Vagueness and the Aftermath - A sporadic diary

[kinboshi]

Glad you liked it Tom.  I love Brian Cox's enthusiasm, he's like a kid in a sweet shop at times!

I hadn't realised just how important a role the magnetic field around the earth plays in keeping the earth inhabitable for us peeps.  Every day's a school day.

[12barblues]

The geological record shows that the polarity of the Earth's magnetic field has changed many times, i.e. the north pole  becomes the south pole and vice versa.  The mechanism is, as far as I am aware, totally unknown and therefore unpredictable.  Presumably, at some point during the change, the magnetic field is zero and we will be totally exposed to the vast amount of electromagnetic radiation bombarding the Earth.

We're all doomed, dooooooomed!

[TightEnd]

The mystery of how 100 starlings came to be found dead in a grandmother's front garden may have been solved today - with a less than sinister explanation.

At first glance the deaths of the birds, found with blood oozing from their beaks and broken wings, appeared decidedly spooky.

The grisly deaths had echoes of horror films after nurse Jackie Wright said her neighbours had watched the birds simply fall out of the sky en masse.


An RSPCA Animal Welfare Officer poses with a number of the dead birds: Experts say they may have taken a 'wrong turn' while being hunted

But experts have come up with a less supernatural explanation - the swooping starlings may simply have taken a wrong turn and crashed.

An RSPCA expert said the case in Coxley, Somerset, remained a mystery, but said the 'most plausible' theory was that the birds were being hunted by a bird of prey.

In their efforts to escape it is believed they may have veered the wrong way, crashing to the ground and leaving them with broken beaks and wings and internal injuries.

Post mortem examinations on the feathered corpses found no evidence suggesting they had been poisoned and the flock did not hit power lines, the RSPCA said.
dead birds

An RSPCA animal welfare officer was called in by Julie Knight to collect the dozens of dead birds from her garden in Coxley, Somerset

Speaking after she returned home to find her garden littered with bodies, Julie said: 'It was like something out of an horror film - like Hitchcock's The Birds - it was absolutely terrifying.

'The sky was raining starlings. One of my neighbours saw them. They seemed to just fall out of the sky. About 70 were dead straight away.

'We called out the RSPCA and their animal welfare officer took a few away in cages and euthanised the rest.

'There must have been over 100 birds in total. I've been a country girl all my life and I've never seen anything like it.'
Julie Knight

Nurse Julie Knight said discovering the birds was like something from a horror film

RSPCA spokesman Helen Cohen said the cause of the incident was 'still a mystery'.

She said: 'We were informed that a lady had reported many dead or dying starlings on her property. This is obviously an extremely unusual occurrence.

'Tests were carried out on some of the birds and they were found to have physical injuries but we could find no evidence of any health issues which could explain what had happened.

'We know they did not strike power cables because they would have fallen directly beneath and there are none nearby.

'The only possible explanation we can think of is that something has caused the flock to suddenly change their direction of flight and caused them to hit the ground.

'It could have been that a bird of prey could have scared them into doing this, but it is still a mystery really.'

The uncanny scene in Mrs Knight's garden mirrored that of an episode of cult Channel 5 hit Flash forward, in which a flock of crows falls out of the sky in Somalia.

Similar incidents of flocks of birds plummeting to earth have been reported all over the world, with pesticides and collisions sometimes being blamed.

Lloyd Scott, from the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, said: 'This is one of the oddest things I've ever heard about.

'We've certainly never come across anything similar.'

[rex008]

For those who like looking at the British countryside, Google street view has now been rolled out to 95% of the UK's roads. So you can go and look at (eg) Belvoir Castle, without shifting your arse off your seat. Which is nice.

I can't imagine the amount of storage space this takes up. T'Internet can be seriously cool sometimes.

[RED-DOG]

Yesterday I was mostly working with the village environment group. Today I will mostly be doing more of the same.

I enjoy working with the group, it means I get to mess about outdoors, improve the environment, and build up some good karma all at the same time.

We're all  volunteers, so instead of money, we take our payment in the form of bacon sandwiches and cups of tea. (Yesterday, I awarded myself a huge bonus butty)

I also enjoy being the youngest member of the team. (Ave age, 68) They refer to me as "The Kid"


Today, we hope to finish laying one of those underground paths that are designed to let the grass grow through. It should be great when it's done. It will wind through a little avenue of trees that we planted just for that purpose, and it will have a couple of benches where solitary people can sit and contemplate life, or courting couples can sit and contemplate each other.


Yesterday we cut and rolled the turf, and removed about 5'' of topsoil.

Click to see full-size image.

Today we will (Hopefully) backfill with a mixture of soil and sharp sand....

Click to see full-size image.

....and then lay the sections of path (It's like an interlocking plastic grid)....

Click to see full-size image.

......before replacing the turf and compressing the whole lot together with a whacker plate.


More pics later if I survive.  (I bet you can't wait)



 




 

[RED-DOG]

On Wednesday, I was in Birmingham and I took this snap of some railway arch businesses.

Almost every town has some, and 9 times out of 10, the boss is a real character. I used to love to hawking underneath the arches.

I may start a collection of railway arch business photographs. Please feel free to contribute.

Click to see full-size image.

   

[RED-DOG]

They don't make em like this any more.

[TheChipPrince]

I've just taken this off Google Street View of the ones I pass on my way home past Chester Racecourse...  The track is directly where we looking, if we could jump 20 feet we'd have a great view!

[RED-DOG]

That one's going straight into the collection.

[RED-DOG]

[RED-DOG]

[Claw75]

one of my favourite spots in London - the arches under Charing Cross at Villiers Street.

Click to see full-size image.

[RED-DOG]

Atmospheric.

I love the cobbles.

[RED-DOG]

The wild bunch.

Click to see full-size image.

[RED-DOG]

It looked like a daunting task from this end, especially when it started raining.

Click to see full-size image.