The Magpie's Hoard

A surprise discovery

This afternoon I picked up some of my late father's books that my mother is donating to charity. I've been ferrying small batches of them to our local Oxfam bookshop over the past few months.

Imagine my surprise when I opened one of books to remove a bookmark and found a picture of my dad at work!

The book in question was The Illustrated Guide to Country Towns and Villages of Britain published by the Automobile Association in 1985. My father's picture appears in a section at the back headed "Aspects of Country Life: Crafts that live on".

Bugs Britannica

Following the success of Flora Britannica and Birds Britannica, Richard Mabey and Peter Marren have begun compiling Bugs Britannica:

Bugs Britannica will be a nationwide chronicle of bug life in the 21st century. It will look at why bugs matter to us and why we care about them. It will record our continuing love-hate relationship with small life and how it influences our life and times, in a word, our culture. We want to find out what meaning we attach to bugs, what uses and entertainments we have made of them, how they inspire us whether in poetry, prose, film or song, and what we do to attract and conserve them.

The authors are appealing for people to send in examples of bug-lore:

We want to know about your encounters with bug life. Do you garden with bugs in mind, perhaps with bee-friendly flowers or a pond? Are there local names or customs involving particular insects or other invertebrates? Have you ever been inspired by bug activity, whether by a spider spinning its web, or a grasshopper chirping in the long grass, or the homely shape and colours of a bumblebee?

You can contribute by leaving a comment on the Bugs Britannica blog. There's also an article about the project in the August edition of BBC Wildlife Magazine.

The Modern Boy

I spent yesterday afternoon helping my mother with the daunting task of sorting out my late father's papers and paraphernalia. We started with the small mountain of stuff that he had amassed in the corner of their house he used as an office-cum-studio. Amongst other things we found dozens of notebooks crammed with notes and sketches on sundry topics: church architecture, anatomy, calligraphy, archaeology, etc.

It soon became apparent that my father had been reluctant to throw things away throughout his 86 years. I even came across a letter dated 8th November 1933 from offices of The Modern Boy. It seems that my father had sent them a photograph of a model biplane he had built (I hasten to add that this was long before the advent of the Airfix kit).

Dad was just 13 when he built the model plane. Within three years he had graduated from model-making to stone-carving. He was inspired by the sculpture of Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, a prodigious talent who died aged 23 in the trenches at Neuville St. Vaast.

Earlier this year I visited an exhibition at the Graves Art Gallery titled We the Moderns, which features a selection of pieces by Gaudier-Brzeska.  I was amazed by the quality and quantity of work that he produced during his brief but remarkable career - no wonder my father found him an inspiration!

I plan to write more about my dad's life and work over the next few months.

In Print

Three of my orchid photos have been used to illustrate an article in the September edition of The Maltby Mail.

The newspaper found my pictures by searching Flickr.

I'm afraid I didn't get paid for the use of my pictures, but it's nice to see them in print anyway!

Reds & Greys

There's an interesting article by Professor Stephen Harris in the September edition of BBC Wildlife Magazine.

In "The Red Has Lost - So Accept The Grey", Professor Harris argues that the efforts to control the spread of the introduced grey squirrel (Sciurus carolinensis) have been totally ineffective and we should adopt a new strategy to conserve the remaining UK populations of the indigenous red squirrel (S. vulgaris).

Pseuds Corner

Issue 7 of Olympus E-magazine arrived this morning. It includes a feature on a young Norwegian photographer, Jens Haugen, who says

"The traditionally perceived roles of men and women no longer exist. and as they struggle to find their new identities, relations between the sexes have turned very icy..."

To illustrate this point, he presents a photo-montage of a naked woman wielding a chainsaw in a forest of giant broccoli, titled 'The Struggle of the Sexes'.

Later in the article, Jens poses the question

"What has happened to the carefree laughter of children?"

Sorry mate, it's been drowned-out by the hearty guffawing of grown-ups.

Here comes the flood

"Sheffield’s five valleys carried their rivers along, now feeding the mills and wheels which in turn fed the industries, the grindstones, tilt hammers and other machinery which helped make Sheffield the steel capital of the world."

That's an extract from the prologue of 'Flood Waters', a new novel by Lett Rowe. It's based on the Great Sheffield Flood of 1864, which claimed several hundred lives. Chapter one of the novel can be downloaded free-of-charge from www.syci.org.uk/floodwaters.

On this day in 1791

When shall we 3 meet again
Originally uploaded by JJay

Last Saturday I picked up a book called "Gilbert White's Journals" in our local Oxfam shop for £1.99. It's a transcription of the diaries that the Reverend Gilbert White kept from 1768 until his death in 1793. He used some of them as reference material whilst writing his bestseller "The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne".

Here is the entry for 14th September 1791:

Hop-picking goes on without the least interruption. Stone-curlews cry late in the evenings. The congregating flocks of hirundines on the church and tower are very beautiful, and amusing! When they fly-off altogether from the roof, on any alarm, they quite swarm in the air. But soon they settle in heaps, and preening their feathers, and lifting up their wings to admit the sun, seem highly to enjoy the warm situation. Thus they spend the heat of the day, preparing for their emigration, and, as it were consulting when and where they are to go. The flight about the church seems to consist chiefly of house-martins, about 400 in number: but there are other places of rendezvous about the village frequented at the same time. The swallows seem to delight more in holding their assemblies on trees.

"When Autumn scatters his departing gleams,
Warn'd of approaching winter gathered play
The Swallow people; and toss'd wide around
O'er the calm sky in convolution swift,
The feather'd eddy floats: rejoicing once
Ere to their wintry slumbers they retire,
In clusters clung beneath the mouldring bank,
And where, unpierced by frost, the cavern sweats.
Or rather into warmer climes convey'd,
With other kindred birds of season, there
They twitter chearful, till the vernal months
Invite them welcome back: - for thronging now
Innumerous wings are in commotion all."

I'm fairly sure that the poem is an excerpt from "Autumn" by James Thomson. It refers to the uncertainty about where summer migrants, such as swallows, spend the winter.

Wild Lives

This morning I received my bimonthly copy of British Wildlife Magazine. On the cover there's a brilliant photo of hares boxing in the snow by Richard Revels; inside there's a diverse range of articles, two of which are as much about people as they are about wildlife.

"Extreme Butterfly Collecting" by Matthew Oates is a biography of Ian Robert Penicuick Heslop (1904-70), a splendid example of the old school of eccentric naturalists. In the company of characters such as Baron de Worms and Colonel Labouchere, he risked life and limb to amass a collection of Britain's rarest butterflies. In 1953 he proudly announced, "By a coincidence I have caught exactly as many purple emperors as I have shot elephants".

By contrast, in his "Twitcher in the Swamp" column, Peter Marren offers a scathing critique of the BBC's recent series British Isles - A Natural History. He writes, "Deep down, the telly people think that nature is boring. Or, to be more accurate, they are convinced that the public thinks so." This is why, he claims, natural history programmes have become more and more gimmicky and obsessed with technology. I found myself nodding in agreement as I read the piece: the best natural history programmes show that nature is endlessly fascinating in its own right, without resorting to technical gimmickry.

Earlier in the week, I found myself watching a re-run of Ape-Man on UKTV History. This series marks, for me, the point at which the BBC's documentary output started to go seriously astray. They took a fascinating subject, human origins, and made a programme that is virtually unwatchable. Information is delivered in the briefest of snippets, punctuated by doom-laden chords and blurred, oddly-coloured footage of chimpanzees. It's as if the programme-makers thought, "People won't be interested in this, so we need to find a way of making it more dramatic." That seems a very strange view point for a documentary-maker. Surely it's better to assume that your audience will be interested provided you explain the subject clearly.

I've just started reading How to Be a Bad Birdwatcher by Simon Barnes. His philosophy is that studying the natural world, even in a casual and non-scientific way, can be a life-affirming experience. As he says, "Look out of the window. See a bird. Enjoy it. Congratulations. You are a bad birdwatcher."

I couldn't agree more with Simon's philosophy. Trudging home through the snow on Thursday afternoon, I spotted a starling singing its heart out on a TV aerial. Despite the gloomy winter weather, this little bird was full of the joys of spring: chest puffed out, wings fluttering, throat quivering. My spirits were instantly lifted.

About a year ago I took the decision to become more involved with the Sorby Natural History Society. Although I had been a member (on and off) for about 30 years, I hadn't attended many of the society's meetings until last year. Sorby has many experts in different fields of natural history. They are enthusiastic amateurs from all walks of life and, as far I know, none of them has ever caught a purple emperor and/or shot an elephant!

Some of the Sorby's most active members are octogenarians, which demonstrates that pursuing a lifelong interest in the natural world can  help keep the mind sharp and the body lithe. I only hope I can keep pace and stay the course.

I'll end with a memorable quote from Life on Air by David Attenborough:

"I know of no pleasure deeper than that which comes from contemplating the natural world and trying to understand it.”

You're not wrong there, mate!