No post last week as the weather was so bad I took not one photo (well, ok, I took one or two but I had very little to say).
Missed this last night, I couldn't cope with the 2.30am start. However, Owen has kindly made it available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCpd8Kz07Gg - actually he pre-recorded the show as he was a bit nervous. Advance Base Christmas gig from Owen's basement. You can donate here: www.paypal.me/advancebase If you are unfamiliar with Advance Base the best place to start is with the Animal Companionship album, you can buy it (yes, purchase music so our musicians can keep going) here: https://advancebase.bandcamp.com/album/animal-companionship
Before being Advance Base Owen was Casiotone for the Painfully Alone. There are CFTPA songs in the set. Owen is one of my favourite musicians, someone who is an astute observer of the human condition. Lo-fi brilliance.
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| Click the album cover for the link. |
Louise bought us a visit to the O2 and the Pete Tong gig. We had a load of connection issues, due to the offspring watching a movie... however, it was good and it wasn't. Somehow for me despite the great sound, and music I like, it seemed kind of wrong with the orchestra, I couldn't get into it anyway. Preferred Owen in his basement.
We went back to the Links beach today, I stayed there whilst Louise and the hound tramped up Marwick Head.
I took lots of pictures of waders in very poor light. Some came out ok I think ISO 1600 which shows the difference between the Olympus and the Canon.
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| Be still whilst the world rushes by. |
Sunday was better weather and M and I, walked up to the Kitchener memorial. Took lots of pictures of waves and threw most away as usual.
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| Kitchener memorial, a somewhat tainted monument. |
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| A lot of very young people died amongst the 736 when the Hampshire went down with the notorius colonialist. |
A record number of Chaffinch in the garden today, at least for winter, 23. Seven Goldfinch yesterday. I was looking at my data for Goldfinch and for Twite, two species that on the home patch (approx 1km) have shared very different fortunes. When we came here in 2009, Twite was quite a common bird to my recall, Goldfinch a scarce one. These graphs show what has happened since 2013 (data prior to then was not kept so carefully).
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| Goldfinch records per year 2013 - 2020. |
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| Twite records per year 2013 - 2020. The scales are different though so caution with the data. |
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| Three of yesterday's seven Goldfinch, they've been present pretty much all winter so far. |
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| Lastly, Sunday evening and an attempt at photographing the conjunction, Saturn (top) and Jupiter, apparently over Hoy, from Harray, West Mainland. I love the wild Christmas lights lower left. |
3 comments:
I never knew that Kitchener met his end in Orkney. Fascinating stuff.
Yes, the Hampshire hit a mine, it is believed. Just 12 survivors. The wall with the names is a recent thing. At work we made a recording of all the names of the dead being read out and this was played over wee speakers as folk walked up to the monument for the commemmoration event. I should have dug it out and put it with the blog post.
Wikipedia says he "he caught pneumonia while ascending in a balloon", which seems somewhat improbable. I wonder what the true story of that was.
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