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Known as "Dodda Alada Mara" in south India's Kannada language (meaning the Big Banyan tree) this is one of the largest Banyan trees in India. You can see many of its roots in this picture.
This is located near Sira Town in Tumkur District. The tree is revered by Hindus as a sacred tree and is protected by the locals.
Wild Dog. Kruger National Park. South Africa. Nov/2020
African Wild Dog
The African wild dog (Lycaon pictus), also known as the painted hunting dog, painted wolf, African hunting dog,[4] Cape hunting dog or African painted dog, is a canid native to sub-Saharan Africa. It is the largest of its family in Africa, and the only extant member of the genusLycaon, which is distinguished from Canis by dentition highly specialised for a hypercarnivorous diet, and a lack of dewclaws. It was classified as endangered by the IUCN in 2016, as it had disappeared from much of its original range. The 2016 population was estimated at roughly 39 subpopulations containing 6,600 adults, only 1,400 of which were reproductive. The decline of these populations is ongoing, due to habitat fragmentation, human persecution and disease outbreaks.
The African wild dog is a highly social animal, living in packs with separate dominance hierarchies for males and females. Uniquely among social carnivores, the females rather than the males scatter from the natal pack once sexually mature and the young are allowed to feed first on carcasses. The species is a specialised diurnal hunter of antelopes, which it catches by chasing them to exhaustion. Like other canids, it regurgitates food for its young, but this action is also extended to adults, to the point of being the bedrock of African wild dog social life. It has few natural predators, though lions are a major source of mortality and spotted hyenas are frequent kleptoparasites.
Although not as prominent in African folklore or culture as other African carnivores, it has been respected in several hunter-gatherer societies, particularly those of the predynastic Egyptians and the San people.
Source: Wikipedia
Cachorro do Mato ou Cachorro Selvagem
O mabeco (Lycaon pictus) também conhecido como cão-selvagem-africano ou cão-caçador-africano ou cachorro-do-mato ou cachorro selvagem é um canídeo típico da África que vive em zonas de savana e vegetação esparsa. A espécie já foi comum em toda a África subsaariana (exceto em áreas de floresta tropical ou densa e zonas desérticas). A sua distribuição geográfica actual limita-se ao sul da África especialmente em Namíbia, Zimbábue, Zâmbia, Botswana e sul da África Oriental na Tanzânia e norte de Moçambique. É uma espécie ameaçada de extinção principalmente pela fragmentação do habitat, que aumenta os conflitos com humanos, como perseguição por criadores de gado, acidentes em estradas, doenças de animais domésticos. Como agravante, a espécie naturalmente ocorre em baixas densidades populacionais, mesmo em áreas bem preservadas. A população é estimada em 6600 por toda a África, com cerca de 1400 indivíduos maduros.
É um animal altamente social, passando a maior parte de sua vida em alcateias controladas por um casal alfa, que detêm os direitos de reprodução. Realizam suas atividades em grupo, abatendo grandes animais com trabalho em equipe. Essas alcateias possuem geralmente 7 a 15 indivíduos, chegando a 40. Possuem hierarquias separadas entre os sexos e maior número de machos que fêmeas. O comportamento dentro da alcateia é geralmente pacífico e os confrontos geralmente imitam-se a disputa de fêmeas pela reprodução. Animais doentes ou feridos são protegidos e cuidados pelo grupo. As caças também são divididas entre todos os membros e os filhotes possuem privilégios e prioridade na alimentação. O hábito de regurgitar a comida para outros membros é um dos mais marcantes da espécie e está intrinsecamente relacionado com interações sociais do grupo.
Os cães-selvagens-africanos caçam utilizando do trabalho em equipe, ao anoitecer e amanhecer. Sua estratégia de caça se baseia na corrida e resistência física, com estratégias variadas. Os grandes animais são abatidos à medida que são mordidos enquanto correm, enquanto os pequenos são puxados para baixo. Sua dieta é variada, e inclui principalmente mamíferos de médio porte como gazelas e impalas. As presas são comumente disputadas e roubadas, principalmente por hienas. Também sofrem de predação direta de grandes carnívoros, especialmente leões. Por isso, sua população é bastante influenciada pela presença deles, e tendem a ocupar áreas com menor presença desses animais.
O mabeco é um predador de médio porte, com cerca de 75 a 110 cm de comprimento e aproximadamente 18 a 36 kg de peso. A sua pelagem, muito característica com manchas de castanho, preto, branco e alaranjado, deu o nome científico à espécie: Lycaon pictus significa lobo pintado. A cabeça é em geral mais escura e a cauda termina num tufo branco. As orelhas são grandes e arredondadas e as pernas longas e finas terminam em patas fortes com quatro dedos, diferentemente de outros canídeos.
Fonte: Wikipedia (tradução livre)
Kruger National Park
Kruger National Park is one of the largest game reserves in Africa. It covers an area of around 20,000 square kilometres in the provinces of Limpopo and Mpumalanga in northeastern South Africa, and extends 360 kilometres (220 mi) from north to south and 65 kilometres (40 mi) from east to west.
Source: Wikipedia
Parque Nacional Kruger
O Parque Nacional Kruger é a maior área protegida de fauna bravia da África do Sul, cobrindo cerca de 20 000 km2. Está localizado no nordeste do país, nas províncias de Mpumalanga e Limpopo e tem uma extensão de cerca de 360 km de norte a sul e 65 km de leste a oeste.
Os parques nacionais africanos, nas regiões da savana africana são importantes pelo turismo com safári de observação e fotográfico.
O seu nome foi dado em homenagem a Stephanus Johannes Paul Kruger, último presidente da República Sul-Africana bôere. Foi criado em 31 de Maio de 1926
Fonte: Wikipedia
Kirby Muxloe Castle HD5.
Kirby Muxloe Castle, also known as Kirby Castle, is an unfinished 15th century fortified manor house in Kirby Muxloe, Leicestershire. It was a brick-built fortified mansion, built for Lord Hastings. It sits in ruins now with a complete corner tower, and is being conserved by English Heritage. One of the few castles in England to have a wet moat of water moat...most soils are too porous...the moats are 60 ft (18 m) wide. Kirby Muxloe Castle, Leicestershire is an unfinished 15th century fortified manor house in Kirby Muxloe surrounded by a moat.
Copyright © 2012 by Scott A. McNealy Photographer. See more of my work at www.noboundaryphotography.co.uk or www.flickr.com/photos/scottamcnealy/
Kiev Pechersk Lavra, also known as the Kiev Monastery of the Caves, is a historic Orthodox Christian monastery in Kiev, Ukraine. Since its foundation as the cave monastery in 1015 the Lavra has been a preeminent center of the Eastern Orthodox Christianity in Eastern Europe. It is inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
The word pechera means cave. The word lavra is used to describe high-ranking monasteries for (male) monks of the Eastern Orthodox Church. Therefore the name of the monastery is also translated as Kiev Cave Monastery, Kiev Caves Monastery or the Kiev Monastery of the Caves.
The Kiev Pechersk Lavra caverns are a very complex system of narrow underground corridors (about 1-1½ metres wide and 2-2½ metres high), along with numerous living quarters and underground chapels. In 1051, the Reverend Anthony had settled in an old cave in one of the hills surrounding the Kiev Pechersk Lavra. This cave apparently grew, with numerous additions including corridors and a church, and is now what we know as the Far Caves. In 1057, Anthony moved to a cave near the Upper Lavra, now called the Near Caves.
Foreign travellers in the 16-17th centuries had written that the catacombs of the Lavra stretched for hundreds of kilometres, reaching as far as Moscow and Novgorod, which had apparently brought about to the knowledge of the Kiev Pechersk Lavra around the world.
The Kiev Pechersk Lavra is also one of the largest Ukrainian museums in Kiev. The exposition is the actual ensemble of the Upper (Near Caves) and Lower (Far Caves) Lavra territories that houses more than 100 architectural relics of the past. The museum also provides tours to the catacombs, which contain mummified remains of Orthodox saints or their relics.
The Whirlpool Galaxy, also known as Messier 51a, M51a, and NGC 5194, is an interacting grand-design spiral galaxy with a Seyfert 2 active galactic nucleus. It lies in the constellation Canes Venatici, and was the first galaxy to be classified as a spiral galaxy. Its distance is estimated to be 23 million light-years away from Earth.
The galaxy and its companion, NGC 5195, are easily observed by amateur astronomers, and the two galaxies may be seen with binoculars. The Whirlpool Galaxy has been extensively observed by professional astronomers, who study it to understand galaxy structure (particularly structure associated with the spiral arms) and galaxy interactions.
Acquisition:
132 x 180s Ha - 6h36m
333 x 60s L - 5h33m
148 x 60s R – 2h28m
165 x 60s G – 2h45m
151 x 60s B – 2h31m
Total integration is 19 hours and 53 minutes.
Shot over 6 different nights from The Netherlands on 31st of March and 1/7/9/10/13th of April 2019
Processing:
Aligned and stacked and 2x drizzled in PixInsight following the LVA pre-processing tutorial
DynamicCrop
DynamicBackgroundExtraction
LinearFit
RGB combined with PixelMath
Added Ha to red with NGRBCombine script
Added L to RGB with LRGBCombitation
Imported into Photoshop:
Set black and white point
Converted into 16bit
Curves and levels
Brightness
Imported into Lightroom:
Corrected colour, changed highlights/shadows/whites and blacks
Curve adjustments
Finally noise reduction was done with a new program I stumbled upon thanks to some people in our discord, called Topaz DeNoise AI. Used automatic settings it recommended and it really does wonders. Not sure how it works but it seems like this is a very strong program.
Gear:
Sky-Watcher EQ6-R PRO
Sky-Watcher Esprit 120 with APM Riccardi M63 reducer, 0,75x
ZWO ASI 1600 MM pro
ZWO EFW 8x1,25" with Baader LRGB and Astrodon 5nm Ha, 3nm OIII and SII filters
ZWO EAF
For guiding I use a ZWO ASI 120 MM-S with an Orion Mini 50mm guide scope
Frostenden is a well known marker for me when I travel up the A12, nearly home, and location of a public toilet. Never worked out why here though.
As it was so well signposted from the A12, I thought it bound to be open.
But wasn't.
Lots of good graffiti in the porch.
-------------------------------------------
You head south, leaving behind the tedious miles of Yarmouth and Lowestoft suburbia, industrialisation and caravan parks. Or perhaps you are cycling the narrow lanes around delightfully remote Henstead and Benacre. Whichever, to reach this church you must travel for a while on the awful A12, the main road connecting London with the east coast. But shortly, you turn off down a narrow lane which, before fading out into the farmyard of Frostenden Hall, takes you past this little round-towered church on its mound. Apart from the Hall, there is no other building in sight, and the rolling fields and copses go some way to ameliorating the noise of the traffic on the road beyond. The tower sits contentedly, and this church is in no particular hurry about anything.
You may find sheep grazing in the churchyard, or watch, as I did one autumn day in 2011, a tractor and plough cleaving a line away from me towards the top of the ridge, a rabble of seagulls wafting and diving behind it. I sat on the wall to watch because, unusually for this part of Suffolk, Frostenden church is kept locked, and I was waiting for the churchwarden. They open it every Saturday morning, but this was a Friday afternoon. There is no keyholder notice, but when I rang one of the churchwardens he was very happy to come and open up, even though it did mean him crossing the busy A12.
This is one of Suffolk's oldest round towers, probably early Norman but quite possibly Saxon, and the church against it, although much newer, is still mainly 13th century. A pretty sundial over the south door exhorts us in Latin to Watch and Pray. The porch forms the most westerly bay of the south aisle, and you step through it past an elaborate graffito reading 1606 into a simple, well-kept interior.
I remembered liking this church a lot on my previous visit in 1998, though I didn't remember much about it. It's a quiet place, with nothing spectacular to impose itself. There is some very good early 20th century glass, and a fine Arts and Crafts memorial to a former Rector contemporary with it. A good earlier memorial to William Glover came just before the end of the Commonwealth. The Glovers must have been a locally significant family, as there are other memorials to them.
The font appears to predate its Perpendicular cover by a century or so, and the cover itself is smaller around the base than you might expect. Perhaps it came from a different font originally, or, as Sam Mortlock thought, it is a cut down version of a towering font cover of the type found at Ufford and Hepworth. Turning east, I like the way the rood loft stairs turn back westwards from within the chancel. Best of all, I think I like the slightly uneven pamment floors. They lend an air of restraint to what is otherwise undeniably a 19th Century interior.
Back out in the churchyard, there is a curiosity. The parish war memorial sits to the south of the porch. If you look at the names around the base, you will see that this parish lost more men in the Second World War than it did in the First. This is most unusual - you come across it in suburbs, where a city has grown to engulf what had been rural parishes, but not in remote spots like this. It seems impossible that Frostenden had a larger population during the second war than in the first, so I wonder what the story behind the discrepancy is?
Beyond the churchyard wall, the ditch marks the route of the former river that served this village when it was an early medieval port. At Domesday, there were two churches here, and a thriving community. Now, only the sheep and the seagulls will keep you company.
Simon Knott, December 2011
Drinkwater & Schriver Mill, also known as Cedar Point Mill, built in 1875.
Notice that the Cottonwood River was at an above-average level - storms dumped heavy precipitation in the area, causing river levels to rise.
It actually became worse a week after I visited Cedar Point - US-50 between Elmdale and Florence was temporarily closed to traffic due to flash flooding.
Cedar Point, Chase County, Kansas
Thursday afternoon 2 May 2019
HMS Bedfordshire (also known as HMT Bedfordshire) was built as a fishing trawler and launched on Tees-side in 1935. She was taken over by the Admiralty in August 1939.
In 1941 the Americans were losing many tankers and other shipping because German U-boats were active on the east coast of the United States. During March and April 1942 the U-boat action was leading to massive loss of shipping, cargos and men. As the US navy had no real anti-submarine fleet the British Admiralty answered their plea and agreed to lend them twenty four anti-submarine trawlers. These British trawlers would come under American command and be used for patrol and escort work.
HMT (His Majesty's Trawler) Bedfordshire was based at the North Carolina port of Morehead City. Ships leaving Morehead City were being lost regularly in what was known as 'Torpedo Alley' off the Outer Banks.
On the night of 11th May 1942, HMT Bedfordshire went out as usual to patrol the coast off Ocracoke Island. She was torpedoed by U-558 and disintegrated immediately with the loss of all thirty-five men on board.
Only four bodies were recovered, washed up on an Ocracoke beach. TWo could be identified, two could not. They were buried in what is now known as the 'British Cemetery' on Ocracoke and accorded full military honours, including a twenty-one gun salute.
The tiny cemetery, hemmed in by other private cemeteries, was given to Great Britain and the Commonwealth War Graves Commission provided their standard gravestones.
The cemetery is now maintained for the CWGC by the US Coastguard based on Ocracoke.
Formerly: Unknown
Now: El Pollo Rey
3610 Columbia Pike
Arlington, VA
The building looks similiar to a Lum's, but I haven't found a Lum's at this address in the phone books I've searched. I have found a Dobb's House at this address - but I'm not sure if it's the original building (Dobb's is listed as 3620 Columbia Pike).
The Crescent Development Project or The Crescent Bay (formerly known as Caspian Plus) is skyscraper complex which is under construction on the Caspian Sea coast in Baku, Azerbaijan.
The complex comprises an offshore hotel (Crescent Hotel), office tower (Crescent City), residential tower, and a retail and entertainment centre (Crescent Place). The project is intended to be an architectural landmark.
History
In February 2008, skyscrapernews.com, a well-known architectural review website, published an article about two projects designed by the Korean company, Heerim Architects, for construction in Baku. The projects, both with a lunar theme, were described as, "an attempt to reinvent the concept of the skyscraper beyond the traditional". The article described two skyscraper complexes, proposed for construction on neighbouring peninsulas, on opposite shores of Baku Bay. The first, Full Moon Bay, was to be constructed on the western side of the bay. It included a 158-meter, 35-storey, discoid hotel called "Palace of the Winds 1 and 2". The second complex, "Caspian Plus", had been proposed for construction on the eastern edge of Baku Bay near the seaport, acting as a counterpoint to "Full Moon Bay". Initially, the second project included a 32-storey crescent-shaped hotel (standing on its "horns" offshore), four high-rise residential buildings, and a 43-story business centre standing 203 metres tall (now called Crescent City Tower). The fate of the related projects remained uncertain until October 2009 when foundation work in the location of the "Caspian Plus" complex was started.
The project has since been modified. A trio of high-rise residential buildings was removed to avoid visual overlapping of two other buildings (Port Baku Towers and Port Baku Residence). After modification, the project consisted of a hotel ("The Crescent Hotel"), an office tower ("The Crescent City"), and a high-rise residential building with a podium ("The Crescent Place"). The previous name of the project, "Caspian Plus", was changed to "The Crescent Development Project".
The project Full Moon Bay was cancelled.
Project
The "Crescent Development Project" is situated with one part on the waterfront of Baku. An offshore part, which includes "The Crescent Hotel", will be located on an artificial island about 170 metres from shore. There will be an office tower ("The Crescent City"), and a residential high-rise building with a podium ("The Crescent Place"), on the coastline behind "The Crescent Hotel".
The Crescent Hotel
"The Crescent Hotel" is a curving arched building. It is designed to look like a crescent moon with its points on the surface of the Caspian Sea. The crescent shape of the building refers to one of the symbols of Azerbaijan, depicted on its national flag. The skyscraper’s arcuate configuration will not affect the interior of the hotel as the building will rely on two multi-storey column-like towers, which will create additional space and act as a support for the hotel.[10] These supporting towers are called Eastern and Western in accordance with their location. "The Crescent Hotel" comprises 32 floors (28 storeys of the hotel itself standing over a 4-storeys podium). Upon completion, the hotel will comprise 230 guest rooms, 74 apartments and 16 villas. The total area is 177,969 m²2, parking is planned for 601 cars.[10] "The Crescent Hotel" will be connected to the shore and other buildings of the project via a bridge. This hotel is planned to be a 'seven-star' facility.
The Crescent City
The office tower, “The Crescent City”, is a 210-metre skyscraper with 43 overground levels. It is being built behind "The Crescent Hotel" on the waterfront next to the seaport of Baku and the “JW Marriott Absheron”. According to the project design, the facade of the building is cylindrical and slightly flattened at the north-south direction. The bottom of the tower is narrow and widens as it approaches the top which includes a concave notch. The shape of "The Crescent City" is designed to resemble a torch.
The Crescent Place
"The Crescent Place" consists of 3 basement floors and 32 overground levels: a 5-storey podium, 2 floors of town houses and a 25-storey residential tower with 2 additional penthouse levels. The Crescent Place will be located onshore next to the tower of "The Crescent City". This residential building, standing 170 metres tall, will include 168 apartments. The total area of the Crescent Place is 273 000 m², with space for approximately 100 retail outlets and an additional 40 food and beverage units.
Construction
According to a report published by the management company, almost all piling work for the project had been completed by November 2013. Nine percent of the entire project had been constructed. Ten percent of the coastal part of the Project had been completed.
In July 2015, DSA Architects International was appointed to take over multidisciplinary lead consultancy design services on the Crescent Development Project, with construction works ongoing.
Site of The Crescent Hotel
The plot for "The Crescent Hotel" lies within an area in the Caspian Sea. In May 2012, hehe setting was started. These piles were installed in two rows around the perimeter of the future hotel's location. A double metal fence was then installed around the site which restricted any additional water entering the area.[citation needed] Once the fence was completed, water was pumped from the site, and it was filled with sand to create the foundation of the building. As of early 2013, the soil creating the artificial island has been formed, and foundation work for the Western and Eastern towers is completed. The piles constructed for "The Crescent Hotel", with a diameter 1500–2000 mm and a length 76.1 meters, are the biggest ever built in Azerbaijan. It was planned to build 464 piles by the end of 2013. By the beginning of 2015, development of both the Eastern and Western Towers had begun on the artificial island.
Given the complexity of the building’s geometry, a number of contracting companies from the world-wide were engaged in the construction. Many of them faced challenges in achieving their goals. So, Derby Design Engineering cited that the main challenge was to design a constructible solution for the link-bridge between the column-like towers. This arch has a span of 90 meters which supports 5 hotel levels, hanging off the link-bridge truss. The Koltay Facades website stated that curved sides of the hotel represent an exciting challenge for engineers and designers; floor by floor, the slope of the glass is changing, and so are the components of the reaction forces on the slab, the appearance of the glass, the safety requirements, amongst the others.
Sites of The Crescent City and Crescent Place
Construction of the onshore foundation started in October 2009. For all parts of the coastline (sites of "The Crescent City" and "The Crescent Place"), 691 short piles with a diameter of 1.2 m and a depth of 26 meters have been installed . For the tower “The Crescent city” 118 deep piles (diameter 1500 mm, depth of 52-61,5 meters) were constructed.
By November 2013, 4 taps had been installed on the site of "The Crescent Place". The first floors of the podium were appearing above the fence. The construction of the residential tower, "The Crescent Place", had been started. By the beginning of 2015, 35th floor of The Crescent Place Tower was being constructed.
By March 2014, the foundation of "Crescent City Tower" had been ready for concrete core pouring.[citation needed] As of beginning 2015, The Crescent City Tower was being constructed at 16-17 levels. In August 2015, the concrete core of the building reached up to the 30th level. By December 2015, the 43rd level of the concrete core of the Crescent City was completed.
According to a spokesman of Ilk Construction, completion of the shell and core of "The Crescent Place" is scheduled for January 2015; the site of "The Crescent City" must be finished by May of the same year.[6] Completion of the entire project was planned for the second half of 2017 but as of February 2019, technical difficulties have prevented the completion of the arch section that will ultimately join the two towers. The completion date is currently estimated as late 2020.
She has two eggs, but seems only one chicken, last year she had two.
Red-throated Diver nesting in Porkeri Mountains
Adult in breeding plumage
Conservation status
Least Concern (IUCN 3.1)[1]
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Aves
Order: Gaviiformes
Family: Gaviidae
Genus: Gavia
Species: G. stellata
Binomial name
Gavia stellata
(Pontoppidan, 1763)
Synonyms
Colymbus stellatus Pontoppidan, 1763 Colymbus lumme Brünnich, 1764
Colymbus septentrionalis Linnaeus, 1766
Gavia lumme Forster, 1788
Colymbus mulleri Brehm, 1826
Urinator lumme Stejneger, 1882
The Red-throated Diver (Gavia stellata), known in North America as the Red-throated Loon, is a migratory aquatic bird that is found in the temperate regions of the northern hemisphere. It is the smallest and most widely distributed member of the loon or diver family.
Around 55–67 centimetres (22–26 in) in length, the Red-throated Diver is a nondescript bird in winter, greyish above fading to white below. During the breeding season, it acquires the distinctive reddish throat which gives rise to its common name. Fish form the bulk of the diet, with invertebrates and plants sometimes eaten as well. A monogamous species, the Red-throated Diver forms long-term pair bonds.
Contents [hide]
1 Taxonomy and etymology
2 Description
2.1 Voice
3 Habitat and distribution
4 Behaviour
4.1 Food and feeding
4.2 Breeding
5 Conservation status and threats
6 In human culture
7 References
7.1 Sources
8 External links
[edit] Taxonomy and etymology
First described by Danish naturalist Erik Pontoppidan in 1763, the Red-throated Diver is a monotypic species, with no distinctive subspecies despite its large Holarctic range.[2] Pontoppidan initially placed the species in the now-defunct genus Colymbus, which contained grebes as well as divers. By 1788, however, German naturalist Johann Reinhold Forster realized that grebes and divers were different enough to warrant separate genera, and moved the Red-throated Diver (along with all other diver species) to its present genus.[3] Its relationship to the four other divers is complex; though all belong to the same genus, it differs more than any of the others in terms of morphology, behaviour, ecology and breeding biology. It is thought to have evolved in the Palearctic, and then to have expanded into the Nearctic.[2]
The genus name Gavia comes from the Latin for "sea mew", as used by ancient Roman naturalist Pliny the Elder.[4] The specific epithet stellata is Latin for "set with stars" or "starry",[5] and refers to the bird's speckled back in its non-breeding plumage.[4] "Diver" refers to the family's underwater method of hunting for prey, while "red-throated" is a straightforward reference to the bird's most distinctive breeding plumage feature. The word "loon" is thought to have derived from the Swedish lom, the Old Norse or Icelandic lómr, or the Old Dutch loen, all of which mean "lame" or "clumsy", and is a probable reference to the difficulty that all divers have in moving about on land.[6]
[edit] Description
The Red-throated Diver is the smallest and lightest of the world's diver species, ranging from 55–67 centimetres (22–26 in) in length with a 91–110 centimetres (36–43 in) wingspan,[7] and averaging 1.4 kilograms (3.1 lb) in weight.[8] Like all divers, it is long-bodied and short-necked, with its legs set far back on its body.[9] The sexes are similar, although males tend to be slightly larger and heavier than females.[2] In breeding plumage, the adult has a grey head and neck (with narrow black and white stripes on the back of the neck), a triangular red throat patch, white underparts and a dark mantle. It is the only diver with an all-dark back in breeding plumage. The non-breeding plumage is drabber with the chin, foreneck and much of the face white, and considerable white speckling on the dark mantle. Its bill is thin, straight and sharp, and the bird often holds it at an uptilted angle. Though the colour of the bill changes from black in summer to pale grey in winter, the timing of the colour change does not necessarily correspond to that of the bird's overall plumage change. The nostrils are narrow slits located near the base of the bill, and the iris is reddish.
An adult in non-breeding plumage shows the speckled back which gives the bird its specific name.When it first emerges from its egg, the young Red-throated Diver is covered with fine soft down feathers. Primarily dark brown to dark grey above, it is slightly paler on the sides of its head and neck, as well as on its throat, chest, and flanks, with a pale grey lower breast and belly. Within weeks, this first down is replaced by a second, paler set of down feathers, which are in turn replaced by developing juvenile feathers.[10]
In flight, the Red-throated Diver has a distinctive profile; its small feet do not project far past the end of its body, its head and neck droop below the horizontal (giving the flying bird a distinctly hunchbacked shape) and its thin wings are angled back. It has a quicker, deeper wingbeat than do other divers.[8]
[edit] Voice
The adult Red-throated Diver has a number of vocalisations, which are used in different circumstances. In flight, when passing conspecifics or circling its own pond, it gives a series of rapid yet rhythmic goose-like cackles, at roughly five calls per second. Its warning call, if disturbed by humans or onshore predators, is a short croaking bark. A low-pitched moaning call, used primarily as a contact call between mates and between parents and young, but also during copulation, is made with the bill closed. The species also has a short wailing call, which descends slightly in pitch and lasts about a second; due to strong harmonics surrounding the primary pitch, this meowing call is more musical than its other calls. Another call—a harsh, pulsed cooing that rises and falls in pitch, and is typically repeated up to 10 times in a row—is used in territorial encounters and pair-bonding, and by parent birds encouraging their young to move on land between bodies of water.[11] Known as the "long call", it is often given in duet, which is unusual among the divers;[12] the female's contribution is longer and softer than her mate's.[11]
Young have a shrill closed-bill call, which they use in begging and to contact their parents. They also have a long call used in response to (and similar to that of) the long call of adults.[11]
[edit] Habitat and distribution
The Red-throated Diver breeds primarily in the Arctic regions of northern Eurasia and North America (generally north of 50°N latitude), and winters in northern coastal waters.[13] Unlike other divers, the Red-throated Diver regularly uses very small freshwater lakes as breeding sites.
In North America, it winters regularly along both coasts, ranging as far south as the Baja California Peninsula and the Gulf of California in northwestern Mexico; it has been recorded as a vagrant in the interior Mexican state of Hidalgo.[14] In Europe, it breeds in Iceland, northern Scotland, Scandinavia and northern Russia, and winters along the coast as far south as parts of Spain; it also regularly occurs along major inland waterways, including the Mediterranean, Aegean and Black Seas, as well as large river, lakes and reservoirs.[15] It has occurred as a vagrant as far south as Morocco, Tunisia and The Gambia.[1]
Some of its folknames in northeastern North America—including cape race, cape brace, cape drake and cape racer, as well as corruptions such as scapegrace—originated from its abundance around Cape Race, Newfoundland.[16]
[edit] Behaviour
Because its feet are located so far back on its body, the Red-throated Diver is not capable of walking on land; however, it can use its feet to shove itself forward on its breast.[8] Young use this method of covering ground when moving from their breeding pools to larger bodies of water, including rivers and the sea.[17] It is the only species of diver able to take off directly from land.[18]
The Red-throated Diver is a diurnal migrant, which travels singly or in loose groups, often high above the water.[8] In eastern North America (and possibly elsewhere), it tends to migrate near the coast rather than farther offshore.[19] It is a strong flier, and has been clocked at speeds between 75 and 78 kilometres per hour (47–49 mph).[20] Like all members of its family, the Red-throated Diver goes through a simultaneous wing moult, losing all its flight feathers at once and becoming flightless for a period of 3–4 weeks. However, unlike other divers—which undergo this moult in late winter—the Red-throated Diver loses its ability to fly sometime between early August and November.[21]
[edit] Food and feeding
Like all members of its family, the Red-throated Diver is primarily a fish-eater, though it sometimes feeds on molluscs, crustaceans, frogs, aquatic invertebrates, insects, fish spawn or even plant material.[22] It seizes rather than spears its prey, which is generally captured underwater.[23] Though it normally dives and swims using only its feet for propulsion, it may use its wings as well if it needs to turn or accelerate quickly.[24] Pursuit dives range from 2–9 metres (6.6–30 ft) in depth, with an average underwater time of about a minute.[22] The fish diet of the Red-throated Diver has led to several of its folknames, including "sprat borer" and "spratoon".[25]
Chicks are competent swimmers, able to accompany their parents soon after hatching.For the first few days after hatching, young Red-throated Divers are fed aquatic insects and small crustaceans by both parents. After 3–4 days, the parents switch to fish small enough for the young birds to swallow whole. By four weeks of age, the young can eat the same food—of the same size—as their parents do.[26] Young birds may be fed for some time after fledging; adults have been seen feeding fish to juveniles at sea and on inland lakes in the United Kingdom, hundreds of kilometers from any breeding areas.[27][28]
[edit] Breeding
The Red-throated Diver is a monogamous species which forms long-term pair bonds. Both sexes build the nest, which is a shallow scrape (or occasionally a platform of mud and vegetation) lined with vegetation and sometimes a few feathers, and placed within a half-metre (18 in) of the edge of a small pond. The female lays two eggs (though clutches of 1–3 have been recorded); they are incubated for 24–29 days, primarily by the female. The eggs, which are greenish or olive-brownish spotted with black, measure 75 x 46 millimetres (3.0 x 1.8 in) and have a mass of 83 grams (2.9 oz), of which 8 percent is shell.[23][29] Incubation is begun as soon as the first egg is laid, so they hatch asynchronously. The young birds are precocial upon hatching: downy and mobile with open eyes; both parents feed them (small aquatic invertebrates initially, then small fish) for 38–48 days. Parents will perform distraction displays to lure predators away from the nest and young.[23] Ornithologists disagree as to whether adults carry young on their backs while swimming with some maintaining that they do[23] and others the opposite.[30]
[edit] Conservation status and threats
JuvenileThough the Red-throated Diver is not a globally threatened species, as it has a large population and a significant range, there are populations which appear to be declining. Numbers counted in U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service surveys in Alaska show a 53 percent population decline between 1971 and 1993, for example,[31] and counts have dropped in continental Europe as well.[32] In Scotland, on the other hand, the population increased by some 16 percent between 1994 and 2006, according to surveys done by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and Scottish Natural Heritage.[32] In 2002, Wetlands International estimated a global population of 490,000 to 1,500,000 individuals; global population trends haven't been quantified.[1]
The Red-throated Diver is one of the species to which the Agreement on the Conservation of African-Eurasian Migratory Waterbirds (AEWA) applies;[33] in the Americas, it is protected by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918.[34] Oil spills, habitat degradation, and fishing nets are among the main threats this species faces.[30] In addition, high levels of mercury in the environment have led to reproductive failures in some areas, including parts of Sweden.[35] On the breeding grounds, Arctic and Red Foxes are major predators of eggs,[36] while Great Skuas, Arctic Skuas and various species of Larus gulls (including Great Black-backed Gulls and Glaucous Gulls)[37][38] are predators of both eggs and young.[39]
[edit] In human culture
Used as a food source since prehistoric times,[40][41] the Red-throated Diver is still hunted by indigenous peoples in some parts of the world today.[42] Eggs as well as birds are taken, sometimes in significant numbers; during one study on northern Canada's Igloolik Island, 73% of all Red-throated Diver eggs laid within the 10 km2 (3.9 mi2) study site over two breeding seasons were collected by indigenous inhabitants of the island.[43] In some parts of Russia, Red-throated Diver skins were traditionally used to make caps, collars and other clothing trim.[44] The species was also central to the creation mythologies of indigenous groups throughout the Holarctic.[45] According to the myth—which varies only slightly between versions, despite the sometimes-vast distances that separated the groups who believed it—the diver was asked by a great shaman to bring up earth from the bottom of the sea. That earth was then used to build the world's dry land.[45][46]
As recently as the 1800s, the Red-throated Diver was thought to be a foreteller of storms; according to the conventional wisdom of the time, birds flying inland or giving short cries predicted good weather, while those flying out to sea or giving long, wailing cries predicted rain.[29][32] In the Orkney and Shetland islands of Scotland, the species is still known as the "rain goose" in deference to its supposed weather-predicting capabilities.[32]
Bhutan, Japan and the Union of the Comoros have issued stamps featuring the Red-throated Diver.[47]
[edit] References
1.^ a b c BirdLife International (2008). Gavia stellata. 2008 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. IUCN 2008. Retrieved on 2008-10-14.
2.^ a b c Carboneras, p. 162
3.^ Allen, J. A (July 1897). "The Proper Generic Name of the Loons". The Auk 14 (3): 31... . elibrary.unm.edu/sora/Auk/v014n03/p0312-p0313.pdf.
4.^ a b Johnsgard, Paul A. (1987). Diving Birds of North America. University of Nevada–Lincoln. ISBN 0803225660. digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1011&a....
5.^ Simpson, Donald Penistan (1979). Cassell's Latin Dictionary (5 ed.). London: Cassell Ltd. p. 883. ISBN 0-304-52257-0.
6.^ Carboneras 1992, p. 169
7.^ Svensson, Lars; Peter Grant (1999). Collins Bird Guide. London: HarperCollins. pp. 12–13. ISBN 0-00-219728-6.
8.^ a b c d Sibley, David (2000). The Sibley Guide to Birds. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. p. 23. ISBN 0-679-45122-6.
9.^ Cramp 1977, p. 42
10.^ Cramp 1977, p. 49
11.^ a b c Cramp 1977, p. 48
12.^ Carboneras 1992, p. 164
13.^ Carboneras, p.171
14.^ Howell, Steve N. G.; Sophie Webb (1995). A Guide to the Birds of Mexico and Northern Central America. Oxford University Press. p. 92. ISBN 0-19-854012-4.
15.^ Cramp, p. 45
16.^ Cassidy, Frederic Gomes; Hall, Joan Houston (1985). Dictionary of American Regional English. Harvard University Press. p. 539. ISBN 0674205111. books.google.com/books?id=tuLKtLkFshoC&pg=RA1-PA539&a....
17.^ Haviland, Maud D. "On the Method of Progression on Land of a Young Red-throated Diver". British Birds 8 (10): 24... .
18.^ Mead-Waldo, E. G. B. "Habits of the Red-throated Diver". British Birds 16 (6): 172–3.
19.^ Powers, Kevin D.; Jeffrey Cherry. "Loon migrations off the coast of the northeastern United States". Wilson Bulletin 95 (1): 12... . elibrary.unm.edu/sora/Wilson/v095n01/p0125-p0132.pdf.
20.^ Davis, Rolph A. (January 1971). "Flight speed of Arctic and Red-throated Loons". The Auk 88 (1): 169. elibrary.unm.edu/sora/Auk/v088n01/p0169-p0169.pdf.
21.^ Wolfenden, Glen E.. "Selection for a Delayed Simultaneous Wing Molt in Loons (Gaviidae)". The Wilson Bulletin 79 (4): 41... . elibrary.unm.edu/sora/Wilson/v079n04/p0416-p0420.pdf.
22.^ a b Carboneras 1992, p. 171
23.^ a b c d Ehrlich, Paul R.; Dobkin, David S., Wheye, Darryl & Pimm, Stuart L. (1994). The Birdwatcher's Handbook. Oxford University Press. p. 2. ISBN 0-19-858407-5.
24.^ Townsend, Charles W. (July 1909). "The Use of the Wings and Feet by Diving Birds". The Auk 26 (3): 23... . elibrary.unm.edu/sora/Auk/v026n03/p0234-p0248.pdf.
25.^ Cocker, Mark; Mabey, Richard (2005). Birds Britannica. London: Chatto & Windus. p. 3. ISBN 0-701-16907-9.
26.^ Cramp 1977, p. 46
27.^ Hart, Alan S.; Jardine, David C. and Colin Hewitt (June 1998). "Red-throated Diver feeding young in October". British Birds 91 (6): 231.
28.^ Barber, S. C. (June 2002). "Red-throated Diver feeding young in November". British Birds 95 (6): 313.
29.^ a b "Red-throated Diver". British Trust for Ornithology. blx1.bto.org/birdfacts/results/bob20.htm. Retrieved on 2008-06-27.
30.^ a b "All About Birds: Red-throated Loon". Cornell Lab of Ornithology. www.birds.cornell.edu/AllAboutBirds/BirdGuide/Red-throate.... Retrieved on 2008-06-30.
31.^ Groves, Deborah J.; Conant, Bruce; King, Rodney J.; Hodges, John I.; King, James G. (1996). "Status and trends of loon populations summering in Alaska, 1971–1993". The Condor 98 (2): 189–195 . doi:10.2307/1369136. elibrary.unm.edu/sora/Condor/files/issues/v098n02/p0189-p....
32.^ a b c d "Rise in divers mystifies experts". BBC News. news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/highlands_and_island.... Retrieved on 2007-09-07.
33.^ "Waterbird species to which the Agreement applies". Agreement on the Conservation of African-Eurasian Migratory Waterbirds. www.unep-aewa.org/documents/agreement_text/eng/pdf/aewa_a.... Retrieved on 2008-06-29.
34.^ "Birds Protected by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act". US Fish and Wildlife Service. www.fws.gov/migratorybirds/intrnltr/mbta/mbtandx.html#l. Retrieved on 2008-06-29.
35.^ Eriksson, M.O.G.; Johansson, I. & Ahlgren, C.G. (1992). "Levels of mercury in eggs of red-throated diver Gavia stellata and black-throated diver G. arctica in southwest Sweden" (Abstract). Ornis Svecica 2 (1): 29–36. md1.csa.com/partners/viewrecord.php?requester=gs&coll....
36.^ Schamel, Douglas; Tracy, Diane (Summer 1985). "Replacement Clutches in the Red-throated Loon". Journal of Field Ornithology 56 (3): 28... . elibrary.unm.edu/sora/JFO/v056n03/p0282-p0283.pdf.
37.^ Serle Jnr., W. (January 1936). "Mortality amongst Red-throated Divers". British Birds 29 (1): 81-82.
38.^ Eberl, Christine; Picman, Jaroslav (July–September 1993). "Effect of Nest-site Location on Reproductive Success of Red-throated Loons (Gavia stellata)". The Auk 110 (3): 43... . elibrary.unm.edu/sora/Auk/v110n03/p0436-p0444.pdf.
39.^ Booth, C. J. (January 1978). "Breeding success of Red-throated Divers". British Birds 71 (1): 44.
40.^ Gordon, Bryan C.; Savage, Howard. "Whirl Lake: A Stratified Indian Site Near the Mackenzie Delta". Arctic 27 (3): 17... . pubs.aina.ucalgary.ca/arctic/Arctic27-3-175.pdf.
41.^ Tagliacozzo, Antonio; Gala, Monica (November 2002). "Exploitation of Anseriformes at two Upper Palaeolithic sites in Southern Italy: Grotta Romanelli (Lecce, Apulia) and Grotta del Santuario della Madonna a Praia a Mare (Cosenza, Calabria)". Acta zoologica cracoviensia 45 (special issue): 117-131 . www.isez.pan.krakow.pl/journals/azc_v/pdf/45/09.pdf.
42.^ Bird, Louis; Brown, Jennifer S.H. (2005). Telling Our Stories: Omushkego Legends and Histories from Hudson Bay. Broadview Press. ISBN 1551115808. books.google.com/books?id=Cc9dgTkkfcoC&printsec=front....
43.^ Forbes, Graham; Robertson, Kelly; Ogilvie, Carey; Seddon, Laura (September 1992). "Breeding Densities, Biogeography, and Nest Predation of Birds on Igloolik Island, NWT". Arctic (Peterborough, Ontario) 45 (3): 295-303 . pubs.aina.ucalgary.ca/arctic/Arctic45-3-295.pdf.
44.^ "Red-throated Loon". Birds of North America Online. Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology and the American Ornithologists' Union. bna.birds.cornell.edu/bna/species/513/articles/conservation. Retrieved on 2008-03-27. (Registration required)
45.^ a b Köngäs, Elli Kaija (Spring 1960). "The Earth-Diver (Th. A 812)". Ethnohistory 7 (2): 15... . www.jstor.org/pss/480754.
46.^ Lutwack, Leonard (1994). Birds in Literature. University Press of Florida. p. 82. ISBN 0813012546.
47.^ Scharning, Kjell. "Stamps showing Red-throated Loon Gavia stellata". Theme Birds on Stamps. www.birdtheme.org/mainlyimages/index.php?spec=1458. Retrieved on 2009-02-13.
[edit] Sources
Carboneras, Carles (1992). "Family Gaviidae (Divers)". in Josep del Hoyo, Andrew Elliott & Jordi Sargatal. Handbook of the Birds of the World, Volume 1: Ostrich to Ducks. Barcelona: Lynx Edicions. pp. 162–172 .
Cramp, Stanley, ed (1977). "Gavia stellata Red-throated Diver". Handbook of the Birds of Europe, the Middle East and North Africa: Birds of the Western Palearctic, Volume 1, Ostrich to Ducks. Oxford University Press. pp. 42–49. ISBN 0-19-857358-8.
[edit] External links
Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Gavia stellata
Red-throated Diver photos on Philadelphia's Academy of Natural Sciences's Visual Resources for Ornithology website
Red-throated Diver videos on Handbook of Birds of the World's Internet Bird Collection website
Red-throated Diver sound recordings on xeno-canto.org's website
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red-throated_Diver"
Categories: IUCN Red List least concern species | Gaviiformes | Arctic birds | Birds of Europe | Birds of Asia | British Isles coastal fauna | Birds of Italy
Known in Puerto Rico as Julia Also known as Julia Butterfly, Julia Heliconian, the Flame or Flambeau
________________________________________________________________________
Clasificación Cientifica// Scientific classification
Orden: Lepidoptera
Familia: Nymphalidae
Género: Dryas
Especie: D. iulia
________________________________________________________________________
Fun Facts:
The sole representative of its genus Dryas, it is native from Brazil to southern Texas and Florida, and in summer can sometimes be found as far north as eastern Nebraska. Over 15 subspecies have been described.
Its wingspan ranges from 82 to 92 mm, and it is colored orange (brighter in male specimens) with black markings; this species is somewhat unpalatable to birds and belongs to the "orange" Batesian mimic complex.
This butterfly is a fast flier and frequents clearings, paths, and margins of forests and woodlands. It feeds on the nectar of flowers, such as lantanas (Lantana) and Shepherd's-needle (Scandix pecten-veneris), and the tears of caiman, the eye of which the butterfly irritates to produce tears.
The species is popular in butterfly houses because it is long-lived and active throughout the day.
Datos Curiosos:
El único representante de su género Dryas, es nativa de Brasil hasta el sur de Texas y Florida, y en verano a veces puede ser encontrado tan al norte como el este de Nebraska. Más de 15 subespecies se han descrito.
Sus rangos de envergadura de 82 a 92 mm, y es de color naranja (más brillante en ejemplares machos).
Esta mariposa es un volante rápido y frecuenta claros, caminos y márgenes de bosques y tierras arboladas. Se alimenta del néctar de las flores, como lantanas (Lantana) y de pastor de la aguja (Scandix pecten-veneris), y las lágrimas de caimán, el ojo de la mariposa, que irrita a la producción de lágrimas.
La especie es muy popular en los mariposarios, ya que es de vida larga y activa durante todo el día.
Known throughout the north west as Salford's Little Venice, this part of the quays is alive with swans, ducks and swans.
(last of the lies for today)
Best known for her series of collaborative community-directed projects, Laura Anderson Barbata’s work finds expression in the service of cultural exploration and group participation. Ms. Barbata works within a wide variety of cultures to create art that has great meaning and relevance for her collaborators.
Ms. Barbata was born in Mexico City and currently divides her time between New York and Mexico. She has exhibited widely, having shown her work at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Museum of Modern Art in Mexico City, The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, and the Museum of Modern Art in Rio de Janeiro, among many other locations.
Among Tender Roots documents Barbata’s collaborations with communities through books, handmade paper, printworks, sculpture, video, installation, and photographs.
Victoriastadt, also known as Kaskelkiez after Kaskelstrasse that runs right through the area, in the Rummelsburg district of the Berlin borough of Lichtenberg. The name is a reminder of the close ties that existed at the end of the 19th century with the United Kingdom during the reign of Queen Victoria.
In 1871, brothers Anton and Albert Lehmann, Rummelsburger wool and plush goods manufacturers, purchased the entire site. After founding Cement Bau AG in 1871 together with factory owner Albert Protzen, they had the area divided into lots. The foundation stone for the Victoriastadt settlment was laid in 1872. From Kietzer Landweg (Nöldnerstraße since the 1950s), a flurry of construction activity began; housing needed to be built quickly and cheaply for the workers of the factories being put up in Rummelsburg and Friedrichsfelde. However, no investment at all had been made into utilities, so there were no water, electricity or gas connections for the first few years. The only water supply was a communal water tank.
Due to a shortage of bricks, the Berlin Cement Bau AG tested new construction mixtures of cement, sand and slag for the production of complete house sections, the poured concrete process. The German civil engineer Alexis Riese had become acquainted with this monolithic construction method during a stay in England. Cement-Bau AG first carried out a test construction. From this test building, Türrschmidt developed different types of houses with neoclassical style elements, which were then gradually built here between 1871 and 1875. They were two- or three-storey buildings with standardised dimensions in terms of building lengths and depths, room sizes, wall thicknesses, room heights, window and door openings, even chimneys. A total of between 48 and 70 of these houses are said to have been built. They were not very popular with tenants, probably because of the inadequate sanitary facilities, so the buildings were later modernised. Most of them did not survive the passage of time; some were heavily altered in terms of colour, design or interior. In 1981, fifteen were counted as surviving by the architects Armin Niemeyer and Ernst Kanow. They are the oldest known concrete buildings surviving in the world.
Victoriastadt, also known as Kaskelkiez after Kaskelstrasse that runs right through the area, in the Rummelsburg district of the Berlin borough of Lichtenberg. The name is a reminder of the close ties that existed at the end of the 19th century with the United Kingdom during the reign of Queen Victoria.
In 1871, brothers Anton and Albert Lehmann, Rummelsburger wool and plush goods manufacturers, purchased the entire site. After founding Cement Bau AG in 1871 together with factory owner Albert Protzen, they had the area divided into lots. The foundation stone for the Victoriastadt settlment was laid in 1872. From Kietzer Landweg (Nöldnerstraße since the 1950s), a flurry of construction activity began; housing needed to be built quickly and cheaply for the workers of the factories being put up in Rummelsburg and Friedrichsfelde. However, no investment at all had been made into utilities, so there were no water, electricity or gas connections for the first few years. The only water supply was a communal water tank.
Originally a working class district, Victoriastadt influenced the traditional image of Gründerzeit Berlin. The poet and artist Heinrich Zille lived here for five years and adopted many impressions of the area for his works.
A large proportion of the residential buildings, some with sheds and small workshops in their backyards, have been preserved and form a cohesive ensemble. The whole area has almost entirely been redeveloped in keeping with its status as a conservation area.
The Victoriastadt is completely surrounded by railway lines, and its layout and apperance has been shaped by their alignment. Apart from on Kynaststraße from the southwest, it is only accessible by passing under a railway.
Tashkent also known as Toshkent, is the capital and largest city of Uzbekistan. It is the most populous city in Central Asia, with a population of more than 3 million people as of April 1, 2024. It is located in northeastern Uzbekistan, near the border with Kazakhstan.
Before the influence of Islam in the mid-8th century AD, Sogdian and Turkic culture was predominant. After Genghis Khan destroyed the city in 1219, it was rebuilt and profited from its location on the Silk Road. From the 18th to the 19th centuries, the city became an independent city-state, before being re-conquered by the Khanate of Kokand. In 1865, Tashkent fell to the Russian Empire; as a result, it became the capital of Russian Turkestan. In Soviet times, it witnessed major growth and demographic changes due to forced deportations from throughout the Soviet Union. Much of Tashkent was destroyed in the 1966 Tashkent earthquake, but it was soon rebuilt as a model Soviet city. It was the fourth-largest city in the Soviet Union at the time, after Moscow, Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg) and Kiev (now Kyiv).
Tashkent plays a central role in the country's economic and human development. As of 2024, it recorded the highest HDI among Uzbekistan's regions, with a score of 0.840, reflecting significant progress in education, healthcare, and living standards. Economically, Tashkent was the leading contributor to the national GDP, accounting for 19% of Uzbekistan’s GDP in the first half of 2024. This economic dominance is supported by ongoing infrastructure development and urban modernization projects aimed at enhancing its role as a financial and commercial hub. Nonetheless, the city faces challenges such as environmental concerns and the need for sustainable investment in public services.
Since Uzbekistan gained independence, Tashkent has retained its multiethnic population, with ethnic Uzbeks forming the majority. In 2009, it celebrated 2,200 years of its written history. The master plan of Tashkent until 2045 was approved.
Kochi, also known as Cochin, is a major port city on the south-west coast of India bordering the Laccadive Sea. It is part of the district of Ernakulam in the state of Kerala and is often referred to as Ernakulam. Kochi is the most densely populated city in Kerala. As of 2011, it has a corporation limit population of 677,381 within an area of 94.88 km² and a total urban population of more than of 2.1 million within an area of 440 km², making it the largest and the most populous metropolitan area in Kerala. Kochi city is also part of the Greater Cochin region and is classified as a Tier-II city by the Government of India.
Called the Queen of the Arabian Sea, Kochi was an important spice trading centre on the west coast of India from the 14th century onward, and maintained a trade network with Arab merchants from the pre-Islamic era. Occupied by the Portuguese in 1503, Kochi was the first of the European colonies in colonial India. It remained the main seat of Portuguese India until 1530, when Goa was chosen instead. The city was later occupied by the Dutch and the British, with the Kingdom of Cochin becoming a princely state. Kochi ranks first in the total number of international and domestic tourist arrivals in Kerala. The city was ranked the sixth best tourist destination in India according to a survey conducted by the Nielsen Company on behalf of the Outlook Traveller magazine. Kochi was one of the 28 Indian cities among the emerging 440 global cities that will contribute 50% of the world GDP by the year 2025, in a 2011 study done by the McKinsey Global Institute. In July 2018, Kochi was ranked the topmost emerging future megacity in India by global professional services firm JLL.
Kochi is known as the financial, commercial and industrial capital of Kerala. It has the highest GDP as well as the highest GDP per capita in the state. The city is home to the Southern Naval Command of the Indian Navy and is the state headquarters of the Indian Coast Guard with an attached air squadron, named Air Squadron 747. Commercial maritime facilities of the city include the Port of Kochi, an International Container Transshipment Terminal, the Cochin Shipyard. Kochi is also home for the Cochin Stock Exchange, International Pepper Exchange, Marine Products Export Development Authority, Coconut Development Board. Kochi is home for the High Court of Kerala and Lakshadweep, Naval Physical and Oceanographic Laboratory (NPOL), Indian Maritime University, Sree Sankaracharya Sanskrit University and the Cochin University of Science and Technology. Kochi is also home to Kerala's National Law School, the National University of Advanced Legal Studies.
The Karnak Temple Complex, commonly known as Karnak (/ˈkɑːr.næk/[1], from Arabic Khurnak meaning "fortified village"), comprises a vast mix of decayed temples, chapels, pylons, and other buildings near Luxor, in Egypt. Construction at the complex began during the reign of Senusret I in the Middle Kingdom and continued into the Ptolemaic period, although most of the extant buildings date from the New Kingdom. The area around Karnak was the ancient Egyptian Ipet-isut ("The Most Selected of Places") and the main place of worship of the eighteenth dynasty Theban Triad with the god Amun as its head. It is part of the monumental city of Thebes. The Karnak complex gives its name to the nearby, and partly surrounded, modern village of El-Karnak, 2.5 kilometres (1.6 miles) north of Luxor.
The complex is a vast open site and includes the Karnak Open Air Museum. It is believed to be the second[citation needed] most visited historical site in Egypt; only the Giza Pyramids near Cairo receive more visits. It consists of four main parts, of which only the largest is currently open to the general public. The term Karnak often is understood as being the Precinct of Amun-Ra only, because this is the only part most visitors see. The three other parts, the Precinct of Mut, the Precinct of Montu, and the dismantled Temple of Amenhotep IV, are closed to the public. There also are a few smaller temples and sanctuaries connecting the Precinct of Mut, the Precinct of Amun-Re, and the Luxor Temple.
The Precinct of Mut is very ancient, being dedicated to an Earth and creation deity, but not yet restored. The original temple was destroyed and partially restored by Hatshepsut, although another pharaoh built around it in order to change the focus or orientation of the sacred area. Many portions of it may have been carried away for use in other buildings.
The key difference between Karnak and most of the other temples and sites in Egypt is the length of time over which it was developed and used. Construction of temples started in the Middle Kingdom and continued into Ptolemaic times. Approximately thirty pharaohs contributed to the buildings, enabling it to reach a size, complexity, and diversity not seen elsewhere. Few of the individual features of Karnak are unique, but the size and number of features are overwhelming. The deities represented range from some of the earliest worshiped to those worshiped much later in the history of the Ancient Egyptian culture. Although destroyed, it also contained an early temple built by Amenhotep IV (Akhenaten), the pharaoh who later would celebrate a near monotheistic religion he established that prompted him to move his court and religious center away from Thebes. It also contains evidence of adaptations, using buildings of the Ancient Egyptians by later cultures for their own religious purposes
wikipedia
Headcorn was best known to me as where steam railtours these days are re-coaled and watered. So that there might be a fine church here meant I needed to return.
And so on a fine autumnal day, I drove up from Ashford among the still greet woods to Headcorn where I found a bustling modern town stretched out along a main road.
On a sharp bed in that road sith Ss Peter and Paul, set well back from the road, and an oasis of calm from the nearby High Street.
On the east side of the church yard is a fine walk flanked by a series of fine Kenish clapboard houses, in a picture perfect setting.
Not much on the history of the church thus far, though.
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A church of the Perpendicular period whose size reflects the medieval wealth brought here by the cloth trade. The base of the rood screen is early sixteenth century, and some fragments of glass of the same date survive in the tracery of a north window. The pulpit is a curious piece knocked up from pieces of old woodwork. Yet for woodwork the outstanding feature of Headcorn is the roof, which is accepted as one of the most accomplished mid-fourteenth-century structures in the country. Also of good quality are the Royal Arms of George III painted by J. Adams in 1808. There is a large south porch of the fifteenth century with an upper room which has a small window into the church - a sure sign that this was a priest's parvise, and not just storage space.
www.kentchurches.info/church.asp?p=Headcorn
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The Parish Church is dedicated to St. Peter and St. Paul, and the present building dates back to the 11th century. The nave of this church was probably on the site of the present chancel, whose north and east walls date from that period. A south aisle, in the area of the present Lady Chapel, was added in the 12th century. In the 13th and 14th centuries, a new nave was constructed, and the present south aisle was added in the early 15th century. Later in the same century, the tower and south porch were built. The nave roof is an exceptionally fine example with deep mouldings and massive rafters.
In addition to the Lady Chapel, there is a small chapel at the west end of the south aisle, dedicated to St. Nicholas.
Externally the church is approached through a lychgate, built to commemorate the year 2000, and donated by the people of Headcorn. The avenue of trees along the path were planted for Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee
www.handschurches.org/churches/headcorn-church/
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Construction of the church was begun in the 13th century and continued during the 14th and 15th centuries. The church is constructed of Bethersden marble and has plain tiled roofs.[1]
The late 14th-century west tower comprises three stages with buttresses on the external corners and a taller attached polygonal stair turret on the north-east corner. String courses separate each stage and a battlemented parapet forms the top of the walls on each side. The west side contains a three-lighted, cinquefoil-headed and traceried window in the first stage positioned above the small west door. The second stage contains small rectangular windows on the façades and the third stage contains two- or three-lighted belfry windows on each side with either trefoil or quatrefoil decoration.[1]
The nave is probably 14th-century and is flanked on the south side by a late 14th-century aisle with its attached porch of a similar age. The parapets of the aisle and porch are battlemented. The three aisle windows are cinquefoil-topped and the porch inner doorway is of Bethesden marble. The north wall of the nave contains four three-lighted traceried windows separated by buttresses. The chancel is 13th century with the windows replaced probably in the late 14th century or in the 15th century. The east end is gabled with a tall window of two stacked groups of three cinquefoil-topped lights. Abutting the south side of the chancel is the south chapel which also dates from the 14th century. Four two-lighted windows alternate with buttresses on the south chapel wall and the east end contains a five-lighted traceried window.
nternally, the nave and south aisle are separated by an arcade of five pointed arches on octagonal columns with bases and capitals in Bethesden marble. The arch between chancel and nave and between south aisle and south chapel are similar. An arcade of two bays divides the chancel from the south chapel. The collar-rafter roof to the nave is late 14th century or early 15th century with seven moulded trusses. The pitched roof of the chancel is boarded and the roofs of the aisle and chapel are flat and boarded.[1]
The 15th-century font is octagonal with carved sides. Piscina are located in the south walls at the east end of the aisle and the east end of the chapel and in the chancel. The screen is partly 16th century with linenfold panelling which also features on the late 19th century pulpit.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Peter%27s_and_St_Paul%27s_Church...
The largest known cave system in the world, the Mammoth-Flint Ridge Cave System, as of 2022, has 426 miles of documented passages, and sits beneath the ground in Mammoth Cave National Park, established in 1941, and was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1981, the only designation in the state of Kentucky. The park is also an International Biosphere Reserve, designated in 1990, and an International Dark Sky Park, designated in 2021. The Mammoth-Flint Ridge Cave System formed in Mississippian Limestone rock underneath a Big Clifty Sandstone cap, which has formed several stable arched passages of varying sizes from the intrusion of water into the rock layers, with the less porous sandstone cap preventing water intrusion at most locations, which have kept the caverns beneath intact and stable for eons. The water that passes through the cave system drains into the adjacent Green River, and has continuously eroded deeper into the rock along with the river. The cave is home to endemic species of organisms that have adapted to the dark conditions within the cave system. The cave system was known to indigenous people, whom mined gypsum from the walls of the caves and explored the caves, with human remains, signs of human activity, and artifacts from their presence in the cave. The cave became known to European settlers in the 1790s, and it started being mined by Valentine Simon for saltpeter to create gunpowder in 1798, with the mining activities intensifying around the time of the War of 1812, and becoming an industrial-scale operation under the ownership of Charles Wilkins and Hyman Gratz, whom used slave labor to exploit the cave’s resources. In 1838, with the decline in value of saltpeter, the cave was sold to Franklin Gorin, whom operated the cave as a tourist attraction, but was sold to Doctor John Croghan the following year. Under Gorin and Croghan, Black slaves served as tour guides for visitors, with Stephen Bishop being the most notable of these guides. Bishop made many maps of the caves during the 1840s and 1850s, and was the first known person to cross Bottomless Pit and discover the River Styx and Mammoth Dome on the other side. Croghan attempted to run a Tuberculosis Hospital within the cave in 1842-1843, believing the stable temperatures and air would assist patients, but this was short lived. In 1886, the Mammoth Cave Railroad was built between Park City and the historic Mammoth Cave Hotel, which operated until 1931. The caves were mapped more accurately by German visitor Max Kämper in 1908, whom mapped the surface topography and used instruments to document the cave, allowing for the opening of new entrances to the caverns from the surface and being the most accurate maps of the caves until the 1960s. Sadly, this was not appreciated by the Croghan family, whose historic cavern entrance was threatened in status by these maps, and Kämper returned to Germany, where he died as a soldier during World War I’s Battle of the Somme in 1916. Starting in the 1920s, the land around the caves was purchased by the private Mammoth Cave National Park Association, with the park being officially authorized in 1926. Between 1933 and 1942, the park’s landscape was reforested and infrastructure was constructed by the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), part of the New Deal. Between 1954 and 1972, the cave system was further explored, culminating in the connection between the longer Flint Ridge System and wider Mammoth Cave being found, making it the longest known cave system in the world. Today, the park sees about half a million visitors annually, and contains the majority of the Mammoth-Flint Ridge Cave system, with some portions of the system extending east of the park’s boundaries under privately-owned land.
Now we're talking these are substantial rocks on the south slopes of Horridge Common but not of any great height.
Taktsang, also known as Taktsang Palphug Monastery and Tiger's Nest or Tiger’s Lair is a prominent Himalayan Buddhist sacred site located along the edge of a cliff in the upper Paro Valley in Paro, Bhutan in the Eastern Himalayas. The monastery clings to the rock towering 2,600 feet above the valley and 9,678 feet above sea level.
I was sure glad when I finished my hike up to Taktsang Monastery (Tiger’s Nest) and then back to the start of the trail, but I now wish I could do it again and beat my time. I know, from the time on the photos, that it took me an hour and 50 minutes from the start of the trail to the half way point, Taktsang Restaurant, where we regrouped before starting out again. I did stop a lot to take pictures and probably spent more time than I should have at one location because a fellow Sierra Club member said, “Ginger, we’ve got to get going. Others are probably waiting for us at the restaurant”.
Along the way I ate beef jerky and drank lots of water. I carried two 32 oz, bottles of water. The night before I added a lemon-lime Nuun electrolyte tablet to one of the bottles --- had never taken electrolytes before, but a friend recommended doing so. Anyway, this is what I learned: Nuun electrolyte tablets contain sodium, potassium, magnesium, and calcium which aid in the absorption of water to keep you hydrated. I sure didn’t have a problem hiking up so I guess it worked!
At the restaurant we were greeted by our Sierra Club trip leader who surprised us with a piece of chocolate! I’m not a chocolate eater, but that was sooooo good. We were then served crackers and tea. From the restaurant to the top was another hour and 50 minutes --- again I know this from the time on the photos I took, and I sure took a lot of photos. When I was close to the top I had finished the 32 ounces of water+ electrolytes so I took out another tablet and dropped it into the second bottle of 32 ounces of water.
No photos were allowed in the monastery. In fact, we had to put all of our belongings into lockers, and of course, we had to remove our shoes. We had been removing our shoes daily as we entered monasteries, dzongs, lhakhangs, and Butanese homes. Since I knew this ahead of time I took some older socks that I could put on once I removed my shoes in order to keep the bottoms of my good socks clean.
After our tour of the monastery we headed down to the restaurant for our meal. The only thing I didn’t like in the monastery was the burning incense. It’s pretty prevalent throughout Bhutan in places of worship. For me, it was difficult to breathe so I didn’t stay inside the rooms of the monastery very long. I didn’t take many pictures on the way down so I don’t know the time it took for me to get to the restaurant or to return from the restaurant to the start of the trail.
It probably took a little less time than going up. At one point I stopped to take off my vest. That put a little distance between me and others. I even saw people pass me by as I was putting my vest into my backpack and then putting on my backpack. Later I stopped to get my knee support out of my backpack and put it on. That took longer, but it was very necessary. My knee was killing me each time I bent it. It was soooo painful. Now I was really alone on the trail. I didn’t see any one in front of me or behind me.
For me, it was more difficult going down, especially over rocks because no one was in front of me. It’s much easier for me to follow in the steps of an experienced hiker when going over rocks or when there isn’t a set trail.
And then . . . a third . . . and last stop. Because there were lots of horses going up the trail I had to wait for them. There were too many horses and not enough room to pass. The horses even stopped to drink water from the trough and I couldn’t go around them. Now there was lots of distance between me and the others.
Well, that’s what happens when you make stops! I thought I was going to be the last to return, but once I reached the others I learned there was one more behind me!
We were a group of 17 Los Angeles and Orange County Sierra Club members. Two members did not attempt the Taktsang Monastery hike due to leg and knee problems. One of the 15 who started out in the morning with us rode a horse from the trail head to the restaurant. That’s as far as the horses could go. Once everyone had tea, crackers, and a rest at the restaurant we headed up, kind of staggered, each going at his/her own pace. The plan was to re-group at the top and enter the monastery together with our guide.
About 30 minutes after leaving the restaurant, as I was going up, I was surprised to see the person who had been on horseback coming down. She said she wasn’t feeling well at all, sick to her stomach and dizzy (probably due to the high altitude) so she decided to return to the restaurant and wait for us there.
Known for its popular camping area, Locust Lake State Park nestles on the side of Locust Mountain. The 52-acre Locust Lake is located between two campgrounds and is surrounded by beautiful forests. Hiking and fishing are popular activities in the 1,772-acre park.
Dave Thomas (@pragdave) describes the evolution of tacit knowledge and how craftsmen should teach junior developers.
5900 Troost Avenue
Kansas City, MO
Built in 1965. When opened, they were a used car dealer, specializing in premium brands like Cadillac and Lincoln.
Sigiriya, also known as Lion Rock, a 200m rock standing in the middle of nowhere. The rock is a natural fort and that it is why it is being used for that purpose by an ancient King Kaspaya neary 15 centuries ago. On the summit the ruins of his palace and other buildings can still be found. It is termed as 8th wonder of the world as it is still a mystery that how they pumped the water and other resources to the top...
Here was something I hadn't known to expect: when my GPS said to "veer left" to stay onto Weld County Rd 136—as opposed to following the curve of the arterial I was on to turn right onto County Rd 89—I did not know I would be driving onto a road that was unpaved. The paved road turns, and going this direction meant actually going straight; I think Siri says to "veer left" in an attempt to make it clear I was indeed meant to drive off the paved road—although I had to look several times at the moving map on my phone just to make sure I was indeed going where I was supposed to.
Never in my life have I deliberately driven so far into the middle of nowhere, all by myself. But, I was on a mission! I was driving ninety minutes out of my way—literally doubling the drive time I would otherwise have—to Cheyenne, Wyoming, just so I could get all of two miles into Nebraska, and then, well, I could say I've been to Nebraska.
It was a good 15 miles of these packed gravel roads before reaching Panorama Point, my specific Nebraska destination barely across the state line in the southwest corner of the state's fat eastern panhandle, the last road of which was more of a straight-up dirt road, which, although it also had small rocks, was a more comfortable drive for me. The first roads with more gravel on them freaked me out just slightly, as I was in a rather nice, white Kia rental car. I could hear lots of pebbles getting kicked up by my tires and hitting the bottom of the car. I have literally never owned a car of my own, and although I relatively frequently drive Shobhit's car, it's a now-ancient 2004 Nissan Sentra, so I have no real sense of how much of a concern this should be. Still, in the end I drove these last 15 miles at an average of around 40 mph. The noise from the gravel didn't sound any different at that speed than it did at 25 or 30 mph, so I figured, fuck it.
I had driven about twenty miles of these gravel roads before I finally hit another paved road, just over the state line in southeast Wyoming, which was a relief. Smooth sailing after that! I didn't even mind getting stuck behind a John Deere tractor for several minutes. At least the road was paved.
NGC6888, otherwise known as the Crescent Nebula. This emission nebula in the constellation Cygnus lies roughly 5000 light years away. It was formed by a collision between the fast- and slow-moving stellar winds (as our own Sun's "solar wind") emitted from the same red giant star. This collision created two shockwaves -- one moving outward and one moving inward, heating the wind to extremely hot temperatures.
This image is displayed in greyscale because it shows the red channel only -- my DSLR and 13nm hydrogen-alpha filter act to reject all light except for a narrow channel of the infrared (very useful in combating light pollution). The blue and green channels are essentially black.
Known for its bohemian spirit, Venice is a buzzing beach town with upscale commercial and residential pockets. Free-spirited Venice Boardwalk is the site of funky shops, street performers and colorful murals. There’s also a skate park and Muscle Beach outdoor gym.
Known as ponts de bens, they were built for shelter from the sun in the heat of the day, or in bad weather. These stone buildings are dry-walled. The method is ancient, and they appear almost megalithic, but these are most likely built within the last 200 years, and are dotted over the landscape from Punta Nati lighthouse down towards Ciutadella.
If you are not familiar with viewing stereo cross-view images, gently cross your eyes and the third image which appears centrally is the stereo view. See the link in my profile - www.flickr.com/people/barrie_r/?rb=1
On my last day in South America this last trip, I was scurrying around to catch scenic shots of the falls. As I was about to leave the park, I caught a glimpse of this place. I kind of liked the overgrown "Jurassic Park" feel to it. Didn't think of it until now, but I should have explored it a bit more!
Basel, also known as Bâle in French and Basilea in Italian, is a city in northwestern Switzerland on the Rhine. Basel is Switzerland's third-most-populous city (after Zürich and Geneva), with roughly 178,000 inhabitants within the city municipality limits in the 2020s. The official language of Basel is (the Swiss variety of Standard) German, and the main spoken language is the local Basel German dialect.
Basel is commonly considered to be the cultural capital of Switzerland and the city is famous for its many museums, including the first collection of art accessible to the public in the world (1661) and the largest museum of art in Switzerland. The University of Basel, Switzerland's oldest university (founded in 1460), and the city's centuries-long commitment to humanism, have made Basel a safe haven at times of political unrest in other parts of Europe for refugees and dissidents.
Information from: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basel
In Pakistan, spring celebrations are locally known as ‘Jashn-e-Baharan’. People all over the country celebrate the arrival of spring in the most festive way. When it comes to spring celebrations and festivals, Pakistani celebrations have a league of their own. Spring is celebrated with gardens full of multi color flowers, dancing people, music, different stalls, with cultural representation and different skits also performed.
Mr. Atif Mushtaq, Chairman Board of Governors of Hajvery university Lahore inaugurated a two day spring festival on 7th TO 8th April 2015 . The festival was organized by HU Students Clubs and faculty member of all departments. Hajvery University celebrates spring festival every year so preparation was started two week earlier.
Students were really excited due to Singing, dancing, ramp walk, skits performance and different stalls which were the part of spring festival. Some students performed a funny skit with title “Mughal-e- Azam” which was very entertaining for all of us. Our singers with their magnanimous voice mesmerized the atmosphere every one was just drenched in happiness and joy.Those moments were completely affable with no words to reveal.The joice and vigour of our dancers were completely thrillling on that smokey dance floor.
Students of fashion designing set their dress according to spring and when models came on ramp with their dresses students appreciated the work which were done by the participants in the evening,that was a glamorous moment at stance.The crowd were totally infetuated with the blooming models.
And there were also different stalls like food stalls, jeweler stalls, and technology stalls also were the part of our spring festival. Students of the University fully participated at the events of festival.
Talking to participants on various stalls, Mr. Atif Mushtaq said that besides studies, educational trends, co-curricular activities and extra-curricular activities are essential for flourishment and furtherance of abilities, qualities and knowledge in various sectors. He also appreciated the stalls pertaining different foods like, snacks, Nimco, barbeque etc.
Mr.Atif Mushtaq take a round of the festival and went to every stall and saw the items presented / prepared by the students. Encouraging the skills, efforts and labour of students. And hoped that students of Hajvery University will play their positive role in participating in national progress and prosperity.
The Dean, faculty members, teachers and office-bearers of students clubs accompanied the Mr. Atif Mushtaq, Chairman Board of Governors visited the stalls of the festival. At the end Mr. Chairman gave the shields and certificate to students. It was a best festival ever.
Known as lie-and-wait predators, these guys don't chase down their meal, they wait for it to wander by. Native to Northern Argentina, Uruguay and the Rio Grande do Sul region of Brazil.
Known as the "Sailfish Capital of the World," Stuart, Florida's sailfish fountain is a focal point of downtown.
Chillenden is best known for the white clapboard post mill, which is about half a mile above the village.
I came here via Goodnestone, and on the map it looked like an easy journey of a couple of miles. As it turned out the network of narrow lanes made it more difficult, but I knew where the mill was, so made my way there, then down into the village which is stretched along a sunken lane, the church being opposite the village pub.
All Saints is a small church, similar to Harty and Stodmarsh, with a sturdy wooden fram holding the small tower and spire up.
Some nice victorian tiles and ancient glass in the window, but just fragments.
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Chillenden comes from the Old English ‘denu’ meaning a ‘valley’ combined with a personal name; therefore, ‘Ciolla’s valley’. The Domesday Book records Chillenden as Cilledene.
Chillenden parish church is a Grade: II listed building, dedicated to All Saints. The Normans built the church in the 12th century with additions in the 14th and 15th centuries. In 1800, Edward Hasted described the Chillenden church as ‘antient, it is a mean building, very small, having a square tower at the west end, in which there is only one bell. It consists of a body, and one chancel. In the windows are remains of very handsome painted glass. There is a handsome zig-zag moulding, and circular arch over the north door. There is likewise a circular arch, but plainer than the other, over the south door’. The architect Sir George Gilbert Scott sensitively restored the church in 1871.
www.kentpast.co.uk/chillenden.html
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CHILLENDEN,
WRITTEN in the survey of Domesday, Cilledene, lies the next parish westward from Knolton, taking its name from its cold and low situation. The manors of Knolton and Woodnesborough claim over part of this parish, as does the manor of Adisham over another part of it. A borsholder is appointed for this parish by the justices, at their petty sessions for this division of the lath of St. Augustine.
THE PARISH of Chillenden lies dry and healthy, but it is not very pleasantly situated, though surrounded by other parishes which are remarkably so; it is very small, containing only one hundred and sixty acres, and the whole rents in it amount to little more than 250l. per annum. There are three farms in it, one belonging to Mr. Hammond, and the other two to Sir Brook Bridges, bart. It lies low in a bottom, the high road from Canterbury to Deal leads through the village called Chillenden-street, which consists of twenty two houses; on the south side stands the church. The soil is chalky and poor, and the lands, which are arable, are open and uninclosed. A fair is held here on WhitMonday, for pedlary, &c.
THIS PLACE, at the time of taking the survey of Domesday, was part of the possessions of Odo, bishop of Baieux, under the general title of whose lands it is entered in it as follows:
Osbern (son of Letard) holds of the bishop Cilledene. It was taxed at one suling and one yoke and ten acres. The arable land is . . . . In demesne there is nothing now, but nine villeins have there two carucates and an half. In the time of king Edward the Consessor it was worth sixty shillings, and afterwards thirty shillings, now forty shillings. Godwin held it of king Edward, and five other Thanes. Thomas Osbern put three of their lands into one manor.
Four years after the taking of this survey, this estate, on the bishop's disgrace and the consiscation of his estates, came into the hands of the crown.
After which it came into the possession of a family, who took their surname from it, and there is mention made in deeds, which are as antient as the reign of king Henry III. of John de Chillenden, Edward and William de Chillenden, who had an interest in this place; after this name was become extinct here, the Bakers, of Caldham, in Capel, near Folkestone, possessed it, in whom this manor continued till king Henry VI.'s reign, when it passed by sale to Hunt, whose descendants remained entitled to it for two or three descents, when one of them alienated it to Gason, of Apulton, in Ickham. (fn. 1) They bore for their arms, Azure, a fess cotized, ermine, between three goats heads, couped, argent; which coat was granted anno 39 king Henry VIII. (fn. 1) in which name it continued for some time, and till it was at length sold to Hammond, of St. Alban's, in Nonington, in whose descendants it has continued down to William Hammond, esq. of St. Alban's, who is the present owner of this manor.
This estate pays a quit rent to Adisham manor, of which it is held. It has no manerial rights, and it is much doubted, if it had ever any claim, beyond the reputation of a manor.
There are no parochial charities. The poor constantly relieved are about sixteen, casually six.
THIS PARISH is within the ECCLESIASTICAL JURISDICTION of the diocese of Canterbury, and deanry of Bridge.
The church, which is dedicated to All Saints, seems antient, it is a mean building, very small, having a square tower at the west end, in which there is only one bell. It consists of a body, and one chancel. In the windows are remains of very handsome painted glass. There is a handsome zig-zag moulding, and circular arch over the north door. There is likewise a circular arch, but plainer than the other, over the south door. It has nothing further worth mention in it.
¶This church was part of the possessions of the priory of Ledes, being given to it by William de Northwic, about the latter end of king Henry II.'s reign; (fn. 2) but the prior and convent never obtained the appropriation of it, but contented themselves with a pension of eight shillings yearly from it; in which state it continued till the dissolution of the priory in the 31st year of king Henry VIII's reign, when the advowson, together with the above pension, came with the rest of the possession of the priory, into the hands of the crown, in which the patronage of this church continues at this time. But the annual pension of eight shillings was soon afterwards settled by the king in his 33d year, among other premises, on his new-founded dean and chapter of Rochester, part of whose possessions it still continues.
This rectory is valued in the king's books at five pounds. It is now a discharged living, and is of about the clear yearly value of twenty six pounds. In 1588 it was valued at forty pounds, communicants seventyseven. In 1640 it was valued at the same, communicants seventy.
There are three acres of glebe. The present incumbent has built a tolerable good parsonage-house on the scite of the antient one. There is no land within this parish exempt from the payment of tithe.
A camel is an even-toed ungulate within the genus Camelus, bearing distinctive fatty deposits known as "humps" on its back. The two surviving species of camel are the dromedary, or one-humped camel (C. dromedarius), which inhabits the Middle East and the Horn of Africa; and the bactrian, or two-humped camel (C. bactrianus), which inhabits Central Asia. Both species have been domesticated; they provide milk, meat, hair for textiles or goods such as felted pouches, and are working animals with tasks ranging from human transport to bearing loads.
The term "camel" is derived via Latin and Greek (camelus and κάμηλος kamēlos respectively) from Hebrew or Phoenician gāmāl.
"Camel" is also used more broadly to describe any of the six camel-like mammals in the family Camelidae: the two true camels and the four New World camelids: the llama, alpaca, guanaco, and vicuña of South America.
BIOLOGY
The average life expectancy of a camel is 40 to 50 years. A full-grown adult camel stands 1.85 m at the shoulder and 2.15 m at the hump. Camels can run at up to 65 km/h in short bursts and sustain speeds of up to 40 km/h. Bactrian camels weigh 300 to 1,000 kg and dromedaries 300 to 600 kg.
The male dromedary camel has in its throat an organ called a dulla, a large, inflatable sac he extrudes from his mouth when in rut to assert dominance and attract females. It resembles a long, swollen, pink tongue hanging out of the side of its mouth. Camels mate by having both male and female sitting on the ground, with the male mounting from behind. The male usually ejaculates three or four times within a single mating session. Camelids are the only ungulates to mate in a sitting position.
ECOLOGICAL AND BEHAVIORAL ADAPTIONS
Camels do not directly store water in their humps as was once commonly believed. The humps are actually reservoirs of fatty tissue: concentrating body fat in their humps minimizes the insulating effect fat would have if distributed over the rest of their bodies, helping camels survive in hot climates. When this tissue is metabolized, it yields more than one gram of water for every gram of fat processed. This fat metabolization, while releasing energy, causes water to evaporate from the lungs during respiration (as oxygen is required for the metabolic process): overall, there is a net decrease in water.
Camels have a series of physiological adaptations that allow them to withstand long periods of time without any external source of water. Unlike other mammals, their red blood cells are oval rather than circular in shape. This facilitates the flow of red blood cells during dehydration and makes them better at withstanding high osmotic variation without rupturing when drinking large amounts of water: a 600 kg camel can drink 200 L of water in three minutes.
Camels are able to withstand changes in body temperature and water consumption that would kill most other animals. Their temperature ranges from 34 °C at dawn and steadily increases to 40 °C by sunset, before they cool off at night again. Maintaining the brain temperature within certain limits is critical for animals; to assist this, camels have a rete mirabile, a complex of arteries and veins lying very close to each other which utilizes countercurrent blood flow to cool blood flowing to the brain. Camels rarely sweat, even when ambient temperatures reach 49 °C Any sweat that does occur evaporates at the skin level rather than at the surface of their coat; the heat of vaporization therefore comes from body heat rather than ambient heat. Camels can withstand losing 25% of their body weight to sweating, whereas most other mammals can withstand only about 12–14% dehydration before cardiac failure results from circulatory disturbance.
When the camel exhales, water vapor becomes trapped in their nostrils and is reabsorbed into the body as a means to conserve water. Camels eating green herbage can ingest sufficient moisture in milder conditions to maintain their bodies' hydrated state without the need for drinking.
The camels' thick coats insulate them from the intense heat radiated from desert sand; a shorn camel must sweat 50% more to avoid overheating. During the summer the coat becomes lighter in color, reflecting light as well as helping avoid sunburn. The camel's long legs help by keeping its body farther from the ground, which can heat up to 70 °C. Dromedaries have a pad of thick tissue over the sternum called the pedestal. When the animal lies down in a sternal recumbent position, the pedestal raises the body from the hot surface and allows cooling air to pass under the body.
Camels' mouths have a thick leathery lining, allowing them to chew thorny desert plants. Long eyelashes and ear hairs, together with nostrils that can close, form a barrier against sand. If sand gets lodged in their eyes, they can dislodge it using their transparent third eyelid. The camels' gait and widened feet help them move without sinking into the sand.
The kidneys and intestines of a camel are very efficient at reabsorbing water. Camel urine comes out as a thick syrup, and camel feces are so dry that they do not require drying when the Bedouins use them to fuel fires.
Camels' immune system differs from those of other mammals. Normally, the Y-shaped antibody molecules consist of two heavy (or long) chains along the length of the Y, and two light (or short) chains at each tip of the Y. Camels, in addition to these, also have antibodies made of only two heavy chains, a trait that makes them smaller and more durable. These "heavy-chain-only" antibodies, discovered in 1993, are thought to have developed 50 million years ago, after camelids split from ruminants and pigs.
GENETICS
The karyotypes of different camelid species have been studied earlier by many groups, but no agreement on chromosome nomenclature of camelids has been reached. A 2007 study flow sorted camel chromosomes, building on the fact that camels have 37 pairs of chromosomes (2n=74), and found that the karyotime consisted of one metacentric, three submetacentric, and 32 acrocentric autosomes. The Y is a small metacentric chromosome, while the X is a large metacentric chromosome.The hybrid camel, a hybrid between Bactrian and dromedary camels, has one hump, though it has an indentation 4–12 cm deep that divides the front from the back. The hybrid is 2.15 m at the shoulder and 2.32 m tall at the hump. It weighs an average of 650 kg and can carry around 400 to 450 kg, which is more than either the dromedary or Bactrian can. According to molecular data, the New World and Old World camelids diverged 11 million years ago. In spite of this, these species can still hybridize and produce fertile offspring. The cama is a camel–llama hybrid bred by scientists who wanted to see how closely related the parent species were. Scientists collected semen from a camel via an artificial vagina and inseminated a llama after stimulating ovulation with gonadotrophin injections. The cama has ears halfway between the length of camel and llama ears, no hump, longer legs than the llama, and partially cloven hooves. According to cama breeder Lulu Skidmore, cama have "the fleece of the llamas" and "the strength and patience of the camel". Like the mule, camas are sterile, despite both parents having the same number of chromosomes.
EVOLUTION
The earliest known camel, called Protylopus, lived in North America 40 to 50 million years ago (during the Eocene). It was about the size of a rabbit and lived in the open woodlands of what is now South Dakota. By 35 million years ago, the Poebrotherium was the size of a goat and had many more traits similar to camels and llamas. The hoofed Stenomylus, which walked on the tips of its toes, also existed around this time, and the long-necked Aepycamelus evolved in the Miocene.
The direct ancestor of all modern camels, Procamelus, existed in the upper Miocone and lower Pliocene. Around 3–5 million years ago, the North American Camelidae spread to South America via the Isthmus of Panama, where they gave rise to guanacos and related animals, and to Asia via the Bering land bridge. Surprising finds of fossil Paracamelus on Ellesmere Island beginning in 2006 in the high Canadian Arctic indicate the dromedary is descended from a larger, boreal browser whose hump may have evolved as an adaptation in a cold climate. This creature is estimated to have stood around nine feet tall.
The last camel native to North America was Camelops hesternus, which vanished along with horses, short-faced bears, mammoths and mastodons, ground sloths, sabertooth cats, and many other megafauna, coinciding with the migration of humans from Asia.
DOMESTICATION
Most camels surviving today are domesticated. Along with many other megafauna in North America, the original wild camels were wiped out during the spread of Native Americans from Asia into North America, 12,000 to 10,000 years ago. The only wild camels left are the Bactrian camels of the Gobi Desert.
Like the horse, before their extinction in their native land, camels spread across the Bering land bridge, moving the opposite direction from the Asian immigration to America, to survive in the Old World and eventually be domesticated and spread globally by humans.
Dromedaries may have first been domesticated by humans in Somalia and southern Arabia, around 3,000 BC, the Bactrian in central Asia around 2,500 BC, as at Shar-i Sokhta (also known as the Burnt City), Iran.
Discussions concerning camel domestication in Mesopotamia are often related to mentions of camels in the Hebrew Bible. The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia: E-J for instance mentions that "In accord with patriarchal traditions, cylinder seals from Middle Bronze Age Mesopotamia showed riders seated upon camels."
Martin Heide's 2010 work on the domestication of the camel tentatively concludes that the bactrian camel was domesticated by at least the middle of the third millennium somewhere east of the Zagros Mountains, then moving into Mesopotamia, and suggests that mentions of camels "in the patriarchal narratives may refer, at least in some places, to the Bactrian camel." while noting that the camel is not mentioned in relationship to Canaan.
Recent excavations in the Timna Valley by Lidar Sapir-Hen and Erez Ben-Yosef discovered what may be the earliest domestic camel bones found in Israel or even outside the Arabian peninsula, dating to around 930 BCE. This garnered considerable media coverage as it was described as evidence that the stories of Abraham, Joseph, Jacob and Esau were written after this time.
The existence of camels in Mesopotamia but not in Israel is not a new idea. According to an article in Time Magazine, the historian Richard Bulliet wrote in his 1975 book "The Camel and the Wheel" that "the occasional mention of camels in patriarchal narratives does not mean that the domestic camels were common in the Holy Land at that period." The archaeologist William F. Albright writing even earlier saw camels in the Bible as an anachronism. The official report by Sapir-Hen and Ben-Joseph notes that "The introduction of the dromedary camel (Camelus dromedarius) as a pack animal to the southern Levant signifies a crucial juncture in the history of the region; it substantially facilitated trade across the vast deserts of Arabia, promoting both economic and social change (e.g., Kohler 1984; Borowski 1998: 112-116; Jasmin 2005). This, together with the depiction of camels in the Patriarchal narrative, has generated extensive discussion regarding the date of the earliest domestic camel in the southern Levant (and beyond) (e.g., Albright 1949: 207; Epstein 1971: 558-584; Bulliet 1975; Zarins 1989; Köhler-Rollefson 1993; Uerpmann and Uerpmann 2002; Jasmin 2005; 2006; Heide 2010; Rosen and Saidel 2010; Grigson 2012). Most scholars today agree that the dromedary was exploited as a pack animal sometime in the early Iron Age (not before the 12th century BCE)" and concludes that "Current data from copper smelting sites of the Aravah Valley enable us to pinpoint the introduction of domestic camels to the southern Levant more precisely based on stratigraphic contexts associated with an extensive suite of radiocarbon dates. The data indicate that this event occurred not earlier than the last third of the 10th century BCE and most probably during this time. The coincidence of this event with a major reorganization of the copper industry of the region - attributed to the results of the campaign of Pharaoh Shoshenq I - raises the possibility that the two were connected, and that camels were introduced as part of the efforts to improve efficiency by facilitating trade."
MILITARY USES
By at least 1200 BC, the first camel saddles had appeared, and Bactrian camels could be ridden. The first saddle was positioned to the back of the camel, and control of the Bactrian camel was exercised by means of a stick. However, between 500–100 BC, Bactrian camels attained military use. New saddles, which were inflexible and bent, were put over the humps and divided the rider's weight over the animal. In the seventh century BC, the military Arabian saddle appeared, which improved the saddle design again slightly.
Camel cavalries have been used in wars throughout Africa, the Middle East, and into modern-day Border Security Force of India (though as of July 2012, the BSF has planned the replacement of camels with ATVs). The first use of camel cavalries was in the Battle of Qarqar in 853 BC. Armies have also used camels as freight animals instead of horses and mules.
In the East Roman Empire, the Romans used auxiliary forces known as dromedarii, whom they recruited in desert provinces. The camels were used mostly in combat because of their ability to scare off horses at close ranges (horses are afraid of the camels' scent), a quality famously employed by the Achaemenid Persians when fighting Lydia in the Battle of Thymbra.
19th and 20th CENTURIES
The United States Army established the U.S. Camel Corps, which was stationed in California in the late 19th century. One may still see stables at the Benicia Arsenal in Benicia, California, where they nowadays serve as the Benicia Historical Museum. Though the experimental use of camels was seen as a success (John B. Floyd, Secretary of War in 1858, recommended that funds be allocated towards obtaining a thousand more camels), the outbreak of the American Civil War saw the end of the Camel Corps: Texas became part of the Confederacy, and most of the camels were left to wander away into the desert.
France created a méhariste camel corps in 1912 as part of the Armée d'Afrique in the Sahara in order to exercise greater control over the camel-riding Tuareg and Arab insurgents, as previous efforts to defeat them on foot had failed. The camel-mounted units remained in service until the end of French rule over Algeria in 1962.
In 1916, the British created the Imperial Camel Corps. It was originally used to fight the Senussi, but was later used in the Sinai and Palestine Campaign in World War I. The Imperial Camel Corps comprised infantrymen mounted on camels for movement across desert, though they dismounted at battle sites and fought on foot. After July 1918, the Corps began to become run down, receiving no new reinforcements, and was formally disbanded in 1919.
In World War I, the British Army also created the Egyptian Camel Transport Corps, which consisted of a group of Egyptian camel drivers and their camels. The Corps supported British war operations in Sinai, Palestine, and Syria by transporting supplies to the troops.
The Somaliland Camel Corps was created by colonial authorities in British Somaliland in 1912; it was disbanded in 1944.
Bactrian camels were used by Romanian forces during World War II in the Caucasian region.
The Bikaner Camel Corps of British India fought alongside the British Indian Army in World Wars I and II.
The Tropas Nómadas (Nomad Troops) were an auxiliary regiment of Sahrawi tribesmen serving in the colonial army in Spanish Sahara (today Western Sahara). Operational from the 1930s until the end of the Spanish presence in the territory in 1975, the Tropas Nómadas were equipped with small arms and led by Spanish officers. The unit guarded outposts and sometimes conducted patrols on camelback.
FOOD USES
DAIRY
Camel milk is a staple food of desert nomad tribes and is sometimes considered a meal in and of itself; a nomad can live on only camel milk for almost a month. Camel milk is rich in vitamins, minerals, proteins, and immunoglobulins; compared to cow's milk, it is lower in fat and lactose, and higher in potassium, iron, and vitamin C. Bedouins believe the curative powers of camel milk are enhanced if the camel's diet consists of certain desert plants. Camel milk can readily be made into a drinkable yogurt, as well as butter or cheese, though the yields for cheese tend to be low.
Camel milk cannot be made into butter by the traditional churning method. It can be made if it is soured first, churned, and a clarifying agent is then added. Until recently, camel milk could not be made into camel cheese because rennet was unable to coagulate the milk proteins to allow the collection of curds. Developing less wasteful uses of the milk, the FAO commissioned Professor J.P. Ramet of the École Nationale Supérieure d'Agronomie et des Industries Alimentaires, who was able to produce curdling by the addition of calcium phosphate and vegetable rennet. The cheese produced from this process has low levels of cholesterol and is easy to digest, even for the lactose intolerant. The sale of camel cheese is limited owing to the small output of the few dairies producing camel cheese and the absence of camel cheese in local (West African) markets. Cheese imports from countries that traditionally breed camels are difficult to obtain due to restrictions on dairy imports from these regions.
Additionally, camel milk has been made into ice cream in a Netherlands camel farm.
MEAT
A camel carcass can provide a substantial amount of meat. The male dromedary carcass can weigh 300–400 kg, while the carcass of a male Bactrian can weigh up to 650 kg. The carcass of a female dromedary weighs less than the male, ranging between 250 and 350 kg. The brisket, ribs and loin are among the preferred parts, and the hump is considered a delicacy. The hump contains "white and sickly fat", which can be used to make the khli (preserved meat) of mutton, beef, or camel. Camel meat is reported to taste like coarse beef, but older camels can prove to be very tough, although camel meat becomes more tender the more it is cooked. The Abu Dhabi Officers' Club serves a camel burger mixed with beef or lamb fat in order to improve the texture and taste. In Karachi, Pakistan, some restaurants prepare nihari from camel meat. In Syria and Egypt, there are specialist camel butchers.
Camel meat has been eaten for centuries. It has been recorded by ancient Greek writers as an available dish at banquets in ancient Persia, usually roasted whole. The ancient Roman emperor Heliogabalus enjoyed camel's heel.[31] Camel meat is still eaten in certain regions, including Eritrea, Somalia, Djibouti, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Syria, Libya, Sudan, Ethiopia, Kazakhstan, and other arid regions where alternative forms of protein may be limited or where camel meat has had a long cultural history. Camel blood is also consumable, as is the case among pastoralists in northern Kenya, where camel blood is drunk with milk and acts as a key source of iron, vitamin D, salts and minerals. Camel meat is also occasionally found in Australian cuisine: for example, a camel lasagna is available in Alice Springs.
A 2005 report issued jointly by the Saudi Ministry of Health and the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention details cases of human bubonic plague resulting from the ingestion of raw camel liver.
RELIGION
ISLAM
Camel meat is halal for Muslims. However, according to some Islamic schools of thought, a state of impurity is brought on by the consumption of it. Consequently, these schools hold that Muslims must perform wudhu (ablution) before the next time they pray after eating camel meat.
Also, some Islamic schools of thought consider it haraam for a Muslim to perform salat in places where camels lie, as it is said to be a dwelling place of shaytan.
According to Suni ahadith collected by Bukhari and Muslim, Muhammad ordered a certain group of people to drink camel milk and urine as a medicine. However, according to Abū Ḥanīfa, the drinking of camel urine, while not forbidden (ḥaram), is disliked (makrūh) in Islam.
Camel urine is sold as traditional medicine in shops in Saudi Arabia. The Sunni scholar Muhammad Al-Munajjid's IslamQA.info recommends camel urine as beneficial to curing certain diseases and to human health and cited Ahadith and scientific studies as justification. King Abdulaziz University researcher Dr. Faten Abdel-Rajman Khorshid has claimed that cancer and other diseases could be treated with camel urine as recommended by the Prophet. The United Arab Emirates "Arab Science and Technology Foundation" reported that cancer could be treated with camel urine. Camel urine was also prescribed as a treatment by Zaghloul El-Naggar, a religious scholar. Camel urine is the only urine which is permitted to be drunk according to the Hanbali madhhab of Sunni Islam. The World Health Organization said that camel urine consumption may be a factor in the spread of the MERS virus in Saudi Arabia. The Gulf Times writer Ahmad al-Sayyed wrote that various afflictions are dealt with camel urine by people. Dandruff, scalp ailments, hair, sores, and wounds were recommended to be treated with camel urine by Ibn Sina. Arab American University Professor of Cell Biology and Immunology Bashar Saad (PhD) along with Omar Said (PhD) wrote that medicinal use of camel urine is approved of and promoted by Islam since it was recommended by the prophet. A test on mice found that cytotoxic effects similar to cyclophosphamide were induced on bone marrow by camel urine. Besides for consumption as a medicinal drink, camel urine is believed to help treat hair. Bites from insects were warded off with camel urine, which also served as a shampoo. Camel urine is also used to help treat asthma, infections, treat hair, sores, hair growth and boost libido.
Several Sunni Ahadith mention drinking camel urine. Some Shia criticized Wahhabis for camel urine treatment. Shia scholars also recommend the medicinal use of camel urine. Shia Hadith on Imam Ja'far al-Sadiq reported that shortness of breath (asthma) was treated with camel urine. Shia Marja Ayatollah Sistani said that for medicinal purposes only, sheep, cow, and camel urine can be drunk.
JUDAISM
According to Jewish tradition, camel meat and milk are not kosher. Camels possess only one of the two kosher criteria; although they chew their cud, they do not possess cloven hooves:
Nevertheless these shall ye not eat of them that only chew the cud, or of them that only part the hoof: the camel, because he cheweth the cud but parteth not the hoof, he is unclean unto you.
— Leviticus 11:4
DISTRIBUTION ANDNUMBERS
There are around 14 million camels alive as of 2010, with 90% being dromedaries. Dromedaries alive today are domesticated animals (mostly living in the Horn of Africa, the Sahel, Maghreb, Middle East and South Asia). The Horn region alone has the largest concentration of camels in the world, where the dromedaries constitute an important part of local nomadic life. They provide nomadic people in Somalia (which has the largest camel herd in the world) and Ethiopia with milk, food, and transportation.
The Bactrian camel is, as of 2010, reduced to an estimated 1.4 million animals, most of which are domesticated. The only truly wild Bactrian camels, of which there are less than one thousand, are thought to inhabit the Gobi Desert in China and Mongolia.
The largest population of feral camels is in Australia. There are around 700,000 feral dromedary camels in central parts of Australia, descended from those introduced as a method of transport in the 19th and early 20th centuries. This population is growing about 8% per year. Representatives of the Australian government have culled more than 100,000 of the animals in part because the camels use too much of the limited resources needed by sheep farmers.
A small population of introduced camels, dromedaries and Bactrians, wandered through Southwest United States after having been imported in the 1800s as part of the U.S. Camel Corps experiment. When the project ended, they were used as draft animals in mines and escaped or were released. Twenty-five U.S. camels were bought and imported to Canada during the Cariboo Gold Rush.
WIKIPEDIA
Lake Palace (formerly known as Jag Niwas), has been voted as the most romantic hotel in India and in the world.
The palace was constructed facing east, allowing its inhabitants to pray to Surya, the Hindu sun god, at the crack of dawn.The successive rulers used this palace as their summer resort, holding their regal durbars in its courtyards lined with columns, pillared terraces, fountains and gardens.
The walls made of black and white marbles are adorned by semi-precious stones and ornamented niches. Gardens, fountains, pillared terraces and columns line its courtyards.
Captain Sir Thomas Moore (30 April 1920 – 2 February 2021), more popularly known as Captain Tom, was a British Army officer and fundraiser. He made international headlines in April 2020 when he raised money for charity in the run-up to his 100th birthday during the COVID-19 pandemic. He served in India and the Burma campaign during the Second World War, and later became an instructor in armoured warfare. After the war, he worked as managing director of a concrete company and was an avid motorcycle racer.
On 6 April 2020, at the age of 99 during the first COVID-19 national lockdown, Moore began to walk 100 lengths of his garden in aid of NHS Charities Together, with the goal of raising £1,000 by his 100th birthday on 30 April. In the 24-day course of his fundraising, he made many media appearances and became a household name in the UK, earning a number of accolades and attracting over 1.5 million individual donations.
In recognition of his efforts, he received the BBC Sports Personality of the Year Helen Rollason Award at the 2020 ceremony. He performed in a cover version of the song "You'll Never Walk Alone" sung by Michael Ball, with proceeds going to the same charity. The single topped the UK Singles Chart, making him the oldest person to achieve a UK number one.
On the morning of Moore's 100th birthday, the total raised by his walk passed £30 million, and by the time the campaign closed at the end of that day had increased to over £32.79 million (worth almost £39 million with expected tax rebates). His birthday was marked in a number of ways, including flypasts by the Royal Air Force and the British Army. He received over 150,000 cards, and was appointed as honorary colonel of the Army Foundation College. On 17 July 2020, he was personally knighted by Queen Elizabeth II at Windsor Castle. He died in 2021 aged 100, at Bedford Hospital, where he was taken after being treated for pneumonia and then testing positive for COVID-19.
Irony of his story is he most likely died after takinh the CV19 vaccination.
Graffiti (plural; singular graffiti or graffito, the latter rarely used except in archeology) is art that is written, painted or drawn on a wall or other surface, usually without permission and within public view. Graffiti ranges from simple written words to elaborate wall paintings, and has existed since ancient times, with examples dating back to ancient Egypt, ancient Greece, and the Roman Empire (see also mural).
Graffiti is a controversial subject. In most countries, marking or painting property without permission is considered by property owners and civic authorities as defacement and vandalism, which is a punishable crime, citing the use of graffiti by street gangs to mark territory or to serve as an indicator of gang-related activities. Graffiti has become visualized as a growing urban "problem" for many cities in industrialized nations, spreading from the New York City subway system and Philadelphia in the early 1970s to the rest of the United States and Europe and other world regions
"Graffiti" (usually both singular and plural) and the rare singular form "graffito" are from the Italian word graffiato ("scratched"). The term "graffiti" is used in art history for works of art produced by scratching a design into a surface. A related term is "sgraffito", which involves scratching through one layer of pigment to reveal another beneath it. This technique was primarily used by potters who would glaze their wares and then scratch a design into them. In ancient times graffiti were carved on walls with a sharp object, although sometimes chalk or coal were used. The word originates from Greek γράφειν—graphein—meaning "to write".
The term graffiti originally referred to the inscriptions, figure drawings, and such, found on the walls of ancient sepulchres or ruins, as in the Catacombs of Rome or at Pompeii. Historically, these writings were not considered vanadlism, which today is considered part of the definition of graffiti.
The only known source of the Safaitic language, an ancient form of Arabic, is from graffiti: inscriptions scratched on to the surface of rocks and boulders in the predominantly basalt desert of southern Syria, eastern Jordan and northern Saudi Arabia. Safaitic dates from the first century BC to the fourth century AD.
Some of the oldest cave paintings in the world are 40,000 year old ones found in Australia. The oldest written graffiti was found in ancient Rome around 2500 years ago. Most graffiti from the time was boasts about sexual experiences Graffiti in Ancient Rome was a form of communication, and was not considered vandalism.
Ancient tourists visiting the 5th-century citadel at Sigiriya in Sri Lanka write their names and commentary over the "mirror wall", adding up to over 1800 individual graffiti produced there between the 6th and 18th centuries. Most of the graffiti refer to the frescoes of semi-nude females found there. One reads:
Wet with cool dew drops
fragrant with perfume from the flowers
came the gentle breeze
jasmine and water lily
dance in the spring sunshine
side-long glances
of the golden-hued ladies
stab into my thoughts
heaven itself cannot take my mind
as it has been captivated by one lass
among the five hundred I have seen here.
Among the ancient political graffiti examples were Arab satirist poems. Yazid al-Himyari, an Umayyad Arab and Persian poet, was most known for writing his political poetry on the walls between Sajistan and Basra, manifesting a strong hatred towards the Umayyad regime and its walis, and people used to read and circulate them very widely.
Graffiti, known as Tacherons, were frequently scratched on Romanesque Scandinavian church walls. When Renaissance artists such as Pinturicchio, Raphael, Michelangelo, Ghirlandaio, or Filippino Lippi descended into the ruins of Nero's Domus Aurea, they carved or painted their names and returned to initiate the grottesche style of decoration.
There are also examples of graffiti occurring in American history, such as Independence Rock, a national landmark along the Oregon Trail.
Later, French soldiers carved their names on monuments during the Napoleonic campaign of Egypt in the 1790s. Lord Byron's survives on one of the columns of the Temple of Poseidon at Cape Sounion in Attica, Greece.
The oldest known example of graffiti "monikers" found on traincars created by hobos and railworkers since the late 1800s. The Bozo Texino monikers were documented by filmmaker Bill Daniel in his 2005 film, Who is Bozo Texino?.
In World War II, an inscription on a wall at the fortress of Verdun was seen as an illustration of the US response twice in a generation to the wrongs of the Old World:
During World War II and for decades after, the phrase "Kilroy was here" with an accompanying illustration was widespread throughout the world, due to its use by American troops and ultimately filtering into American popular culture. Shortly after the death of Charlie Parker (nicknamed "Yardbird" or "Bird"), graffiti began appearing around New York with the words "Bird Lives".
Modern graffiti art has its origins with young people in 1960s and 70s in New York City and Philadelphia. Tags were the first form of stylised contemporary graffiti. Eventually, throw-ups and pieces evolved with the desire to create larger art. Writers used spray paint and other kind of materials to leave tags or to create images on the sides subway trains. and eventually moved into the city after the NYC metro began to buy new trains and paint over graffiti.
While the art had many advocates and appreciators—including the cultural critic Norman Mailer—others, including New York City mayor Ed Koch, considered it to be defacement of public property, and saw it as a form of public blight. The ‘taggers’ called what they did ‘writing’—though an important 1974 essay by Mailer referred to it using the term ‘graffiti.’
Contemporary graffiti style has been heavily influenced by hip hop culture and the myriad international styles derived from Philadelphia and New York City Subway graffiti; however, there are many other traditions of notable graffiti in the twentieth century. Graffiti have long appeared on building walls, in latrines, railroad boxcars, subways, and bridges.
An early graffito outside of New York or Philadelphia was the inscription in London reading "Clapton is God" in reference to the guitarist Eric Clapton. Creating the cult of the guitar hero, the phrase was spray-painted by an admirer on a wall in an Islington, north London in the autumn of 1967. The graffito was captured in a photograph, in which a dog is urinating on the wall.
Films like Style Wars in the 80s depicting famous writers such as Skeme, Dondi, MinOne, and ZEPHYR reinforced graffiti's role within New York's emerging hip-hop culture. Although many officers of the New York City Police Department found this film to be controversial, Style Wars is still recognized as the most prolific film representation of what was going on within the young hip hop culture of the early 1980s. Fab 5 Freddy and Futura 2000 took hip hop graffiti to Paris and London as part of the New York City Rap Tour in 1983
Commercialization and entrance into mainstream pop culture
Main article: Commercial graffiti
With the popularity and legitimization of graffiti has come a level of commercialization. In 2001, computer giant IBM launched an advertising campaign in Chicago and San Francisco which involved people spray painting on sidewalks a peace symbol, a heart, and a penguin (Linux mascot), to represent "Peace, Love, and Linux." IBM paid Chicago and San Francisco collectively US$120,000 for punitive damages and clean-up costs.
In 2005, a similar ad campaign was launched by Sony and executed by its advertising agency in New York, Chicago, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, and Miami, to market its handheld PSP gaming system. In this campaign, taking notice of the legal problems of the IBM campaign, Sony paid building owners for the rights to paint on their buildings "a collection of dizzy-eyed urban kids playing with the PSP as if it were a skateboard, a paddle, or a rocking horse".
Tristan Manco wrote that Brazil "boasts a unique and particularly rich, graffiti scene ... [earning] it an international reputation as the place to go for artistic inspiration". Graffiti "flourishes in every conceivable space in Brazil's cities". Artistic parallels "are often drawn between the energy of São Paulo today and 1970s New York". The "sprawling metropolis", of São Paulo has "become the new shrine to graffiti"; Manco alludes to "poverty and unemployment ... [and] the epic struggles and conditions of the country's marginalised peoples", and to "Brazil's chronic poverty", as the main engines that "have fuelled a vibrant graffiti culture". In world terms, Brazil has "one of the most uneven distributions of income. Laws and taxes change frequently". Such factors, Manco argues, contribute to a very fluid society, riven with those economic divisions and social tensions that underpin and feed the "folkloric vandalism and an urban sport for the disenfranchised", that is South American graffiti art.
Prominent Brazilian writers include Os Gêmeos, Boleta, Nunca, Nina, Speto, Tikka, and T.Freak. Their artistic success and involvement in commercial design ventures has highlighted divisions within the Brazilian graffiti community between adherents of the cruder transgressive form of pichação and the more conventionally artistic values of the practitioners of grafite.
Graffiti in the Middle East has emerged slowly, with taggers operating in Egypt, Lebanon, the Gulf countries like Bahrain or the United Arab Emirates, Israel, and in Iran. The major Iranian newspaper Hamshahri has published two articles on illegal writers in the city with photographic coverage of Iranian artist A1one's works on Tehran walls. Tokyo-based design magazine, PingMag, has interviewed A1one and featured photographs of his work. The Israeli West Bank barrier has become a site for graffiti, reminiscent in this sense of the Berlin Wall. Many writers in Israel come from other places around the globe, such as JUIF from Los Angeles and DEVIONE from London. The religious reference "נ נח נחמ נחמן מאומן" ("Na Nach Nachma Nachman Meuman") is commonly seen in graffiti around Israel.
Graffiti has played an important role within the street art scene in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), especially following the events of the Arab Spring of 2011 or the Sudanese Revolution of 2018/19. Graffiti is a tool of expression in the context of conflict in the region, allowing people to raise their voices politically and socially. Famous street artist Banksy has had an important effect in the street art scene in the MENA area, especially in Palestine where some of his works are located in the West Bank barrier and Bethlehem.
There are also a large number of graffiti influences in Southeast Asian countries that mostly come from modern Western culture, such as Malaysia, where graffiti have long been a common sight in Malaysia's capital city, Kuala Lumpur. Since 2010, the country has begun hosting a street festival to encourage all generations and people from all walks of life to enjoy and encourage Malaysian street culture.
The modern-day graffitists can be found with an arsenal of various materials that allow for a successful production of a piece. This includes such techniques as scribing. However, spray paint in aerosol cans is the number one medium for graffiti. From this commodity comes different styles, technique, and abilities to form master works of graffiti. Spray paint can be found at hardware and art stores and comes in virtually every color.
Stencil graffiti is created by cutting out shapes and designs in a stiff material (such as cardboard or subject folders) to form an overall design or image. The stencil is then placed on the "canvas" gently and with quick, easy strokes of the aerosol can, the image begins to appear on the intended surface.
Some of the first examples were created in 1981 by artists Blek le Rat in Paris, in 1982 by Jef Aerosol in Tours (France); by 1985 stencils had appeared in other cities including New York City, Sydney, and Melbourne, where they were documented by American photographer Charles Gatewood and Australian photographer Rennie Ellis
Tagging is the practice of someone spray-painting "their name, initial or logo onto a public surface" in a handstyle unique to the writer. Tags were the first form of modern graffiti.
Modern graffiti art often incorporates additional arts and technologies. For example, Graffiti Research Lab has encouraged the use of projected images and magnetic light-emitting diodes (throwies) as new media for graffitists. yarnbombing is another recent form of graffiti. Yarnbombers occasionally target previous graffiti for modification, which had been avoided among the majority of graffitists.
Theories on the use of graffiti by avant-garde artists have a history dating back at least to the Asger Jorn, who in 1962 painting declared in a graffiti-like gesture "the avant-garde won't give up"
Many contemporary analysts and even art critics have begun to see artistic value in some graffiti and to recognize it as a form of public art. According to many art researchers, particularly in the Netherlands and in Los Angeles, that type of public art is, in fact an effective tool of social emancipation or, in the achievement of a political goal
In times of conflict, such murals have offered a means of communication and self-expression for members of these socially, ethnically, or racially divided communities, and have proven themselves as effective tools in establishing dialog and thus, of addressing cleavages in the long run. The Berlin Wall was also extensively covered by graffiti reflecting social pressures relating to the oppressive Soviet rule over the GDR.
Many artists involved with graffiti are also concerned with the similar activity of stenciling. Essentially, this entails stenciling a print of one or more colors using spray-paint. Recognized while exhibiting and publishing several of her coloured stencils and paintings portraying the Sri Lankan Civil War and urban Britain in the early 2000s, graffitists Mathangi Arulpragasam, aka M.I.A., has also become known for integrating her imagery of political violence into her music videos for singles "Galang" and "Bucky Done Gun", and her cover art. Stickers of her artwork also often appear around places such as London in Brick Lane, stuck to lamp posts and street signs, she having become a muse for other graffitists and painters worldwide in cities including Seville.
Graffitist believes that art should be on display for everyone in the public eye or in plain sight, not hidden away in a museum or a gallery. Art should color the streets, not the inside of some building. Graffiti is a form of art that cannot be owned or bought. It does not last forever, it is temporary, yet one of a kind. It is a form of self promotion for the artist that can be displayed anywhere form sidewalks, roofs, subways, building wall, etc. Art to them is for everyone and should be showed to everyone for free.
Graffiti is a way of communicating and a way of expressing what one feels in the moment. It is both art and a functional thing that can warn people of something or inform people of something. However, graffiti is to some people a form of art, but to some a form of vandalism. And many graffitists choose to protect their identities and remain anonymous or to hinder prosecution.
With the commercialization of graffiti (and hip hop in general), in most cases, even with legally painted "graffiti" art, graffitists tend to choose anonymity. This may be attributed to various reasons or a combination of reasons. Graffiti still remains the one of four hip hop elements that is not considered "performance art" despite the image of the "singing and dancing star" that sells hip hop culture to the mainstream. Being a graphic form of art, it might also be said that many graffitists still fall in the category of the introverted archetypal artist.
Banksy is one of the world's most notorious and popular street artists who continues to remain faceless in today's society. He is known for his political, anti-war stencil art mainly in Bristol, England, but his work may be seen anywhere from Los Angeles to Palestine. In the UK, Banksy is the most recognizable icon for this cultural artistic movement and keeps his identity a secret to avoid arrest. Much of Banksy's artwork may be seen around the streets of London and surrounding suburbs, although he has painted pictures throughout the world, including the Middle East, where he has painted on Israel's controversial West Bank barrier with satirical images of life on the other side. One depicted a hole in the wall with an idyllic beach, while another shows a mountain landscape on the other side. A number of exhibitions also have taken place since 2000, and recent works of art have fetched vast sums of money. Banksy's art is a prime example of the classic controversy: vandalism vs. art. Art supporters endorse his work distributed in urban areas as pieces of art and some councils, such as Bristol and Islington, have officially protected them, while officials of other areas have deemed his work to be vandalism and have removed it.
Pixnit is another artist who chooses to keep her identity from the general public. Her work focuses on beauty and design aspects of graffiti as opposed to Banksy's anti-government shock value. Her paintings are often of flower designs above shops and stores in her local urban area of Cambridge, Massachusetts. Some store owners endorse her work and encourage others to do similar work as well. "One of the pieces was left up above Steve's Kitchen, because it looks pretty awesome"- Erin Scott, the manager of New England Comics in Allston, Massachusetts.
Graffiti artists may become offended if photographs of their art are published in a commercial context without their permission. In March 2020, the Finnish graffiti artist Psyke expressed his displeasure at the newspaper Ilta-Sanomat publishing a photograph of a Peugeot 208 in an article about new cars, with his graffiti prominently shown on the background. The artist claims he does not want his art being used in commercial context, not even if he were to receive compensation.
Territorial graffiti marks urban neighborhoods with tags and logos to differentiate certain groups from others. These images are meant to show outsiders a stern look at whose turf is whose. The subject matter of gang-related graffiti consists of cryptic symbols and initials strictly fashioned with unique calligraphies. Gang members use graffiti to designate membership throughout the gang, to differentiate rivals and associates and, most commonly, to mark borders which are both territorial and ideological.
Graffiti has been used as a means of advertising both legally and illegally. Bronx-based TATS CRU has made a name for themselves doing legal advertising campaigns for companies such as Coca-Cola, McDonald's, Toyota, and MTV. In the UK, Covent Garden's Boxfresh used stencil images of a Zapatista revolutionary in the hopes that cross referencing would promote their store.
Smirnoff hired artists to use reverse graffiti (the use of high pressure hoses to clean dirty surfaces to leave a clean image in the surrounding dirt) to increase awareness of their product.
Graffiti often has a reputation as part of a subculture that rebels against authority, although the considerations of the practitioners often diverge and can relate to a wide range of attitudes. It can express a political practice and can form just one tool in an array of resistance techniques. One early example includes the anarcho-punk band Crass, who conducted a campaign of stenciling anti-war, anarchist, feminist, and anti-consumerist messages throughout the London Underground system during the late 1970s and early 1980s. In Amsterdam graffiti was a major part of the punk scene. The city was covered with names such as "De Zoot", "Vendex", and "Dr Rat". To document the graffiti a punk magazine was started that was called Gallery Anus. So when hip hop came to Europe in the early 1980s there was already a vibrant graffiti culture.
The student protests and general strike of May 1968 saw Paris bedecked in revolutionary, anarchistic, and situationist slogans such as L'ennui est contre-révolutionnaire ("Boredom is counterrevolutionary") and Lisez moins, vivez plus ("Read less, live more"). While not exhaustive, the graffiti gave a sense of the 'millenarian' and rebellious spirit, tempered with a good deal of verbal wit, of the strikers.
I think graffiti writing is a way of defining what our generation is like. Excuse the French, we're not a bunch of p---- artists. Traditionally artists have been considered soft and mellow people, a little bit kooky. Maybe we're a little bit more like pirates that way. We defend our territory, whatever space we steal to paint on, we defend it fiercely.
The developments of graffiti art which took place in art galleries and colleges as well as "on the street" or "underground", contributed to the resurfacing in the 1990s of a far more overtly politicized art form in the subvertising, culture jamming, or tactical media movements. These movements or styles tend to classify the artists by their relationship to their social and economic contexts, since, in most countries, graffiti art remains illegal in many forms except when using non-permanent paint. Since the 1990s with the rise of Street Art, a growing number of artists are switching to non-permanent paints and non-traditional forms of painting.
Contemporary practitioners, accordingly, have varied and often conflicting practices. Some individuals, such as Alexander Brener, have used the medium to politicize other art forms, and have used the prison sentences enforced on them as a means of further protest. The practices of anonymous groups and individuals also vary widely, and practitioners by no means always agree with each other's practices. For example, the anti-capitalist art group the Space Hijackers did a piece in 2004 about the contradiction between the capitalistic elements of Banksy and his use of political imagery.
Berlin human rights activist Irmela Mensah-Schramm has received global media attention and numerous awards for her 35-year campaign of effacing neo-Nazi and other right-wing extremist graffiti throughout Germany, often by altering hate speech in humorous ways.
In Serbian capital, Belgrade, the graffiti depicting a uniformed former general of Serb army and war criminal, convicted at ICTY for war crimes and crimes against humanity, including genocide and ethnic cleansing in Bosnian War, Ratko Mladić, appeared in a military salute alongside the words "General, thank to your mother". Aleks Eror, Berlin-based journalist, explains how "veneration of historical and wartime figures" through street art is not a new phenomenon in the region of former Yugoslavia, and that "in most cases is firmly focused on the future, rather than retelling the past". Eror is not only analyst pointing to danger of such an expressions for the region's future. In a long expose on the subject of Bosnian genocide denial, at Balkan Diskurs magazine and multimedia platform website, Kristina Gadže and Taylor Whitsell referred to these experiences as a young generations' "cultural heritage", in which young are being exposed to celebration and affirmation of war-criminals as part of their "formal education" and "inheritance".
There are numerous examples of genocide denial through celebration and affirmation of war criminals throughout the region of Western Balkans inhabited by Serbs using this form of artistic expression. Several more of these graffiti are found in Serbian capital, and many more across Serbia and Bosnian and Herzegovinian administrative entity, Republika Srpska, which is the ethnic Serbian majority enclave. Critics point that Serbia as a state, is willing to defend the mural of convicted war criminal, and have no intention to react on cases of genocide denial, noting that Interior Minister of Serbia, Aleksandar Vulin decision to ban any gathering with an intent to remove the mural, with the deployment of riot police, sends the message of "tacit endorsement". Consequently, on 9 November 2021, Serbian heavy police in riot gear, with graffiti creators and their supporters, blocked the access to the mural to prevent human rights groups and other activists to paint over it and mark the International Day Against Fascism and Antisemitism in that way, and even arrested two civic activist for throwing eggs at the graffiti.
Graffiti may also be used as an offensive expression. This form of graffiti may be difficult to identify, as it is mostly removed by the local authority (as councils which have adopted strategies of criminalization also strive to remove graffiti quickly). Therefore, existing racist graffiti is mostly more subtle and at first sight, not easily recognized as "racist". It can then be understood only if one knows the relevant "local code" (social, historical, political, temporal, and spatial), which is seen as heteroglot and thus a 'unique set of conditions' in a cultural context.
A spatial code for example, could be that there is a certain youth group in an area that is engaging heavily in racist activities. So, for residents (knowing the local code), a graffiti containing only the name or abbreviation of this gang already is a racist expression, reminding the offended people of their gang activities. Also a graffiti is in most cases, the herald of more serious criminal activity to come. A person who does not know these gang activities would not be able to recognize the meaning of this graffiti. Also if a tag of this youth group or gang is placed on a building occupied by asylum seekers, for example, its racist character is even stronger.
By making the graffiti less explicit (as adapted to social and legal constraints), these drawings are less likely to be removed, but do not lose their threatening and offensive character.
Elsewhere, activists in Russia have used painted caricatures of local officials with their mouths as potholes, to show their anger about the poor state of the roads. In Manchester, England, a graffitists painted obscene images around potholes, which often resulted in them being repaired within 48 hours.
In the early 1980s, the first art galleries to show graffitists to the public were Fashion Moda in the Bronx, Now Gallery and Fun Gallery, both in the East Village, Manhattan.
A 2006 exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum displayed graffiti as an art form that began in New York's outer boroughs and reached great heights in the early 1980s with the work of Crash, Lee, Daze, Keith Haring, and Jean-Michel Basquiat. It displayed 22 works by New York graffitists, including Crash, Daze, and Lady Pink. In an article about the exhibition in the magazine Time Out, curator Charlotta Kotik said that she hoped the exhibition would cause viewers to rethink their assumptions about graffiti.
From the 1970s onwards, Burhan Doğançay photographed urban walls all over the world; these he then archived for use as sources of inspiration for his painterly works. The project today known as "Walls of the World" grew beyond even his own expectations and comprises about 30,000 individual images. It spans a period of 40 years across five continents and 114 countries. In 1982, photographs from this project comprised a one-man exhibition titled "Les murs murmurent, ils crient, ils chantent ..." (The walls whisper, shout and sing ...) at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris.
In Australia, art historians have judged some local graffiti of sufficient creative merit to rank them firmly within the arts. Oxford University Press's art history text Australian Painting 1788–2000 concludes with a long discussion of graffiti's key place within contemporary visual culture, including the work of several Australian practitioners.
Between March and April 2009, 150 artists exhibited 300 pieces of graffiti at the Grand Palais in Paris.
Spray paint has many negative environmental effects. The paint contains toxic chemicals, and the can uses volatile hydrocarbon gases to spray the paint onto a surface.
Volatile organic compound (VOC) leads to ground level ozone formation and most of graffiti related emissions are VOCs. A 2010 paper estimates 4,862 tons of VOCs were released in the United States in activities related to graffiti.
In China, Mao Zedong in the 1920s used revolutionary slogans and paintings in public places to galvanize the country's communist movement.
Based on different national conditions, many people believe that China's attitude towards Graffiti is fierce, but in fact, according to Lance Crayon in his film Spray Paint Beijing: Graffiti in the Capital of China, Graffiti is generally accepted in Beijing, with artists not seeing much police interference. Political and religiously sensitive graffiti, however, is not allowed.
In Hong Kong, Tsang Tsou Choi was known as the King of Kowloon for his calligraphy graffiti over many years, in which he claimed ownership of the area. Now some of his work is preserved officially.
In Taiwan, the government has made some concessions to graffitists. Since 2005 they have been allowed to freely display their work along some sections of riverside retaining walls in designated "Graffiti Zones". From 2007, Taipei's department of cultural affairs also began permitting graffiti on fences around major public construction sites. Department head Yong-ping Lee (李永萍) stated, "We will promote graffiti starting with the public sector, and then later in the private sector too. It's our goal to beautify the city with graffiti". The government later helped organize a graffiti contest in Ximending, a popular shopping district. graffitists caught working outside of these designated areas still face fines up to NT$6,000 under a department of environmental protection regulation. However, Taiwanese authorities can be relatively lenient, one veteran police officer stating anonymously, "Unless someone complains about vandalism, we won't get involved. We don't go after it proactively."
In 1993, after several expensive cars in Singapore were spray-painted, the police arrested a student from the Singapore American School, Michael P. Fay, questioned him, and subsequently charged him with vandalism. Fay pleaded guilty to vandalizing a car in addition to stealing road signs. Under the 1966 Vandalism Act of Singapore, originally passed to curb the spread of communist graffiti in Singapore, the court sentenced him to four months in jail, a fine of S$3,500 (US$2,233), and a caning. The New York Times ran several editorials and op-eds that condemned the punishment and called on the American public to flood the Singaporean embassy with protests. Although the Singapore government received many calls for clemency, Fay's caning took place in Singapore on 5 May 1994. Fay had originally received a sentence of six strokes of the cane, but the presiding president of Singapore, Ong Teng Cheong, agreed to reduce his caning sentence to four lashes.
In South Korea, Park Jung-soo was fined two million South Korean won by the Seoul Central District Court for spray-painting a rat on posters of the G-20 Summit a few days before the event in November 2011. Park alleged that the initial in "G-20" sounds like the Korean word for "rat", but Korean government prosecutors alleged that Park was making a derogatory statement about the president of South Korea, Lee Myung-bak, the host of the summit. This case led to public outcry and debate on the lack of government tolerance and in support of freedom of expression. The court ruled that the painting, "an ominous creature like a rat" amounts to "an organized criminal activity" and upheld the fine while denying the prosecution's request for imprisonment for Park.
In Europe, community cleaning squads have responded to graffiti, in some cases with reckless abandon, as when in 1992 in France a local Scout group, attempting to remove modern graffiti, damaged two prehistoric paintings of bison in the Cave of Mayrière supérieure near the French village of Bruniquel in Tarn-et-Garonne, earning them the 1992 Ig Nobel Prize in archeology.
In September 2006, the European Parliament directed the European Commission to create urban environment policies to prevent and eliminate dirt, litter, graffiti, animal excrement, and excessive noise from domestic and vehicular music systems in European cities, along with other concerns over urban life.
In Budapest, Hungary, both a city-backed movement called I Love Budapest and a special police division tackle the problem, including the provision of approved areas.
The Anti-social Behaviour Act 2003 became Britain's latest anti-graffiti legislation. In August 2004, the Keep Britain Tidy campaign issued a press release calling for zero tolerance of graffiti and supporting proposals such as issuing "on the spot" fines to graffiti offenders and banning the sale of aerosol paint to anyone under the age of 16. The press release also condemned the use of graffiti images in advertising and in music videos, arguing that real-world experience of graffiti stood far removed from its often-portrayed "cool" or "edgy'" image.
To back the campaign, 123 Members of Parliament (MPs) (including then Prime Minister Tony Blair), signed a charter which stated: "Graffiti is not art, it's crime. On behalf of my constituents, I will do all I can to rid our community of this problem."
In the UK, city councils have the power to take action against the owner of any property that has been defaced under the Anti-social Behaviour Act 2003 (as amended by the Clean Neighbourhoods and Environment Act 2005) or, in certain cases, the Highways Act. This is often used against owners of property that are complacent in allowing protective boards to be defaced so long as the property is not damaged.
In July 2008, a conspiracy charge was used to convict graffitists for the first time. After a three-month police surveillance operation, nine members of the DPM crew were convicted of conspiracy to commit criminal damage costing at least £1 million. Five of them received prison sentences, ranging from eighteen months to two years. The unprecedented scale of the investigation and the severity of the sentences rekindled public debate over whether graffiti should be considered art or crime.
Some councils, like those of Stroud and Loerrach, provide approved areas in the town where graffitists can showcase their talents, including underpasses, car parks, and walls that might otherwise prove a target for the "spray and run".
Graffiti Tunnel, University of Sydney at Camperdown (2009)
In an effort to reduce vandalism, many cities in Australia have designated walls or areas exclusively for use by graffitists. One early example is the "Graffiti Tunnel" located at the Camperdown Campus of the University of Sydney, which is available for use by any student at the university to tag, advertise, poster, and paint. Advocates of this idea suggest that this discourages petty vandalism yet encourages artists to take their time and produce great art, without worry of being caught or arrested for vandalism or trespassing.[108][109] Others disagree with this approach, arguing that the presence of legal graffiti walls does not demonstrably reduce illegal graffiti elsewhere. Some local government areas throughout Australia have introduced "anti-graffiti squads", who clean graffiti in the area, and such crews as BCW (Buffers Can't Win) have taken steps to keep one step ahead of local graffiti cleaners.
Many state governments have banned the sale or possession of spray paint to those under the age of 18 (age of majority). However, a number of local governments in Victoria have taken steps to recognize the cultural heritage value of some examples of graffiti, such as prominent political graffiti. Tough new graffiti laws have been introduced in Australia with fines of up to A$26,000 and two years in prison.
Melbourne is a prominent graffiti city of Australia with many of its lanes being tourist attractions, such as Hosier Lane in particular, a popular destination for photographers, wedding photography, and backdrops for corporate print advertising. The Lonely Planet travel guide cites Melbourne's street as a major attraction. All forms of graffiti, including sticker art, poster, stencil art, and wheatpasting, can be found in many places throughout the city. Prominent street art precincts include; Fitzroy, Collingwood, Northcote, Brunswick, St. Kilda, and the CBD, where stencil and sticker art is prominent. As one moves farther away from the city, mostly along suburban train lines, graffiti tags become more prominent. Many international artists such as Banksy have left their work in Melbourne and in early 2008 a perspex screen was installed to prevent a Banksy stencil art piece from being destroyed, it has survived since 2003 through the respect of local street artists avoiding posting over it, although it has recently had paint tipped over it.
In February 2008 Helen Clark, the New Zealand prime minister at that time, announced a government crackdown on tagging and other forms of graffiti vandalism, describing it as a destructive crime representing an invasion of public and private property. New legislation subsequently adopted included a ban on the sale of paint spray cans to persons under 18 and increases in maximum fines for the offence from NZ$200 to NZ$2,000 or extended community service. The issue of tagging become a widely debated one following an incident in Auckland during January 2008 in which a middle-aged property owner stabbed one of two teenage taggers to death and was subsequently convicted of manslaughter.
Graffiti databases have increased in the past decade because they allow vandalism incidents to be fully documented against an offender and help the police and prosecution charge and prosecute offenders for multiple counts of vandalism. They also provide law enforcement the ability to rapidly search for an offender's moniker or tag in a simple, effective, and comprehensive way. These systems can also help track costs of damage to a city to help allocate an anti-graffiti budget. The theory is that when an offender is caught putting up graffiti, they are not just charged with one count of vandalism; they can be held accountable for all the other damage for which they are responsible. This has two main benefits for law enforcement. One, it sends a signal to the offenders that their vandalism is being tracked. Two, a city can seek restitution from offenders for all the damage that they have committed, not merely a single incident. These systems give law enforcement personnel real-time, street-level intelligence that allows them not only to focus on the worst graffiti offenders and their damage, but also to monitor potential gang violence that is associated with the graffiti.
Many restrictions of civil gang injunctions are designed to help address and protect the physical environment and limit graffiti. Provisions of gang injunctions include things such as restricting the possession of marker pens, spray paint cans, or other sharp objects capable of defacing private or public property; spray painting, or marking with marker pens, scratching, applying stickers, or otherwise applying graffiti on any public or private property, including, but not limited to the street, alley, residences, block walls, and fences, vehicles or any other real or personal property. Some injunctions contain wording that restricts damaging or vandalizing both public and private property, including but not limited to any vehicle, light fixture, door, fence, wall, gate, window, building, street sign, utility box, telephone box, tree, or power pole.
To help address many of these issues, many local jurisdictions have set up graffiti abatement hotlines, where citizens can call in and report vandalism and have it removed. San Diego's hotline receives more than 5,000 calls per year, in addition to reporting the graffiti, callers can learn more about prevention. One of the complaints about these hotlines is the response time; there is often a lag time between a property owner calling about the graffiti and its removal. The length of delay should be a consideration for any jurisdiction planning on operating a hotline. Local jurisdictions must convince the callers that their complaint of vandalism will be a priority and cleaned off right away. If the jurisdiction does not have the resources to respond to complaints in a timely manner, the value of the hotline diminishes. Crews must be able to respond to individual service calls made to the graffiti hotline as well as focus on cleanup near schools, parks, and major intersections and transit routes to have the biggest impact. Some cities offer a reward for information leading to the arrest and prosecution of suspects for tagging or graffiti related vandalism. The amount of the reward is based on the information provided, and the action taken.
When police obtain search warrants in connection with a vandalism investigation, they are often seeking judicial approval to look for items such as cans of spray paint and nozzles from other kinds of aerosol sprays; etching tools, or other sharp or pointed objects, which could be used to etch or scratch glass and other hard surfaces; permanent marking pens, markers, or paint sticks; evidence of membership or affiliation with any gang or tagging crew; paraphernalia including any reference to "(tagger's name)"; any drawings, writing, objects, or graffiti depicting taggers' names, initials, logos, monikers, slogans, or any mention of tagging crew membership; and any newspaper clippings relating to graffiti crime.
Caesarea Philippi:
Also known as Baal-gad, Banias, Baniyas, Banyas, Barias, Belinas, Caesarea Neronias, Caesarea of Philip, Caesarea Paneas, Caesarea Panias, Caesareia Sebaste, Keisarion, Kisrin, Medinat Dan, Mivzar Dan, Neronias, Pamias, Paneas, Paneias, Paneion, Panias, Panium
Situated 25 miles north of the Sea of Galilee and at the base of Mt. Hermon, Caesarea Philippi is the location of one of the largest springs feeding the Jordan River.
This abundant water supply has made the area very fertile and attractive for religious worship. Numerous temples were built at this city in the Hellenistic and Roman periods.
Apparently known as Baal Hermon and Baal Gad in the Old Testament period, this site later was named Panias after the Greek god Pan who was worshiped here.
There is no record of Jesus entering the city, but the great confession and the transfiguration both occurred in the vicinity of the city (Matt 16:13), then known as Caesarea Philippi.
Grotto of Pan:
The spring emerged from the large cave which became the center of pagan worship. Beginning in the 3rd century B.C., sacrifices were cast into the cave as offerings to the god Pan.
Pan, the half-man half-goat god of fright (thus “panic”), is often depicted playing the flute. This city, which was known in ancient times as Panias, is now called by the Arabic form of this name, Banias.
Sacred Niches:
Adjacent to the sacred cave is a rocky escarpment with a series of hewn niches. We know that statues of the deity were placed in these niches by depictions of such on coins of the city.
One niche housed a sculpture of Echo, the mountain nymph and Pan’s consort. Another niche housed a statue of Pan’s father, Hermes, son of nymph Maia. Inscriptions in the niches mention those who gave large donations.