View allAll Photos Tagged Distinctive,
The distinctive front of former Sunderland Corporation Leyland Panther/Strachan 53 FBR53D is pictured at the Beamish Open Air Museum, during their 'Buses at Beamish' event, on July 16th 2022. Of more interest is the former Alexander Fife Leyland Tiger Cub/Alexander FPD225 RMS714 which was about to go out on the circuit.
The humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae) is a species of baleen whale. One of the larger rorqual species, adults range in length from 12–16 metres (39–52 ft) and weigh approximately 36,000 kilograms (79,000 lb). The humpback has a distinctive body shape, with unusually long pectoral fins and a knobbly head. An acrobatic animal known for breaching and slapping the water with its tail and pectorals, it is popular with whale watchers off the coasts of Australasia and the Americas. Males produce a complex song lasting 10 to 20 minutes, which they repeat for hours at a time. Its purpose is not clear, though it may have a role in mating.
Found in oceans and seas around the world, humpback whales typically migrate up to 25,000 kilometres (16,000 mi) each year. Humpbacks feed only in summer, in polar waters, and migrate to tropical or subtropical waters to breed and give birth in the winter. During the winter, humpbacks fast and live off their fat reserves. Their diet consists mostly of krill and small fish. Humpbacks have a diverse repertoire of feeding methods, including the bubble net feeding technique.
Like other large whales, the humpback was and is a target for the whaling industry. Once hunted to the brink of extinction, its population fell by an estimated 90% before a moratorium was introduced in 1966. While stocks have since partially recovered, entanglement in fishing gear, collisions with ships, and noise pollution continue to impact the 80,000 humpbacks worldwide.
A diligent California Towhee gathers hairs and fibers to build a cozy nest nearby. These adaptable birds are known for their distinctive 'chewink' call and their ability to thrive in urban environments.
Highsmith, Carol M.,, 1946-, photographer.
The remains of the distinctive neon sign for the old Distelfink drive-in restaurant in Heidelberg, a small Pennsylvania borough, near Gettysburg
2019-07-06.
1 photograph : digital, tiff file, color.
Notes:
Title, date and keywords based on information provided by the photographer.
Named after Heidelberg, Germany, the native home of a large share of the early settlers. The restaurant, which closed in 2011, borrowed its name from the Pennsylvania Dutch symbol for good fortune: a yellow finch. In its heyday, it welcomed buses full of patrons on their way to attractions throughout the area, including the nearby Gettysburg Battlefield, scene of the decisive battle of the U.S. Civil War of the 1860s.
Gift/purchase; with support of the Pew Charitable Trusts; 2019; (DLC/PP-2019:012)
Forms part of Carol M. Highsmith's America Project in the Carol M. Highsmith Archive.
Subjects:
America--Distelfink Drive-in--Distelfinks--Old neon signs
United States--Pennsylvania--Heildelberg.
Format: Digital photographs--Color--2010-2020.
Rights Info: No known restrictions on publication.
Repository: Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, D.C. 20540 USA, hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/pp.print
Part Of: Highsmith, Carol M., 1946- Carol M. Highsmith Archive. (DLC) 00650024
Higher resolution image is available (Persistent URL): hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/highsm.58838
Call Number: LC-DIG-highsm- 58838
This distinctive 1.5-story residence stands as one of Pacific Grove’s larger early homes, showcasing a strong Queen Anne influence through its intact architectural features and period craftsmanship. The steeply pitched gable roof is adorned with decorative boxed cornices and fishscale shingles, echoed again in the gable detailing. A small front porch, bracketed and embellished with fishscale shingles, welcomes visitors, while a large rear porch offers additional outdoor space. The exterior is clad in horizontal wood drop siding, and a charming bay window with two bracketed cut-away corners adds visual interest and stylistic flair. Windows are segmented 1-over-1, framed with decorative sills and trim, and complemented by stained or leaded glass and transoms. The house retains its original form and materials, with the exception of the expanded rear porch, and remains a well-preserved example of Queen Anne design from Pacific Grove’s Early Development period (1873–1902), notable for its authenticity, craftsmanship, and architectural integrity.
The Great tit , is a distinctive looking garden visitor with it’s white and black head. The largest of the tit family it has a wingspan of up to 26cm , with a body length of between 12-14cm and body weight up to 20g. It has a bright yellow breast with a broad black stripe and blue-green wings. the female has the same colouring as the male with slightly duller colours.
Read more at www.wildonline.blog
The Blue Tit is a popular and easy to recognise garden favourite. With its small size and distinctive blue and yellow plumage , the Blue tit is a regular garden visitor that’s wide spread throughout the British Isles and mainland Europe. The Blue Tit is a member of the Tit family of birds , Paridae . Usually resident , the bird does not migrate and in fact most stay within a short distance from where they hatch , typically less than 20 miles.
The Blue Tit is around 12 cm long with a wingspan of 18 cm and weighs between 11- 20 g . With a blue crown and dark line passing through the eye, with white cheeks to the chin. The forehead and a bar on the wing are white. The nape, wings and tail are blue and the back is yellowish green. The underparts is mostly yellow with a dark line down the abdomen. Both male and female adult birds have a similar appearance.
The Blue tit will nest in any suitable hole in a tree, wall, or stump, or an artificial nest box, competing with Great Tits and House Sparrows for nesting sites. The same hole ( nesting site ) is returned to every year, and when one pair dies another pair will takes possession of the nesting site. It is estimated that there are 3,300,000 breeding pairs in the UK.
The successful breeding of chicks is dependent on sufficient supply of green caterpillars as well as satisfactory weather. Breeding seasons may be affected badly if the weather is cold and wet between May and July, particularly if this coincides with the emergence of the caterpillars on which the nestlings are fed.
Eggs are small in size, 14–18 mm in diameter. The egg size does vary, depending mostly on the size of individual females and habitat . The nesting material is usually moss, wool, hair and feathers, and the eggs are laid in April or May. The number in the clutch can be very large with seven or eight eggs laid by a single female. During the incubation period, female blue tits perform all of the incubation, however the male feeds the female during this time.
The Blue Tits diet is made up of small insects and spiders during the summer months supplemented by fruit , nuts and the young buds of trees and plants. The bird has adapted and evolved the ability to digest milk and cream and is an acrobatic favourite on bird feeders up and down the country.
Read more at www.wildonline.blog
From left to right: Parliamentary Library with distinctive two-tiered, green roof. Centre Block of Parliament with the Peace Tower and clock. West Block of Parliament 150 metres west, the Confederation Building and Canada's Supreme Court at right.
My hobby is photography.
CTV Regional Contact gave me 3 minutes on the local CTV News here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=3C2U_01ajdw
Mikey G Ottawa's 100 most interesting images as per Flickriver HERE: www.flickriver.com/photos/mikeygottawa/popular-interesting/
See Mikey G Ottawa's most popular Flickr Photo Albums HERE:
www.flickr.com/photos/mikeygottawa/albums
CBC Radio 1 gave me almost eight minutes. Listen here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=253iqLH82oA
Rogers Cable TV gave me 10 minutes on Camera Talk HERE:
Bryce Canyon is an American national park located in southwestern Utah. The major feature of the park is Bryce Canyon, which despite its name, is not a canyon, but a collection of giant natural amphitheaters along the eastern side of the Paunsaugunt Plateau. Bryce is distinctive due to geological structures called hoodoos, formed by frost weathering and stream erosion of the river and lake bed sedimentary rocks. The red, orange, and white colors of the rocks provide spectacular views for park visitors. Bryce Canyon National Park is much smaller and sits at a much higher elevation than nearby Zion National Park. The rim at Bryce varies from 8,000 to 9,000 feet (2,400 to 2,700 m).
The Bryce Canyon area was settled by Mormon pioneers in the 1850s and was named after Ebenezer Bryce, who homesteaded in the area in 1874.[3] The area around Bryce Canyon was originally designated as a national monument by President Warren G. Harding in 1923 and was redesignated as a national park by Congress in 1928. The park covers 35,835 acres (55.992 sq mi; 14,502 ha; 145.02 km2) and receives substantially fewer visitors than Zion National Park (nearly 4.3 million in 2016) or Grand Canyon National Park (nearly 6 million in 2016), largely due to Bryce's more remote location. In 2018, Bryce Canyon received 2,679,478 recreational visitors, which was an increase of 107,794 visitors from the prior year.
Bryce Canyon National Park lies within the Colorado Plateau geographic province of North America and straddles the southeastern edge of the Paunsaugunt Plateau west of the Paunsaugunt Faults (Paunsaugunt is Paiute for "home of the beaver"). Park visitors arrive from the plateau part of the park and look over the plateau's edge toward a valley containing the fault and the Paria River just beyond it (Paria is Paiute for "muddy or elk water"). The edge of the Kaiparowits Plateau bounds the opposite side of the valley.
Bryce Canyon was not formed from erosion initiated from a central stream, meaning it technically is not a canyon. Instead headward erosion has excavated large amphitheater-shaped features in the Cenozoic-aged rocks of the Paunsaugunt Plateau. This erosion resulted in delicate and colorful pinnacles called hoodoos that are up to 200 feet (60 m) high. A series of amphitheaters extends more than 20 miles (30 km) north-to-south within the park. The largest is Bryce Amphitheater, which is 12 miles (19 km) long, 3 miles (5 km) wide and 800 feet (240 m) deep. A nearby example of amphitheaters with hoodoos in the same formation but at a higher elevation is in Cedar Breaks National Monument, which is 25 miles (40 km) to the west on the Markagunt Plateau.
Rainbow Point, the highest part of the park at 9,105 feet (2,775 m), is at the end of the 18-mile (29 km) scenic drive. From there, Aquarius Plateau, Bryce Amphitheater, the Henry Mountains, the Vermilion Cliffs and the White Cliffs can be seen. Yellow Creek, where it exits the park in the north-east section, is the lowest part of the park at 6,620 feet (2,020 m).
Little is known about early human habitation in the Bryce Canyon area. Archaeological surveys of Bryce Canyon National Park and the Paunsaugunt Plateau show that people have been in the area for at least 10,000 years. Basketmaker Anasazi artifacts several thousand years old have been found south of the park. Other artifacts from the Pueblo-period Anasazi and the Fremont culture (up to the mid-12th century) have also been found.
The Paiute Native Americans moved into the surrounding valleys and plateaus in the area around the same time that the other cultures left. These Native Americans hunted and gathered for most of their food, but also supplemented their diet with some cultivated products. The Paiute in the area developed a mythology surrounding the hoodoos (pinnacles) in Bryce Canyon. They believed that hoodoos were the Legend People whom the trickster Coyote turned to stone. At least one older Paiute said his culture called the hoodoos Anka-ku-was-a-wits, which is Paiute for "red painted faces".
It was not until the late 18th and the early 19th century that the first European Americans explored the remote and hard-to-reach area. Mormon scouts visited the area in the 1850s to gauge its potential for agricultural development, use for grazing, and settlement.
The first major scientific expedition to the area was led by U.S. Army Major John Wesley Powell in 1872. Powell, along with a team of mapmakers and geologists, surveyed the Sevier and Virgin River area as part of a larger survey of the Colorado Plateaus. His mapmakers kept many of the Paiute place names.
Small groups of Mormon pioneers followed and attempted to settle east of Bryce Canyon along the Paria River. In 1873, the Kanarra Cattle Company started to use the area for cattle grazing.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints sent Scottish immigrant Ebenezer Bryce and his wife Mary to settle land in the Paria Valley because they thought his carpentry skills would be useful in the area. The Bryce family chose to live right below Bryce Amphitheater—the main collection of hoodoos in the park. Bryce grazed his cattle inside what are now park borders, and reputedly thought that the amphitheaters were a "helluva place to lose a cow." He also built a road to the plateau to retrieve firewood and timber, and a canal to irrigate his crops and water his animals. Other settlers soon started to call the unusual place "Bryce's canyon", which was later formalized into Bryce Canyon.
A combination of drought, overgrazing and flooding eventually drove the remaining Paiutes from the area and prompted the settlers to attempt construction of a water diversion channel from the Sevier River drainage. When that effort failed, most of the settlers, including the Bryce family, left the area. Bryce moved his family to Arizona in 1880. The remaining settlers dug a 10-mile (16 km) ditch from the Sevier's east fork into Tropic Valley.
These scenic areas were first described for the public in magazine articles published by Union Pacific and Santa Fe railroads in 1916. People like Forest Supervisor J. W. Humphrey promoted the scenic wonders of Bryce Canyon's amphitheaters, and by 1918 nationally distributed articles also helped to spark interest. However, poor access to the remote area and the lack of accommodations kept visitation to a bare minimum.
Ruby Syrett, Harold Bowman and the Perry brothers later built modest lodging, and set up "touring services" in the area. Syrett later served as the first postmaster of Bryce Canyon. Visitation steadily increased, and by the early 1920s the Union Pacific Railroad became interested in expanding rail service into southwestern Utah to accommodate more tourists.
At the same time, conservationists became alarmed by the damage overgrazing, logging, and unregulated visitation were having on the fragile features of Bryce Canyon. A movement to have the area protected was soon started, and National Park Service Director Stephen Mather responded by proposing that Bryce Canyon be made into a state park. The governor of Utah and the Utah State Legislature, however, lobbied for national protection of the area. Mather relented and sent his recommendation to President Warren G. Harding, who on June 8, 1923, declared Bryce Canyon a national monument.
A road was built the same year on the plateau to provide easy access to outlooks over the amphitheaters. From 1924 to 1925, Bryce Canyon Lodge was built from local timber and stone.
Members of the United States Congress started work in 1924 on upgrading Bryce Canyon's protection status from a national monument to a national park in order to establish Utah National Park. A process led by the Utah Parks Company for transferring ownership of private and state-held land in the monument to the federal government started in 1923. The last of the land in the proposed park's borders was sold to the federal government four years later, and on February 25, 1928, the renamed Bryce Canyon National Park was established.
In 1931, President Herbert Hoover annexed an adjoining area south of the park, and in 1942 an additional 635 acres (257 ha) was added. This brought the park's total area to the current figure of 35,835 acres (14,502 ha). Rim Road, the scenic drive that is still used today, was completed in 1934 by the Civilian Conservation Corps. Administration of the park was conducted from neighboring Zion National Park until 1956, when Bryce Canyon's first superintendent started work.
The USS Bryce Canyon, which was named for the park, served as a supply and repair ship in the U.S. Pacific Fleet from September 15, 1950, to June 30, 1981.
Bryce Canyon Natural History Association (BCNHA) was established in 1961. It runs the bookstore inside the park visitor center and is a non-profit organization created to aid the interpretive, educational and scientific activities of the National Park Service at Bryce Canyon National Park. A portion of the profits from all bookstore sales are donated to public land units.
Responding to increased visitation and traffic congestion, the National Park Service implemented a voluntary, summer-only, in-park shuttle system in June 2000. In 2004, reconstruction began on the aging and inadequate road system in the park.
The Bryce Canyon area shows a record of deposition that spans from the last part of the Cretaceous period and the first half of the Cenozoic era. The ancient depositional environment of the region around what is now the park varied. The Dakota Sandstone and the Tropic Shale were deposited in the warm, shallow waters of the advancing and retreating Cretaceous Seaway (outcrops of these rocks are found just outside park borders). The colorful Claron Formation, from which the park's delicate hoodoos are carved, was laid down as sediments in a system of cool streams and lakes that existed from 63 to about 40 million years ago (from the Paleocene to the Eocene epochs). Different sediment types were laid down as the lakes deepened and became shallow and as the shoreline and river deltas migrated.
Several other formations were also created but were mostly eroded away following two major periods of uplift. The Laramide orogeny affected the entire western part of what would become North America starting about 70 million to 50 million years ago. This event helped to build the Rocky Mountains and in the process closed the Cretaceous Seaway. The Straight Cliffs, Wahweap, and Kaiparowits formations were victims of this uplift. The Colorado Plateaus were uplifted 16 million years ago and were segmented into different plateaus, each separated from its neighbors by faults and each having its own uplift rate. The Boat Mesa Conglomerate and the Sevier River Formation were removed by erosion following this uplift.
This uplift created vertical joints, which over time were preferentially eroded. The soft Pink Cliffs of the Claron Formation were eroded to form freestanding pinnacles in badlands called hoodoos, while the more resistant White Cliffs formed monoliths. The brown, pink and red colors are from hematite (iron oxide; Fe2O3); the yellows from limonite (FeO(OH)·nH2O); and the purples are from pyrolusite (MnO2). Also created were arches, natural bridges, walls, and windows. Hoodoos are composed of soft sedimentary rock and are topped by a piece of harder, less easily eroded stone that protects the column from the elements. Bryce Canyon has one of the highest concentrations of hoodoos of any place on Earth.
The formations exposed in the area of the park are part of the Grand Staircase. The oldest members of this supersequence of rock units are exposed in the Grand Canyon, the intermediate ones in Zion National Park, and its youngest parts are laid bare in Bryce Canyon area. A small amount of overlap occurs in and around each park.
More than 400 native plant species live in the park. There are three life zones in the park based on elevation: The lowest areas of the park are dominated by dwarf forests of pinyon pine and juniper with manzanita, serviceberry, and antelope bitterbrush in between. Aspen, cottonwood, water birch, and willow grow along streams. Ponderosa pine forests cover the mid-elevations with blue spruce and Douglas fir in water-rich areas and manzanita and bitterbrush as underbrush. Douglas fir and white fir, along with aspen and Engelmann spruce, make up the forests on the Paunsaugunt Plateau. The harshest areas have limber pine and ancient Great Basin bristlecone pine, some more than 1,600 years old, holding on.
The forests and meadows of Bryce Canyon provide the habitat to support diverse animal life including foxes, badgers, porcupines, elk, skunks, black bears, bobcats, and woodpeckers. Mule deer are the most common large mammals in the park. Elk and pronghorn, which have been reintroduced nearby, sometimes venture into the park.
Bryce Canyon National Park forms part of the habitat of three wildlife species that are listed under the Endangered Species Act: the Utah prairie dog, the California condor, and the southwestern willow flycatcher. The Utah prairie dog is a threatened species that was reintroduced to the park for conservation, and the largest protected population is found within the park's boundaries.
About 170 species of birds visit the park each year, including swifts and swallows. Most species migrate to warmer regions in winter, although jays, ravens, nuthatches, eagles, and owls stay. In winter, the mule deer, cougars, and coyotes migrate to lower elevations. Ground squirrels and marmots pass the winter in hibernation.
Eleven species of reptiles and four species of amphibians have been found in the park. Reptiles include the Great Basin rattlesnake, short-horned lizard, side-blotched lizard, striped whipsnake, and amphibians include the tiger salamander.
Also in the park are the black, lumpy, very slow-growing colonies of cryptobiotic soil, which are a mix of lichens, algae, fungi, and cyanobacteria. Together these organisms slow erosion, add nitrogen to the soil, and help it to retain moisture.
A line of snowshoers with colorful rock cliff in background.
Snowshoes are required for winter hiking.
Most park visitors sightsee using the scenic drive, which provides access to 13 viewpoints over the amphitheaters. Bryce Canyon has eight marked and maintained hiking trails that can be hiked in less than a day. The following list includes round trip time and trailhead for each in parentheses:
Easy to moderate hikes
Mossy Cave (one hour, State Route 12 northwest of Tropic)
Rim Trail (5–6 hours, anywhere on the rim)
Bristlecone Loop (one hour, Rainbow Point), and Queens Garden (1–2 hours, Sunrise Point)
Moderate hikes
Navajo Loop (1–2 hours, Sunset Point)
Tower Bridge (2–3 hours, north of Sunrise Point)
Strenuous hikes
Fairyland Loop (4–5 hours, Fairyland Point)
Peekaboo Loop (3–4 hours, Bryce Point)
Several of the above trails intersect, allowing hikers to combine routes for more challenging hikes.
The park also has two trails designated for overnight hiking: the 9-mile (14 km) Riggs Spring Loop Trail and the 23-mile (37 km) Under-the-Rim Trail.[27] Both require a backcountry camping permit. In total, 50 miles (80 km) of trails in the park.
More than 10 miles (16 km) of marked but ungroomed skiing trails are available off of Fairyland, Paria, and Rim trails in the park. Twenty miles (32 km) of connecting groomed ski trails are in nearby Dixie National Forest and Ruby's Inn.
The air in the area is so clear that on most days from Yovimpa and Rainbow points, Navajo Mountain and the Kaibab Plateau can be seen 90 miles (140 km) away in Arizona. On extremely clear days, the Black Mesas of eastern Arizona and western New Mexico can be seen some 160 miles (260 km) away.
The park also has a 7.4 magnitude night sky, making it one of the darkest in North America. Stargazers can, therefore, see 7,500 stars with the naked eye, while in most places fewer than 2,000 can be seen due to light pollution, and in many large cities only a few dozen can be seen. Park rangers host public stargazing events and evening programs on astronomy, nocturnal animals, and night sky protection. The Bryce Canyon Astronomy Festival, typically held in June, attracts thousands of visitors. In honor of this astronomy festival, Asteroid 49272 was named after the national park.
There are two campgrounds in the park: North Campground and Sunset Campground. Loop A in North Campground is open year-round. Additional loops and Sunset Campground are open from late spring to early autumn. The 114-room Bryce Canyon Lodge is another way to stay overnight in the park.
Utah is a landlocked state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It borders Colorado to its east, Wyoming to its northeast, Idaho to its north, Arizona to its south, and Nevada to its west. Utah also touches a corner of New Mexico in the southeast. Of the fifty U.S. states, Utah is the 13th-largest by area; with a population over three million, it is the 30th-most-populous and 11th-least-densely populated. Urban development is mostly concentrated in two areas: the Wasatch Front in the north-central part of the state, which is home to roughly two-thirds of the population and includes the capital city, Salt Lake City; and Washington County in the southwest, with more than 180,000 residents. Most of the western half of Utah lies in the Great Basin.
Utah has been inhabited for thousands of years by various indigenous groups such as the ancient Puebloans, Navajo, and Ute. The Spanish were the first Europeans to arrive in the mid-16th century, though the region's difficult geography and harsh climate made it a peripheral part of New Spain and later Mexico. Even while it was Mexican territory, many of Utah's earliest settlers were American, particularly Mormons fleeing marginalization and persecution from the United States via the Mormon Trail. Following the Mexican–American War in 1848, the region was annexed by the U.S., becoming part of the Utah Territory, which included what is now Colorado and Nevada. Disputes between the dominant Mormon community and the federal government delayed Utah's admission as a state; only after the outlawing of polygamy was it admitted in 1896 as the 45th.
People from Utah are known as Utahns. Slightly over half of all Utahns are Mormons, the vast majority of whom are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), which has its world headquarters in Salt Lake City; Utah is the only state where a majority of the population belongs to a single church. A 2023 paper challenged this perception (claiming only 42% of Utahns are Mormons) however most statistics still show a majority of Utah residents belong to the LDS church; estimates from the LDS church suggests 60.68% of Utah's population belongs to the church whilst some sources put the number as high as 68%. The paper replied that membership count done by the LDS Church is too high for several reasons. The LDS Church greatly influences Utahn culture, politics, and daily life, though since the 1990s the state has become more religiously diverse as well as secular.
Utah has a highly diversified economy, with major sectors including transportation, education, information technology and research, government services, mining, multi-level marketing, and tourism. Utah has been one of the fastest growing states since 2000, with the 2020 U.S. census confirming the fastest population growth in the nation since 2010. St. George was the fastest-growing metropolitan area in the United States from 2000 to 2005. Utah ranks among the overall best states in metrics such as healthcare, governance, education, and infrastructure. It has the 12th-highest median average income and the least income inequality of any U.S. state. Over time and influenced by climate change, droughts in Utah have been increasing in frequency and severity, putting a further strain on Utah's water security and impacting the state's economy.
The History of Utah is an examination of the human history and social activity within the state of Utah located in the western United States.
Archaeological evidence dates the earliest habitation of humans in Utah to about 10,000 to 12,000 years ago. Paleolithic people lived near the Great Basin's swamps and marshes, which had an abundance of fish, birds, and small game animals. Big game, including bison, mammoths and ground sloths, also were attracted to these water sources. Over the centuries, the mega-fauna died, this population was replaced by the Desert Archaic people, who sheltered in caves near the Great Salt Lake. Relying more on gathering than the previous Utah residents, their diet was mainly composed of cattails and other salt tolerant plants such as pickleweed, burro weed and sedge. Red meat appears to have been more of a luxury, although these people used nets and the atlatl to hunt water fowl, ducks, small animals and antelope. Artifacts include nets woven with plant fibers and rabbit skin, woven sandals, gaming sticks, and animal figures made from split-twigs. About 3,500 years ago, lake levels rose and the population of Desert Archaic people appears to have dramatically decreased. The Great Basin may have been almost unoccupied for 1,000 years.
The Fremont culture, named from sites near the Fremont River in Utah, lived in what is now north and western Utah and parts of Nevada, Idaho and Colorado from approximately 600 to 1300 AD. These people lived in areas close to water sources that had been previously occupied by the Desert Archaic people, and may have had some relationship with them. However, their use of new technologies define them as a distinct people. Fremont technologies include:
use of the bow and arrow while hunting,
building pithouse shelters,
growing maize and probably beans and squash,
building above ground granaries of adobe or stone,
creating and decorating low-fired pottery ware,
producing art, including jewelry and rock art such as petroglyphs and pictographs.
The ancient Puebloan culture, also known as the Anasazi, occupied territory adjacent to the Fremont. The ancestral Puebloan culture centered on the present-day Four Corners area of the Southwest United States, including the San Juan River region of Utah. Archaeologists debate when this distinct culture emerged, but cultural development seems to date from about the common era, about 500 years before the Fremont appeared. It is generally accepted that the cultural peak of these people was around the 1200 CE. Ancient Puebloan culture is known for well constructed pithouses and more elaborate adobe and masonry dwellings. They were excellent craftsmen, producing turquoise jewelry and fine pottery. The Puebloan culture was based on agriculture, and the people created and cultivated fields of maize, beans, and squash and domesticated turkeys. They designed and produced elaborate field terracing and irrigation systems. They also built structures, some known as kivas, apparently designed solely for cultural and religious rituals.
These two later cultures were roughly contemporaneous, and appear to have established trading relationships. They also shared enough cultural traits that archaeologists believe the cultures may have common roots in the early American Southwest. However, each remained culturally distinct throughout most of their existence. These two well established cultures appear to have been severely impacted by climatic change and perhaps by the incursion of new people in about 1200 CE. Over the next two centuries, the Fremont and ancient Pueblo people may have moved into the American southwest, finding new homes and farmlands in the river drainages of Arizona, New Mexico and northern Mexico.
In about 1200, Shoshonean speaking peoples entered Utah territory from the west. They may have originated in southern California and moved into the desert environment due to population pressure along the coast. They were an upland people with a hunting and gathering lifestyle utilizing roots and seeds, including the pinyon nut. They were also skillful fishermen, created pottery and raised some crops. When they first arrived in Utah, they lived as small family groups with little tribal organization. Four main Shoshonean peoples inhabited Utah country. The Shoshone in the north and northeast, the Gosiutes in the northwest, the Utes in the central and eastern parts of the region and the Southern Paiutes in the southwest. Initially, there seems to have been very little conflict between these groups.
In the early 16th century, the San Juan River basin in Utah's southeast also saw a new people, the Díne or Navajo, part of a greater group of plains Athabaskan speakers moved into the Southwest from the Great Plains. In addition to the Navajo, this language group contained people that were later known as Apaches, including the Lipan, Jicarilla, and Mescalero Apaches.
Athabaskans were a hunting people who initially followed the bison, and were identified in 16th-century Spanish accounts as "dog nomads". The Athabaskans expanded their range throughout the 17th century, occupying areas the Pueblo peoples had abandoned during prior centuries. The Spanish first specifically mention the "Apachu de Nabajo" (Navaho) in the 1620s, referring to the people in the Chama valley region east of the San Juan River, and north west of Santa Fe. By the 1640s, the term Navaho was applied to these same people. Although the Navajo newcomers established a generally peaceful trading and cultural exchange with the some modern Pueblo peoples to the south, they experienced intermittent warfare with the Shoshonean peoples, particularly the Utes in eastern Utah and western Colorado.
At the time of European expansion, beginning with Spanish explorers traveling from Mexico, five distinct native peoples occupied territory within the Utah area: the Northern Shoshone, the Goshute, the Ute, the Paiute and the Navajo.
The Spanish explorer Francisco Vázquez de Coronado may have crossed into what is now southern Utah in 1540, when he was seeking the legendary Cíbola.
A group led by two Spanish Catholic priests—sometimes called the Domínguez–Escalante expedition—left Santa Fe in 1776, hoping to find a route to the California coast. The expedition traveled as far north as Utah Lake and encountered the native residents. All of what is now Utah was claimed by the Spanish Empire from the 1500s to 1821 as part of New Spain (later as the province Alta California); and subsequently claimed by Mexico from 1821 to 1848. However, Spain and Mexico had little permanent presence in, or control of, the region.
Fur trappers (also known as mountain men) including Jim Bridger, explored some regions of Utah in the early 19th century. The city of Provo was named for one such man, Étienne Provost, who visited the area in 1825. The city of Ogden, Utah is named for a brigade leader of the Hudson's Bay Company, Peter Skene Ogden who trapped in the Weber Valley. In 1846, a year before the arrival of members from the Church of Jesus Christ of latter-day Saints, the ill-fated Donner Party crossed through the Salt Lake valley late in the season, deciding not to stay the winter there but to continue forward to California, and beyond.
Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, commonly known as Mormon pioneers, first came to the Salt Lake Valley on July 24, 1847. At the time, the U.S. had already captured the Mexican territories of Alta California and New Mexico in the Mexican–American War and planned to keep them, but those territories, including the future state of Utah, officially became United States territory upon the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, February 2, 1848. The treaty was ratified by the United States Senate on March 10, 1848.
Upon arrival in the Salt Lake Valley, the Mormon pioneers found no permanent settlement of Indians. Other areas along the Wasatch Range were occupied at the time of settlement by the Northwestern Shoshone and adjacent areas by other bands of Shoshone such as the Gosiute. The Northwestern Shoshone lived in the valleys on the eastern shore of Great Salt Lake and in adjacent mountain valleys. Some years after arriving in the Salt Lake Valley Mormons, who went on to colonize many other areas of what is now Utah, were petitioned by Indians for recompense for land taken. The response of Heber C. Kimball, first counselor to Brigham Young, was that the land belonged to "our Father in Heaven and we expect to plow and plant it." A 1945 Supreme Court decision found that the land had been treated by the United States as public domain; no aboriginal title by the Northwestern Shoshone had been recognized by the United States or extinguished by treaty with the United States.
Upon arriving in the Salt Lake Valley, the Mormons had to make a place to live. They created irrigation systems, laid out farms, built houses, churches, and schools. Access to water was crucially important. Almost immediately, Brigham Young set out to identify and claim additional community sites. While it was difficult to find large areas in the Great Basin where water sources were dependable and growing seasons long enough to raise vitally important subsistence crops, satellite communities began to be formed.
Shortly after the first company arrived in the Salt Lake Valley in 1847, the community of Bountiful was settled to the north. In 1848, settlers moved into lands purchased from trapper Miles Goodyear in present-day Ogden. In 1849, Tooele and Provo were founded. Also that year, at the invitation of Ute chief Wakara, settlers moved into the Sanpete Valley in central Utah to establish the community of Manti. Fillmore, Utah, intended to be the capital of the new territory, was established in 1851. In 1855, missionary efforts aimed at western native cultures led to outposts in Fort Lemhi, Idaho, Las Vegas, Nevada and Elk Mountain in east-central Utah.
The experiences of returning members of the Mormon Battalion were also important in establishing new communities. On their journey west, the Mormon soldiers had identified dependable rivers and fertile river valleys in Colorado, Arizona and southern California. In addition, as the men traveled to rejoin their families in the Salt Lake Valley, they moved through southern Nevada and the eastern segments of southern Utah. Jefferson Hunt, a senior Mormon officer of the Battalion, actively searched for settlement sites, minerals, and other resources. His report encouraged 1851 settlement efforts in Iron County, near present-day Cedar City. These southern explorations eventually led to Mormon settlements in St. George, Utah, Las Vegas and San Bernardino, California, as well as communities in southern Arizona.
Prior to establishment of the Oregon and California trails and Mormon settlement, Indians native to the Salt Lake Valley and adjacent areas lived by hunting buffalo and other game, but also gathered grass seed from the bountiful grass of the area as well as roots such as those of the Indian Camas. By the time of settlement, indeed before 1840, the buffalo were gone from the valley, but hunting by settlers and grazing of cattle severely impacted the Indians in the area, and as settlement expanded into nearby river valleys and oases, indigenous tribes experienced increasing difficulty in gathering sufficient food. Brigham Young's counsel was to feed the hungry tribes, and that was done, but it was often not enough. These tensions formed the background to the Bear River massacre committed by California Militia stationed in Salt Lake City during the Civil War. The site of the massacre is just inside Preston, Idaho, but was generally thought to be within Utah at the time.
Statehood was petitioned for in 1849-50 using the name Deseret. The proposed State of Deseret would have been quite large, encompassing all of what is now Utah, and portions of Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, Wyoming, Arizona, Oregon, New Mexico and California. The name of Deseret was favored by the LDS leader Brigham Young as a symbol of industry and was derived from a reference in the Book of Mormon. The petition was rejected by Congress and Utah did not become a state until 1896, following the Utah Constitutional Convention of 1895.
In 1850, the Utah Territory was created with the Compromise of 1850, and Fillmore (named after President Fillmore) was designated the capital. In 1856, Salt Lake City replaced Fillmore as the territorial capital.
The first group of pioneers brought African slaves with them, making Utah the only place in the western United States to have African slavery. Three slaves, Green Flake, Hark Lay, and Oscar Crosby, came west with this first group in 1847. The settlers also began to purchase Indian slaves in the well-established Indian slave trade, as well as enslaving Indian prisoners of war. In 1850, 26 slaves were counted in Salt Lake County. Slavery didn't become officially recognized until 1852, when the Act in Relation to Service and the Act for the relief of Indian Slaves and Prisoners were passed. Slavery was repealed on June 19, 1862, when Congress prohibited slavery in all US territories.
Disputes between the Mormon inhabitants and the federal government intensified after the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints' practice of polygamy became known. The polygamous practices of the Mormons, which were made public in 1854, would be one of the major reasons Utah was denied statehood until almost 50 years after the Mormons had entered the area.
After news of their polygamous practices spread, the members of the LDS Church were quickly viewed by some as un-American and rebellious. In 1857, after news of a possible rebellion spread, President James Buchanan sent troops on the Utah expedition to quell the growing unrest and to replace Brigham Young as territorial governor with Alfred Cumming. The expedition was also known as the Utah War.
As fear of invasion grew, Mormon settlers had convinced some Paiute Indians to aid in a Mormon-led attack on 120 immigrants from Arkansas under the guise of Indian aggression. The murder of these settlers became known as the Mountain Meadows massacre. The Mormon leadership had adopted a defensive posture that led to a ban on the selling of grain to outsiders in preparation for an impending war. This chafed pioneers traveling through the region, who were unable to purchase badly needed supplies. A disagreement between some of the Arkansas pioneers and the Mormons in Cedar City led to the secret planning of the massacre by a few Mormon leaders in the area. Some scholars debate the involvement of Brigham Young. Only one man, John D. Lee, was ever convicted of the murders, and he was executed at the massacre site.
Express riders had brought the news 1,000 miles from the Missouri River settlements to Salt Lake City within about two weeks of the army's beginning to march west. Fearing the worst as 2,500 troops (roughly 1/3rd of the army then) led by General Albert Sidney Johnston started west, Brigham Young ordered all residents of Salt Lake City and neighboring communities to prepare their homes for burning and evacuate southward to Utah Valley and southern Utah. Young also sent out a few units of the Nauvoo Legion (numbering roughly 8,000–10,000), to delay the army's advance. The majority he sent into the mountains to prepare defenses or south to prepare for a scorched earth retreat. Although some army wagon supply trains were captured and burned and herds of army horses and cattle run off no serious fighting occurred. Starting late and short on supplies, the United States Army camped during the bitter winter of 1857–58 near a burned out Fort Bridger in Wyoming. Through the negotiations between emissary Thomas L. Kane, Young, Cumming and Johnston, control of Utah territory was peacefully transferred to Cumming, who entered an eerily vacant Salt Lake City in the spring of 1858. By agreement with Young, Johnston established the army at Fort Floyd 40 miles away from Salt Lake City, to the southwest.
Salt Lake City was the last link of the First Transcontinental Telegraph, between Carson City, Nevada and Omaha, Nebraska completed in October 1861. Brigham Young, who had helped expedite construction, was among the first to send a message, along with Abraham Lincoln and other officials. Soon after the telegraph line was completed, the Deseret Telegraph Company built the Deseret line connecting the settlements in the territory with Salt Lake City and, by extension, the rest of the United States.
Because of the American Civil War, federal troops were pulled out of Utah Territory (and their fort auctioned off), leaving the territorial government in federal hands without army backing until General Patrick E. Connor arrived with the 3rd Regiment of California Volunteers in 1862. While in Utah, Connor and his troops soon became discontent with this assignment wanting to head to Virginia where the "real" fighting and glory was occurring. Connor established Fort Douglas just three miles (5 km) east of Salt Lake City and encouraged his bored and often idle soldiers to go out and explore for mineral deposits to bring more non-Mormons into the state. Minerals were discovered in Tooele County, and some miners began to come to the territory. Conner also solved the Shoshone Indian problem in Cache Valley Utah by luring the Shoshone into a midwinter confrontation on January 29, 1863. The armed conflict quickly turned into a rout, discipline among the soldiers broke down, and the Battle of Bear River is today usually referred to by historians as the Bear River Massacre. Between 200 and 400 Shoshone men, women and children were killed, as were 27 soldiers, with over 50 more soldiers wounded or suffering from frostbite.
Beginning in 1865, Utah's Black Hawk War developed into the deadliest conflict in the territory's history. Chief Antonga Black Hawk died in 1870, but fights continued to break out until additional federal troops were sent in to suppress the Ghost Dance of 1872. The war is unique among Indian Wars because it was a three-way conflict, with mounted Timpanogos Utes led by Antonga Black Hawk fighting federal and Utah local militia.
On May 10, 1869, the First transcontinental railroad was completed at Promontory Summit, north of the Great Salt Lake. The railroad brought increasing numbers of people into the state, and several influential businessmen made fortunes in the territory.
Main article: Latter Day Saint polygamy in the late-19th century
During the 1870s and 1880s, federal laws were passed and federal marshals assigned to enforce the laws against polygamy. In the 1890 Manifesto, the LDS Church leadership dropped its approval of polygamy citing divine revelation. When Utah applied for statehood again in 1895, it was accepted. Statehood was officially granted on January 4, 1896.
The Mormon issue made the situation for women the topic of nationwide controversy. In 1870 the Utah Territory, controlled by Mormons, gave women the right to vote. However, in 1887, Congress disenfranchised Utah women with the Edmunds–Tucker Act. In 1867–96, eastern activists promoted women's suffrage in Utah as an experiment, and as a way to eliminate polygamy. They were Presbyterians and other Protestants convinced that Mormonism was a non-Christian cult that grossly mistreated women. The Mormons promoted woman suffrage to counter the negative image of downtrodden Mormon women. With the 1890 Manifesto clearing the way for statehood, in 1895 Utah adopted a constitution restoring the right of women's suffrage. Congress admitted Utah as a state with that constitution in 1896.
Though less numerous than other intermountain states at the time, several lynching murders for alleged misdeeds occurred in Utah territory at the hand of vigilantes. Those documented include the following, with their ethnicity or national origin noted in parentheses if it was provided in the source:
William Torrington in Carson City (then a part of Utah territory), 1859
Thomas Coleman (Black man) in Salt Lake City, 1866
3 unidentified men at Wahsatch, winter of 1868
A Black man in Uintah, 1869
Charles A. Benson in Logan, 1873
Ah Sing (Chinese man) in Corinne, 1874
Thomas Forrest in St. George, 1880
William Harvey (Black man) in Salt Lake City, 1883
John Murphy in Park City, 1883
George Segal (Japanese man) in Ogden, 1884
Joseph Fisher in Eureka, 1886
Robert Marshall (Black man) in Castle Gate, 1925
Other lynchings in Utah territory include multiple instances of mass murder of Native American children, women, and men by White settlers including the Battle Creek massacre (1849), Provo River Massacre (1850), Nephi massacre (1853), and Circleville Massacre (1866).
Beginning in the early 20th century, with the establishment of such national parks as Bryce Canyon National Park and Zion National Park, Utah began to become known for its natural beauty. Southern Utah became a popular filming spot for arid, rugged scenes, and such natural landmarks as Delicate Arch and "the Mittens" of Monument Valley are instantly recognizable to most national residents. During the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, with the construction of the Interstate highway system, accessibility to the southern scenic areas was made easier.
Beginning in 1939, with the establishment of Alta Ski Area, Utah has become world-renowned for its skiing. The dry, powdery snow of the Wasatch Range is considered some of the best skiing in the world. Salt Lake City won the bid for the 2002 Winter Olympics in 1995, and this has served as a great boost to the economy. The ski resorts have increased in popularity, and many of the Olympic venues scattered across the Wasatch Front continue to be used for sporting events. This also spurred the development of the light-rail system in the Salt Lake Valley, known as TRAX, and the re-construction of the freeway system around the city.
During the late 20th century, the state grew quickly. In the 1970s, growth was phenomenal in the suburbs. Sandy was one of the fastest-growing cities in the country at that time, and West Valley City is the state's 2nd most populous city. Today, many areas of Utah are seeing phenomenal growth. Northern Davis, southern and western Salt Lake, Summit, eastern Tooele, Utah, Wasatch, and Washington counties are all growing very quickly. Transportation and urbanization are major issues in politics as development consumes agricultural land and wilderness areas.
In 2012, the State of Utah passed the Utah Transfer of Public Lands Act in an attempt to gain control over a substantial portion of federal land in the state from the federal government, based on language in the Utah Enabling Act of 1894. The State does not intend to use force or assert control by limiting access in an attempt to control the disputed lands, but does intend to use a multi-step process of education, negotiation, legislation, and if necessary, litigation as part of its multi-year effort to gain state or private control over the lands after 2014.
Utah families, like most Americans everywhere, did their utmost to assist in the war effort. Tires, meat, butter, sugar, fats, oils, coffee, shoes, boots, gasoline, canned fruits, vegetables, and soups were rationed on a national basis. The school day was shortened and bus routes were reduced to limit the number of resources used stateside and increase what could be sent to soldiers.
Geneva Steel was built to increase the steel production for America during World War II. President Franklin D. Roosevelt had proposed opening a steel mill in Utah in 1936, but the idea was shelved after a couple of months. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States entered the war and the steel plant was put into progress. In April 1944, Geneva shipped its first order, which consisted of over 600 tons of steel plate. Geneva Steel also brought thousands of job opportunities to Utah. The positions were hard to fill as many of Utah's men were overseas fighting. Women began working, filling 25 percent of the jobs.
As a result of Utah's and Geneva Steels contribution during the war, several Liberty Ships were named in honor of Utah including the USS Joseph Smith, USS Brigham Young, USS Provo, and the USS Peter Skene Ogden.
One of the sectors of the beachhead of Normandy Landings was codenamed Utah Beach, and the amphibious landings at the beach were undertaken by United States Army troops.
It is estimated that 1,450 soldiers from Utah were killed in the war.
A trip to Worcestershire in mid March.
This is the largest UK Tit with a distinctive two-syllable song. It has a green and yellow body and a striking glossy black head with white cheeks. It's a woodland bird that has readily adapted to man-made habitats to become a familiar garden visitor. It can be quite aggressive at a bird table, fighting off smaller Tits.
It is a widespread and common species throughout Europe.
Bryce Canyon is an American national park located in southwestern Utah. The major feature of the park is Bryce Canyon, which despite its name, is not a canyon, but a collection of giant natural amphitheaters along the eastern side of the Paunsaugunt Plateau. Bryce is distinctive due to geological structures called hoodoos, formed by frost weathering and stream erosion of the river and lake bed sedimentary rocks. The red, orange, and white colors of the rocks provide spectacular views for park visitors. Bryce Canyon National Park is much smaller and sits at a much higher elevation than nearby Zion National Park. The rim at Bryce varies from 8,000 to 9,000 feet (2,400 to 2,700 m).
The Bryce Canyon area was settled by Mormon pioneers in the 1850s and was named after Ebenezer Bryce, who homesteaded in the area in 1874.[3] The area around Bryce Canyon was originally designated as a national monument by President Warren G. Harding in 1923 and was redesignated as a national park by Congress in 1928. The park covers 35,835 acres (55.992 sq mi; 14,502 ha; 145.02 km2) and receives substantially fewer visitors than Zion National Park (nearly 4.3 million in 2016) or Grand Canyon National Park (nearly 6 million in 2016), largely due to Bryce's more remote location. In 2018, Bryce Canyon received 2,679,478 recreational visitors, which was an increase of 107,794 visitors from the prior year.
Bryce Canyon National Park lies within the Colorado Plateau geographic province of North America and straddles the southeastern edge of the Paunsaugunt Plateau west of the Paunsaugunt Faults (Paunsaugunt is Paiute for "home of the beaver"). Park visitors arrive from the plateau part of the park and look over the plateau's edge toward a valley containing the fault and the Paria River just beyond it (Paria is Paiute for "muddy or elk water"). The edge of the Kaiparowits Plateau bounds the opposite side of the valley.
Bryce Canyon was not formed from erosion initiated from a central stream, meaning it technically is not a canyon. Instead headward erosion has excavated large amphitheater-shaped features in the Cenozoic-aged rocks of the Paunsaugunt Plateau. This erosion resulted in delicate and colorful pinnacles called hoodoos that are up to 200 feet (60 m) high. A series of amphitheaters extends more than 20 miles (30 km) north-to-south within the park. The largest is Bryce Amphitheater, which is 12 miles (19 km) long, 3 miles (5 km) wide and 800 feet (240 m) deep. A nearby example of amphitheaters with hoodoos in the same formation but at a higher elevation is in Cedar Breaks National Monument, which is 25 miles (40 km) to the west on the Markagunt Plateau.
Rainbow Point, the highest part of the park at 9,105 feet (2,775 m), is at the end of the 18-mile (29 km) scenic drive. From there, Aquarius Plateau, Bryce Amphitheater, the Henry Mountains, the Vermilion Cliffs and the White Cliffs can be seen. Yellow Creek, where it exits the park in the north-east section, is the lowest part of the park at 6,620 feet (2,020 m).
Little is known about early human habitation in the Bryce Canyon area. Archaeological surveys of Bryce Canyon National Park and the Paunsaugunt Plateau show that people have been in the area for at least 10,000 years. Basketmaker Anasazi artifacts several thousand years old have been found south of the park. Other artifacts from the Pueblo-period Anasazi and the Fremont culture (up to the mid-12th century) have also been found.
The Paiute Native Americans moved into the surrounding valleys and plateaus in the area around the same time that the other cultures left. These Native Americans hunted and gathered for most of their food, but also supplemented their diet with some cultivated products. The Paiute in the area developed a mythology surrounding the hoodoos (pinnacles) in Bryce Canyon. They believed that hoodoos were the Legend People whom the trickster Coyote turned to stone. At least one older Paiute said his culture called the hoodoos Anka-ku-was-a-wits, which is Paiute for "red painted faces".
It was not until the late 18th and the early 19th century that the first European Americans explored the remote and hard-to-reach area. Mormon scouts visited the area in the 1850s to gauge its potential for agricultural development, use for grazing, and settlement.
The first major scientific expedition to the area was led by U.S. Army Major John Wesley Powell in 1872. Powell, along with a team of mapmakers and geologists, surveyed the Sevier and Virgin River area as part of a larger survey of the Colorado Plateaus. His mapmakers kept many of the Paiute place names.
Small groups of Mormon pioneers followed and attempted to settle east of Bryce Canyon along the Paria River. In 1873, the Kanarra Cattle Company started to use the area for cattle grazing.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints sent Scottish immigrant Ebenezer Bryce and his wife Mary to settle land in the Paria Valley because they thought his carpentry skills would be useful in the area. The Bryce family chose to live right below Bryce Amphitheater—the main collection of hoodoos in the park. Bryce grazed his cattle inside what are now park borders, and reputedly thought that the amphitheaters were a "helluva place to lose a cow." He also built a road to the plateau to retrieve firewood and timber, and a canal to irrigate his crops and water his animals. Other settlers soon started to call the unusual place "Bryce's canyon", which was later formalized into Bryce Canyon.
A combination of drought, overgrazing and flooding eventually drove the remaining Paiutes from the area and prompted the settlers to attempt construction of a water diversion channel from the Sevier River drainage. When that effort failed, most of the settlers, including the Bryce family, left the area. Bryce moved his family to Arizona in 1880. The remaining settlers dug a 10-mile (16 km) ditch from the Sevier's east fork into Tropic Valley.
These scenic areas were first described for the public in magazine articles published by Union Pacific and Santa Fe railroads in 1916. People like Forest Supervisor J. W. Humphrey promoted the scenic wonders of Bryce Canyon's amphitheaters, and by 1918 nationally distributed articles also helped to spark interest. However, poor access to the remote area and the lack of accommodations kept visitation to a bare minimum.
Ruby Syrett, Harold Bowman and the Perry brothers later built modest lodging, and set up "touring services" in the area. Syrett later served as the first postmaster of Bryce Canyon. Visitation steadily increased, and by the early 1920s the Union Pacific Railroad became interested in expanding rail service into southwestern Utah to accommodate more tourists.
At the same time, conservationists became alarmed by the damage overgrazing, logging, and unregulated visitation were having on the fragile features of Bryce Canyon. A movement to have the area protected was soon started, and National Park Service Director Stephen Mather responded by proposing that Bryce Canyon be made into a state park. The governor of Utah and the Utah State Legislature, however, lobbied for national protection of the area. Mather relented and sent his recommendation to President Warren G. Harding, who on June 8, 1923, declared Bryce Canyon a national monument.
A road was built the same year on the plateau to provide easy access to outlooks over the amphitheaters. From 1924 to 1925, Bryce Canyon Lodge was built from local timber and stone.
Members of the United States Congress started work in 1924 on upgrading Bryce Canyon's protection status from a national monument to a national park in order to establish Utah National Park. A process led by the Utah Parks Company for transferring ownership of private and state-held land in the monument to the federal government started in 1923. The last of the land in the proposed park's borders was sold to the federal government four years later, and on February 25, 1928, the renamed Bryce Canyon National Park was established.
In 1931, President Herbert Hoover annexed an adjoining area south of the park, and in 1942 an additional 635 acres (257 ha) was added. This brought the park's total area to the current figure of 35,835 acres (14,502 ha). Rim Road, the scenic drive that is still used today, was completed in 1934 by the Civilian Conservation Corps. Administration of the park was conducted from neighboring Zion National Park until 1956, when Bryce Canyon's first superintendent started work.
The USS Bryce Canyon, which was named for the park, served as a supply and repair ship in the U.S. Pacific Fleet from September 15, 1950, to June 30, 1981.
Bryce Canyon Natural History Association (BCNHA) was established in 1961. It runs the bookstore inside the park visitor center and is a non-profit organization created to aid the interpretive, educational and scientific activities of the National Park Service at Bryce Canyon National Park. A portion of the profits from all bookstore sales are donated to public land units.
Responding to increased visitation and traffic congestion, the National Park Service implemented a voluntary, summer-only, in-park shuttle system in June 2000. In 2004, reconstruction began on the aging and inadequate road system in the park.
The Bryce Canyon area shows a record of deposition that spans from the last part of the Cretaceous period and the first half of the Cenozoic era. The ancient depositional environment of the region around what is now the park varied. The Dakota Sandstone and the Tropic Shale were deposited in the warm, shallow waters of the advancing and retreating Cretaceous Seaway (outcrops of these rocks are found just outside park borders). The colorful Claron Formation, from which the park's delicate hoodoos are carved, was laid down as sediments in a system of cool streams and lakes that existed from 63 to about 40 million years ago (from the Paleocene to the Eocene epochs). Different sediment types were laid down as the lakes deepened and became shallow and as the shoreline and river deltas migrated.
Several other formations were also created but were mostly eroded away following two major periods of uplift. The Laramide orogeny affected the entire western part of what would become North America starting about 70 million to 50 million years ago. This event helped to build the Rocky Mountains and in the process closed the Cretaceous Seaway. The Straight Cliffs, Wahweap, and Kaiparowits formations were victims of this uplift. The Colorado Plateaus were uplifted 16 million years ago and were segmented into different plateaus, each separated from its neighbors by faults and each having its own uplift rate. The Boat Mesa Conglomerate and the Sevier River Formation were removed by erosion following this uplift.
This uplift created vertical joints, which over time were preferentially eroded. The soft Pink Cliffs of the Claron Formation were eroded to form freestanding pinnacles in badlands called hoodoos, while the more resistant White Cliffs formed monoliths. The brown, pink and red colors are from hematite (iron oxide; Fe2O3); the yellows from limonite (FeO(OH)·nH2O); and the purples are from pyrolusite (MnO2). Also created were arches, natural bridges, walls, and windows. Hoodoos are composed of soft sedimentary rock and are topped by a piece of harder, less easily eroded stone that protects the column from the elements. Bryce Canyon has one of the highest concentrations of hoodoos of any place on Earth.
The formations exposed in the area of the park are part of the Grand Staircase. The oldest members of this supersequence of rock units are exposed in the Grand Canyon, the intermediate ones in Zion National Park, and its youngest parts are laid bare in Bryce Canyon area. A small amount of overlap occurs in and around each park.
More than 400 native plant species live in the park. There are three life zones in the park based on elevation: The lowest areas of the park are dominated by dwarf forests of pinyon pine and juniper with manzanita, serviceberry, and antelope bitterbrush in between. Aspen, cottonwood, water birch, and willow grow along streams. Ponderosa pine forests cover the mid-elevations with blue spruce and Douglas fir in water-rich areas and manzanita and bitterbrush as underbrush. Douglas fir and white fir, along with aspen and Engelmann spruce, make up the forests on the Paunsaugunt Plateau. The harshest areas have limber pine and ancient Great Basin bristlecone pine, some more than 1,600 years old, holding on.
The forests and meadows of Bryce Canyon provide the habitat to support diverse animal life including foxes, badgers, porcupines, elk, skunks, black bears, bobcats, and woodpeckers. Mule deer are the most common large mammals in the park. Elk and pronghorn, which have been reintroduced nearby, sometimes venture into the park.
Bryce Canyon National Park forms part of the habitat of three wildlife species that are listed under the Endangered Species Act: the Utah prairie dog, the California condor, and the southwestern willow flycatcher. The Utah prairie dog is a threatened species that was reintroduced to the park for conservation, and the largest protected population is found within the park's boundaries.
About 170 species of birds visit the park each year, including swifts and swallows. Most species migrate to warmer regions in winter, although jays, ravens, nuthatches, eagles, and owls stay. In winter, the mule deer, cougars, and coyotes migrate to lower elevations. Ground squirrels and marmots pass the winter in hibernation.
Eleven species of reptiles and four species of amphibians have been found in the park. Reptiles include the Great Basin rattlesnake, short-horned lizard, side-blotched lizard, striped whipsnake, and amphibians include the tiger salamander.
Also in the park are the black, lumpy, very slow-growing colonies of cryptobiotic soil, which are a mix of lichens, algae, fungi, and cyanobacteria. Together these organisms slow erosion, add nitrogen to the soil, and help it to retain moisture.
A line of snowshoers with colorful rock cliff in background.
Snowshoes are required for winter hiking.
Most park visitors sightsee using the scenic drive, which provides access to 13 viewpoints over the amphitheaters. Bryce Canyon has eight marked and maintained hiking trails that can be hiked in less than a day. The following list includes round trip time and trailhead for each in parentheses:
Easy to moderate hikes
Mossy Cave (one hour, State Route 12 northwest of Tropic)
Rim Trail (5–6 hours, anywhere on the rim)
Bristlecone Loop (one hour, Rainbow Point), and Queens Garden (1–2 hours, Sunrise Point)
Moderate hikes
Navajo Loop (1–2 hours, Sunset Point)
Tower Bridge (2–3 hours, north of Sunrise Point)
Strenuous hikes
Fairyland Loop (4–5 hours, Fairyland Point)
Peekaboo Loop (3–4 hours, Bryce Point)
Several of the above trails intersect, allowing hikers to combine routes for more challenging hikes.
The park also has two trails designated for overnight hiking: the 9-mile (14 km) Riggs Spring Loop Trail and the 23-mile (37 km) Under-the-Rim Trail.[27] Both require a backcountry camping permit. In total, 50 miles (80 km) of trails in the park.
More than 10 miles (16 km) of marked but ungroomed skiing trails are available off of Fairyland, Paria, and Rim trails in the park. Twenty miles (32 km) of connecting groomed ski trails are in nearby Dixie National Forest and Ruby's Inn.
The air in the area is so clear that on most days from Yovimpa and Rainbow points, Navajo Mountain and the Kaibab Plateau can be seen 90 miles (140 km) away in Arizona. On extremely clear days, the Black Mesas of eastern Arizona and western New Mexico can be seen some 160 miles (260 km) away.
The park also has a 7.4 magnitude night sky, making it one of the darkest in North America. Stargazers can, therefore, see 7,500 stars with the naked eye, while in most places fewer than 2,000 can be seen due to light pollution, and in many large cities only a few dozen can be seen. Park rangers host public stargazing events and evening programs on astronomy, nocturnal animals, and night sky protection. The Bryce Canyon Astronomy Festival, typically held in June, attracts thousands of visitors. In honor of this astronomy festival, Asteroid 49272 was named after the national park.
There are two campgrounds in the park: North Campground and Sunset Campground. Loop A in North Campground is open year-round. Additional loops and Sunset Campground are open from late spring to early autumn. The 114-room Bryce Canyon Lodge is another way to stay overnight in the park.
Utah is a landlocked state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It borders Colorado to its east, Wyoming to its northeast, Idaho to its north, Arizona to its south, and Nevada to its west. Utah also touches a corner of New Mexico in the southeast. Of the fifty U.S. states, Utah is the 13th-largest by area; with a population over three million, it is the 30th-most-populous and 11th-least-densely populated. Urban development is mostly concentrated in two areas: the Wasatch Front in the north-central part of the state, which is home to roughly two-thirds of the population and includes the capital city, Salt Lake City; and Washington County in the southwest, with more than 180,000 residents. Most of the western half of Utah lies in the Great Basin.
Utah has been inhabited for thousands of years by various indigenous groups such as the ancient Puebloans, Navajo, and Ute. The Spanish were the first Europeans to arrive in the mid-16th century, though the region's difficult geography and harsh climate made it a peripheral part of New Spain and later Mexico. Even while it was Mexican territory, many of Utah's earliest settlers were American, particularly Mormons fleeing marginalization and persecution from the United States via the Mormon Trail. Following the Mexican–American War in 1848, the region was annexed by the U.S., becoming part of the Utah Territory, which included what is now Colorado and Nevada. Disputes between the dominant Mormon community and the federal government delayed Utah's admission as a state; only after the outlawing of polygamy was it admitted in 1896 as the 45th.
People from Utah are known as Utahns. Slightly over half of all Utahns are Mormons, the vast majority of whom are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), which has its world headquarters in Salt Lake City; Utah is the only state where a majority of the population belongs to a single church. A 2023 paper challenged this perception (claiming only 42% of Utahns are Mormons) however most statistics still show a majority of Utah residents belong to the LDS church; estimates from the LDS church suggests 60.68% of Utah's population belongs to the church whilst some sources put the number as high as 68%. The paper replied that membership count done by the LDS Church is too high for several reasons. The LDS Church greatly influences Utahn culture, politics, and daily life, though since the 1990s the state has become more religiously diverse as well as secular.
Utah has a highly diversified economy, with major sectors including transportation, education, information technology and research, government services, mining, multi-level marketing, and tourism. Utah has been one of the fastest growing states since 2000, with the 2020 U.S. census confirming the fastest population growth in the nation since 2010. St. George was the fastest-growing metropolitan area in the United States from 2000 to 2005. Utah ranks among the overall best states in metrics such as healthcare, governance, education, and infrastructure. It has the 12th-highest median average income and the least income inequality of any U.S. state. Over time and influenced by climate change, droughts in Utah have been increasing in frequency and severity, putting a further strain on Utah's water security and impacting the state's economy.
The History of Utah is an examination of the human history and social activity within the state of Utah located in the western United States.
Archaeological evidence dates the earliest habitation of humans in Utah to about 10,000 to 12,000 years ago. Paleolithic people lived near the Great Basin's swamps and marshes, which had an abundance of fish, birds, and small game animals. Big game, including bison, mammoths and ground sloths, also were attracted to these water sources. Over the centuries, the mega-fauna died, this population was replaced by the Desert Archaic people, who sheltered in caves near the Great Salt Lake. Relying more on gathering than the previous Utah residents, their diet was mainly composed of cattails and other salt tolerant plants such as pickleweed, burro weed and sedge. Red meat appears to have been more of a luxury, although these people used nets and the atlatl to hunt water fowl, ducks, small animals and antelope. Artifacts include nets woven with plant fibers and rabbit skin, woven sandals, gaming sticks, and animal figures made from split-twigs. About 3,500 years ago, lake levels rose and the population of Desert Archaic people appears to have dramatically decreased. The Great Basin may have been almost unoccupied for 1,000 years.
The Fremont culture, named from sites near the Fremont River in Utah, lived in what is now north and western Utah and parts of Nevada, Idaho and Colorado from approximately 600 to 1300 AD. These people lived in areas close to water sources that had been previously occupied by the Desert Archaic people, and may have had some relationship with them. However, their use of new technologies define them as a distinct people. Fremont technologies include:
use of the bow and arrow while hunting,
building pithouse shelters,
growing maize and probably beans and squash,
building above ground granaries of adobe or stone,
creating and decorating low-fired pottery ware,
producing art, including jewelry and rock art such as petroglyphs and pictographs.
The ancient Puebloan culture, also known as the Anasazi, occupied territory adjacent to the Fremont. The ancestral Puebloan culture centered on the present-day Four Corners area of the Southwest United States, including the San Juan River region of Utah. Archaeologists debate when this distinct culture emerged, but cultural development seems to date from about the common era, about 500 years before the Fremont appeared. It is generally accepted that the cultural peak of these people was around the 1200 CE. Ancient Puebloan culture is known for well constructed pithouses and more elaborate adobe and masonry dwellings. They were excellent craftsmen, producing turquoise jewelry and fine pottery. The Puebloan culture was based on agriculture, and the people created and cultivated fields of maize, beans, and squash and domesticated turkeys. They designed and produced elaborate field terracing and irrigation systems. They also built structures, some known as kivas, apparently designed solely for cultural and religious rituals.
These two later cultures were roughly contemporaneous, and appear to have established trading relationships. They also shared enough cultural traits that archaeologists believe the cultures may have common roots in the early American Southwest. However, each remained culturally distinct throughout most of their existence. These two well established cultures appear to have been severely impacted by climatic change and perhaps by the incursion of new people in about 1200 CE. Over the next two centuries, the Fremont and ancient Pueblo people may have moved into the American southwest, finding new homes and farmlands in the river drainages of Arizona, New Mexico and northern Mexico.
In about 1200, Shoshonean speaking peoples entered Utah territory from the west. They may have originated in southern California and moved into the desert environment due to population pressure along the coast. They were an upland people with a hunting and gathering lifestyle utilizing roots and seeds, including the pinyon nut. They were also skillful fishermen, created pottery and raised some crops. When they first arrived in Utah, they lived as small family groups with little tribal organization. Four main Shoshonean peoples inhabited Utah country. The Shoshone in the north and northeast, the Gosiutes in the northwest, the Utes in the central and eastern parts of the region and the Southern Paiutes in the southwest. Initially, there seems to have been very little conflict between these groups.
In the early 16th century, the San Juan River basin in Utah's southeast also saw a new people, the Díne or Navajo, part of a greater group of plains Athabaskan speakers moved into the Southwest from the Great Plains. In addition to the Navajo, this language group contained people that were later known as Apaches, including the Lipan, Jicarilla, and Mescalero Apaches.
Athabaskans were a hunting people who initially followed the bison, and were identified in 16th-century Spanish accounts as "dog nomads". The Athabaskans expanded their range throughout the 17th century, occupying areas the Pueblo peoples had abandoned during prior centuries. The Spanish first specifically mention the "Apachu de Nabajo" (Navaho) in the 1620s, referring to the people in the Chama valley region east of the San Juan River, and north west of Santa Fe. By the 1640s, the term Navaho was applied to these same people. Although the Navajo newcomers established a generally peaceful trading and cultural exchange with the some modern Pueblo peoples to the south, they experienced intermittent warfare with the Shoshonean peoples, particularly the Utes in eastern Utah and western Colorado.
At the time of European expansion, beginning with Spanish explorers traveling from Mexico, five distinct native peoples occupied territory within the Utah area: the Northern Shoshone, the Goshute, the Ute, the Paiute and the Navajo.
The Spanish explorer Francisco Vázquez de Coronado may have crossed into what is now southern Utah in 1540, when he was seeking the legendary Cíbola.
A group led by two Spanish Catholic priests—sometimes called the Domínguez–Escalante expedition—left Santa Fe in 1776, hoping to find a route to the California coast. The expedition traveled as far north as Utah Lake and encountered the native residents. All of what is now Utah was claimed by the Spanish Empire from the 1500s to 1821 as part of New Spain (later as the province Alta California); and subsequently claimed by Mexico from 1821 to 1848. However, Spain and Mexico had little permanent presence in, or control of, the region.
Fur trappers (also known as mountain men) including Jim Bridger, explored some regions of Utah in the early 19th century. The city of Provo was named for one such man, Étienne Provost, who visited the area in 1825. The city of Ogden, Utah is named for a brigade leader of the Hudson's Bay Company, Peter Skene Ogden who trapped in the Weber Valley. In 1846, a year before the arrival of members from the Church of Jesus Christ of latter-day Saints, the ill-fated Donner Party crossed through the Salt Lake valley late in the season, deciding not to stay the winter there but to continue forward to California, and beyond.
Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, commonly known as Mormon pioneers, first came to the Salt Lake Valley on July 24, 1847. At the time, the U.S. had already captured the Mexican territories of Alta California and New Mexico in the Mexican–American War and planned to keep them, but those territories, including the future state of Utah, officially became United States territory upon the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, February 2, 1848. The treaty was ratified by the United States Senate on March 10, 1848.
Upon arrival in the Salt Lake Valley, the Mormon pioneers found no permanent settlement of Indians. Other areas along the Wasatch Range were occupied at the time of settlement by the Northwestern Shoshone and adjacent areas by other bands of Shoshone such as the Gosiute. The Northwestern Shoshone lived in the valleys on the eastern shore of Great Salt Lake and in adjacent mountain valleys. Some years after arriving in the Salt Lake Valley Mormons, who went on to colonize many other areas of what is now Utah, were petitioned by Indians for recompense for land taken. The response of Heber C. Kimball, first counselor to Brigham Young, was that the land belonged to "our Father in Heaven and we expect to plow and plant it." A 1945 Supreme Court decision found that the land had been treated by the United States as public domain; no aboriginal title by the Northwestern Shoshone had been recognized by the United States or extinguished by treaty with the United States.
Upon arriving in the Salt Lake Valley, the Mormons had to make a place to live. They created irrigation systems, laid out farms, built houses, churches, and schools. Access to water was crucially important. Almost immediately, Brigham Young set out to identify and claim additional community sites. While it was difficult to find large areas in the Great Basin where water sources were dependable and growing seasons long enough to raise vitally important subsistence crops, satellite communities began to be formed.
Shortly after the first company arrived in the Salt Lake Valley in 1847, the community of Bountiful was settled to the north. In 1848, settlers moved into lands purchased from trapper Miles Goodyear in present-day Ogden. In 1849, Tooele and Provo were founded. Also that year, at the invitation of Ute chief Wakara, settlers moved into the Sanpete Valley in central Utah to establish the community of Manti. Fillmore, Utah, intended to be the capital of the new territory, was established in 1851. In 1855, missionary efforts aimed at western native cultures led to outposts in Fort Lemhi, Idaho, Las Vegas, Nevada and Elk Mountain in east-central Utah.
The experiences of returning members of the Mormon Battalion were also important in establishing new communities. On their journey west, the Mormon soldiers had identified dependable rivers and fertile river valleys in Colorado, Arizona and southern California. In addition, as the men traveled to rejoin their families in the Salt Lake Valley, they moved through southern Nevada and the eastern segments of southern Utah. Jefferson Hunt, a senior Mormon officer of the Battalion, actively searched for settlement sites, minerals, and other resources. His report encouraged 1851 settlement efforts in Iron County, near present-day Cedar City. These southern explorations eventually led to Mormon settlements in St. George, Utah, Las Vegas and San Bernardino, California, as well as communities in southern Arizona.
Prior to establishment of the Oregon and California trails and Mormon settlement, Indians native to the Salt Lake Valley and adjacent areas lived by hunting buffalo and other game, but also gathered grass seed from the bountiful grass of the area as well as roots such as those of the Indian Camas. By the time of settlement, indeed before 1840, the buffalo were gone from the valley, but hunting by settlers and grazing of cattle severely impacted the Indians in the area, and as settlement expanded into nearby river valleys and oases, indigenous tribes experienced increasing difficulty in gathering sufficient food. Brigham Young's counsel was to feed the hungry tribes, and that was done, but it was often not enough. These tensions formed the background to the Bear River massacre committed by California Militia stationed in Salt Lake City during the Civil War. The site of the massacre is just inside Preston, Idaho, but was generally thought to be within Utah at the time.
Statehood was petitioned for in 1849-50 using the name Deseret. The proposed State of Deseret would have been quite large, encompassing all of what is now Utah, and portions of Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, Wyoming, Arizona, Oregon, New Mexico and California. The name of Deseret was favored by the LDS leader Brigham Young as a symbol of industry and was derived from a reference in the Book of Mormon. The petition was rejected by Congress and Utah did not become a state until 1896, following the Utah Constitutional Convention of 1895.
In 1850, the Utah Territory was created with the Compromise of 1850, and Fillmore (named after President Fillmore) was designated the capital. In 1856, Salt Lake City replaced Fillmore as the territorial capital.
The first group of pioneers brought African slaves with them, making Utah the only place in the western United States to have African slavery. Three slaves, Green Flake, Hark Lay, and Oscar Crosby, came west with this first group in 1847. The settlers also began to purchase Indian slaves in the well-established Indian slave trade, as well as enslaving Indian prisoners of war. In 1850, 26 slaves were counted in Salt Lake County. Slavery didn't become officially recognized until 1852, when the Act in Relation to Service and the Act for the relief of Indian Slaves and Prisoners were passed. Slavery was repealed on June 19, 1862, when Congress prohibited slavery in all US territories.
Disputes between the Mormon inhabitants and the federal government intensified after the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints' practice of polygamy became known. The polygamous practices of the Mormons, which were made public in 1854, would be one of the major reasons Utah was denied statehood until almost 50 years after the Mormons had entered the area.
After news of their polygamous practices spread, the members of the LDS Church were quickly viewed by some as un-American and rebellious. In 1857, after news of a possible rebellion spread, President James Buchanan sent troops on the Utah expedition to quell the growing unrest and to replace Brigham Young as territorial governor with Alfred Cumming. The expedition was also known as the Utah War.
As fear of invasion grew, Mormon settlers had convinced some Paiute Indians to aid in a Mormon-led attack on 120 immigrants from Arkansas under the guise of Indian aggression. The murder of these settlers became known as the Mountain Meadows massacre. The Mormon leadership had adopted a defensive posture that led to a ban on the selling of grain to outsiders in preparation for an impending war. This chafed pioneers traveling through the region, who were unable to purchase badly needed supplies. A disagreement between some of the Arkansas pioneers and the Mormons in Cedar City led to the secret planning of the massacre by a few Mormon leaders in the area. Some scholars debate the involvement of Brigham Young. Only one man, John D. Lee, was ever convicted of the murders, and he was executed at the massacre site.
Express riders had brought the news 1,000 miles from the Missouri River settlements to Salt Lake City within about two weeks of the army's beginning to march west. Fearing the worst as 2,500 troops (roughly 1/3rd of the army then) led by General Albert Sidney Johnston started west, Brigham Young ordered all residents of Salt Lake City and neighboring communities to prepare their homes for burning and evacuate southward to Utah Valley and southern Utah. Young also sent out a few units of the Nauvoo Legion (numbering roughly 8,000–10,000), to delay the army's advance. The majority he sent into the mountains to prepare defenses or south to prepare for a scorched earth retreat. Although some army wagon supply trains were captured and burned and herds of army horses and cattle run off no serious fighting occurred. Starting late and short on supplies, the United States Army camped during the bitter winter of 1857–58 near a burned out Fort Bridger in Wyoming. Through the negotiations between emissary Thomas L. Kane, Young, Cumming and Johnston, control of Utah territory was peacefully transferred to Cumming, who entered an eerily vacant Salt Lake City in the spring of 1858. By agreement with Young, Johnston established the army at Fort Floyd 40 miles away from Salt Lake City, to the southwest.
Salt Lake City was the last link of the First Transcontinental Telegraph, between Carson City, Nevada and Omaha, Nebraska completed in October 1861. Brigham Young, who had helped expedite construction, was among the first to send a message, along with Abraham Lincoln and other officials. Soon after the telegraph line was completed, the Deseret Telegraph Company built the Deseret line connecting the settlements in the territory with Salt Lake City and, by extension, the rest of the United States.
Because of the American Civil War, federal troops were pulled out of Utah Territory (and their fort auctioned off), leaving the territorial government in federal hands without army backing until General Patrick E. Connor arrived with the 3rd Regiment of California Volunteers in 1862. While in Utah, Connor and his troops soon became discontent with this assignment wanting to head to Virginia where the "real" fighting and glory was occurring. Connor established Fort Douglas just three miles (5 km) east of Salt Lake City and encouraged his bored and often idle soldiers to go out and explore for mineral deposits to bring more non-Mormons into the state. Minerals were discovered in Tooele County, and some miners began to come to the territory. Conner also solved the Shoshone Indian problem in Cache Valley Utah by luring the Shoshone into a midwinter confrontation on January 29, 1863. The armed conflict quickly turned into a rout, discipline among the soldiers broke down, and the Battle of Bear River is today usually referred to by historians as the Bear River Massacre. Between 200 and 400 Shoshone men, women and children were killed, as were 27 soldiers, with over 50 more soldiers wounded or suffering from frostbite.
Beginning in 1865, Utah's Black Hawk War developed into the deadliest conflict in the territory's history. Chief Antonga Black Hawk died in 1870, but fights continued to break out until additional federal troops were sent in to suppress the Ghost Dance of 1872. The war is unique among Indian Wars because it was a three-way conflict, with mounted Timpanogos Utes led by Antonga Black Hawk fighting federal and Utah local militia.
On May 10, 1869, the First transcontinental railroad was completed at Promontory Summit, north of the Great Salt Lake. The railroad brought increasing numbers of people into the state, and several influential businessmen made fortunes in the territory.
Main article: Latter Day Saint polygamy in the late-19th century
During the 1870s and 1880s, federal laws were passed and federal marshals assigned to enforce the laws against polygamy. In the 1890 Manifesto, the LDS Church leadership dropped its approval of polygamy citing divine revelation. When Utah applied for statehood again in 1895, it was accepted. Statehood was officially granted on January 4, 1896.
The Mormon issue made the situation for women the topic of nationwide controversy. In 1870 the Utah Territory, controlled by Mormons, gave women the right to vote. However, in 1887, Congress disenfranchised Utah women with the Edmunds–Tucker Act. In 1867–96, eastern activists promoted women's suffrage in Utah as an experiment, and as a way to eliminate polygamy. They were Presbyterians and other Protestants convinced that Mormonism was a non-Christian cult that grossly mistreated women. The Mormons promoted woman suffrage to counter the negative image of downtrodden Mormon women. With the 1890 Manifesto clearing the way for statehood, in 1895 Utah adopted a constitution restoring the right of women's suffrage. Congress admitted Utah as a state with that constitution in 1896.
Though less numerous than other intermountain states at the time, several lynching murders for alleged misdeeds occurred in Utah territory at the hand of vigilantes. Those documented include the following, with their ethnicity or national origin noted in parentheses if it was provided in the source:
William Torrington in Carson City (then a part of Utah territory), 1859
Thomas Coleman (Black man) in Salt Lake City, 1866
3 unidentified men at Wahsatch, winter of 1868
A Black man in Uintah, 1869
Charles A. Benson in Logan, 1873
Ah Sing (Chinese man) in Corinne, 1874
Thomas Forrest in St. George, 1880
William Harvey (Black man) in Salt Lake City, 1883
John Murphy in Park City, 1883
George Segal (Japanese man) in Ogden, 1884
Joseph Fisher in Eureka, 1886
Robert Marshall (Black man) in Castle Gate, 1925
Other lynchings in Utah territory include multiple instances of mass murder of Native American children, women, and men by White settlers including the Battle Creek massacre (1849), Provo River Massacre (1850), Nephi massacre (1853), and Circleville Massacre (1866).
Beginning in the early 20th century, with the establishment of such national parks as Bryce Canyon National Park and Zion National Park, Utah began to become known for its natural beauty. Southern Utah became a popular filming spot for arid, rugged scenes, and such natural landmarks as Delicate Arch and "the Mittens" of Monument Valley are instantly recognizable to most national residents. During the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, with the construction of the Interstate highway system, accessibility to the southern scenic areas was made easier.
Beginning in 1939, with the establishment of Alta Ski Area, Utah has become world-renowned for its skiing. The dry, powdery snow of the Wasatch Range is considered some of the best skiing in the world. Salt Lake City won the bid for the 2002 Winter Olympics in 1995, and this has served as a great boost to the economy. The ski resorts have increased in popularity, and many of the Olympic venues scattered across the Wasatch Front continue to be used for sporting events. This also spurred the development of the light-rail system in the Salt Lake Valley, known as TRAX, and the re-construction of the freeway system around the city.
During the late 20th century, the state grew quickly. In the 1970s, growth was phenomenal in the suburbs. Sandy was one of the fastest-growing cities in the country at that time, and West Valley City is the state's 2nd most populous city. Today, many areas of Utah are seeing phenomenal growth. Northern Davis, southern and western Salt Lake, Summit, eastern Tooele, Utah, Wasatch, and Washington counties are all growing very quickly. Transportation and urbanization are major issues in politics as development consumes agricultural land and wilderness areas.
In 2012, the State of Utah passed the Utah Transfer of Public Lands Act in an attempt to gain control over a substantial portion of federal land in the state from the federal government, based on language in the Utah Enabling Act of 1894. The State does not intend to use force or assert control by limiting access in an attempt to control the disputed lands, but does intend to use a multi-step process of education, negotiation, legislation, and if necessary, litigation as part of its multi-year effort to gain state or private control over the lands after 2014.
Utah families, like most Americans everywhere, did their utmost to assist in the war effort. Tires, meat, butter, sugar, fats, oils, coffee, shoes, boots, gasoline, canned fruits, vegetables, and soups were rationed on a national basis. The school day was shortened and bus routes were reduced to limit the number of resources used stateside and increase what could be sent to soldiers.
Geneva Steel was built to increase the steel production for America during World War II. President Franklin D. Roosevelt had proposed opening a steel mill in Utah in 1936, but the idea was shelved after a couple of months. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States entered the war and the steel plant was put into progress. In April 1944, Geneva shipped its first order, which consisted of over 600 tons of steel plate. Geneva Steel also brought thousands of job opportunities to Utah. The positions were hard to fill as many of Utah's men were overseas fighting. Women began working, filling 25 percent of the jobs.
As a result of Utah's and Geneva Steels contribution during the war, several Liberty Ships were named in honor of Utah including the USS Joseph Smith, USS Brigham Young, USS Provo, and the USS Peter Skene Ogden.
One of the sectors of the beachhead of Normandy Landings was codenamed Utah Beach, and the amphibious landings at the beach were undertaken by United States Army troops.
It is estimated that 1,450 soldiers from Utah were killed in the war.
It looks distinctive -- and it's hard to believe I happened across a rare plant bearing a showy flower right on the main path of one of Greece's most heavily visited archaeological sites -- but it led me on a merry chase. iNaturalist machine vision doesn't have it; nor does Google image search. Text searches were futile, as were wildflower ID sites. But Siri Knowledge image search did better (and also jibed with one of the genera that had appeared further down the list in iNaturalist). The 1st 2 examples it pulled up were Campanula celsii and C. topaliana, both endemic to the southern and central Greek mainland. I struggled to tell them apart, but it seems there is some question over whether they are synonyms of each other (see www.inaturalist.org/observations/18193270). I picked topaliana because it looked like a better visual match, but I could be wrong. C. andrewsii is also in the mix and also appears to be an endemic; it was favored on iNat. More shots at www.inaturalist.org/observations/161531257.
Built in 1914 at no. 911 Wellington Street East.
"This is a Prairie-style single-story residence, noticeably located at the south-west corner of Wellington and Woodward in the city’s east-central area. It encompasses part of Lot 15, Plan 568 and Lot 29, Plan 930. GIS coordinates: 705,711.336 5,154,111.585 Meters
This handsome, distinctive, well maintained home is the best example of a Prairie-style residence to be found in Sault Ste. Marie. It is an elegant Craftsman style bungalow with a variety of gently pitched roof slopes and a small hipped dormer. The eaves are deep and bracketed. The columns are plain with square abacuses and no base. The inclusion of classical modillions in a residence is rare in Sault Ste. Marie and to Prairie-style homes. A variety of rustic building materials have been utilized: stucco, wood, brick and stone. The window groupings consist of both casement and sash with inner muntin bars. Those windows on the front have been replaced with modern aluminum windows but the windows around the sunroom on the east side and those on the partial second floor are original. Many of the original storm windows are stored in the garage. Craftsmanship in the building is excellent yet simple and functional. Even the interior fireplace sports hand-carved brackets of similar design to those supporting the overhanging exterior eaves. With the exception of the kitchen and bathroom, the main floor rooms are still finished with the original oak trim and floors. An old photo of the house indicates that cedar shingles once adorned the roof.
This residence was constructed, in its present form, in 1914 for Richard H. Carney who was District manager for Canada Life Assurance Co. It was the Carney family who was responsible for construction of the Carney Block on Queen St. It thus reflects the affluence of an upper middle class business family which was profiting from the Clergue industrial expansion of the day. A 1914 date and initials of the stone mason builder may be found in the basement wall mortar between the sandstone pieces. It is likely this sandstone was quarried from the locks as was typical for the day. This house was purchased in 1939 by the MacIntosh family who owned it until 2004.
The key exterior features that embody the heritage value of 911 Wellington St. E. include:
- Variety of gently pitched roof slopes provide horizontal emphasis reflecting the Prairiestyle bungalow
- Clerestory lighting that provides light to a half story loft
- A hipped dormer and deep bracketed eaves
- Columns with abacuses and no base but adorned with modillions
- Rustic building materials including stucco, wood, brick and stone
- Original casement windows with sash and inner muntin bars on the sunroom (east side)
and on the half story loft
- Home and property have been well maintained in traditional style with little change to
the exterior
- An interior with oak trim, baseboards and flooring unchanged save for the kitchen and
bathroom
- A beautiful fireplace with brackets supporting the mantle matching those under the
eaves on the exterior
- The best example of a classical Prairie-style residence in Sault Ste. Marie distinctively
located in a prominent east-central location
- A residence which reflects the affluence of a prominent Sault business family built
during the heyday of the Clergue industrial empire" - info from the Sault Ste. Marie Municipal Heritage Committee.
"Sault Ste. Marie (/ˈsuː seɪnt məˈriː/ SOO-seint-ma-REE) is a city on the St. Marys River in Ontario, Canada, close to the Canada–US border. It is the seat of the Algoma District and the third largest city in Northern Ontario, after Sudbury and Thunder Bay.
The Ojibwe, the indigenous Anishinaabe inhabitants of the area, call this area Baawitigong, meaning "place of the rapids." They used this as a regional meeting place during whitefish season in the St. Mary's Rapids. (The anglicized form of this name, Bawating, is used in institutional and geographic names in the area.)
To the south, across the river, is the United States and the Michigan city of the same name. These two communities were one city until a new treaty after the War of 1812 established the border between Canada and the United States in this area at the St. Mary's River. In the 21st century, the two cities are joined by the International Bridge, which connects Interstate 75 on the Michigan side, and Huron Street (and former Ontario Secondary Highway 550B) on the Ontario side. Shipping traffic in the Great Lakes system bypasses the Saint Mary's Rapids via the American Soo Locks, the world's busiest canal in terms of tonnage that passes through it, while smaller recreational and tour boats use the Canadian Sault Ste. Marie Canal.
French colonists referred to the rapids on the river as Les Saults de Ste. Marie and the village name was derived from that. The rapids and cascades of the St. Mary's River descend more than 6 m (20 ft) from the level of Lake Superior to the level of the lower lakes. Hundreds of years ago, this slowed shipping traffic, requiring an overland portage of boats and cargo from one lake to the other. The entire name translates to "Saint Mary's Rapids" or "Saint Mary's Falls". The word sault is pronounced [so] in French, and /suː/ in the English pronunciation of the city name. Residents of the city are called Saultites.
Sault Ste. Marie is bordered to the east by the Rankin and Garden River First Nation reserves, and to the west by Prince Township. To the north, the city is bordered by an unincorporated portion of Algoma District, which includes the local services boards of Aweres, Batchawana Bay, Goulais and District, Peace Tree and Searchmont. The city's census agglomeration, including the townships of Laird, Prince and Macdonald, Meredith and Aberdeen Additional and the First Nations reserves of Garden River and Rankin, had a total population of 79,800 in 2011.
Native American settlements, mostly of Ojibwe-speaking peoples, existed here for more than 500 years. In the late 17th century, French Jesuit missionaries established a mission at the First Nations village. This was followed by development of a fur trading post and larger settlement, as traders, trappers and Native Americans were attracted to the community. It was considered one community and part of Canada until after the War of 1812 and settlement of the border between Canada and the US at the Ste. Mary's River. At that time, the US prohibited British traders from any longer operating in its territory, and the areas separated by the river began to develop as two communities, both named Sault Ste. Marie." - info from Wikipedia.
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gardens by the bay
gardens by the bay
Singapore Gardens by the Bay consists of three distinctive waterfront gardens – Bay South, Bay East and Bay Central, spanning a total of 101 hectares. They are set in the heart of Singapore’s new downtown Marina Bay, encircling the Marina Reservoir like a green necklace. The Gardens will complement the array of attractions around Marina Bay.
Gardens by the Bay is an integral part of a strategy by the Singapore government that further transforms Singapore from a ‘Garden City’ to a ‘City in a Garden’, in which the city is woven into a green and floral tapestry.Gardens by the bay.. This aims to raise the quality of life in Singapore with a more holistic and all-encompassing programme that enhances greenery and flora in the city. First announced to the public by Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong during the National Day Rally in August 2005, Gardens by the Bay will become Singapore’s premier urban outdoor recreation space, and a national icon.
An international competition for the design of the master plan was held in January 2006 to elicit the best designs for the Gardens. This attracted more than 70 entries submitted by 170 firms from 24 countries, from which two firms – Grant Associates and Gustafson Porter – were eventually awarded the master plan design for the Bay South and Bay East Gardens respectively.
The Gardens are being developed in phases. Bay South is currently being constructed and is slated to be completed by June 2012. Bay East has been developed as an interim park in support of the Youth Olympic Games 2010, and is scheduled to open to the public in late 2011 or early 2012. The full master plan implementation of Bay East and the development of Bay Central are part of the next phase of development.Gardens by the bay..
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Please note that all the contents in this photostream is copyrighted and protected under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and the Copyright Act of Singapore, any usage of the images without permission will face liability for the infringement.
For enquiry, drop a mail to fiftymm99@yahoo.com
A distinctive feature of Phang Nga Bay is the sheer limestone cliffs that jut vertically out of the emerald green water. James Bond Island and Koh Panyee are just two of the more famous spots in this bay. By far the best means of enjoying the spectacular scenery, with only brief encounters with the tourist crowds as James Bond and Koh Panyee, is to take one of the boat trips from the northern end of Phuket.
Phang Nga Bay is a great place for boating. The interesting limestone cliffs create a picturesque backdrop and there are many safe places to anchor.
The fact that it's protected from both the Northeast and the Southwest monsoon seasons means that its waters remain calm year-round, which adds to the appeal of its scenic wonders and abundant wildlife.
The barn swallow (Hirundo rustica) is the most widespread species of swallow in the world.[2] It is a distinctive passerine bird with blue upperparts and a long, deeply forked tail. It is found in Europe, Asia, Africa and the Americas. In Anglophone Europe it is just called the swallow; in Northern Europe it is the only common species called a "swallow" rather than a "martin".
There are six subspecies of barn swallow, which breed across the Northern Hemisphere. Four are strongly migratory, and their wintering grounds cover much of the Southern Hemisphere as far south as central Argentina, the Cape Province of South Africa, and northern Australia. Its huge range means that the barn swallow is not endangered, although there may be local population declines due to specific threats.
The barn swallow is a bird of open country that normally uses man-made structures to breed and consequently has spread with human expansion. It builds a cup nest from mud pellets in barns or similar structures and feeds on insects caught in flight.[4] This species lives in close association with humans, and its insect-eating habits mean that it is tolerated by humans; this acceptance was reinforced in the past by superstitions regarding the bird and its nest. There are frequent cultural references to the barn swallow in literary and religious works due to both its living in close proximity to humans and its annual migration. The barn swallow is the national bird of Austria and Estonia.
The adult male barn swallow of the nominate subspecies H. r. rustica is 17–19 cm (6.7–7.5 in) long including 2–7 cm (0.79–2.76 in) of elongated outer tail feathers. It has a wingspan of 32–34.5 cm (12.6–13.6 in) and weighs 16–22 g (0.56–0.78 oz). It has steel blue upperparts and a rufous forehead, chin and throat, which are separated from the off-white underparts by a broad dark blue breast band. The outer tail feathers are elongated, giving the distinctive deeply forked "swallow tail". There is a line of white spots across the outer end of the upper tail. The female is similar in appearance to the male, but the tail streamers are shorter, the blue of the upperparts and breast band is less glossy, and the underparts paler. The juvenile is browner and has a paler rufous face and whiter underparts. It also lacks the long tail streamers of the adult.
The song of the male barn swallow is a cheerful warble, often ending with su-seer with the second note higher than the first but falling in pitch. Calls include witt or witt-witt and a loud splee-plink when excited (or trying to chase intruders away from the nest). The alarm calls include a sharp siflitt for predators like cats and a flitt-flitt for birds of prey like the hobby. This species is fairly quiet on the wintering grounds.
The distinctive combination of a red face and blue breast band render the adult barn swallow easy to distinguish from the African Hirundo species and from the welcome swallow (Hirundo neoxena) with which its range overlaps in Australasia. In Africa the short tail streamers of the juvenile barn swallow invite confusion with juvenile red-chested swallow (Hirundo lucida), but the latter has a narrower breast band and more white in the tail.
The preferred habitat of the barn swallow is open country with low vegetation, such as pasture, meadows and farmland, preferably with nearby water. This swallow avoids heavily wooded or precipitous areas and densely built-up locations. The presence of accessible open structures such as barns, stables, or culverts to provide nesting sites, and exposed locations such as wires, roof ridges or bare branches for perching, are also important in the bird's selection of its breeding range.
It breeds in the Northern Hemisphere from sea level to typically 2,700 m (8,900 ft), but to 3,000 m (9,800 ft) in the Caucasus and North America, and it is absent only from deserts and the cold northernmost parts of the continents. Over much of its range, it avoids towns, and in Europe is replaced in urban areas by the house martin. However, in Honshū, Japan, the barn swallow is a more urban bird, with the red-rumped swallow (Cecropis daurica) replacing it as the rural species.
In winter, the barn swallow is cosmopolitan in its choice of habitat, avoiding only dense forests and deserts. It is most common in open, low vegetation habitats, such as savanna and ranch land, and in Venezuela, South Africa and Trinidad and Tobago it is described as being particularly attracted to burnt or harvested sugarcane fields and the waste from the cane. In the absence of suitable roost sites, they may sometimes roost on wires where they are more exposed to predators. Individual birds tend to return to the same wintering locality each year and congregate from a large area to roost in reed beds. These roosts can be extremely large; one in Nigeria had an estimated 1.5 million birds.
These roosts are thought to be a protection from predators, and the arrival of roosting birds is synchronized in order to overwhelm predators like African hobbies. The barn swallow has been recorded as breeding in the more temperate parts of its winter range, such as the mountains of Thailand and in central Argentina.
Migration of barn swallows between Britain and South Africa was first established on 23 December 1912 when a bird that had been ringed by James Masefield at a nest in Staffordshire, was found in Natal. As would be expected for a long-distance migrant, this bird has occurred as a vagrant to such distant areas as Hawaii, Bermuda, Greenland, Tristan da Cunha the Falkland Islands, and even Antarctica.
The male barn swallow returns to the breeding grounds before the females and selects a nest site, which is then advertised to females with a circling flight and song.
Plumage may be used to advertise: in some populations, like in the subspecies H. r. gutturalis, darker ventral plumage in males is associated with higher breeding success. In other populations, the breeding success of the male is related to the length of the tail streamers, with longer streamers being more attractive to the female. Males with longer tail feathers are generally longer-lived and more disease resistant, females thus gaining an indirect fitness benefit from this form of selection, since longer tail feathers indicate a genetically stronger individual which will produce offspring with enhanced vitality. Males in northern Europe have longer tails than those further south; whereas in Spain the male's tail streamers are only 5% longer than the female's, in Finland the difference is 20%. In Denmark, the average male tail length increased by 9% between 1984 and 2004, but it is possible that climatic changes may lead in the future to shorter tails if summers become hot and dry.
Males with long streamers also have larger white tail spots, and since feather-eating bird lice prefer white feathers, large white tail spots without parasite damage again demonstrate breeding quality; there is a positive association between spot size and the number of offspring produced each season.
The breeding season of the barn swallow is variable; in the southern part of the range, the breeding season usually is from February or March to early to mid September, although some late second and third broods finish in October. In the northern part of the range, it usually starts late May to early June and ends the same time as the breeding season of the southernmost birds.
Both sexes defend the nest, but the male is particularly aggressive and territorial. Once established, pairs stay together to breed for life, but extra-pair copulation is common, making this species genetically polygamous, despite being socially monogamous. Males guard females actively to avoid being cuckolded. Males may use deceptive alarm calls to disrupt extrapair copulation attempts toward their mates.
As its name implies, the barn swallow typically nests inside accessible buildings such as barns and stables, or under bridges and wharves. Before man-made sites became common, it nested on cliff faces or in caves, but this is now rare. The neat cup-shaped nest is placed on a beam or against a suitable vertical projection. It is constructed by both sexes, although more often by the female, with mud pellets collected in their beaks and lined with grasses, feathers, algae or other soft materials. The nest building ability of the male is also sexually selected; females will lay more eggs and at an earlier date with males who are better at nest construction, with the opposite being true with males that are not. After building the nest, barn swallows may nest colonially where sufficient high-quality nest sites are available, and within a colony, each pair defends a territory around the nest which, for the European subspecies, is 4 to 8 m2 (43 to 86 sq ft) in size. Colony size tends to be larger in North America.
In North America at least, barn swallows frequently engage in a mutualist relationship with ospreys. Barn swallows will build their nest below an osprey nest, receiving protection from other birds of prey that are repelled by the exclusively fish-eating ospreys. The ospreys are alerted to the presence of these predators by the alarm calls of the swallows.
There are normally two broods, with the original nest being reused for the second brood and being repaired and reused in subsequent years. The female lays two to seven, but typically four or five, reddish-spotted white eggs. The clutch size is influenced by latitude, with clutch sizes of northern populations being higher on average than southern populations. The eggs are 20 mm × 14 mm (0.79 in × 0.55 in) in size, and weigh 1.9 g (0.067 oz), of which 5% is shell. In Europe, the female does almost all the incubation, but in North America the male may incubate up to 25% of the time. The incubation period is normally 14–19 days, with another 18–23 days before the altricial chicks fledge. The fledged young stay with, and are fed by, the parents for about a week after leaving the nest. Occasionally, first-year birds from the first brood will assist in feeding the second brood.[
Compared to those from early broods, juvenile barn swallows from late broods have been found to migrate at a younger age, fuel less efficiently during migration and have lower return rates the following year.
The barn swallow will mob intruders such as cats or accipiters that venture too close to their nest, often flying very close to the threat. Adult barn swallows have few predators, but some are taken by accipiters, falcons, and owls. Brood parasitism by cowbirds in North America or cuckoos in Eurasia is rare.
Hatching success is 90% and the fledging survival rate is 70–90%. Average mortality is 70–80% in the first year and 40–70% for the adult. Although the record age is more than 11 years, most survive less than four years. Barn swallow nestlings have prominent red gapes, a feature shown to induce feeding by parent birds. An experiment in manipulating brood size and immune system showed the vividness of the gape was positively correlated with T-cell–mediated immunocompetence, and that larger brood size and injection with an antigen led to a less vivid gape.
The barn swallow has been recorded as hybridising with the cliff swallow (Petrochelidon pyrrhonota) and the cave swallow (P. fulva) in North America, and the house martin (Delichon urbicum) in Eurasia, the cross with the latter being one of the most common passerine hybrids.
For more information, please visit en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barn_swallow
I usually walk among the Fittie housing and tarry sheds when I have some time while waiting on ships arriving or leaving the harbour, today I choose to walk along the main street where locals parks their cars , I've passed this building many times though never noticed the scripted block with info of the buildings origins and date etc, took a photo to archive for my Flickr, this is the result .
The Gospel Hall is located on New Pier Road, within the conservation area of Footdee. This building was constructed as recently as 1951 and was initially used as a place of worship. A full-immersion baptismal font remains a defining feature of the erstwhile Gospel Hall.
From 1990 to 2014, the building was rented as a studio by respected RSA artist, Joyce Cairns. Among a great many distinctive, large scale paintings-many inspired by and featuring the village of Fittie, her significant body of work “War Tourist” was produced within the four walls of the hall.
When Joyce’s tenancy came to an end in April 2014, members of the Castlehill and Pittodrie Community Council began informal inquiries into the vacant property being acquired for the benefit of village residents.
Residents of a historic fishing community have joined together in a bid to buy a disused gospel hall from the local authority.
In a first for Aberdeen City Council, the residents of Footdee, know locally as Fittie, will take over ownership of the old Gospel Hall from the local authority via a community asset transfer.
This relatively new legislation introduces a right for community bodies to make requests to all local authorities for land or buildings they feel they could make better use of.
The building, which dates back to 1951 in its current form, will be acquired by the non-profit charity Fittie Community Development Trust which is an association of 60 residents of the former fishing village.
The local authority has approved the terms of the sale with the trust on course to buy the building in which they want to hold community events.
The trust has received £50,000 from the Scottish Land Fund and is raising cash to renovate the hall, with an anticipated opening date of summer 2018.
Trust chairwoman Pauline Brown said: “The purchase of this building to use as a community hall is an important and positive development for the village of Fittie.
“We have been heartened by the support of Aberdeen City Council in helping to make this happen.
“Providing the Fittie community with a physical location to hold meetings and social, recreational and educational clubs and events will provide opportunities for residents of all ages to engage in activities which will support community cohesion, develop interests and improve general health and wellbeing.”
The gospel hall, on New Pier Road, was initially used as a place of worship for local fishermen but was later rented as a studio by artist Joyce Cairns from 1990 to 2014.
Members of Castlehill and Pittodrie Community Council then began informal inquiries before the trust led the campaign to buy it.
Fittie resident Mary Falconer, who has lived in the village for 35 years, said it was “wonderful news” for the community.
She said: “Now we can look forward to opening the doors to a historic building that’s been part of the village for many years but has been empty and disused for some time.
“This building will bring pleasure to local people and we look forward to being able to share some community activities and our history and heritage with the wider community, showing another side of Fittie life.”
The Arabian or Arab horse (Arabic: الحصان العربي [ ħisˤaːn ʕarabiː], DMG ḥiṣān ʿarabī) is a breed of horse that originated on the Arabian Peninsula. With a distinctive head shape and high tail carriage, the Arabian is one of the most easily recognizable horse breeds in the world. It is also one of the oldest breeds, with archaeological evidence of horses that resemble modern Arabians dating back 4,500 years. Throughout history, Arabian horses spread around the world by both war and trade, used to improve other breeds by adding speed, refinement, endurance, and strong bone. Today, Arabian bloodlines are found in almost every modern breed of riding horse.
Photographed at Shoreline Lake Park, Mountain View, California
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From Wikipedia: The black-necked grebe (Podiceps nigricollis), known in North America as the eared grebe, is a member of the grebe family of water birds. It was described in 1831 by Christian Ludwig Brehm. There are currently three accepted subspecies, including the nominate subspecies. Its breeding plumage features a distinctive ochre-coloured plumage that extends behind its eye and over its ear coverts. The rest of the upper parts, including the head, neck, and breast, are coloured black to blackish brown. The flanks are tawny rufous to maroon-chestnut, and the abdomen is white. When in its non-breeding plumage, this bird has greyish-black upper parts, including the top of the head and a vertical stripe on the back of the neck. The flanks are also greyish-black. The rest of the body is a white or whitish colour. The juvenile has more brown in its darker areas. The subspecies californicus can be distinguished from the nominate by the former's usually longer bill. The other subspecies, P. n. gurneyi, can be differentiated by its greyer head and upper parts and by its smaller size. P. n. gurneyi can also be told apart by its lack of a non-breeding plumage. This species is present in parts of Africa, Eurasia, and the Americas.
The black-necked grebe uses multiple foraging techniques. Insects, which make up the majority of this bird's diet, are caught either on the surface of the water or when they are in flight. It occasionally practices foliage gleaning. This grebe dives to catch crustaceans, molluscs, tadpoles, and small frogs and fish. When moulting at saline lakes, this bird feeds mostly on brine shrimp. The black-necked grebe makes a floating cup nest on an open lake. The nest cup is covered with a disc. This nest is located both in colonies and by itself. During the breeding season, which varies depending on location, this species will lay one (sometimes two) clutch of three to four eggs. The number of eggs is sometimes larger due to conspecific brood parasitism. After a 21-day incubation period, the eggs hatch, and then the nest is deserted. After about 10 days, the parents split up the chicks between themselves. After this, the chicks become independent in about 10 days, and fledge in about three weeks.
Although it generally avoids flight, the black-necked grebe travels as far as 6,000 kilometres (3,700 mi) during migration. In addition, it becomes flightless for two months after completing a migration to reach an area where it can safely moult. During this moult, the grebe can double in weight. The migrations to reach these areas are dangerous, sometimes with thousands of grebe deaths. In spite of this, it is classified as a least concern species by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN). It is likely that this is the most numerous grebe in the world. There are potential threats to it, such as oil spills, but these are not likely to present a major risk to the overall population.
Taxonomy:
This species was first described by Carl Ludwig Hablitz in 1783 as Colymbus caspicus, from a bird in Bandar-e Anzali. This was originally thought to be a synonym for the horned grebe, until Erwin Stresemann discovered that the description applied more to the black-necked grebe in 1948. Before this, the earliest description was thought to be by Christian Ludwig Brehm in 1831, who gave this bird its current scientific name of Podiceps nigricollis from a German bird. To resolve this, the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature suppressed the name C. caspicus. The genus name Dytes is sometimes used for this species, a placement which was formalized by Robert Ridgway in 1881.
This bird is closely related to the silvery grebe and the Junin grebe. The extinct Colombian grebe is sometimes considered to be a subspecies of this species, in addition to three other extant subspecies:
P. n. nigricollis – (Brehm, CL, 1831): nominate, is found from western Europe to western Asia (wintering to the south and west), in central and eastern Asia, and in eastern Africa
P. n. gurneyi – (Roberts, 1919): is found in southern Africa
P. n. californicus – (Heermann, 1854): is found from southwestern Canada through the western U.S. It winters as far south as Guatemala
The generic name, Podiceps, comes from two Latin words: podicis, meaning "vent" or "anus" and pes meaning "foot". This is a reference to the attachment point of the bird's legs—at the extreme back end of its body. The specific epithet nigricollis is Latin for "black-necked": niger means "black" and collis means "neck". The subspecies epithet californicus comes from "California", while gurneyi comes from the name of British ornithologist John Henry Gurney Sr.
"Black-necked grebe" has been designated the official name by the International Ornithological Committee (IOC). Both common names for this species refer to features visible when the bird is in its breeding plumage; in such plumage, it has an all-black neck and a spray of golden plumes on each side of its head. The name "eared grebe" is nearly a century older than the name "black-necked grebe". The latter was first used in 1912 by Ernst Hartert, in an effort to bring the common name of the species in line with its scientific name. The name "eared grebe" is still used in North America to refer to this bird.
Description:
The black-necked grebe usually measures between 28 and 34 centimetres (11 and 13 in) in length and weighs 265 to 450 grams (9.3 to 15.9 oz). The nominate subspecies in breeding plumage has the head, neck, breast, and upper parts coloured black to blackish brown, with the exception of the ochre-coloured fan of feathers extending behind the eye over the eye-coverts and sides of the nape. This eye is mostly red, with a narrow and paler yellow ring on the inner parts of the eye and an orange-yellow to pinkish-red orbital ring. The thin, upturned bill, on the other hand, is black, and is connected to the eye by a blackish line starting at the gape. Sometimes, the foreneck can be found to be mostly tinged brown. The upperwing is blackish to drab brown in colour and has a white patch formed by the secondaries and part of the inner primaries. The flanks are coloured tawny rufous to maroon-chestnut and have the occasional blackish fleck. The underwing and abdomen is white, with an exception to the former being the dark tertials and the mostly pale grey-brown outer primaries. The legs are a dark greenish grey. The sexes are similar.
In non-breeding plumage, the nominate has greyish-black upper parts, cap, nape, and hindneck, with the colour on the upper portion of the latter being contained in a vertical stripe. The dark colour of the cap reaches below the eye and can be seen, diffused, to the ear-coverts. Behind the ear-coverts on the sides of the neck, there are white ovals. The rest of the neck is grey to brownish-grey in colour and has white that varies in amount. The breast is white, and the abdomen is whitish. The flanks are coloured in a mix of blackish-grey with white flecks. The colour of the bill when not breeding differs from that of the breeding plumage, with the former being significantly more grey.
The juvenile black-necked grebe is similar to the non-breeding adult. There are differences, however, including the fact that the dark areas are usually more brownish in the juvenile, with less black. The lores are often tinged pale grey, with whitish marks behind the eye. On the sides of the head and upper neck, there is a buffy or tawny tinge. The chick is downy and has a blackish-grey head with stripes and spots that are white or pale buff-grey. The throat and foreneck are largely pale. The upper parts are mostly dark grey in colour, and the abdomen is white.
The subspecies californicus usually has a longer bill compared to the nominate, and has brown-grey inner primaries during the breeding season. When not breeding, the nominate has diffuse and pale lores less often than Podiceps nigricollis californicus. The other subspecies, P. n. gurneyi, is the smallest of the three subspecies, in addition to having a greyer head and upper parts. The adult of this subspecies also has a rufous-brown tinge on its lesser wing-coverts. It also lacks a non-breeding plumage, in addition to the tufts on the side of its head being paler.
Vocalizations:
When breeding, the black-necked grebe gives a quiet "ooeek" that ascends in pitch from an already high pitch. This call is also used as a territorial call, in addition to a low and fast trill, which itself is also used during courtship. Another call is a short "puuii" or "wit". This grebe is silent when it is not the breeding season and when it is feeding or resting.
Distribution and habitat:
This species breeds in vegetated areas of freshwater lakes across Europe, Asia, Africa, northern South America and the southwest and western United States. After breeding, this bird migrates to saline lakes to moult. Then, after completing the moult and waiting for sometimes several months, it migrates to winter in places such as the south-western Palearctic and the eastern parts of both Africa and Asia. It also winters in southern Africa, another place where it breeds. In the Americas, it winters as far south as Guatemala, although the wintering population there is mainly restricted to islands in the Gulf of California, the Salton Sea, and Baja California. When not breeding, its habitat is primarily saline lakes and coastal estuaries.
Behaviour:
This grebe is highly gregarious, usually forming large colonies when breeding and large flocks when not.
Breeding:
This species builds its floating nest in the usually shallow water of open lakes. The nest itself is anchored to the lake by plants. It is built by both the male and female and made out of plant matter. Most of it is submerged, with the bottom of the shallow cup usually being level with the water. Above the cup, there is a flat disc. This grebe nests both in colonies and by itself. When it does not nest by itself, it will often nest in mixed-species colonies that are made up of birds such as black-headed gulls, ducks, and various other waterbirds. Whether it nests in colonies or not has an effect on the dimensions of the nest. When the bird is not in a colony, the nest has an average diameter of 28 centimetres (11 in), although this can vary, with nests ranging from about 20 centimetres (8 in) to over 30 centimetres (12 in). This is compared to nests in colonies, which have an average diameter of about 25.5 centimetres (10 in). It is suggested that rarely some pairs of this grebe will steward over multiple nests when in colonies.
Pair formation in the black-necked grebe usually starts during pauses in the migration to the breeding grounds, although it occasionally occurs before, in wintering pairs. This pair formation continues after this grebe has arrived to its breeding grounds. Courtship occurs when it arrives at the breeding lake. The displays are performed in the middle of the lake. There is no territory involved in courting; individuals used the whole area of the lake. When advertising for a mate, a black-necked grebe will approach other black-necked grebes with its body fluffed out and its neck erect. It closes its beak to perform a call, poo-eee-chk, with the last note only barely audible. Courtship generally stops at the start of nesting.
In the Northern Hemisphere, this bird breeds from April to August. In east Africa, the breeding season is at least from January to February, while in southern Africa, the breeding season is from October to April.
The black-necked grebe is socially monogamous. Conspecific or intraspecific brood parasitism, where the female lays eggs in the nest of others of their own species is common with nearly 40% of nests being parasitized on average. In terms of territory, this grebe will only defend its nest site.
This grebe lays a clutch, and sometimes two clutches, of three to four chalky greenish or bluish eggs. Nests that have been parasitized, however, will have two more eggs on average, even though the amount that the host lays is about the same no matter if it has been parasitized or not. The eggs, although they are initially immaculate, do get stained by the plant matter that the nest is built out of. The eggs measure 45 by 30 millimetres (1.8 by 1.2 in) on average and are incubated by both parents for about 21 days. The laying date of the eggs is somewhat synchronized, with birds in small colonies having the laying dates spread out by just a few days, compared to large colonies, where the laying date is spread out over more than 10 days.
After the chicks hatch, the birds will desert their nest. Even though the young can swim and dive during this time, they rarely do, instead staying on the parents' backs for four days after hatching. After about 10 days, the parents split the chicks up, with each parent taking care of about half of the brood. After this split, the chicks are independent in about 10 days, and fledge in about three weeks.
When disturbed while incubating, this bird usually (just under 50% of the time) partly covers its eggs with nest material when the disruption is not sudden, but a bird with an incomplete clutch usually does not attempt to cover the eggs. When the disruption is sudden, on the other hand, the black-necked grebe usually (just under 50% of the time) does not cover its eggs. In comparison, other species of grebes cover up their eggs when leaving the nest. Predation is usually not the primary cause of egg loss, with most nesting failures occurring after the chicks have hatched. A major cause of this is the chilling of the young.
Feeding:
The black-necked grebe forages mainly by diving from the water, with dives usually lasting less than 30 seconds. These dives are usually shorter in time when in more shallow water. In between dives, this grebe rests for an average of 15 seconds. It also forages by gleaning foliage, plucking objects off of the surface of water, having its head submerged while swimming, and sometimes capturing flying insects.
This grebe eats mostly insects, of both adult and larval stages, as well as crustaceans, molluscs, tadpoles, and small frogs and fish. When moulting at lakes with high salinity, although, this bird feeds mostly on brine shrimp. The behaviour of black-necked grebes changes in response to the availability of brine shrimp; bodies of water with more shrimp have more grebes, and grebes spend more time foraging when the amount of shrimp and the water temperature decreases.
The young are fed one at a time by the parents, with one bird carrying the young while the other feeds it. The young take food by grabbing it, with their beaks, from their parents, or by grabbing food dropped into the water. When a young bird cannot grab the food, then the adults submerge their bill into the water and shake their bill to break up the food.
Moult and migration:
When breeding is over, the black-necked grebe usually partakes in a moult migration to saline lakes. It especially prefers lakes with large numbers of invertebrate prey, so that it can fatten up while moulting and before going on its winter migration. Some birds, although, moult when on the breeding grounds, but most do not moult until the end of the moult migration. This migration is dangerous, with hundreds and sometimes thousands of birds being killed by snowstorms when traveling to places such as Mono Lake.
When it finishes its moult migration, this bird moults its remiges between August and September, which makes it unable to fly. This moult is preceded by an increase in weight. During the moult, the breast muscles atrophy. When the moult is completed, this grebe continues to gain weight, often more than doubling its original weight. This additional fat is used to power the black-necked grebe's overnight fall migration to its wintering grounds. The fat is most concentrated in the abdomen, second most in the thorax, and least in the chest. This bird usually starts its migration earlier when shrimp is more abundant and when the moulting lake is at a higher than average temperature. It generally leaves on a clear night with lower than average surface temperatures.
Movement:
This grebe is one of the most inefficient fliers among birds. Generally, it avoids flying at all costs and reserves long-distance flight exclusively for migration. This is combined with the fact that this bird is flightless for two months of the year during its moult. However, when migrating, it travels as much as 6,000 kilometres (3,700 miles) to reach rich feeding areas that are exploited by few other species. In flight, the shape of this grebe is like a loon: straight neck, legs trailing, and wings beating often.
When diving, this bird pulls its head back and then arches it forward into the water, with the body following and a slight springing. The legs only start moving when they are underwater. When swimming on the surface of the water, the body of this grebe is relatively high, although none of the underparts are seen. The neck is held straight up in a relaxed manner, with the bill being held forward and parallel to the water. Each of the feet perform strong alternating strokes.
AB2A0205-1_fCAFlkr
www.bbc.co.uk/handsonnature/woodlands/caledonian_pinewood...
Abernethy Forest in is one of the oldest woodlands in the Britain, renowned for its soaring Scots Pines, its stunning Ospreys, and its abundance of wildlife.
This is a great place for looking at trees and becoming a nature detective.
Located in the Eastern Highlands of Scotland, Abernethy is home to some amazing plants and animals and offers one of the country's unique wildlife experiences.
Pines and Martens
The Abernethy Forest is one of the last remnants of the Caledonian pine forest which once covered the country.
It is now the largest remaining stretch of native pinewood in Britain.
The diversity of wildlife at Abernethy Forest is immense ranging from Red Squirrels feeding on the Scots Pines' cones, to birds like Grouse and Capercaillie.
Also look out for Pine Martens chasing small birds through the wooded canopy.
The woods support an array of specialist insects and plants.
There are also 700 types of fungi, 300 species of moths, 280 types of fly, 128 varieties of spider and 900 different types of beetle.
Beetles include the Timberman with its impressive, long antennae and camouflage colouring.
King Pine
The walk from the car park at Abernethy takes visitors through a rare Caledonian pine forest, where you can also see Red Squirrels, Grouse and Capercaillie.
The Scots Pine is the largest and longest lived tree in the Caledonian pine forest, characterised by the distinctive pine cones at the end of their branches.
The mature trees are easy to spot - they have a blue-green look to them, which distinguishes them from other conifers in the woods.
When the Ice Age ended, these trees were amongst the first to re-colonise the landscape.
Birds, bugs and woods
Much later during industrial times the trees were used as timber for shipbuilding, and their resin was used to make glue and other products.
Today they form the backbone of an eco-system on which many other plant and animal species depend.
When walking through the woods, look closely and you may spot a Crested Tit looking for bugs that live on Scots Pines, or prising open its pine cones to get at the seeds inside.
There's also a wealth of life on the forest floor from junipers through to blueberries (sometimes known as bilberries), which provide food for birds.
Bird power
Abernethy Forest is famous for its Ospreys which can be seen from the Osprey Centre in the season, with video pictures of the birds relayed back to the centre.
The forest is also a good place to find the Capercaillie, one of Britain's biggest birds, weighing in about the size of a turkey.
Visitors can join a Caper Watch in one of the forest's hides to spot this elusive bird strutting its stuff during the breeding season.
The Black Grouse is another forest resident, though smaller in size than the Capercaillie. Listen out for its distinctive bubbling noise.
The best time to visit Abernethy is April to July to see birds, plants and insects.
Whinchat
Saxicola rubetra
[order] Passeriformes | [family] Muscicapidae | [latin] Saxicola rubetra | [UK] Whinchat | [FR] Tarier des prés | [DE] Braunkehlchen | [ES] Tarabilla Norteña | [IT] Stiaccino | [NL] Paapje | [IRL] Caislín aitinn
Status: Widespread summer visitor from April to September to uplands and scrubland throughout Ireland. Scarce passage in spring and autumn mainly to eastern and southern coasts.
Conservation Concern: Amber-listed in Ireland due to a decline in the breeding population. The European population is currently assessed as Secure.
Identification: The same size as Robin and Stonechat and broadly resembles the latter species. Frequently uses exposed perches like Stonechat. In all plumages has a grey-brown rump, with a broad black stripe at the base of the tail. The white base to the tail is not obvious. Adult males have a dark head with a broad white supercilium. The back is streaked brown and black. The underparts (throat and breast) are a rich orange-buff. In flight, shows two large white patches on the wing. Adult females are similar to adult male Whinchats, but have a buffy-brown head and beige supercilium. The underparts also tend top be less extensively orange. Juveniles resemble adult females, but have some dark spotting on the breast.
Similar Species: Stonechat
Call: A soft "yu-tek-tek". Sings mainly at night and so infrequently heard. A distinctive series of whistled notes and rasping sounds, intermixed with mimicked calls and songs of other bird species.
Diet: Insects and other invertebrates.
Breeding: Breeds in a wide variety of habitats, including insect-rich meadows and bracken-covered slopes in uplands. The Irish breeding population has been decling in the last few years.
Wintering: Winters in tropical Africa.
Where to See: Coronation Plantation in County Wicklow and the Shannon Callows near Banagher are good areas to see Whinchat in Ireland.
The Eastern Lubber is surely the most distinctive grasshopper species in the southeastern United States. It is well known both for its size and its unique coloration. The wings offer little help with mobility for they are rarely more than half the length of the abdomen. This species is incapable of flight and can jump only short distances.The Eastern Lubber is quite clumsy and slow in movement and mostly travels by walking and crawling feebly over the substrate. The “lubber” designation is interesting because it aptly describes this grasshopper. “Lubber” is derived from an old English word “lobre” which means lazy or clumsy. This term has come to mean a big, clumsy, and stupid person, also known as a lout or lummox. In modern times, it is normally used only by seafarers, who term novices “landlubbers”. Eastern Lubber is one of only four species in the family Romaleidae found north of Mexico, but there are many other species in South America, and many are winged and agile, so although some other species in this family are called lubbers, the “lubber” designation is not appropriate for the entire family.
Adults of eastern Lubber Grasshoppers possess a variety of abilities to defend themselves. Their bright color pattern is a warning to predators that the Lubber contains toxic substances. Indeed, there are several records attributing the demise of individual birds failure to exercise caution when selecting prey items. Also, small mammals such as opossums have been known to vomit violently after ingesting a lubber, and to remain ill for several hours. However, shrikes are reported to catch and kill lubbers.
If the red, yellow, and black coloration fails to keep a predator at bay, when contacted the Lubber may produce a phenolic secretion from a special thoracic gland, first as a dispersant spray and then as a frothy secretion. This exudate consists of a number of phenolic and quinone compounds, some of which are irritants or toxins that deter predation by vertebrates and ants. The exact nature of the toxic properties varies, as these grasshoppers assimilate different compounds depending on the plants they ingest. This bubbly froth is accompanied by a relatively loud hissing sound. The insect contracts the abdomen to force air out of the spiracles along with the defensive secretion. The sound is produced as the spray is being forced out of these tiny holes in the thorax called spiracles. These defensive behaviors seem to be limited to the adult stage.
I found this one snacking on my neighbors Bougainvillea in Lake Wales, Florida.
The Sydney Opera House is a multi-venue performing arts centre in Sydney, Australia. It is one of the 20th century's most famous and distinctive buildings.
Designed by Danish architect Jørn Utzon, the building was formally opened on 20 October 1973 after a gestation beginning with Utzon's 1957 selection as winner of an international design competition. The government of New South Wales, led by the premier, Joseph Cahill, authorised work to begin in 1958 with Utzon directing construction. The government's decision to build Utzon's design is often overshadowed by circumstances that followed, including cost and scheduling overruns as well as the architect's ultimate resignation.
The building and its surrounds occupy the whole of Bennelong Point on Sydney Harbour, between Sydney Cove and Farm Cove, adjacent to the Sydney central business district and the Royal Botanic Gardens, and close by the Sydney Harbour Bridge.
Though its name suggests a single venue, the building comprises multiple performance venues which together are among the busiest[citation needed] performing arts centres – hosting well over 1,500 performances annually, attended by more than 1.2 million people. Performances are presented by numerous performing artists, including four resident companies: Opera Australia, The Australian Ballet, the Sydney Theatre Company and the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. As one of the most popular visitor attractions in Australia, more than eight million people visit the site annually, and approximately 350,000 visitors take a guided tour of the building each year. The building is managed by the Sydney Opera House Trust, an agency of the New South Wales State Government.
On 28 June 2007, the Sydney Opera House became a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Description Source:
A distinctive gritstone tor near the Rivelin Dams on the outskirts of Sheffield.
Olympus OM4 with Zuiko 28mm f3.5 on Kodak Ektar 100 film.
Herne Bay, Kent.
As its name suggests, redshanks' most distinctive features are their bright orange-red legs. They have a medium-length bill with an orange base to match, brown speckled back and wings and paler belly.
What they eat:
Redshanks hunt for insects, earthworms, molluscs and crustaceans by probing their bills into soil and mud.
Measurements:
Length:28 cm
Wingspan:62 cm
Weight:110g (male), 130g (female)
Population:
UK breeding:25,000 pairs
UK wintering:130,000 birds
Read more at www.rspb.org.uk/birds-and-wildlife/wildlife-guides/bird-a...
Photo taken between Manigango or Yilun La tso (lake) and Tro la (pass) Tibet,བོད .
Tibetan culture developed under the influence of a number of factors. Tibet's specific geographic and climactic conditions- its altitude, short growing season, and cold weather- have encouraged reliance on pastorialism, as well as the development of a different cuisine from surrounding regions. Contact with neighboring countries and cultures- including India, China, and Mongolia- have influenced the development of Tibetan culture, but the Himalayan region's remoteness and inaccessibility have preserved distinctive local influences. Buddhism has exerted a particularly strong influence on Tibetan culture since its introduction in the 7th Century. Art, literature, and music all contain elements of Buddhist religion, and Buddhism itself has adopted a unique form in Tibet, influenced by the Bön tradition and other local beliefs.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laughing_Dove
The Laughing Dove (Spilopelia senegalensis) is a small pigeon that is a resident breeder in Sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East east to the Indian Subcontinent. This small long-tailed dove is found in dry scrub and semi-desert habitats where pairs can often be seen feeding on the ground. A rufous and black chequered necklace gives it a distinctive pattern and is also easily distinguished from other doves by its call. Other names include Palm Dove and Senegal Dove while in India the name of the Little Brown Dove is often used. It was introduced in Western Australia and has established itself in the wild around Perth and Fremantle.
Description
The Laughing Dove is a long-tailed, slim pigeon, typically 25 cm (9.8 in) in length. It is pinkish brown on the underside with a lilac tinged head and neck. The head and underparts are pinkish, shading to buff on the lower abdomen. A chequered rufous and grey patch is found on the sides of the neck and are made up of split feathers. The upper parts are brownish with a bluish-grey band along the wing. The back is uniform and dull brown in the Indian population. The African populations senegalensis and phoenicophila have a bluish grey rump and upper tail coverts but differ in the shades of the neck and wing feathers while aegyptiaca is larger and the head and nape are vinous and upper wing coverts are rufous.[2] The tail is graduated and the outer feathers are tipped in white. The sexes are indistinguishable in the field. Young birds lack the chequered neck markings. The legs are red. The populations vary slightly in plumage with those from more arid zones being paler.[3] Abnormal leucistic plumages have been noted.[4]
The chuckling call is a low rolling croo-doo-doo-doo-doo with a rising and falling amplitude.[5]
Distribution and habitat
It is a common and widespread species in scrub, dry farmland and habitation over a good deal of its range, often becoming very tame. The species is found in much of Sub-Saharan Africa, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India. It is also found in Israel, Lebanon, Syria, the UAE and Turkey (these populations may be derived from human introductions). They are mostly sedentary but some populations may make movements. Birds ringed in Gujarat have been recovered 200 km north in Pakistan and exhausted birds have been recorded landing on ships in the Arabian Sea.[3][6] The species (thought to belong to the nominate population) was introduced to Perth in 1889 and has become established around Western Australia.[7] Birds that land on ships may be introduced to new regions.
Systematics and taxonomy
This species was described by Linnaeus who placed it in the genus Columba along with other pigeons. It was later placed in the genus Streptopelia but studies of molecular phylogeny indicated that this and the Spotted Dove stood out from the remainder of the Streptopelia species[9] leading to the use of an older genus name that has been used for the species by Carl Sundevall. Unfortunately Sundevall used the name Stigmatopelia senegalensis and Spilopelia for the Spotted Dove (he used the genus for chinensis as well as for suratensis and tigrina, which are now subspecies) on the same page of his 1872 book.[10] Some authors have argued that Stigmatopelia is the valid name as it has priority due to appearing in an earlier line on the page[11] but Schodde and Mason in their zoological catalogue of Australian birds chose Spilopelia citing clause 24(b) of the ICZN Code which supports the decision of the first reviser.[12]
Several populations with minute plumage and size differences have been given the status of subspecies and these include:[13]
S. s. phoenicophila (Hartert, 1916) : Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia
S. s. aegyptiaca (Latham, 1790) : Nile valley
S. s. senegalensis (Linnaeus, 1766) : Senegal and Nigeria including aequatorialis (Erlanger, 1904)
S. s. cambayensis (Gmelin, 1789) : India
S. s. ermanni (Bonaparte, 1856) : Afghanistan and Turkestan
S. s. sokotrae (Grant, 1914) : Socotra Island
S. s. dakhlae (Meinertzhagen, 1928) : Dakhla oasis, Libya (usually included in phoenicophila)
S. s. thome (Bannerman, 1931) : Sao Thome Island (but may possibly be an introduced population)
Behaviour and ecology
The species is usually seen in pairs or small parties and only rarely in larger groups. Larger groups are formed especially when drinking at waterholes in arid regions. Small numbers assemble on trees near waterholes before flying to the water's edge where they are able to suck up water like other members of the pigeon family.[14] Laughing Doves eat the fallen seeds, mainly of grasses, other vegetable matter and small ground insects such as termites and beetles.[15][16] They are fairly terrestrial, foraging on the ground in grasslands and cultivation. Their flight is quick and direct with the regular beats and an occasional sharp flick of the wings which are characteristic of pigeons in general.[3]
The male in courtship display follows the female with head bobbing displays while cooing. The male pecks its folded wings in "displacement-preening" to solicit copulation form the female. A female accepts by crouching and begging for food. The male may indulge in courtship feeding before mounting and copulating. Pairs may preen each other.[17] Males may also launch into the air with wing clapping sounds and then glide down in a gentle arc when displaying. The species has a spread out breeding season in Africa. Almost year round in Malawi and Turkey;[18] and mainly May to November in Zimbabwe, February to June in Egypt and Tunisia. In Turkey they breed In Australia the main breeding season is September to November.[7] The nest is a very flimsy platform of twigs built in a low bush and sometimes in crevices or under the eaves of houses. Both parents build the nest with males bringing the twigs which are then placed by the female. Two eggs are laid within an interval of a day between them and both parents take part in building the nest, incubating and feeding the young. Males spend more time incubating the nest during the day.[19] The eggs are incubated after the second egg is laid and the eggs hatch after about 13 to 15 days.[3][20] Nesting adults may feign injury to distract and draw predators away from the nest.[21] Multiple broods may be raised by the same pair in the same nest. Seven broods by the same pair have been noted in Turkey.[17] The young fledge and leave the nest after about 14 to 16 days.[22][23] The Jacobin Cuckoo sometimes lays its egg in the nests of the Laughing Dove in Africa.[24]
Feral populations in Australia are sometimes infected by a virus that causes symptoms similar to that produced in parrots by psittacine beak and feather disease.[25] Several ectoparasitic bird lice have been found on the species and include those in the genera Coloceras, Columbicola, Bonomiella and Hohorstiella.[26] A blood parasite Trypanosoma hannae has been recorded in the species.[27] Southern Grey Shrike have been observed preying on an adult Laughing Dove in northwestern India while the Lizard Buzzard is a predator of the species in Africa.[28][29] South African birds sometimes show a beak deformity in which the upper mandible overgrowth occurs.
Commentary.
The distinctive rounded Chalk Downs
below Ditchling Beacon, 248 metres.
Springy turf and speckled by Hawthorn bushes
in this almost flattened coombe.
Farms support arable and pasture, nearby.
The air is pure, the views extensive.
Fair weather clouds spread across a wide sky,
over the Sussex Downs,
and peace prevails.
C-GIAW, an Israel 1124A Westwind 2, on approach to runway 23 at Toronto Pearson International Airport in Mississauga, Ontario.
It was arriving as PHX395 (2080061 Ontario Inc., doing business as SkyCare Air Ambulance) from Chicago, Illinois.
Serial number 395 began its career in February 1984 as N95WW with Schering-Plough Corporation.
This 41-year-old continues to serve within the healthcare industry.
Including the prototype, only 88 examples of the 1124A Westwind 2 were produced.
One distinctive route in Hull is the Humber Fastcat, ran jointly by both main operators, Stagecoach and East Yorkshire. The route links Scunthorpe and Ashby with Hull City Centre running every half hour and with a journey time of 1 hour and 20 minutes. Unfortunately one thing I didn’t like is the lack of WiFi and USB power points for such a long distance route (and I tried it when it had ADL Enviro 300s)! Other than that it was quite a scenic route, going over the Humber Bridge and running parallel to the Humber estuary.
Whilst Stagecoach run 5 ADL Enviro 200 MMCs, 3 based in Scunthorpe and 2 in Hull, EYMS operate this sole Volvo B8RLE MCV Evolution. If it were me I’d have chosen the Volvo.
395 (BU16OYH) purrs out of Hull on a service to Scunthorpe
a Disinfectant with a Distinctive smell, which has been around for longer than me - created 80 years ago. The logo Design of sword and shield has been changed several times over the years; to start with the word Dettol was black and in all caps, then it was changed to lower case in the 1970s. The green colour also changed; the label on this bottle, which was imported to Switzerland from India and sold in my local Sri Lankan corner shop, was used from 2010 to 2020 and is in what they call "swampy yellowish green" and features a sparkle at the tip of the sword, outlined in green. In the current version the sparkle is all white and more realistic and the shield is flat, in dark green.
It is said to kill 99.9% of germs and I imagine a lot of these pocket-sized versions were sold during the pandemic. The smell takes me back a long way, to my schooldays.
Sunway Pyramid is a distinctive retail landmark located in the heart of Petaling Jaya. It was opened in July 1997 as Malaysia's first themed shopping and entertainment mall.
One of the mall's most easily recognised designs is the Egyptian-inspired Pyramid with a lion "standing guard" at the entrance. The rest of the building is embellished in the monumental style, complete with pseudo-hieroglyphics decorating facades, along with numerous Pharonic statuaries.
Sunway Pyramid is also one of the only shopping malls in Malaysia to have an indoor ice skating rink.
This place opens its door at 10 am. That's why it looks so deserted in this shot!
Black Eagle
Ictinaetus malaiensis
Large and distinctive dark eagle of forested mountains and hills. Adults appear all dark from a distance, but closer inspection reveals pale barring on the primaries, secondaries, and undertail, as well as a bright yellow bill and feet. Readily separated from other large birds of prey in range by structure as well as coloration; Black Eagles have broad wings with distinct “fingers”(emarginated primaries) in the tip, as well as a long tail that is fan-shaped when open and slightly wedge-shaped when closed.
5 March, 2023
Chakki Modh, Kasauli, Himachal Pradesh
OM1, 300f4-MC14
1/2000, f5.6, ISO2000Black Eagle,
The Robin is a year round resident in the UK, but a small minority of female Robins migrate to southern Europe during winter, a few as far as Spain. Both the male and female feature similar plumage, both with the distinctive red breast. The male bird is extremely territorial and will aggressively defend his territory, attacking any similar sized birds that try to muscle in on their patch.
The adult European robin is 12cm long and weighs between 15 to 22 g with a wingspan of 20–22 cm . The male and female bear similar plumage; an orange breast and face lined by a bluish grey on the sides of the neck and chest. The upperparts are brownish, or olive-tinged in British birds, and the belly whitish, while the legs and feet are brown. The bill and eyes are black.
Read more at www.wildonline.blog
Herring gulls are noisy, gregarious birds with distinctive vocalisations. Their loud, laughing call is particularly well known, and is often seen as a symbol of the seaside in countries such as the United Kingdom.
Very distinctive hoverfly with its stripy thorax.
I've really stuck my neck out and suggested it may be a female because of the shape of the end of the abdomen but I am as always prepared to be shot down in flames if I'm wrong.
I've been trying for a decent shot of one for a while as they are often off like a rocket if they see you getting too close but this lady obviously felt she was model material.
Best viewed large for sure.
This distinctive chestnut coloured bird is primarily found in the Indian subcontinent, Southeast Asia and Australia.
They prefer wet areas like mudflats, mangroves and estuaries, but they are also seen in the freshwater wetlands and rice fields. Incidents of sightings have also been reported at above 5000 feet in the Himalayas. However, Brahminy Kites are sedentary and do not migrate.
Brahminy Kites are primarily scavengers, although they also eat small prey, like fish, crabs, frogs, reptiles, rodents and even insects. They may also steal from other raptors, eating the catch in flight, to prevent it from being stolen back. Young birds are sometimes seen dropping leaves and attempting to catch them in the air.
They roost communally on large and isolated trees and as many as 600 have been seen at just one location.
The Brahminy Kite is the official mascot of Jakarta. In India it is considered as the contemporary representation of the mythical Garuda. In Malaysia, the island of Langkawi is named after the bird. In Bangladesh it is known as Shonkho Chil. In the Philippines, it is known as Lawin.
A fable from central Bougainville Island relates how a mother left her baby under a banana tree while gardening, and the baby floated into the sky crying and transformed into Kaa'nang, the Brahminy Kite, its necklace becoming the birds feathers.
in its distinctive mating colour. The blue has not been exaggerated. Shot in the 'wild'....Best viewed Full Screen.
Distinctive with its white headcode surround and red buffer beam, 40155 joins the down main as it approaches Warrington with 1E93 1732 Bangor - York on 20th July 1984.
I recall being really annoyed that the window hangers ruined my shot, and I think I even shouted at them as the train passed!
This was near the end of the Class 40s and workings on this day included.....
40012 1D34 0744 Manchester Victoria - Bangor
40012 1E99 1115 Bangor - Newcastle
40013 1E06 0905 Liverpool Lime Street - Scarborough , to York
40015 1M69 1130 Stirling - London Euston , to Carstairs
40015 1G78 1607 Carstairs - Edinburgh Waverley
40035 1E94 0805 Liverpool Lime Street - Newcastle , to Huddersfield & fail
40044 2F15 0734 Manchester Victoria - Liverpool Lime Street
40044 1E79 1005 Liverpool Lime Street - Scarborough
40044 1M75 1400 Scarborough - Liverpool LS
40044 1J29 1920 Liverpool LS - Manchester V
40058 1E16 1510 Bangor - Scarborough , from Chester
40058 2P25 2113 Scarborough - York
40155 1E00 0705 Liverpool Lime Street - Scarborough , from York
40155 1M63 1100 Scarborough - Bangor
40155 1E93 1732 Bangor - York
Scan unedited and would benefit from a little processing
Distinctive but often rather skulking little bird of fresh and brackish marshes and lakes with dense rushes and other reedy vegetation. Forages in rushes and along the shoreline at muddy edges; often seen making short flights low across openings in rushes, when its broad rusty wingstripe helps with identification. Also note the broad whitish eyebrow and boldly striped upperparts.
Refugio de Vida Silvestre Los Pantanos de Villa, Lima, Peru. October 2018.
Polyzosteria mitchelli
I was very excited to see this cockroach yesterday, and of course it had to have the full photo shoot! :-)
David Rentz describes this cockroach as "One of the most distinctive and widespread species in the genus.
The 'windows' on each thoracic segment and the blue legs are not shared by any other species. "
"A Guide to the Cockroaches of Australia" David Rentz 2014
Bold, bright, eye-catching, distinctive just some of the adjectives that can be used to describe the 2024 paint job that the Edinburgh Tour fleet have received.
Back in March it was officially confirmed that there was going be a bit of a makeover for the tour fleet after seven years of being in service and none more that for the Majestic Tour that has officially been renamed the Regal and has lost all the yellow in the livery and has been changed to a sky blue attire that can be similar to a sunny day.
How though are these eight years old?!!!! My god that makes me feel old as I remember when they were brand new starting out in service and everybody managing to capture them look spanking new and I was so excited for a day out on them. (photo's from 1st October 2016). Now very much fleet stalwarts they look brand new again due to their repaint and redesign. Though the route actually has not had that many significant changes as it still serves the whole of the Leith region which covers Newhaven, Britannia and The shore which includes the new distillery.
Onto 247 individually. I have finally managed to grab a better shot of it that has allowed my rather blurry attempt from 2017 to be removed. I did have to wait an hour in this location to make sure I grabbed this shot and for once I have had a bit more time recently so was able to put that time aside to remove one of the worst shot of my photostream.
This shot was taken in the full of the Fringe which lets be honest was mad busy and one of my least favourite times of the year to live in Edinburgh as it is far too chaotic for me to deal with and means that all traffic takes absolutely ages and everything feels full and all the buses timetables go rather mad and means things run rather late.
So, here we see Lothian Buses Regal Tour Bus 247 at St Andrews Square, which is a perfect position for photos and I actually don't have any from this position at the square passing the tram stop as it starts its next tour of the city on a rather sunny Thursday afternoon.
The Postcard
A postcard that was published by Gordon Fraser with photography by Eric de Maré. The image is a glossy real photograph.
On the back of the card the publishers provide the following information:
'London Westminster - The
Royal Albert Hall.
Captain Francis Fowke, R.E. designed the
Royal Albert Hall which was built in 1867-
1881. The interior comprises one vast, oval
amphitheatre in which 8,000 people can
be seated.
Mecca for concerts, choral events and
festivals, it is nevertheless notorious for its
poor acoustic properties.
The frieze, encircling the building below
the dome, by Armitage, Pickersgill. Marks
and Poynter, is in terracotta and represents
the Triumph of Arts and Letters'.
The card was posted in Kensington, London W8 on Tuesday the 20th. July 1965 to:
Martin,
Dalnaglar Castle,
Glenshee,
Perthshire,
Scotland.
The message on the divided back was as follows:
"More of the wonders of
London.
We are in the middle of a
tropical storm here.
Have bought Queen so am
expecting some 'In' love
tokens!
Love,
Sarah".
The Royal Albert Hall
The Royal Albert Hall is a concert hall on the northern edge of South Kensington, London. One of the United Kingdom's most treasured and distinctive buildings, it is held in trust for the nation and managed by a registered charity which receives no government funding. It can seat 5,272 people.
The Royal Albert Hall has been affectionately named "The Nation's Village Hall".
Since the hall's opening by Queen Victoria in 1871, the world's leading artists from many performance genres have appeared on its stage. It is the venue for the Proms concerts, which have been held there every summer since 1941.
It is host to more than 390 shows in the main auditorium annually, including classical, rock and pop concerts, ballet, opera, film screenings with live orchestral accompaniment, sports, awards ceremonies, school and community events, and charity performances and banquets. A further 400 events are held each year in the non-auditorium areas.
The hall was originally supposed to have been called the Central Hall of Arts and Sciences, but the name was changed to the Royal Albert Hall of Arts and Sciences by Queen Victoria upon laying the Hall's foundation stone in 1867, in memory of her husband, Prince Albert, who had died six years earlier.
History of The Royal Albert Hall
The Royal Albert Hall in the 1800's
In 1851 the Great Exhibition, organised by Prince Albert, was held in Hyde Park, London. The Exhibition was a success, and this led Prince Albert to propose the creation of a group of permanent facilities for the public benefit, which came to be known as Albertopolis.
The Exhibition's Royal Commission bought Gore House, but it was slow to act, and in 1861 Prince Albert died without having seen his ideas come to fruition. However, a memorial was proposed for Hyde Park, with a Great Hall opposite.
The proposal was approved, and the site was purchased with some of the profits from the Exhibition. The Hall was designed by civil engineers Captain Francis Fowke and Major-General Henry Y. D. Scott of the Royal Engineers, and built by Lucas Brothers.
The designers were heavily influenced by ancient amphitheatres, but had also been exposed to the ideas of Gottfried Semper while he was working at the South Kensington Museum.
The recently opened Cirque d'Hiver in Paris was seen in the contemporary press as the design to outdo.
The Hall was constructed mainly of Fareham Red Brick, with terra cotta block decoration made by Gibbs and Canning Ltd. of Tamworth.
The dome (designed by Rowland Mason Ordish) was made of wrought iron and glazed. There was a trial assembly of the dome's iron framework in Manchester; then it was taken apart and transported to London by horse and cart.
When the time came for the supporting structure to be removed from the dome after reassembly in situ, only volunteers remained on-site in case the structure collapsed. It did drop – but only by five-sixteenths of an inch (8 mm).
The Hall was scheduled to be completed by Christmas Day 1870, and Queen Victoria visited a few weeks beforehand to inspect.
The official opening ceremony of the Royal Albert Hall was on the 29th. March 1871. A welcoming speech was given by Edward, the Prince of Wales because Queen Victoria was too overcome to speak;
"Her only recorded comment on the
Hall was that it reminded her of the
British constitution".
In the concert that followed, the Hall's acoustic problems immediately became apparent. Engineers first tried to remove the strong echo by suspending a canvas awning below the dome. This helped, and also sheltered concert-goers from the sun, but the problem was not solved - it used to be jokingly said:
"The Hall is the only place where
a British composer could be sure
of hearing his work twice".
In July 1871, French organist Camille Saint-Saëns performed Church Scene from Faust by Charles Gounod; The Orchestra described him as:
"An exceptional and distinguished
performer ... the effect was most
marvellous."
Initially lit by gas, the Hall contained a special system by which thousands of gas jets were lit within ten seconds. Though it was demonstrated as early as 1873 in the Hall, full electric lighting was not installed until 1888. During an early trial when a partial installation was made, one disgruntled patron wrote to The Times, declaring it to be:
"A very ghastly and unpleasant
innovation".
In May 1877, Richard Wagner conducted the first half of each of the eight concerts which made up the Grand Wagner Festival. After his turn with the baton, he handed it over to conductor Hans Richter and sat in a large armchair on the corner of the stage for the rest of each concert. Wagner's wife Cosima, the daughter of Hungarian virtuoso pianist and composer Franz Liszt, was among the audience.
The Wine Society was founded at the Hall on the 4th. August 1874, after large quantities of cask wine were found in the cellars. A series of lunches were held to publicise the wines, and General Henry Scott proposed a co-operative company to buy and sell wines.
The Royal Albert Hall in the 1900's
In 1906 Elsie Fogerty founded the Central School of Speech and Drama at the Hall, using its West Theatre, now the Elgar Room. The school moved to Swiss Cottage in north London in 1957. Whilst the school was based at the Royal Albert Hall, students who graduated from its classes included Judi Dench, Vanessa Redgrave, Lynn Redgrave, Harold Pinter, Laurence Olivier and Peggy Ashcroft.
In 1911 Russian pianist and composer Sergei Rachmaninoff performed at the Hall. The recital included his 'Prelude in C-sharp minor' and 'Elegie in E-flat minor'.
In 1933 German physicist Albert Einstein led the 'Einstein Meeting' at the hall for the Council for Assisting Refugee Academics, a British charity.
In 1936, the Hall was the scene of a giant rally celebrating the British Empire on the occasion of the centenary of Joseph Chamberlain's birth.
In October 1942, the Hall suffered minor damage during World War II bombing, but in general was left mostly untouched as German pilots used the distinctive structure as a landmark.
In 1949 the canvas awning was removed and replaced with fluted aluminium panels below the glass roof, in a new attempt to cure the echo. However the acoustics were not properly tackled until 1969 when large fibreglass acoustic diffusing discs (commonly referred to as "mushrooms" or "flying saucers") were installed below the ceiling.
In 1968, the Hall hosted the Eurovision Song Contest, and from 1969–1988 the Miss World contest was staged at the venue.
In 1995, Greek keyboardist Yanni performed a concert there for his World Tour; the concert was recorded under the name of Live at Royal Albert Hall.
From 1996 until 2004, the Hall underwent a programme of renovation and development supported by a £20 million grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund and £20m from Arts Council England to enable it to meet the demands of the next century of events and performances.
Thirty "discreet projects" were designed and supervised by the architecture and engineering firm BDP without disrupting events. These projects included improved ventilation to the auditorium, more bars and restaurants, improved seating, better technical facilities, and improved backstage areas. Internally, the Circle seating was rebuilt during June 1996 to provide more legroom, better access, and improved sightlines.
The Royal Albert Hall in the 2000's
The largest project of the ongoing renovation and development was the building of a new south porch – door 12, accommodating a first-floor restaurant, a new ground floor box office and a below-ground loading bay.
Although the exterior of the building was largely unchanged, the south steps leading down to Prince Consort Road were demolished to allow the construction of underground vehicle access and a loading bay with accommodation for three HGVs carrying all the equipment brought by shows.
The steps were then reconstructed around a new south porch, named The Meitar Foyer after a significant donation from Mr & Mrs Meitar. The porch was built on a similar scale and style to the three pre-existing porches at Doors 3, 6 and 9: these works were undertaken by Taylor Woodrow.
The original steps featured in the early scenes of the 1965 film The Ipcress File. On the 4th. June 2004, the project received the Europa Nostra Award for remarkable achievement.
The East (Door 3) and West (Door 9) porches were glazed, and new bars opened along with ramps to improve disabled access. The Stalls were rebuilt in a four-week period in 2000 using steel supports, thereby allowing more space underneath for two new bars.
1,534 unique pivoting seats were installed, with an addition of 180 prime seats. The Choirs were rebuilt at the same time.
The whole building was redecorated in a style that reinforces its Victorian identity. 43,000 sq. ft (4,000 m2) of new carpets were laid in the rooms, stairs, and corridors – specially woven with a border that follows the oval curve of the building.
Between 2002 and 2004, there was a major rebuilding of the great organ (known as the Voice of Jupiter), built by "Father" Henry Willis in 1871 and rebuilt by Harrison & Harrison in 1924 and 1933.
The rebuilding was performed by Mander Organs, and it is now the second-largest pipe organ in the British Isles with 9,997 pipes in 147 stops. The largest is the Grand Organ in Liverpool Cathedral which has 10,268 pipes.
The Royal Albert Hall in the 2010's
During the first half of 2011, changes were made to the backstage areas in order to relocate and increase the size of crew catering areas under the South Steps away from the stage and to create additional dressing rooms nearer to the stage.
During the summer of 2012, the staff canteen and some changing areas were expanded and refurbished. From January to May the Box Office area at Door 12 underwent further modernisation to include a new Café Bar on the ground floor, a new Box Office with shop counters, and additional toilets.
Upon opening it was renamed 'The Zvi and Ofra Meitar Porch and Foyer.' owing to a large donation from the couple.
In Autumn 2013, work began on replacing the Victorian steam heating system over three years and improving and cooling across the building. This work followed the summer Proms season during which temperatures were unusually high.
From January the Cafe Consort on the Grand Tier was closed permanently in preparation for a new restaurant at a cost of £1 million. Verdi – Italian Kitchen was officially opened on the 15th. April with a lunch or dinner menu of stone baked pizzas, pasta, and classic desserts.
Design of The Royal Albert Hall
The Hall, a Grade I listed building, is an ellipse in plan, with its external major and minor axis of 272 and 236 feet (83 and 72 meters. The great glass and wrought-iron dome roofing the Hall is 135 ft (41 m) high.
Below the Arena floor there is room for two 4000 gallon water tanks, which are used for shows that flood the arena like Madame Butterfly.
The Hall was originally designed with a capacity for 8,000 people, and has accommodated as many as 12,000 (although present-day safety restrictions mean the maximum permitted capacity is now 5,272, including standing in the Gallery.
Around the outside of the building is an 800–foot–long terracotta mosaic frieze, depicting "The Triumph of Arts and Sciences", in reference to the Hall's dedication. Above the frieze is an inscription in 12-inch-high (30 cm) terracotta letters that combine historical fact and Biblical quotations:
"This hall was erected for the advancement
of the arts and sciences and works of industry
of all nations in fulfilment of the intention of
Albert Prince Consort.
The site was purchased with the proceeds of
the Great Exhibition of the year MDCCCLI.
The first stone of the Hall was laid by Her
Majesty Queen Victoria on the twentieth day
of May MDCCCLXVII and it was opened by Her
Majesty the Twenty Ninth of March in the year
MDCCCLXXI.
Thine O Lord is the greatness and the power
and the glory and the victory and the majesty.
For all that is in the heaven and in the earth is
Thine. The wise and their works are in the hand
of God. Glory be to God on high and on earth
peace".
Events at The Royal Albert Hall
The first concert at the Hall was Arthur Sullivan's cantata On Shore and Sea, performed on the 1st. May 1871.
Many events are promoted by the Hall, and since the early 1970's promoter Raymond Gubbay has brought a range of events to the Hall including opera, ballet and classical music.
Events also include rock concerts, conferences, banquets, ballroom dancing, poetry recitals, educational talks, motor shows, ballet, opera, film screenings and circus shows.
The Royal Albert Hall has hosted many sporting events, including boxing, squash, table tennis, basketball, wrestling (including the first Sumo wrestling tournament to be held in London) as well as UFC 38 (the first UFC event to be held in the UK), tennis, and even a marathon.
The Hall first hosted boxing in 1918, when it hosted a tournament between British and American servicemen. There was a colour bar in place at the Hall, preventing black boxers from fighting there, between 1923 and 1932.
Greats of British boxing such as Frank Bruno, Prince Naseem Hamed, Henry Cooper and Lennox Lewis have all appeared at the venue. The Hall's boxing history was halted in 1999 when a court ordered that boxing and wrestling matches could no longer be held at the venue. In 2011 that decision was overturned. In 2019 Nicola Adams won the WBO Flyweight title which was the first fight for a world title at the venue since Marco Antonio Barrera took on Paul Lloyd in 1999.
On the 6th. April 1968, the Hall hosted the Eurovision Song Contest which was broadcast in colour for the first time. The first Miss World contest broadcast in colour was also staged at the venue in 1969, and remained at the Hall every year until 1989.
One notable event was a Pink Floyd concert held on the 26th. June 1969. On that night they were banned from ever playing at the Hall again after shooting cannons, nailing things to the stage, and having a man in a gorilla suit roam the audience.
At one point, Rick Wright went to the pipe organ and began to play "The End of the Beginning", the final part of "Saucerful of Secrets", joined by the brass section of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra (led by the conductor, Norman Smith) and the ladies of the Ealing Central Amateur Choir. A portion of the pipe organ recording is included on Pink Floyd's album The Endless River.
On the 18th. June 1985, British Gothic rock band The Sisters of Mercy recorded their live video album Wake at the Hall.
Between 1996 and 2008, the Hall hosted the annual National Television Awards, all of which were hosted by Sir Trevor McDonald.
Benefit concerts include the 1997 Music for Montserrat concert, arranged and produced by George Martin. The event featured artists such as Phil Collins, Mark Knopfler, Sting, Elton John, Eric Clapton, and Paul McCartney.
In 2006, Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour performed at the Hall for the first time since Pink Floyd's 1969 ban. He performed as part of his On an Island Tour. The shows were filmed and used for the live video release, Remember That Night (2007).
Rock band The Killers recorded their first live album, Live from the Royal Albert Hall in July 2009.
On the 5th. April 2010, Swedish progressive metal band Opeth recorded In Live Concert at the Royal Albert Hall, as they became the first Death metal band ever to perform at the Hall. The concert was part of the band's Evolution XX: An Opeth Anthology tour, made in celebration of their 20th. anniversary.
In July 2011, Janet Jackson performed three sold-out shows as part of her Number Ones, Up Close and Personal World Tour.
On the 2nd. October 2011, the Hall staged the 25th.-anniversary performance of Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera, which was broadcast live to cinemas across the world and filmed for DVD.
Lloyd Webber, the original London cast including Sarah Brightman and Michael Crawford, and four previous actors of the titular character, among others, were in attendance – Brightman and the previous Phantoms (aside from Crawford) performed an encore.
On the 22nd. September 2011, Adele performed a one-night-only concert as part of her tour. The concert was filmed for DVD, and screened at cinemas in 26 cities around the world.
Her performance debuted at number one in the United States with 96,000 copies sold, the highest one-week tally for a music DVD in four years. After one week, it became the best-selling music DVD of 2011. As of the 28th. November 2012, it had surpassed sales of one million copies in the United States and sales of three million copies worldwide.
It was the first music DVD to surpass sales of one million in the USA since the Eagles' Farewell 1 Tour-Live from Melbourne in 2005.
The 2012 Sunflower Jam charity concert featured Queen guitarist Brian May performing alongside bassist John Paul Jones of Led Zeppelin, drummer Ian Paice of Deep Purple, and vocalists Bruce Dickinson of Iron Maiden, and Alice Cooper.
On the 24th. September 2012, Classic FM celebrated the 20th. anniversary of their launch with a concert at the Hall. The program featured live performances of works by Handel, Puccini, Rachmaninoff, Parry, Vaughan Williams, Tchaikovsky and Karl Jenkins who conducted his piece The Benedictus from The Armed Man.
On the 19th. November 2012, the Hall hosted the 100th.-anniversary performance of the Royal Variety Performance, attended by the HM Queen Elizabeth II and HRH Duke of Edinburgh, with boy-band One Direction among the performers.
During his Rattle That Lock Tour, David Gilmour performed at the Royal Albert Hall eleven times between September 2015 and September 2016, once in aid of the Teenage Cancer Trust.
On the 13th. November 2015, Canadian musician Devin Townsend recorded his second live album Ziltoid Live at the Royal Albert Hall.
Kylie Minogue performed at the Royal Albert Hall on the 11th. December 2015 and the 9th. - 10th. December 2016 as part of her "A Kylie Christmas" concert series.
On the 3rd. May 2016, singer-songwriter and Soundgarden vocalist Chris Cornell played at the Hall in what would become the last UK show of his life as part of his "Higher Truth" European tour.
Cornell performed stripped-back acoustic renditions from his back-catalogue to rave reviews, including songs from the likes of Soundgarden, Temple of the Dog, Audioslave and his solo work. Cornell died on the 18th. May 2017.
On the 22nd. April 2016, British rock band Bring Me the Horizon performed and recorded their Live at the Royal Albert Hall album, with accompaniment from the Parallax Orchestra conducted by Simon Dobson.
At a press conference held at the Hall in October 2016, Phil Collins announced his return to live performing with his Not Dead Yet Tour, which began in June 2017. The tour included five nights at the Hall which sold out in fifteen seconds.
In October 2017, American rock band Alter Bridge also recorded a live album accompanied by the Parallax Orchestra with Simon Dobson.
Also in 2017, the Hall hosted the 70th. British Academy Film Awards, often referred to as the BAFTAs, for the first time in 20 years, replacing the Royal Opera House at which the event had been held since 2008.
In 2018, WWE held its second United Kingdom Championship Tournament on the 18th. and 19th. June.
Also in 2018, the world premiere of PlayStation in Concert was organised at the Hall. It featured PlayStation game music from the 1990's up until then. It was arranged by Jim Fowler and performed by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.
In May 2019, Mariah Carey performed 3 shows as part of her Caution World Tour. Comedian Bill Burr filmed his 2019 special Paper Tiger at the Hall. In November 2020, One Direction member Niall Horan performed a one off live-streamed show in an empty Hall (during the COVID-19 pandemic) to raise money for charity.
Regular Events at the Royal Albert Hall
The Royal Choral Society
The Royal Choral Society is the longest-running regular performer at the Hall, having given its first performance as the Royal Albert Hall Choral Society on the 8th. May 1872. From 1876, it established the annual Good Friday performance of Handel's Messiah.
BBC Proms
The BBC Sir Henry Wood Promenade Concerts, known as "The Proms", is a popular annual eight-week summer season of daily classical music concerts and other events at the Hall.
In 1942, following the destruction of the Queen's Hall in an air raid, the Hall was chosen as the new venue for the proms. In 1944 with increased danger to the Hall, part of the proms were held in the Bedford Corn Exchange.
Following the end of World War II the proms continued in the Hall, and have done so annually every summer since. The event was founded in 1895, and now each season consists of over 70 concerts, in addition to a series of events at other venues across the United Kingdom on the last night.
In 2009, the total number of concerts reached 100 for the first time. Jiří Bělohlávek described The Proms as:
"The world's largest and most
democratic musical festival".
Proms is a term which arose from the original practice of the audience promenading, or strolling, in some areas during the concert. Proms concert-goers, particularly those who stand, are sometimes described as "Promenaders", but are most commonly referred to as "Prommers".
Tennis
Tennis was first played at the Hall in March 1970, and the ATP Champions Tour Masters has been played annually every December since 1997.
Classical Spectacular
Classical Spectacular, a Raymond Gubbay production, has been coming to the Hall since 1988. It combines popular classical music, lights and special effects.
Cirque du Soleil
Cirque du Soleil has performed annually, with a show being staged every January, since 2003. Cirque has had to adapt many of their touring shows to perform at the venue, modifying the set, usually built for arenas or big top tents instead.
Classic Brit Awards
Since 2000, the Classic Brit Awards has been hosted annually in May at the Hall. It is organised by the British Phonographic Industry.
Festival of Remembrance
The Royal British Legion Festival of Remembrance is held annually the day before Remembrance Sunday.
Institute of Directors
For 60 years the Institute of Directors' Annual Convention has been synonymous with the Hall, although in 2011 and 2012 it was held at indigO2.
The English National Ballet
Since 1998 the English National Ballet has had several specially staged arena summer seasons in partnership with the Hall and Raymond Gubbay. These include Strictly Gershwin, June 2008 and 2011, Swan Lake, June 2002, 2004, 2007, 2010 and 2013, Romeo & Juliet, June 2001 and 2005, and The Sleeping Beauty, April - June 2000.
Teenage Cancer Trust
Starting in the year 2000 the Teenage Cancer Trust has held annual charity concerts (with the exception of 2001). They started as a one-off event, but have expanded over the years to a week or more of evening events. Roger Daltrey of the Who has been intimately involved with the planning of the events.
Graduation Ceremonies
The Hall is used annually by the neighbouring Imperial College London and the Royal College of Art for graduation ceremonies. For several years the University of London and Kingston University also held their graduation ceremonies at the Hall.
Films, Premières and Live Orchestra Screenings
The venue has screened several films since the early silent days. It was the only London venue to show William Fox's The Queen of Sheba in the 1920's.
The Hall has hosted many premières, including the UK première of Fritz Lang's Die Nibelungen, 101 Dalmatians on the 4th. December 1996, the European première of Spandau Ballet's Soul Boys of the Western World, and three James Bond royal world premières - Die Another Day on the 18th. November 2002 (attended by Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip), Skyfall on the 23rd. October 2012 (attended by Charles, Prince of Wales and Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall), and Spectre on the 26th. October 2015 (attended by Prince William, Duke of Cambridge and Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge).
The Hall held the first 3D world première of Titanic 3D, on the 27th. March 2012, with James Cameron and Kate Winslet in attendance.
Since 2009, the Hall has also curated regular seasons of English-language film-and-live-orchestra screenings, including The Lord of the Rings trilogy, Gladiator, Star Trek, Star Trek Into Darkness, Interstellar, The Matrix, West Side Story, Breakfast at Tiffany's, Back to the Future, Jaws, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, and the world première of Titanic Live in Concert.
The only non-English-language movie to have been screened at the Hall is Baahubali: The Beginning (an Indian movie in Telugu and Tamil, but premiered with the Hindi dubbed version).
National Brass Band Championships of Great Britain
The National Brass Band Championships of Great Britain, one of the most prestigious prizes in the annual brass band contesting calendar, holds the Final of the Championship section at the Royal Albert Hall each October.
Beyond the Main Stage
The Hall hosts hundreds of events and activities beyond its main auditorium. There are regular free art exhibitions in the ground floor Amphi corridor, which can be viewed when attending events or on dedicated viewing dates.
Visitors can take a guided tour of the Hall on most days. The most common is the one-hour Grand Tour which includes most front-of-house areas, the auditorium, the Gallery and the Royal Retiring Room.
Other tours include Story of the Proms, Behind the Scenes, Inside Out and School tours.
Children's events include Storytelling and Music Sessions for ages four and under. These take place in the Door 9 Porch and Albert's Band sessions in the Elgar Room during school holidays.
"Live Music in Verdi" takes place in the Italian restaurant on a Friday night featuring different artists each week.
"Late Night Jazz" events in the Elgar Room, generally on a Thursday night, feature cabaret-style seating and a relaxed atmosphere with drinks available.
"Classical Coffee Mornings" are held on Sundays in the Elgar Room with musicians from the Royal College of Music accompanied with drinks and pastries.
Sunday brunch events take place in Verdi Italian restaurant and feature different genres of music.
Regular Performers at the Royal Albert Hall
Eric Clapton is a regular performer at the Hall. Since 1964, Clapton has performed at the Hall over 200 times, and has stated that performing at the venue is: "Like playing in my front room".
In December 1964, Clapton made his first appearance at the Hall with the Yardbirds. It was also the venue for his band Cream's farewell concerts in 1968 and reunion shows in 2005. He also instigated the Concert for George, which was held at the Hall on the 29th. November 2002 to pay tribute to Clapton's lifelong friend, former Beatle George Harrison. Clapton passed 200 shows at the Hall in 2015.
David Gilmour played at the Hall in support of two solo albums, while also releasing a live concert on September 2006 entitled Remember That Night which was recorded during his three nights playing at the Hall for his 2006 On an Island tour.
Notable guests were Robert Wyatt and David Bowie (who sang lead for "Arnold Layne" and "Comfortably Numb"). The live concert was televised by BBC One on the 9th. September 2007.
Gilmour returned to the Hall for four nights in September 2016 (where he was joined on stage by Benedict Cumberbatch for "Comfortably Numb"), having previously played five nights in 2015, to end his 34-day Rattle That Lock Tour. He also made an appearance on the 24th. April 2016 as part of the Teenage Cancer Trust event.
Shirley Bassey is one of the Hall's most prolific female headline performers, having appeared many times at the Hall since the 1970's. In 2001, she sang "Happy Birthday" for the Duke of Edinburgh's 80th. birthday concert. In 2007, she sang at Fashion Rocks in aid of the Prince's Trust.
On the 30th. March 2011, she sang at a gala celebrating the 80th. birthday of Mikhail Gorbachev. In May 2011, she performed at the Classic Brit Awards, singing "Goldfinger" in tribute to the recently deceased composer John Barry. On the 20th. June 2011, she returned and sang "Diamonds Are Forever" and "Goldfinger", accompanied by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, as the climax to the memorial concert for Barry.
James Last appeared 90 times at the Hall between 1973 and 2015, making him the most frequent non–British performer to have played the venue.
Education and Outreach Programme
The Hall's education and outreach programme engages with more than 200,000 people a year. It includes workshops for local teenagers led by musicians such as Foals, Jake Bugg, Emeli Sandé, Nicola Benedetti, Alison Balsom and First Aid Kit, innovative science and maths lessons, visits to local residential homes from the venue's in-house group, Albert's Band, under the 'Songbook' banner, and the Friendship Matinee: an orchestral concert for community groups, with £5 admission.
Mis-labellings
A famous and widely bootlegged concert by Bob Dylan at the Free Trade Hall in Manchester on the 17th. May 1966 was mistakenly labelled the "Royal Albert Hall Concert".
In 1998, Columbia Records released an official recording, The Bootleg Series Vol. 4: Bob Dylan Live 1966, The "Royal Albert Hall" Concert. It maintains the erroneous title but does include details of the actual location.
Recordings from the Royal Albert Hall concerts on the 26th. and 27th. May 1966 were finally released by the artist in 2016 as The Real Royal Albert Hall 1966 Concert.
Another concert mislabelled as being at the Hall was by Creedence Clearwater Revival. An album by them entitled The Royal Albert Hall Concert was released in 1980. When Fantasy Records discovered the show on the album actually took place at the Oakland Coliseum, it retitled the album The Concert.
Pop Culture References
A large mural by Peter Blake, entitled Appearing at the Royal Albert Hall, is displayed in the Hall's Café Bar. Unveiled in April 2014, it shows more than 400 famous figures who have appeared on the stage.
In 1955, English film director Alfred Hitchcock filmed the climax of The Man Who Knew Too Much at the Hall. The 15-minute sequence featured James Stewart, Doris Day and composer Bernard Herrmann, and was filmed partly in the Queen's Box.
Hitchcock was a long-time patron of the Hall and had already set the finale of his 1927 film, The Ring at the Hall, as well as his initial version of The Man Who Knew Too Much, starring Leslie Banks, Edna Best and Peter Lorre.
Other notable films shot at the Hall include Major Barbara, Love Story, The Seventh Veil, The Ipcress File, A Touch of Class, Shine, and Spice World.
In the song "A Day in the Life" by the Beatles, the Albert Hall is mentioned. The verse goes as follows:
"I read the news today, oh boy
four thousand holes in Blackburn, Lancashire
and though the holes were rather small
they had to count them all
now they know how many holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall
I'd love to turn you on".
The song "Session Man" by The Kinks references the Hall:
"He never will forget at all
The day he played at Albert Hall".
In the song "Shame" by Robbie Williams and Gary Barlow, Barlow mentions the Hall in his verse:
"I read your mind and tried to call,
my tears could fill the Albert Hall".
'Like a Rolling Stone'
So what else happened on the day that Sarah posted the card?
Well, the 20th. July 1965 marked the release of 'Like a Rolling Stone'.
'Like a Rolling Stone' is a song by American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, released by Columbia Records. Its confrontational lyrics originated in an extended piece of verse Dylan wrote in June 1965, when he returned exhausted from a gruelling tour of England.
Dylan distilled this draft into four verses and a chorus. 'Like a Rolling Stone' was recorded a few weeks later as part of the sessions for the forthcoming album Highway 61 Revisited.
During a difficult two-day pre-production, Dylan struggled to find the essence of the song, which was demoed without success in 3/4 time. A breakthrough was made when it was tried in a rock music format, and rookie session musician Al Kooper improvised the organ riff for which the track is known.
Columbia Records were unhappy with both the song's length at over six minutes and its heavy electric sound, and were hesitant to release it.
It was only when, a month later, a copy was leaked to a new popular music club and heard by influential DJs that the song was put out as a single. Although radio stations were reluctant to play such a long track, 'Like a Rolling Stone' reached No. 2 in the US Billboard charts and became a worldwide hit.
Critics have described the track as revolutionary in its combination of different musical elements, the youthful, cynical sound of Dylan's voice, and the directness of the question "How does it feel?"
"Like a Rolling Stone" completed the transformation of Dylan's image from folk singer to rock star, and is considered one of the most influential compositions in postwar popular music.
According to review aggregator Acclaimed Music, 'Like a Rolling Stone' is the statistically most acclaimed song of all time.
Rolling Stone magazine listed the song at No. 1 in their "500 Greatest Songs of All Time" list. The song has been covered by many artists, from the Jimi Hendrix Experience and the Rolling Stones to the Wailers and Green Day.
At an auction in 2014, Dylan's handwritten lyrics to the song fetched $2 million, a world record for a popular music manuscript.