure to compensate for the bright background and then recorded a few of those 4K video snippets as the moth flapped vigourously around the window. Unfortunately, they’re just blurry and noisy and not worth showing. I have in the past got better shots using burst mode with a dSLR and using the same EV over-exposure trick.

I think I will take the camera on our next trip abroad as the scenic shots are pretty good and much better than what I get with my phone.

*Skinner trap with Welmite 20W ultraviolet compact fluorescent tube.

Cleaning up a Least Weasel with Firefly

While we were standing on the ditch-bridge beyond the old, stilted Rothschild’s Bungalow at Woodwalton Fen National Nature Reserve trying to catch a glimpse of the Purple Emperors wheeling high above is in the oak trees, a mammal squeaked near our feet and poked its head out to see what all the fuss was about. It was a Least Weasel, it seems.

Its scientific name is Mustela nivalis, although it is often known as the Little Weasel, Common Weasel, or in some places simply a Weasel. In the US the term weasel is more generic and applies to a whole range of creatures. Not to be confused with Mustela erminea,that’s stoatally different although not weasily distinguished. Hahahah.

Anyway, as is the wont of these small carnivores, they might pop out into the open, as did this one, before quickly disappearing back into the tangled undergrowth. But, they almost always come back out within a second or two for another look as did this one, before it plopped into the ditch water swam the few feet across and could be heard scuffling on the other side before disappearing for good.

The upshot of all this peeking and scuffling is that I wasn’t quick enough to get the first shot of the creature standing on the bridge near our feet, but I got a sneaky shot of her after she made her second appearance. Unfortunately, there was a blade of blurry green grass right in front of her. I found a Photoshop tutorial on how to remove such distractions, but the techniques didn’t translate easily to PaintShopPro, although I had a go and managed to decolourise the blade so it was brown and slightly less distracting than the green.

I posted the image on Twitter to confirm the species but also to ask if anyone knew of a simple way to remove blurry blades of grass. Various people replied with PhotoShop suggesttions. But, like I say, I use PaintShopPro rather than that pricey Adobe subscription product. Twitter friend Chuck Baggett offered the best solution. A free, beta-testing AI tool from the very same Adobe, known as Firefly. It’s a generative art tool akin to Dall-E and MidJourney, AI apps I’ve discussed at length here previously.

Firefly has an object removal tool within its repertoire. You set an appropriate brush and simply paint over the object you want to remove. Chuck did the job for me on the version of the weasel, I’d tweeted. But, I obviously wanted to test the app myself, so I uploaded a JPG rendering of the DNG output I’d created with DxO PureRaw3 from the original camera RAW file. Set a brush up and painted out the green blade of grass and some of the other distracting fronds. There were some odd artefacts visible when viewing the eye close-up, but they were relatively easy to fix in PaintShopPro without having to start from scratch in the Firefly AI app.

Least Weasel photo before and after Firefly retouching

I can highly recommend Adobe Firefly for removing such problems from your photos. Much quicker and easier than the various approaches offered for PhotoShop. The app adds a watermark that declares the image was generated with an AI app, but I think in this case it’s quite fair of me to crop out that declaration given then I was simply manipulating my own photo with a digital brush! Obviously, the Firefly system can generate artwork from text descriptions just as Dall-E and MidJourney do and those generative images probably should be declared as such in some circumstances.

Boosting a shady Scarlet Tiger moth

I visited Chippenham Fen NNR. Hoping to see Purple Emperor and seeing a solitary White Admiral instead. Also saw the nationally rare, fenland Silver-barred moth, and lots of Scarlet Tiger moths. It was a grey day by the time I got a snap of a Scarlet Tiger nectaring (one of the only moths of this group in the UK that can feed as an adult). Of course, being a grey day, the light levels were low below a bank of trees with the favoured thistles.

High ISO (2500) photo processed with DxO PureRaw3 removes noise to equivalent of ISO 320 — DxO PureRaw3 can save you three full ISO stops of noise

As you can see from the left-hand portion of this photo, there was a lot of noise in the image. I used DxO PureRaw 3 (right-hand portion processed with the DeepPrimeXD AI setting) to cut the noise and do a little bit of sharpening to the image and then PaintShop Pro to adjust levels in this split-screen shot.

The photo was taken from about 3 metres away, closest I can get with that my big zoom lens, a Sigma OS 150-600mm lens fully extended on a Canon 7D mark ii. And, cropped from a pixel-width of 5472 to just the moth and some of the thistle, which gave me a 1590-pixel wide image, fine for the web and social media.

Camera settings used were shutterspeed 1/800s, f/6.3, and ISO 2500. I reckon PureRaw3 saves you about three full stops of ISO. So, the cleanup of this photo at ISO 2500 is giving you an image equivalent to what I would have got if I’d been able to get a correct exposure at ISO 320.

However, I felt that although the DxO AI software had done an incredible job on removing noise, as it always does, the photo could do with a different type of additional sharpening. So, I fed the original output from DxO into Topaz SharpenAI and then did my usual PaintShopPro tweaks on the saved filed from that software to get what I think is an even better final photo.

Topaz, DxO, PSP processed Scarlet Tiger — This Scarlet Tiger scrubbed up quite well with some RAW processing

How to make your hoverflies pop

I don’t often take photographs of hoverflies, first off, they rarely sit still long enough for me to get a shot. Anyway, I was trying to find butterflies* to photograph at Trumpington Meadows, near Cambridge, and bumped into one the university profs carrying a net. He was hoverflying. We had a good chat about insects.

I later shared my photo of a Pied Plumehorn hoverfly, which I’d snapped a little after we went our separate ways. He seemed to like the photo and asled me about my photographic equipment, he having gone from a Canon 60D dSLR to a mirrorless R5, and wondering about getting better results than he was.

Pied Plumehorn hoverfly, Pied Plumehorn, Volucella pellucens

Well, I’m still using a dSLR, a Canon 7D mark ii. On this occasion with a Canon 70-300 4-5.6 IS lens. I usually carry a Sigma 150-600 for birds and have a Tamron 1:1 90mm macro for studio shots of the morning’s moths and other subjects.

I have toyed with the idea of switching to mirrorless, but I only bought the 7Dii a couple of years ago and the expense of a new camera puts me off, especially, when I don’t think the equivalent price model can beat the 7Dii yet on various features and image quality, as well as in terms of weather and dust proofing. There is also the issue of staring at a screen through the viewfinder rather than seeing the image through the lens. Oh, and the delay between switching on and the camera being ready to shoot.

The 70-300mm lets me focus from about a metre away from the subjects, which is usually fine if you’re cautious with butterflies. The 600mm was a challenge as it has a 3m minimum focus and although it’s about the same weight as 70-300mm lens, it’s a lot shorter. The photos I’m getting when I can get close with the 300mm are better quality than my 600mm shots.

I generally use DxO PureRaw3 to denoise my photos and get them into jpg format for editing. It gives you about 3-4 stops of ISO in terms of noise reduction, which is amazing! I also use Topaz AI Sharpen, which is magic for some images at removing motion blur. I don’t always apply the Topaz processing

My final step is to use PaintShopPro as a cheap alternative to PhotoShop to adjust levels, saturation, vibrancy, and to do a final crop, resize if appropriate for social media and web, and then add my logo.

Below is the unprocessed copy of the hoverfly photo so you can see roughly how it came out of the camera…the edited version is only 1300 pixels across so would be printable at just a couple of centimetres across, it’s perfectly fine on a web page, instagram or for sharing by email. I recently wrote about my process as I apply it to butterfly photos.

My unedited photo of the hoverfly, just the RAW file saved as a JPG

Please note, my blog software is set to resize and compress photos so they’re all 768 pixels across rather than the native size.

*I saw a couple of dozen Meadow Brown, seven or eight Common Blue, a solitary Small Blue, just one Small Health, a couple of Burnet Companion and two or three Silver Y moths

Digital photography file formats

I often refer to the various file formats used in digital photography and image editing and thought some Sciencebase readers might be interested in a very brief summary of what those formats are about. Fundamentally, I shoot in RAW and process with DxO PureRaw 3 followed by Topaz Sharpen AI (not every time) and PaintShop Pro. The final images I share are usually resized to 2048 pixel-width, unless I’ve had to crop it to smaller than that, and compressed to 90% JPG quality.

You can think of RAW as being a digital film negative (although the colours are not inverted) and every other format is like a print from that negative.

Definitions and brief explanations:

1. RAW (Raw Image File):
  - Definition: RAW is a file format that captures all the data from the camera’s image sensor without any processing or compression. RAW files offer greater flexibility for post-processing and editing, allowing photographers to make precise adjustments without loss of quality. However, they usually require specialized software to view and edit.
2. TIFF (Tagged Image File Format):
  - Definition: TIFF is a flexible file format that supports lossless compression and is widely used for storing high-quality images. TIFF files are known for their versatility and ability to maintain image quality. TIFF files can store multiple layers, transparency, and high-bit-depth images, making them ideal for professional photographers and graphic designers. However, TIFF files tend to have larger file sizes compared to other formats.
3. JPG/JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group):
  - Definition: JPG/JPEG is a commonly used file format that uses lossy compression to reduce file size while maintaining acceptable image quality. JPG is a popular format for sharing and displaying photographs on the web and social media due to its small file size. It achieves compression by discarding some image data, which may result in a slight loss of quality. JPG files are widely supported by software, devices, and web browsers, making them suitable for online use. Successive editing and re-saving of JPG files leads to increasing loss of quality.
4. PNG (Portable Network Graphics):
  - Definition: PNG is a file format that supports lossless compression and is particularly well-suited for images with transparent backgrounds or sharp lines and text. Ideal for logos, icons, and graphics with sharp edges. Not so well suited for large photographs.
5. GIF (Graphics Interchange Format):
  - Definition: GIF is a file format these days primarily used for animated images or short looping videos. Originally, it was an efficient compression format for photographs that is in some ways lossless but limits the colour palette to 256-bits.
6. BMP (Bitmap):
  - Definition: BMP is a file format that stores images as uncompressed bitmaps, which means large file sizes. They offer excellent image quality and are often used in professional printing.

Sciencebase reader Andy, was puzzled as to why sometimes his edited image files in JPG format are bigger than the original RAW file. After all, JPG is a compressed format, he says, shouldn’t the file be smaller?

Well, the basic RAW file is like a 1:1 grid of every pixel value recorded by your camera’s sensor. It does contain some extra info too like camera settings, geotags, name, time-date stamp etc, and even a compressed jpg copy of the photo (that copy is used to display the image on your camera’s screen).

When you edit import and edit the RAW image, your processing, levels adjustment, white balance correction, sharpening etc, can add information about how you have changed the values for each of those pixels in the file. Now, when you save it, if you choose minimal jpg compression, then all that extra data is simply stored in the file so it gets bigger.

However, if you save the edited file with a higher compression ratio, then the compression process looks at the pixels, indeed whole areas of pixels to see how it can save space. Those pixels in an area with similar values, say an area of blue sky, are then compressed by saving the data for one typical pixel and then adding a snippet of code to say that so many nearby pixels are the same. This uses up a lot less space than keeping all the data for every single pixel. The redundant data is discarded. The higher the compression ratio the smaller the final file, but the lower the quality and the more artefacts, such as distortion and fringing.

Môn Mam Cymru – Ynys Môn, the Mother of Wales

TL:DR – Modern-day equivalent of the holiday snap slideshow a record of our most recent trip to Wales, specifically the Isle of Anglesey, Ynys Môn.

May 2023, we finally got around to visiting Anglesey (Ynys Môn, sometimes referred to as Môn Mam Cymru meaning “Môn, Mother of Wales”, for its agricultural productivity) just off north-west Wales (Cymru). We stayed in the seaside town of Rhosneigr right next to RAF Valley and with beach views of Snowdonia, Yr Wyddfa. Thankfully, we only really had airbase activity and noise on the last day of our week there. Although that in itself was fun to watch as trainee pilots did their thing.

Here are a few snaps from the trip in no particular order…

First thing we noticed aside from the fact that it was warm and sunny was an abundance of wildflowers in bloom at RSPB Conwy on our trip in, many of the species there had not yet bloomed when we departed Cambridgeshire. Oh, there was also the pleasant realisation that the evenings are long because we were that much further west than where we live.

Mrs Sciencebase running up Harrison Drive, Rhosneigr — Mrs Sciencebase running up that hill: Harrison Drive, Rhosneigr

We tried to visit as many places on the island as we could during our short stay including the rocky reserve behind Rhosneigr with its lakes, RSPB South Stack (for Chough, Puffin, Guillemot, Kittiwake, Razorbill, Fulmar, and Raven), Llyn Parc Mawr (for Red Squirrel) and Niwbwrch (Newborough), Cemlyn Bay for Arctic Tern, Sandwich Tern, Mediterranean Gull, a pair of Merganser, and Black-headed Gull. We missed seeing the Roseate Tern that had set up residence there though. We also took in the seaside resort of Beaumaris for a boat trip to Puffin Island (Puffin, Razorbill, Guillemot, Shag, Cormorant, Great Black-backed Gull, seals).

The Menai Suspension Bridge is one way on and off the island.

I know the numbers are irrelevant, really, but we saw at least 83 species of bird on this trip. We were chuffed to finally catch up with Chough and I think it’s the first time we’ve seen Raven in the UK. I think this is probably the most species we’ve “ticked” on a single trip in our six or so years of being a bit serious with the birding.

Britannia Bridge over the Menai Straits — The Britannia Bridge is another connection between mainland Wales and the Isle of Anglesey

As you might have presumed I took a portable mothtrap and ran the LepiLED off a USB battery pack for a few hours after dusk for three or four nights of our visit. I had little success, but it’s been a weird year with low moth counts across the country. That coupled with the tiny, secluded courtyard of our holiday house with no nearby trees or other vegetation and chilly nights meant very few moths. There were a couple of Garden Carpet, several Carcina quercana, a few Light Brown Apple Moth, and Red/Dark-barred Twin-spot Carpet, or Xanthorhoe sp. Several female Adela reamurella on plants adjacent to Llyn Parc Mawr.

Red/Dark-barred Twin-spot Carpet, or Xanthorhoe sp. — Red form of Dark-barred Twin-spot Carpet to lepiLED in Rhosneigr

Looking towards Rhosneigr from RAF Valley

In daylight moth news, on the dunes adjacent to the airbase Mrs Sciencebase noticed Ruby Tiger (adult), I spotted a larva of the Six-spot Burnet, and numerous Grapholita lunulana.

Lots of Grapholita lunulana on the dunes adjacent to RAF Valley — Lots of Grapholita lunulana in the RAF Valley dunes

There were also Common Heath out there and a tiny micro moth which I didn’t ID. The Ruby Tiger moth was spotted ironically while we watched the training exercises of a pair of Beech T-6C Texan T1 – turboprops and a flock of BAe Systems Hawk 128 T.2 jet aircraft with not a Tiger Moth in sight.

Talk about loud – Three BAe Systems Hawk 128 T.2 coming into land at RAF Valley

Hawk trainer, RAF Valley — Hawk trainer, coming into land at RAF Valley

Beech T-6C Texan T1 - Prop aeroplane, trainer landing at RAF Valley — Beech trainer landing at RAF Valley

There were also lots of Wall butterflies on the railway cutting that runs through the golf course adjacent to the airbase and Small Copper butterflies, a pair of which I snapped in copulo. There were also Small Heath on the footpath through the golf course and the fly Rhagio scolopaceus, the Downlooker Snipefly, cavorting with the Wall on the railway tunnel wall. Elsewhere in the dunes, Fever-fly, Dilophus febrilis.

Wall butterfly showing cryptic camouflage of underwing

Small Coppers in copulo on the Anglesey golf course

Six-spot Burnet larva, Rhosneigr — Six-spot Burnet larva on the dunes near Rhosneigr

Fever-fly, Dilophus febrilis, in the Rhosneigr sand dunes

Male Orange Tip on Cuckooflower, Newborough

Red Squirrel, Llyn Parc Mawr — Red Squirrel on a sunflower feeder at the car park in Llyn Parc Mawr

Raven preying on Guillemot eggs at RSPB South Stack

Raven taking a Guillemot egg — …and the take

Raven with Kittiwake egg, RSPB South Stack

Puffins and Razorbills, RSPB South Stack

Chough flying across South Stack cliff face

One of numerous Chough, RSPB South Stack

One of hundreds if not thousands of Razorbill vying for space on the cliffs at South Stack with thousands of Guillemots, dozens of gulls, fulmar, and kittiwakes — One of hundreds of Razorbill on the cliffs at RSPB South Stack

In terms of flowers, there were lots of wildflowers in bloom that were not showing at home when we left. Also Sea Thrift (Armeria maritima), Bladder Campion (Silene vulgaris), Cuckoo Flower (Cardamine pratensis), Sheep’s Bit (Jasione montana), and Spathulate Fleawort, unique to South Stack and also known as the South Stack Fleawort, Tephroseris integrifolia subsp. maritima. At NT Plas Newydd, Bistort (Bistorta officinalis).

Sheep's Bit, Jasione montana — Sheep’s Bit, Jasione montana

Lots of Bistorta officinalis at NT Plas Newydd

Thrift in the foreground with South Stack Lighthouse in the background — Foreground Thrift over South Stack Lighthouse

The pastel houses of The West End (1869), Beaumaris, Anglesey — The pastel-painted, three-storey houses of The West End (1869), Beaumaris, Anglesey

Mrs Sciencebase on Beaumaris Pier — Mrs Sciencebase “promenading” on Beaumaris Pier

Snowdonia viewed beyond the rocky beach at Penmon and the Menai Strait. An artisanal gift shop in Beaumaris had the marvellous name Echo Beach

Female Great Spotted Woodpecker takes flight, NT Plas Newydd

On our way off Anglesey, we also visited National Trust Plas Newydd House and Garden and then once back on the mainland, NT Penrhyn Castle.

One additional wildlife point, an Orca was sighted off the Llyn Peninsula in Pwllheli Bay. A bit too far to twitch while we were in Wales. And one final word, a long one…

The station sign at Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch (The Church of St Mary in the hollow of the white hazel trees near the fierce whirlpool and the church of St Tysilio by the red cave)

Boosting your butterfly photos

TL:DR – Using photo editing tools to get the most out of your butterfly photos.

It is Green Hairstreak season. I’d heard that this tiny, shimmering green butterfly had been spotted on Devil’s Dyke in Cambridgeshire in mid-April, so I headed out on foot to a local woodland patch that very day where the butterfly had been seen a couple of years ago. I was in luck! One specimen showing briefly. Unfortunately, I didn’t get a photograph on that visit.

Next bright, sunshiny day headed out with Mrs Sciencebase to take another look. There were none on the expected patch, but we kept at it and rounded a corner where there was a Dogwood thicket and various other bushes with a crowd of Green Longhorn moth! So I got a couple of snaps of those.

Mrs Sciencebase spotted the first Green Hairstreak landing. And so with a little bit of patience I managed to get a few overexposed snaps. Using a new second-hand lens (Canon EF 75-300mm lens, 1:4.5-5.6 L IS USM) on my Canon 7Dii), I’ve not quite got used to just how much light it lets in compared to the Sigma 150-600mm I’ve been using since January 2017). Anyway, once I realised the rookie mistake I was making (ISO too high), I homed in on the other Green HSs that were fleeting fluttering into my field of view and finally got a sharp shot at one sideways on. This shorter lens has a much more manageable minimum focusing distance of about one metre as opposed to the three metres of the Sigma.

Obviously, I shoot RAW so that I have more options for developing my photographs just as photographers did when developing their negatives. The tools are software rather than trays of chemical solutions and dark rooms with red lights. Nevertheless, they’re just the tools of the trade and the means by which one extracts a photo from the RAW file. I have outlined the process I generally use for processing my bird photographs. But, this butterfly warranted a slightly different approach.

First step after downloading to PC was to run it through DxO PureRaw 3. This software, which I’ve mentioned several times before, analyses the RAW meta data, identifies camera and lens combination and applies basic corrections such as removing vignetting and pincushion or other distortions inherent to your kit. It also gives you the choice to denoise the photo. It has a slick AI system built in, which I reckon knocks down the ISO equivalent by three stops. So, for a photo that starts of noisy (grainy) because the ISO is relatively high, you can get rid of a lot of the fuzz in one simple, automated step.

The output from PureRaw is a DNG file (a simulated RAW), so you can then import it into a photo editor with the corrections and denoising done and start as if it were the RAW file straight from the camera. This is a real boon as it lets you then do level adjustments, save blownout areas, adjust white balance etc. It also lets you open the file in Topaz Sharpen AI. So, with this butterfly, that’s what I did.

The Topaz software also has Denoise, but it was sharpening that I wanted with this photo. It can be done very subtly or you can retrieve details at quite a powerful level. My usual next step after such initial treatments of the RAW is then to open it in PaintShop Pro (a less expensive alternative to Adobe Photoshop or Lightroom). I am quite happy with its options for cropping, adjusting levels, white balance, saturation, and vibrancy. It is also relatively easy to remove distracting spots and specks in an image to clean up the final photo.

The adult Green Hairstreak, Callophrys rubi, usually emerge at the end of March, into April, to mate and are done by the end of June. They are obviously green, but their hairstreak is but a faint line on the underside of the wings and is even sometimes completely absent or at best a row of faint dots. The green colouration is, as with the colours of other butterflies, due to iridescence and diffraction of light by the scales on the wings rather than the presence of pigments. Lepidoptera, means scaly (or tiled) wings.

The genus part of the butterfly’s scientific name, Callophrys rubi, derives from a Greek word meaning “beautiful eyebrows”, while the species name rubi comes from Rubus, bramble, one of the species’ host plants. There are numerous other “hairstreak” butterflies.

ChatGPT: Your personal brand manager

TL:DR – I prompted ChatGPT to write me a personal brand pitch.

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I haven’t mentioned ChatGPT for a while. There has been something of a backlash against the hype and the scaremongering. But, I have still been using it for various small jobs, such as quick website tweaks and summarising documents that are TL:DR (too long, didn’t read). Latest prompt I gave it was to act as my personal brand manager and write me a pitch based on the Sciencebase homepage. This is an edited version of what it came up with:

David Bradley Science Writer

As a multi-award-winning freelance science writer with over three decades of experience, David Bradley has a unique talent for making complex scientific concepts accessible and engaging. He has written for a diverse range of outlets, including countless newspapers, magazines, research, industrial, educational, and academic organizations, and websites, covering a wide range of topics from astronomy to zoology and almost everything in between.

As a wannabe polymath, he is also an accomplished musician with an enormous passion for photography. He combines his science, snaps, and songs to create a website and blog that offers a fresh perspective on the natural world, showcasing his stunning wildlife photography, and sharing the latest cutting-edge research as well as occasionally offering incidental music. With his wife, Mrs Sciencebase, he is a keen allotmenteer, wildlife garden pond manager, and garden rewilding enthusiast.

David’s writing style is approachable and engaging, and he loves to sprinkle a little Geordie wit and charm into his work. He has bylines in New Scientist, Science, Nature, The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph, Popular Science, American Scientist, and many others. In 1995, he set up the first-ever chemistry webzine, which morphed into the Sciencebase site in 1999.

If you’re looking for an experienced freelance science writer with a passion for making complex concepts accessible, look no further than David Bradley. Connect with him on social media, or shoot him an email at [email protected] to start a conversation…