Bills Posts

OK, I know the header picture isn’t a sparrow. It’s the same starling that visited us when we were sat at Pebbles. It was so close to us, and completely untroubled. Lovely.

We have plenty of food in the garden, I know this because there is food left at the end of the day. It looks like we have both tree and house sparrows visiting us. There were at least a dozen lined up on the fence today, with more in the bushes. But, they are both nervous and foolhardy. It seems to take them a long time to head for the bird table and the feeders. But when they do it’s as a hoard.

We now have three feeders in place, that can each accommodate two birds. They have no hesitation in pushing each other off the perch. They seem to always come in to the garden from the same direction, the east. I wonder if they move from feeding point to point. They are sometimes coordinated with the Starlings. I think it’s them which always clear out the mealworms. Since I put the anti-pigeon measure in place, that seems to have stopped them. They are still picking up the spilled food off the ground. I don’t mind them having that.

We occasionally get visited by a couple of magpies. They seem to spend most of their time strutting around, with the occasional dash to the table, they don’t say long though.

We went through quite a long period of not having birds visiting us. It’s difficult to say how much pleasure we get now. I am determined to do what I can to keep them coming to us.

This is the Bell Tower of Trinity Church in Gosport. Trinity Church has an organ that was played by Handel, in 1747, the church bought the organ for £300, as best as I can make it that’s not far short of £50,000 in todays money. This brief snippet is totally unrelated to the rest of today’s post.

You will know, as a regular reader of this blog that I have a bit of a thing about having a model railway. I am going to start very small, learning how to do things, and will hopefully get the skills to do what I want. I have all sorts of ideas as to how I want to do things. I’d love a mechanical signalling layout, I really do like the old semaphore signals, I think mechanical linkages from the switch to the signal would probably be too much, but I would definitely like to have a panel with the layout printed on to it with the signals and points represented by switches or buttons. Since I was a kid, I wanted a panel with switches and buttons – at the time, I really didn’t care if the buttons or switches actually did anything, but that was what I wanted. Now however I see a way of having that, and it being useful.

My first layout, as I’ve said is going to be very basic, a proof of concept, but I have greater ambitions. In 2016, I laid out in one of my journals an L shaped layout, where at one end I would have a functioning port, with ships at berth, container cranes that would be able to pick up containers of the ship and drop them on the train. The train would start off and the middle part of the layout would be a country scene and at the other end would be an industrial/urban scene.

Now, here’s the other reason why I want to do this, and this is the secret; not an earth shattering one, but I don’t think I have ever talked about this; I want to photograph it. I’ve been practicing;

Now, I do have a problem; I want to work in N-Gauge. Do you know how small the figures are for N-Gauge? They are SMALL;

Now, they are going to be way to small to be practically useful, and devilishly awkward to focus in. Now, I did buy some figures that were for a much bigger gauge, this one gives you a comparison;

I must admit, that I felt a bit embarrassed about admitting this, but a recent search on google brought up a whole bunch of other people who are heavily involved in this, have a look at these as an example;

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=toy+photography&client=safari&hl=en-gb&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiykaSm9ejzAhUTecAKHTt0A1cQ_AUoAXoECAEQAw&biw=1121&bih=1473&dpr=2#imgrc=jA0CQd0PJ1V1FM

Now, I’m not doing this (I don’t think), but I have this thought of telling stories using the railway figures. Once again, I can’t explain why, it’s just one of those things I want to do.

I no longer have a secret!

In the days of film (yes, I know you can still shoot film, but unless you are a really serious devotee, why would you?) one of the biggest disappointments was getting your pictures or slides back and the image you really wanted is, for whatever reason blurred and in your eyes wasted and unusable.

It seems therefore, slightly unusual to deliberately introduce blurring in to your pictures. I haven’t really searched for abstract film photographers, but I bet they are there.

I think this is one area where digital really comes in to it’s own. You can play as much as you want without having to worry about cost.

Of course, you could go full abstract. This is a longer exposure with some more random movement. Actually, whilst this one is OK, I think I prefer the straight ICM pictures.

All of these pictures were taken in the area of the cockle ponds. Perhaps I should try some on the waterfront.

We were sat at a table when this little beaut decided to join us. Quite unconcerned by us. It sat there clearly waiting for us to provide it with some food. I most certainly have obliged if I had been able to, sadly I couldn’t. I think it got annoyed after about 5 minutes and decided to go elsewhere.

Apart from the delight of having it as company even if only for a short period of time, whilst it was here, it maintained an incessant chatter, the range of noises from small low frequency whistles through to loud shouts. It was incredible.

I don’t think I have been so close to a starling, they really are quite beautiful close up. It gives us a huge amount of pleasure to have a bird table which is popular to a large group of them. They turn up every day simply diving on to the table in large numbers, squabbling, showing appalling table manners, throwing seed all over the place.

Luckily, the seed the Starlings throw about mostly gets picked up by the pigeons and the sparrows, along with the occasional magpie. The small birds (I refer to all of them as Sparrows, but I know they aren’t, I need to learn a few of them all line up on the fence and take it in turns to have a go at the hanging feeders. Sometimes one of them will get impatient and will try to knock another of the perch. I could another feeder out – it is there but they are ignoring it. I think I may try a different place for it.

The small birds seem to turn up at the same time as the starlings such that I think they travel around together as a group. They are like little brown rockets, they absolutely whiz in to the fence line, and all line up, usually about six or seven, with a few others, slightly more cautious stay in the bush.

Out on another walk, all these gulls were lined up waiting for food. They seem completely unfazed by my walking within just a few feet of me.

What a delight.

Have a look at these;

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=kevin%27s+rambles

Kevins Rambles is very close to what I was thinking that I wanted to do. Also, he is getting about a fair bit – at least one of his videos is within a very few miles of me.

Now, for some reason, I find his videos difficult to watch. I need to stress, there is absolutely nothing wrong with them, they are very good. But they are difficult for me to watch. Now, I strongly suspect that I am jealous of this, and that is what is making it hard for me.

One thing is obvious, and that is Kevin is putting effort in to his videos. I’m not bothered about equipment, I have more than enough kit to do this, one issue is making the time – now this begins to sound like excuses to me, because If I wanted to, I could. Anything I say from here-on about not doing this is an excuse.

This absolutely one of the failing that bloggers I have looked on YouTube, and that is comparing yourself to others. I got in to a phase of thinking that nobody is going to want to watch me, when you compare me with Kevin. Is this an admission that I would like a larger audience – to be honest, if you are putting stuff either in a blog or on a service like YouTube then I would say wanting a larger audience is axiomatic. But my bottom line is that I am doing this because I want to. But why do I want to? It is a combination of doing so just for the heck of it, and because I do want to tell a story.

I need to stop comparing myself with others, stop prevaricating and get on with it!

I like to do a walk at lunchtime. If I am able to do a couple of miles I am happy. That gives me roughly 5 miles a day providing I can do both the morning and the lunchtime walk. If I am able to get out at the weekend as well, that is all to the good.

I have been walking up to the bridge over Forton lake around the small complex at the end of the bridge. That works out at about two miles. The bridge is closed at the moment;

They are doing repairs on the lifting mechanism. I hadn’t realised but apparently the bridge hasn’t lifted about the last five years. It’s lucky that there have been no reasonably sized boats trapped on the wrong side. The closure means that I am not getting near the two miles with the normal route. I had to change.

At the moment, I am doing a smaller loop than my normal morning walk, but following a similar path. It’s convenient because if I need to go in to the bank, as I did today, it is not really a diversion, merely a variation of the route. It also means that I can pop into any other shop if I need to. So, I’m not unhappy about the change, and will keep it as an option once the bridge has re-opened. I’d also like to see the bridge lifting as well.

Now that things are settling down, I may go back to my visit to Rowner Church. I have the Gosport Walking project to do there. I definitely do want to get my tripod strap problem sorted though. I haven’t for gotten about that.

For three mornings this week, the temperature for my morning walk has been in the mid-teens., although the threat of rain was there. This morning, it was noticeably colder, and quite windy.

It was a nice change to have a prominent moon, in fact, it was very bright. Strangely, I think that one of the reasons that it appeared So bright was that the lights on the Haslar Marina Pier Wall were all off. That was unusual in it’s own right.

I had an annoyance with the tripod. I use a cross bar that has the facility for four devices typically I have my anemometer and my phone mounted on the tripod, and whilst everything was OK for the first week, but this week, the screw holding the bar in place comes loose at the drop of a hat. Very annoying. Anyhow, I fixed the problem this morning by the judicious use of quite strong double sided tape that I have. It’ll be interesting to see how long that lasts, especially if it gets wet.

The problem there of course, is that it ties up a Quick Release Plate, so for what I consider to be a reasonable amount I’ve ordered two more QRP’s one for the Nikon, and one for the spotter scope, so that’s good. They will turn up sometime in the future.

I acknowledge slightly blurred, but this is microseconds after the Red Arrows went “Smoke-On” for their display over HMS Prince of Wales in Portsmouth Harbour. The Display was to mark a political event on board the carrier; The Pacific Future Forum.

The display was held under a low cloud base, 1200 feet. The Red Arrows have a low level display to take account of low cloud. Whilst it may not be as impressive as their normal high level display, it is still very good.

We were able to position ourselves a good way along the Haslar Marina Pier Wall, directly under the flight path for some of the passes.

It’s been a while since we last saw them perform. An absolute delight. We are both very pleased that we took the walk into town.

The cloud trail from their final pass a memory of a few exciting moments in the skies over Portsmouth.

I really enjoy my morning walks, honestly I do. What I don’t enjoy so much is getting up. This morning was a good example of this. Bed was really, seriously comfortable. I woke up at around 0500 with a cat trying to sit on my chest, I turfed him off by turning over, and promptly going back to sleep.

I normally get up at 0535, I woke again at 0550. I got up and looked at the weather, it had been raining, but I couldn’t tell if it was still, so I usually take a trip to the conservatory to find out if I can hear the rain falling on the roof. I couldn’t. I was running out of excuses to not go for a walk. I decided to bite the bullet, after all I have a perfectly good raincoat.

I follow pretty much the same route on my morning walks Monday to Friday. It’s about three miles and it takes me past places that I like to visit. That it is the same route is really irrelevant. I get to visit the water front and the cockle ponds.

The picture at the head is a light on the path toward the back of Trinity Church. The cloud under the light is the rain. It looks heavier than it was. The wind was getting up as well. To me, this is not bad weather, it’s weather with character. I enjoy walking in this kind of climate.

I have to say, that there was a couple of minutes of I am / I’m not going for a walk. But, once I had made the decision that I was going, there was no feeling of reluctance. It’s a bit what I call robot mode, I have a Sequence of events to get ready to leave the house that I tend to go through rather automatically, but once I get outside I look up to see what is happening, and that is the start of the walk. As usual, I enjoyed it.

When a meteor hits the atmosphere, it does so at typically speeds of 70 miles per second. While not relativistic (that is, comparable to the speed of light – 186,280 mps-ish) it is still pretty fast.

When this happens a lot of heat is generated. The object will typically be metallic. It’ll melt the rock, and it will shed particles. Those particles will fall to earth as a micrometeorite. The game is finding them.

These things are small, dust sized particles. But they have two important characteristics that aid in their discovery and identification;

• They are usually magnetic (although they can be glass) and
• They tend to be spherical,

Neither of these properties are exclusive to micrometeorites so a degree of close examination is required, and sometimes you have to resort to special means to confirm, involving Scanning Electron Microscopes.

So, how do you find the little beasties? Knowing where to look is useful. Any undisturbed flat space is good. Any flat Roofs of shops and factories. I haven’t had the bottle to approach any of these in Gosport so far, and there are a few.

You could start in the guttering of your conservatory, whilst the roof of your conservatory isn’t flat, and of course rain washes things, they can get trapped. One other important fact; it is averaged that one micrometeoroid per square metre per year. So there are a lot of them about. My next post on this topic will talk about the process of finding them and identifying them.