Category Archives: photography

memes, personal, photography

[31/52] Mother at Nearly 96

[31/52] Mother at Nearly 96 by kcm76
[31/52] Mother at Nearly 96, a photo by kcm76 on Flickr.

Week 31 entry for 52 weeks challenge.

This is my mother who will be is 96 in October enjoying the summer in the gardens of her care home yesterday. She spends quite a bit of time just sitting quietly under the trees watching the wildlife; apparently in the Spring there were hares running around the lawns quite oblivious to her presence. OK she’s very frail and needs a zimmer frame, but she’s mentally all with it and can still draw and paint and read. And although she’s very deaf with her hearing aids she can still hear the birdsong.

And yes, that’s Noreen in the background who will be 60 also in October.

natural history, personal, photography, science

Skills I Do Not Have, No. 253 of 44975

Common Wasp, Vespula vulgaris by kcm76
Common Wasp, Vespula vulgaris, a photo by kcm76 on Flickr.

I present you with the Common Wasp, Vespula vulgaris.

I found this critter dead on the bedroom floor this morning and in picking it up for recycling I realised just what stunning creatures wasps are. We so often think of them a nuisanceful pests whereas they’re amazingly engineered and even in death almost beautiful. So I had to photograph it – click the links below for larger views.

Image 1 (top left) shows just how hairy they are when we think of them as bald. And you can just see the tiny, shiny bulge of the top of the wasp’s compound eye.
Image 2 (top right) shows some of the mazing engineering: just look at the hooks and barbs on the legs – just what is needed for gripping caterpillar/insect prey and crawling over plants.
Image 3 (bottom left) shows the face and jaws which are the characteristics that identify this as Vespula vulgaris rather than any of the other UK species.
Image 4 shows something I’d never realised before (although my book shows it clearly) and that’s that wasps have two pairs of wings: look carefully and you can see in front of the large main wing a smaller wing. No wonder they’re such skilled flyers.

These are tiny, amazingly delicate yet robust insects. This individual, a worker, is just 12mm long with a wingspan of about 22mm. In her lifetime she may well have “salvaged” numerous flies, caterpillars etc. as food for the next generation of grubs – without wasps we would be knee deep in creepy crawlies.

This was taken under my desk lamp (hence the slight colour cast) with my point-an-shoot Lumic TZ8 – which is amazing for macros like this as it will focus down to just a couple of centimetres (much better than my dSLR)!

And as I was taking these I thought: how the hell do you go about dissecting something this small? Clearly scientists have done so, but it’s a skill I don’t have and I’m not dexterous enough to ever conceive how to do it! Amazing insects and amazing scientific work to dissect one!

Montage created with fd’s Flickr Toys

books, medical, memes, personal, photography, pleasures, science, topographical

Listography: What I want to do this Summer

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Keith at Reluctant Housedad is running Listography again this week while Kate Takes 5 has a break and we’ve been asked to say five things I want to do this summer.

Hmmm … well .. I thought summer was over. Wimbledon has finished, the first blackberries have been picked and it’s raining. Sounds like the end of summer to me. 🙂

But in the spirit of beating my brans out (‘cos I actually found this hard!) here is my rather pathetic list …

Run a Successful Conference. For the Anthony Powell Society; at the beginning of September. Yep, I’m organising it (again — that only five of the last six!). It certainly promises to be good, but you never know until you get there if some joker or other is going to be put into play. So let’s hope all the speakers turn up; the venue works OK and the events all run smoothly.

Kill off my Depression. I’ve had depression for far far too long. It’s high time it b*ggered off for good. It’s certainly better than it was; I’ve halved my dose of anti-depressants this Spring and the hypnotherapy seems to be doing some good. Now for the remainder, please!

While we’re at it can I also Get Rid of my Hayfever once and for all. It had really p’ed me off more than usual this Summer as I’ve been having really itchy, watering eyes despite my usual anti-histamines. After 50-odd years enough is enough. Thank you!

Visit Kew Gardens at least once on a nice day. Kew is one of my favourite places, but despite living only a few miles away we get there all too seldom. At least one visit is a must this summer.


Prospect Cottage, Dungeness, home of the late Derek Jarman.
© Copyright Dr Keith C Marshall, 2010.
Finally we need a Holiday. But it ain’t going to happen until after the conference in September. Does that still count? We’re going off to wallow in decent B&B in New Romney, Kent. The Romney Marsh area is another of my favourite places: wide open spaces; Dungeness; seaside; medieval churches; RH&D Railway. And I have ancestors from New Romney and around the edges of the Romney Marsh, so we’ll be doing some family history while we’re there too. Mix and match depending on the weather, but get away and get some good sea air — and even better if it is warm and sunny.

Will that do?

environment, photography, science, thoughts

Oceanic Truths

A short but very sharp posting from Sheril Kirshenbaum on Wired today points out what many of us already know …

Oceans are Totally F*cked


So what can we do about it? Well you’ll point out that what I do as an individual isn’t going to make a whole bunch of difference. Which is true if I’m the only one taking action. But if we all make changes then it will help bring pressure to bear where it hurts: big business!

So what do we do? It’s a complex problem and there is no simple answer. However the more of the following as you can do the better:

  1. Reduce your dependence on oil. Walk, don’t take the car. Don’t jet around the world on holiday, especially long haul. Fight against excess, especially plastic, packaging. Buy locally grown produce wherever you can to reduce food miles. You already know all these things make sense. And they all help the oceans.
    The less oil we use, the less is transported around the world in mega-tankers, which run on … yes … oil (often horrible crude bunker oil, at that). And the fewer environmentally damaging oil spills there are. And the less off-shore drilling there is. (Yes, that may mean nuclear power; but that’s an argument for another day.)
  2. Buy only fish which is farmed or sustainably caught and which is as locally produced as possible. We have to stop over-fishing. As well as reducing food miles.
  3. Reduce your garbage output. A vast amount of our garbage gets dumped at sea!
  4. Reduce your wastewater output; and clean up wastewater as much as possible. Yes, that means sewage, amongst other things. As with garbage it is scandalous the amount of dirty/polluted wastewater that gets dumped in the oceans.
  5. We also need to reduce agricultural run-off. That means reducing pesticide, herbicide and fertiliser use, and also preventing animal slurry getting into waterways. Which in turn means more sustainable land management. Going organic isn’t necessarily the whole, or even the right, answer; but it should help.
  6. If you’re an aquarist, don’t keep marine fish which haven’t been captive bred. Catching marine fish from the wild is extremely poorly regulated (unlike the trade in wild-caught freshwater Amazonian fishes). Fishing (for the aquatics trade and for food) does enormous damage to tropical reef environments because of the methods used.
  7. And anything else you can do to improve air quality and reduce climate change will help too. A large part of the problems the oceans face is from acidification, which is caused by pollutants and increased carbon dioxide levels. And if we can slow down climate warming, we’ll likely slow down the rate at which the polar ice caps are receding too.
  8. And finally, support marine nature reserves, conservation areas and scientific efforts to better understand the oceans and their biodiversity.

Notice, however I am not saying be totally organic, don’t eat fish, stop using a car or an aeroplane, and grow all your own food. Yes, it would be great (for the environment anyway) if we could do all these things. But let’s be realistic, it isn’t practical and it won’t happen. But we do have to reduce all the harmful things we do and the more you can do the better.

Some of you won’t think about any of this, and won’t bother with any of it, which morally I find inexcusable. But it’s your karma. Many will already be doing something. But which of us couldn’t do a bit more. It all helps. I at least would like there still to be an inhabitable world for your grandchildren. And I think I have a moral obligation to do something the help ensure there is.