memories of snowbirds

Two weeks ago, the weekend that my machine died, there was the last of the snow (I hope). Snow seems to make birds more visible.  So we were watching the bird feeder through the window, and saw several new kinds of birds.  First there was this:

possibly a reed bunting

On consulting our trusty bird book, we decided it was a reed bunting (or possibly a mutant sparrow).  While we were trying to identify it, we noticed another little brown bird hopping around on the ground.  I confidently identified it as a distant sparrow, then looked through the binoculars, saw it had quite a streaked breast, and a thin beak, and swiftly lost my confidence.  After consulting the bird book again, we tentatively decided on meadow pipit (or very mutant sparrow).  Then it flew up into the apple tree: maybe it was a tree pipit?  The bird book helpfully points out distinguishing features in its diagrams, such as differences in colour on tails or wings; unfortunately, there are no features indicated to distinguish between meadow pipits and tree pipits. The text says that the tree pipit is distinguished "from meadow pipit by voice, habitat; also by buffer, less olivaceous colour, pinker legs", and that the meadow pipit "perches less frequently than the tree pipit"; not very helpful features if you have only the one specimen! (The same book helpfully dubs warblers "confusing". Yet despite all this, or maybe because of it, it is my bird identification book of choice.)

While we were debating these identifications, we noticed a larger, more brightly-coloured bird. positively glowing in the sunshine, perched on the large trunk of the apple tree.  What an earth is that?  Feverish page-turning.  No doubt about it this time, it was a fieldfare.  Not only had we never seen one before, I can safely say I'd never even heard of them before.  It flew down to the ground, and pirouetted for our benefit.

fieldfare, showing off for the camera (front shot a little out of focus)

Gorgeous.  Almost makes the snow worthwhile.

fieldfare behind the dogwoods

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retrospective holiday diary day 3: Lindisfarne

Saturday 22 September, and the weather was still fine,

sunny holiday weather

so we decided to take advantage of the sunshine, and do Lindisfarne.

Although Lindisfarne (Holy Island) is an island, it is accessible by causeway when the tide is low, so we could drive there and back. The road wouldn’t be open until 11am, so first we took the opportunity for a little archaeology: Neolithic rock carvings near Routin Linn (or Roughtin Lynn, or many other variants). The rock itself can bee seen from the air in Google maps. Close up, many "ring and cup" markings are visible:

today, we'd call that graffiti and vandalism

Then off to Lindisfarne, over the causeway, to the car park, and taking the hopper bus to the foot of the castle. First the tromp up to the castle itself:

Lindisfarne castle

Then we walked along to the shore, where we saw masses of carefully crafted little cairns. (We resisted the temptation to build one of our own.)

cairn as mini-castle?

We were really enjoying the beautiful weather: sunny, breezy, not too warm, but not yet “brisk”.

why is the sky that funny colour?

We walked round the back of the castle, and popped in to Gertrude Jekyll’s walled garden. Probably not one of her best, but then the location isn’t exactly perfect.

castle seen from Jekyll's garden

Finally, back to the village and a look round the priory.

the angled arch is part of the ceiling vaulting

The castle is just visible through this window:

a view of the distant castle

The red sandstone has weathered over the years into the most remarkable patterns.

natural carvings

On the way back to the mainland, we stopped off at the sand flats, and walked out a little way out, to get a better view of a load of seals sunning themselves on a sandbank in the sea.

distant seals in the sunlight

Then, just by the causeway on the way back, we saw a seal relatively close up.

closer seal, with a curlew at the back left,
and what a bird-savvy friend tells me is probably a juvenile oystercatcher at the back right

Marvellous day.

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visible diversity

Usually the garden bird life is dominated by sparrows and rats-with-wings, plus the odd blackbird. But today, I've spotted a wren, a thrush, a blue tit, and a goldfinch. Maybe the cold brings them to the bird feeder, or maybe they are just more visible against the snow.

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Lake District holiday

We spent a couple of days in the lake District as part of our holiday this year-- neither of us had been before.
We had a great time -- marvellous scenery -- even some good weather! (View a larger map.)


We did the usual touristy things -- first off to see the Castlerigg stone circle, and try to spot how the stones are aligned on peaks and valleys:

We had a trip on a steam train, sitting in a carriage that is exactly like ones I remember from my childhood (except much cleaner!), and looking at the lovely views:

We did a lot of driving round, marvelling at the scenery of lakes and mountains. Some roads were a little alarming -- hairpin bends on steep inclines with little room to pass traffic in the opposite direction (fortunately there wasn't that much traffic) -- topping the brow of a hill and being unable to see anything but sky past the front of the car -- learning to sneer at "mere" 20% incline warning signs -- sitting at the top of a 30% incline, thinking, it looks vertical! But the scenery was worth it all.

We even made friends with some of the exotic local wildlife -- sparrows!! -- who were tame enough to eat crumbs from my hand. After I made the mistake of providing some food, lunchtime turned into a scene from Hitchcock ... suddenly sparrows, hundreds of them!

We were expecting scenery and stone circles -- it was why we went. But an unexpected highlight was the Cumberland Pencil Museum in Keswick. We saw this advertised in a tourist leaflet at our B&B, and so we just had to go. Now, I've never really given a lot of thought to pencils beyond the obvious "so how do they get the lead in there?", but, like just about everything really, there's more to them than meets the eye, as we learned at this fascinating museum.

The local pencil industry grew up around the local graphite outcrops (I learned that it was only relatively recently named "graphite", after the Greek for "drawing/writing", as in "grapheme" and "graphic"). The hardness is altered by adding clay -- more clay gives a harder "lead". Then the industry branched out into coloured pencils, watercolour pencils, and more. And there's lots more fascinating bits and pieces -- including wartime spy pencils, manufacturing tricks, and more. We would have stayed longer, but our car park ticket was expiring, so we had to leave after about an hour.

So, a good couple of days in the Lakes. I'm sure we'll be back.

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owl head stability

Yesterday I was at an interesting seminar given by Dr Tom Stafford (University of Sheffield) on "Inferring cognitive architectures from high-resolution behavioural data" -- about some interesting new results from psychological experiments on learning motor skills. Apparently it pays to be a bit rubbish at the start of learning, maybe because you're exploring more of the space.

Tom also recounted a great little anecdote about how Edward Thorndike, a late 19th century experimenter, thought the best psychological test subject was "a hungry cat": he repeatedly put the cat in a small box that had a foot pedal to release the door, and timed how long it took the cat to escape. Unsurprisingly, the cat got faster. More surprisingly, when the setup was changed to remove the foot pedal, the cat still pressed where it had been -- because it had learned where to press (or maybe it was going, "where's that fsking foot pedal gone?")

During the post-presentation conversation, the discussion turned to visual perception being hard wired for upright heads, to animals turning their heads upright even when they were upside down, to chickens keeping their heads stationary when their bodies are moved, to owls doing the same, to (inevitably) "there's a YouTube video of that!" A few minuted googling showed that indeed, there is. The bored-looking owl even keeps its head stationary when blindfolded. (The guy doing the waving about looks pretty grim, too.)

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There's always one...

It's impossible not to anthropomorphise. It's not just the guy hanging. It's the ones on either side looking down quizzically.


This picture is cropped from the wonderful item #50D1-5830 by Hideta Nagai, whose View Finder Photography website has some spectacular shots.

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