Yesterday I made the mistake of assuming that Frankland Coll and Frankland Lecture Theatre were one and the same place. I dutifully went to what I thought was the right venue and made assiduous notes on assembly language and computing. Bits, bytes and nibbles (!) flowed from my pen as I attempted to get to grips with Forever Loops and Jump Format, hex, dec and binary forms.
As I came out of the lecture I checked my phone ..... there had been a text about 5 minutes into the lecture from the student I was taking the notes for, to tell me that I was In The Wrong Room. Mortification! Not only that, I had suffered sitting through a not altogether (for me at least) enlightening lecture, taking notes that were of no use to anyone, unless I have happened on a new pastime - random note taking. I wonder if it could take off?
Hmmm, it's just as well I hadn't New Year's resolutioned that I would be more proactive with this blog. However, I have set up a blog Micromeandering which will highlight some of the microscopy I am hoping to do.
Time already seems to be flying in. Term started last week with a rude awakening; a new student, and four consecutive hours of three lectures of physics and one of engineering, and a 9am start to boot. Each of the four days I am in starts at 9, which means getting the bus at 8, and me not the most early morning oriented.
We have decided that after the Christmas over-indulgences we must Try And Reduce Intake. Yesterday was the end of the best stage in this regimen i.e. the EATING of all the scrummy things that we still had that were not conducive to weight loss. Our logic is that once these have disappeared, there will be no temptation. I was discussing this method with younger daughter and she wasn't overly impressed with our system.
Not much snow here but much of the country seems to be grinding to a halt with the cold weather and snowfall. News has been rife with the notions of "sub zero temperatures" and "centimetres of snow", how is it that other countries can cope without all this hype? I suppose I am just in grumpy old woman mode.... Luckily we have had little more than a smattering of the white stuff, though I did have a rather unpleasant snowy journey back from my mother's last weekend.
Yesterday was cold but having layered up into Nanook of the North lookalikes we braved the elements to go to Leighton Moss. The birds had had more sense, and few were about. It did mean however that we were able to identify ALL the birds we saw (the grand total of three - robin, oyster catcher and crow).
The water at Leighton Moss was frozen and the only birds in view from the hide we went into were a couple of crows. The didn't seem to mind wading around in icy water and their behaviour seemed quite strange, almost as if they were trying to have a bath.
We then went into nearby Silverdale for a welcome hot coffee and soup and then a wander along the shore. On our way there I saw my first snowdrops of the year. When I lived in Scotland we always looked for the first snowdrops about now, they always seemed to come out round about my ex mother in law's birthday on the 21st.
Then back home to the warmth and a bird themed jigsaw, not difficult but very satisfying.
Wonderful! a pair of bullfinches are near the garden. The weather is so dire and grey that it was well nigh impossible to get an even half decent picture. The female was further along the fence acting coy in the overhanging brambles.
For a mere £1.50 we escaped the dire and dreich weather and visited our local antiques centre. The huge space is shared between dealers who set out their arrays of multifarious items; a whole confusion of stock, some antique, some purporting to be antique, and then there is the completely baffling.
We went to Leighton Moss yesterday and just as we got into the hide we heard the magic words "bittern to the right, flying over the field". The bittern is one of those birds which is exceedingly elusive, and each time we go to the reserve Q is desperate to find one. I failed to see any wings of any sort, bitterns or otherwise, Q said she saw a brown blur in the appropriate place, but then rather blew her ornithological knowledge by whispering to me that she didn't realise they could actually fly. Luckily no one else in the hide heard her comment as we were in the company of EXPERTS. The two bittern spotters each had lenses the size of small sheds and as they left to see if they could follow the flight of the bittern a derisory voice was heard saying "Spotters! pah, they're not birders; you need binoculars, not a camera to watch birds properly". We didn't have our binoculars; but even if we had remembered them, they would not have passed muster in such erudite company. We did have our cameras, but again our paltry lenses couldn't put us in any spotters' league. Anyway we don't really spot let alone identify many birds unless they stay still for about 5 minutes.
The robins of Leighton Moss are not at all camera shy and are willing little posers. The top left robin was flitting about near the reed beds and came and ate food out of one of the visitor's hands.
The marsh tit was a first - luckily for us there was an identification board right near the picnic table.
It's a long time since I have seen a greenfinch.
The reasons for the cages around some of the feeders became apparent!
Lesson learned, don't flap around when fragile butterfly wing bits are on the microscope slide as they have a tendency to catch the breeze and float into oblivion.
This was taken from the upper surface of the butterfly wing, the blue colour isn't obvious as the light is shining through from underneath. What I found interesting were the little scale structures. Are these going to grow into larger scales, or are they subsidiary? Interspersed among the scales are hair like structures (are they hairs or modified scales?) (Addendum: I've just found out that scales are modified hairs).
I took some pictures at higher magnification, but will need to do some serious Googling to see if I can find anything about the details of types and forms of wing scales. Initial forays into the ether have not been very successful.
Scales were removed using the sellotape method and I then looked at the wing. It would seem that the scales are laid down on a membrane.
The following two images show the same section of wing taken with top lighting (top image) and transmitted light (bottom image).
It is clear that the scales on the upper surface of the wing are quite different is shape to those on the under surface.
Top lighting (top image) shows the blue colour of the upper wing surface. The transmitted light (lower bottom image) seems to show more detail of the scales.
The sparrows are really making the most of the bird feeders, but one of them doesn't quite seem to have the hang of it - or perhaps it suffers from motion sickness.
There has also been some other displacement activity.
Yesterday I made the mistake of assuming that Frankland Coll and Frankland Lecture Theatre were one and the same place. I dutifully went to what I thought was the right venue and made assiduous notes on assembly language and computing. Bits, bytes and nibbles (!) flowed from my pen as I attempted to get to grips with Forever Loops and Jump Format, hex, dec and binary forms.
