Photos – Page 5 – Journeys of Heart and Mind

A bird called Jenny

There was a pre-decimal British coin carrying a picture of a wren on the reverse, still in use when I was a small child. There were four farthings in a penny … or 960 of them in a British pound sterling.

European wren (Wikimedia)

ad hoc post – 1

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So, what bird might that be? Why, the Jenny Wren of course. If you live in Britain you’ll probably be familiar with this old term.

My son-in-law, Paz, sent me a link to a wonderful video of a Eurasian wren singing. Because the video has been slowed down, the sound is lower-pitched but also stretched out in time. As a result you can hear far more of the detail in this small bird’s singing performance. It’s truly amazing! But don’t take my word for it, watch and listen for yourself…

Paz is always amusing with his choice of titles; this time his email to me was entitled ‘Trogloclanger’. This is a portmanteau from Troglodytes (the Latin genus and species name of this wren), and The Clangers – fictitious inhabitants of space who made a whistling noise and figured in children’s stories. (You probably don’t want to watch an episode of The Clangers – but just in case, here’s one.)

It’s worth mentioning the Wikipedia article on the Eurasian wren because it provides a lot of detail about this little bird, and was also the source of the photo. Learn more about the ornithology and etymology from Wikipedia. There’s a separate article about the family Troglodytidae in general. Almost all species of wren live in the Americas, or islands in the region.

There was a pre-decimal British coin carrying a picture of a wren on the reverse, still in use when I was a small child. There were four farthings in a penny (‘four’ and the ‘far’ in farthing are cognate) or 960 of them in a British pound sterling. So you’d need just over 9½ farthings to make a decimal penny – that’s inflation for you!

At the time many people supposed that the smallest British bird was chosen for the reverse of the smallest British coin. But that is not the case as the goldcrest is our smallest bird.

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Is it a bird? Is it a plane?

Image of the day – 89

Image of the day – 2

The Sopwith Pup

The navy and the army (the Royal Flying Corp was part of the army) ordered numbers of the planes and they served well until superseded.

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Image of the day – 151

What’s in an image? Sometimes quite a lot, more than meets the eye. I’m posting an image every few days.

This lovely old aeroplane is a Sopwith Pup, as used by the Royal Flying Corp during the First World War. Sopwith was a major British aircraft manufacturer of the day. This aircraft is still flying from time to time in England where it’s based at Old Warden Airfield, itself a survivor of the First World War. This particular aircraft was built after the war and modified back to the fighter configuration.

In the photo the engine is being tested after maintenance, so a couple of side panels have been removed for inspection. The propeller was spinning, you can see the motion blur in the image.

Here’s the same aircraft in action.

Design and construction

Based on a smaller, earlier aircraft, Sopwith designed the larger Pup as a fighter in 1915 with the first prototype appearing in 1916. Both the navy and the army (the Royal Flying Corp was part of the army) ordered numbers of the planes and they served well until superseded and transferred for training purposes as newer, more effective fighting planes rapidly evolved.

This aircraft was much lighter than its German counterparts. It could take off and land on grass surfaces, in quite short distances. The Pup was very manoeuvrable, had a tight turning circle, and a high service ceiling for those times.

The Pups were replaced with Sopwith Camels during 1917.

Old Warden Aerodrome

Old Warden was a First World War air station, as already mentioned. It lies just north of Shefford and south-east of Bedford. Today it’s the home of the Shuttleworth collection of old aircraft and motor vehicles, a very fine and famous collection with a long history, originally as a private collection, but now open to the public. The old aircraft are frequently rolled out, and often one or more are performing in the air.

Everything that’s not active on a particular day is stored in a series of First World War hangers and those are all open to visit as a museum with informative explanatory material on display as well. There is active maintenance and restoration going on, and some of that may be on display too.

If you’re interested in this sort of thing, and are in the area, I highly recommend popping over for a visit.

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Nearly a year ago now…

War, survival, victory

Pasqueflower

Plants are available from garden centres and will grow happily in your garden given the right conditions. These plants belong to the buttercup family and are near relatives of the anemones.

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Image of the day – 150

What’s in an image? Sometimes quite a lot, more than meets the eye. I’m posting an image every few days.

This makes it three in a row for flower images. The pasqueflower (Pulsatilla vulgaris) grows wild in the Cotswolds on dry grassland areas open to full sunshine. It was once quite common, and although not actually threatened, is something of a rarity these days. There’s a Cotwold dry valley site near Cirencester where there’s a reasonably large colony, but to keep the plants safe, the location is not advertised. However, plants are available from garden centres and will grow happily in your garden given the right conditions. These plants belong to the buttercup family and are near relatives of the anemones.

Protecting endangered or rare species (both plants and animals) is of ever growing importance. There are several ways species come under pressure and we’ll look at those first.

Challenges to survival

Habitat loss is the primary cause of decline for many plants, including the pasqueflower. Land improvement, especially the use of fertilisers to increase crop yields, is an issue for plants adapted to poorer soils.

Physical removal of plants or hunting of animals is an issue too. Most species can cope with limited amounts of removal, but if population levels fall drastically, there are real dangers. The dodo died out on the island of Mauritius following hunting by European sailors. The flightless birds were unafraid as they had no natural predators, so they didn’t run away from their hunters. They were welcome fresh meat after weeks at sea on salt beef.

Ecological damage also causes harm, sometimes unexpectedly. After the dodo became extinct, a tree species mysteriously stopped reproducing. Gradually the population was reduced to only older trees. It turned out that the fruit contained toughly seeds with tough shells that would only germinate after passing through the gut of a dodo. Links like this between organisms can be critical.

Climate change is another danger, especially for plants. If climate change is slow organisms can change the range of places where they grow; if it’s fast, animals might adapt, but some plants may need an entire year to move a few metres.

Pollution is a further serious issue and can exacerbate the other problems already mentioned above.

Diseases of both plants and animals can become pandemic and risk extinction, especially when populations are already stressed by droughts, loss of habitat, or pollution.

Attitudes

Given all of the above, what should our attitude be to the current situation?

Some people will shrug their shoulders. – Perhaps they don’t understand the peril the world faces, or they don’t understand the need to help the natural world recover. Or maybe they just feel there is nothing they can do about it.

Others may understand enough of the science to realise there is a danger, to see that it can be reduced (if not entirely averted), and to take some personal actions to help.

Biologists, ecologists, nature enthusiasts, and climate scientists understand only too well what is happening. Usually, they will be trying to communicate the issues whenever and wherever they can.

Followers of Jesus, and people of other faiths will often understand that we should do all we can to protect this world we live in, and live in ways that will reduce the damage.

All of the groups mentioned here are either responding already, or need help to see and understand that the natural world needs our help and that every single one of us can make a difference. Education and commitment are the way forward, so please share this post with anyone you know who might be influenced by it.

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Image of the day – 60

My Father is a farmer

The heart of a tulip

I worked as a professional botanist when I was in my twenties and thirties, studying and publishing scientific papers on pollen and pollination.

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Image of the day – 149

What’s in an image? Sometimes quite a lot, more than meets the eye. I’m posting an image every few days.

I have another flower image for you today. This one shows the centre of a tulip flower in more detail than you might normally see. I’ve placed the centre of the flower towards the lower right of the frame so you can see more of the petals towards the upper left. You’ll notice that the petals are yellow near the centre, orange a bit further out, and pink further out again. What a beautiful combination!

The reproductive parts

Tulips are monoecious, a botanical term that means each plant produces both male and female reproductive tissues. The female part of a tulip flower has three stigmas in the centre. Unlike animals and some more primitive plants, the male reproduction process doesn’t involve motile sperm. Instead, pollen is released as a yellow dust, sometimes dry and carried by the wind but in the case of tulips and many other plants, sticky and carried by flying insects.

Flowers work as attractive beacons for pollinating insects, they’re usually brightly coloured, are often fragrant which helps insects detect them from a distance, and provide food – sugary nectar at the base of the petals, and pollen. Bees collect the pollen and carry it back to the hive as a protein rich food for their larvae. Plants produce more pollen than necessary and can spare some in return for the pollen transport provided by the bees. The pollen grains stick to the pollinating insects and as they visit flower after flower, some of the pollen is transferred from the anthers of one plant to the stigmas of another. This cross-pollination is exactly what the plant needs for the female tissues to develop further and produce viable seeds.

Tulips have five of these anthers, and if you enlarge the image and peer closely you can see yellow dust clinging to them. That dust is the pollen.

Intricate

It’s an astonishingly intricate process in which the plants depend on the insects and the insects depend on the plants. I could go into much greater detail; I worked as a professional botanist when I was in my twenties and thirties, studying and publishing scientific papers on pollen and pollination. Maybe some time I’ll write a bit more about that.

Next time you see tulips in the park, at a florist or supermarket, or in your garden – just think about the intricate interactions going on right there!

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Image of the day – 93

Meadow cranesbill

Large White

A glorious colour contrast

The climate has changed dramatically in the past, but it has always happened slowly, usually taking tens of thousands of years.

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Image of the day – 148

What’s in an image? Sometimes quite a lot, more than meets the eye. I’m posting an image every few days.

Here are two flowering plants with colours on opposite sides of the colour wheel. They’re very distant relatives; the yellow Narcissus (daffodil) is a monocot, the purply-blue Streptocarpus is a dicot. You can’t get much further apart in the family tree of flowering plants, but they look well together.

These two plants simply could not survive in one another’s home territory. The Narcissus needs plenty of moisture, produces leaves in late winter, is not troubled by frost, and flowers in the springtime. It also appreciates some bright sunshine.. Streptocarpus cannot take any degree of frost at all, and is touchy about water. Not enough and it will wilt and die, too much and… wait for it… It will wilt and die! It likes the soil to dry out completely and then have a real drenching, but do not water it again until the soil is really dry. It likes shade or partial shade, but not full sunshine.

Adaptation

The fact that these two plants like such different conditions is nothing to do with the fact they are very distant relatives. All plants growing in the wild are well adapted to the soil type, climate, other plants and animals of the places they inhabit. Natural selection over many, many generations will ensure that this is so. It’s only the survivors that will have a chance to produce seeds. By definition, the next generation comes only from the plants that survived the current generation. Survivors thrive; the rest die out.

Climate change

And this in turn is one of the challenges life faces in the changing climate we are creating. The climate has changed dramatically in the past, but it has always happened slowly, usually taking tens of thousands of years to shift from ice age to interglacial, or from desert to semi-desert to grassland to forest. A species may seem to move north or south, east or west, remaining in the climate zone that suits it best. But what is actually happening is that as a climate zone shifts geographically, conditions become less suitable in one area and more hospitable in another. Perhaps the species manages to survive a little further north than before but struggles and dies on the southern edge of its old range.

This process takes time, but the global warming trends we see due to greenhouse gas releases are many times faster than any natural climate change. Populations cannot respond fast enough under such circumstances; they go into decline and die out – the species may then become extinct, gone forever.

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Climate change – What can I do?

Tag: Photos

A bird called Jenny

ad hoc post – 1

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The Sopwith Pup

Image of the day – 151

Design and construction

Old Warden Aerodrome

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Useful? Interesting?

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Pasqueflower

Image of the day – 150

Challenges to survival

Attitudes

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Useful? Interesting?

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The heart of a tulip

Image of the day – 149

The reproductive parts

Intricate

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Useful? Interesting?

You might like these posts too…

A glorious colour contrast

Image of the day – 148

Adaptation

Climate change

See also:

Useful? Interesting?

You might like these posts too…