Separating Tree Pipits from Meadow Pipits is not especially straightforward. Most birdwatchers rely on their songs and calls to be certain which one they are looking at. Meadow Pipits give a repeated three note seep-seep-seep, while Tree Pipits give a single buzzing teeez. Both do parachuting display flights and both will land in trees. Meadow Pipits are resident breeders but Tree Pipits are migrants from sub-Saharan Africa. As their names suggest, they do have different breeding habitats but Tree Pipits like open areas with a few scattered trees, rather than woodland. Tree Pipits do habitually land in small trees like this individual. Plumage-wise they look pretty similar, apart from the flanks. Tree Pipit has largely unmarked flanks with just a few very thin streaks whereas Meadow Pipit has bold streaking down the flanks, just as boldly-marked as the breast. You can see the thinnest of streaks on the flanks of this Tree Pipit.

I photographed this individual male not far from my house in the West Yorkshire Pennines. Unfortunately their numbers are on the slide and each year they are harder to find. One irony is when Linnaeus first named Tree Pipit in 1758 he named it trivialis, meaning common or ordinary. Most birdwatchers would agree that it is anything but common or ordinary today.

Landscape Arch is in the Devils Garden section of Arches National Park. It is an arc natural arch eroded in Entrada sandstone. Arc natural arches are considered old and near the end of their lifecycle. In its thinnest section the arch is only 6 feet thick, yet it supports a span of rock 290 feet (88 meters) long. The Natural Arch and Bridge Society (NABS) considers Landscape Arch the fifth longest natural arch in the world.

BEST VIEWED ORIGINAL SIZE

This is an Erasable Programmable Read Only Memory (EPROM for short). Our computers in 1980's used to employ these chips to hold the BIOS. Nowadays we use FLASH chips. The thinnest electrical tracks on the chip must be 2 microns thick. You can see them if you view the photo in original size. Did you notice 2732 (the part number) in the upper right corner of the chip?

Sorry if you are not into electronics. In this photography group my aim is to demonstrate that one can capture such submillimeter features by using macro lenses. I used a 70 mm SIGMA macro lens. Of course a tripod, timed shutter to prevent camera shake and a LED light source are necessary for a successful shot.

ORIJINAL BOYDA BAKMANIZI TAVSIYE EDERIM

Bu bir Silinip Programlanabilir Sirf Okunabilen Bellek. 80'li yillarda bilgisayarlarinizin BIOS'u bu chiplere yazilirdi. Simdi FLASH bellek kullaniyoruz. 2 mikron incelikteki yollari resmin orijinal boyutunda gorebilirsiniz. Ust sagda silikon uzerine yazilmis 2732 ye de dikkatinizi cekerim.

Belki elektronikci olmayabilirsiniz, ama fotografla ugrasiyorsunuz. Milimetrenin 1000'de 1'i kalinligindaki bu yollari mikroskopsuz nasil cekersiniz? Burada amac bu. Ben SIGMA'nin 70 mm makro lensini kullandim. Arti tripod, arti LED isik kaynagi, arti zamanlanmis deklansor. Bunlarsiz bu resim olmazdi.

The NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope has revealed the once-hidden features of the protostar within the dark cloud L1527 with its Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam), providing insight into the formation of a new star. These blazing clouds within the Taurus star-forming region are only visible in infrared light, making it an ideal target for Webb.

The protostar itself is hidden from view within the ‘neck’ of this hourglass shape. An edge-on protoplanetary disc is seen as a dark line across the middle of the neck. Light from the protostar leaks above and below this disc, illuminating cavities within the surrounding gas and dust.

The region’s most prevalent features, the blue and orange clouds, outline cavities created as material shoots away from the protostar and collides with the surrounding matter. The colours themselves are due to layers of dust between Webb and the clouds. The blue areas are where the dust is thinnest. The thicker the layer of dust, the less blue light is able to escape, creating pockets of orange.

Webb also reveals filaments of molecular hydrogen that have been shocked as the protostar ejects material away from it. Shocks and turbulence inhibit the formation of new stars, which would otherwise form throughout the cloud. As a result, the protostar dominates the space, taking much of the material for itself.

Despite the chaos that L1527 is causing, it’s only about 100 000 years old — a relatively young body. Given its age and its brightness in far-infrared light, L1527 is considered a class 0 protostar, the earliest stage of star formation. Protostars like these, which are still cocooned in a dark cloud of dust and gas, have a long way to go before they become fully-fledged stars. L1527 doesn’t generate its own energy through the nuclear fusion of hydrogen yet, an essential characteristic of stars. Its shape, while mostly spherical, is also unstable, taking the form of a small, hot, and puffy clump of gas somewhere between 20% and 40% of the mass of our Sun.

As a protostar continues to gather mass, its core gradually compresses and gets closer to stable nuclear fusion. The scene shown in this image reveals that L1527 is doing just that. The surrounding molecular cloud is made up of dense dust and gas that are being drawn towards the centre, where the protostar resides. As the material falls in, it spirals around the centre. This creates a dense disc of material, known as an accretion disc, which feeds material onto the protostar. As it gains more mass and compresses further, the temperature of its core will rise, eventually reaching the threshold for nuclear fusion to begin.

The disc, seen in the image as a dark band in front of the bright centre, is about the size of our Solar System. Given the density, it’s not unusual for much of this material to clump together — the beginnings of planets. Ultimately, this view of L1527 provides a window onto what our Sun and Solar System looked like in their infancy.

Credits: NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI, J. DePasquale (STScI); CC BY 4.0

© All rights reserved. Use without permission is illegal. Please do not reproduce, publish or use any of our photos without our express consent.

La licencia y la explotación de esta imagen pertenece a Getty Images.

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The world is awakening after a long wintry sleep - spring is blooming, a reviving radiance is in the air.

The trees are burgeoning - up to the tip of their thinnest twigs they are putting forth innumerable buds, weaving anew their new beautiful, energy-producing dresses.

The slow flow of the river is telling tales of distant snows, memories of an alien, wild winter - and I know that even up there, on the sides of a small lake nestled between high peaks, the saxifrages are starting their slow work again - grinding the bare stones down to more hospitable soil.

This enchanted little world is awakening from a serene night, at last, as the sun is peering down the ridge of the hill. And my soul is awakening too, singing a speechless song.

I have obtained this picture by blending an exposure bracketing [-1.7/0/+1.7 EV] by luminosity masks in the Gimp (EXIF data, as usual, refer to the "normal exposure" shot), then I added some final touches with Nik Color Efex Pro 4.

Quotes from the legend of Looney Tunes!

"That woman's as cold as a nudist on an iceberg."

I used to lead dawn chorus walks many years ago and I noticed that some participants could not hear certain high-pitched bird songs. The three species I remember this most from were Goldcrest, Treecreeper and Grasshopper Warbler. I also noticed that the people unable to hear these songs were generally male, and over 50. I remember once a Goldcrest singing right next to us sounded really loud, yet several people just looked puzzled as if I was making things up.

The reason for this deafness is damage to the vibrissae in our cochlea. The cochlea is the snail shell-shaped organ in our ear that has tiny hairs called vibrissae which range from thick to thin. When notes of certain pitch reach our ears the appropriate vibrissae vibrate; the thick ones to deep notes, the thin ones to high notes. But really loud noises damage these vibrissae, particularly the thin ones that register high notes. And once they are damaged they are damaged forever. So people who have been exposed to loud noises eg in industry or concerts, are more likely to have ear damage to the thinnest vibrissae, so are less likely to be able to hear a Goldcrest sing.

But here's the really interesting part. Birds regrow their vibrissae each year so any hearing damage is not permanent. And really loud birds like Corncrakes have a system which effectively covers their ears when they start calling, so they don't damage their own hearing ability.

This is a male Goldcrest that I photographed near Holmfirth during lockdown.

Pavor Nocturnus.

Halloween is almost here:

The origins are believed to come from the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain where people dressed up in costumes around bonfires to scare off the wandering ghosts. It was a time where the harvest had ended and the cold was drawing in, a season that signified death and beliefs about the boundary between the world of the living and the dead.

Celebrated on October 31, the Celts believed that during this time, the veil between the living and the spirit world was at its thinnest.

Newly emerged Oak leaves, complete with the thinnest of spider threads, on Midsummer Hill in the Malverns.

Wall House #II

Wall House #II (also known as Bye House) is an historic building in Groningen, Netherlands, that was designed by John Hejduk. it is one of his few realized designs. Heiduk originally designed Wall House #II as a residence to be built in Ridgefield, Connecticut. However, due to cost constraints, the project was abandoned. In 2000, a Dutch development company, Wilma, started building the house in Groningen, based on Heiduk's original design and later revisions. Wall House II has a very large wall as its central feature, composed of four organic-formed rooms and a long, narrow corridor. It is considered a mix of Cubist painting, Surrealist sculpture and architecture. The wall and column are constructed of reinforced concrete. The corridor is steel-framed with wooden stud walls and a stucco exterior.

In discussing the wall section of Wall House #II Heiduk stated:

“Life has to do with walls; we're continuously going in and out, back and forth, and through them. A wall is the quickest, the thinnest, the element we're always transgressing… The wall heightens the sense of passage, and by the same token, its thinness heightens the sense of being just a momentary condition…what I call the moment of the “present.”

Discussing the house colors, Heiduk referred to Le Corbusier’s La Roche House in Paris, stating:

“After that experience,” he says, “I could never do another white or primary-colored house.” In the La Roche house, the colors “were hardly apparent at first, but after you were there awhile you saw not only that they changed constantly, but that they were delicate and muted, and also saturated at the same time.”

Hejduk originally designed Wall house #II in 1973 (the first was done in 1968) for landscape architect A.E. Bye. Due to the high estimated costs of construction in the wooded area, Wall House #II was put on hold. it was proposed to other clients, but was never started.

In 1990 the Wall house II project was introduced in Groningen on behalf of the experiment “Making the City Boundaries”. On the basis of Daniel Libeskind’s masterplan, people from various disciplines were asked to design signposts along the city’s most important arterial roads, telling the story of Groningen. Libeskind was a former student of Heiduk. The Berlin architect Thomas Muller, a former student at Cooper Union, was appointed project architect. He was then working in Groningen under supervision of Kleihues. Due to building codes and construction techniques-which required, for example, leaving space between the wall and rooms for hand plastering-the house was enlarged from its original size, to 2500 square feet. Muller redrew the plans with Derk Flikkema of Otonomo Architects in Groningen, with Hejduk reviewing the drawings in each phase up until his death. The construction cost was $ 600,000 in total, and it was sold with a proviso that the public can visit it one month a year.

Germany, Helgoland, “The Red Rock”, is a small German Archipelago in the North Sea.

On the steep wall & next to it on the 47 mtr high sea stack "Lange Anna", Tall Anna, many seabirds live there & breed in spring, about 1100 gannets, 4000 Guillemot, 3800 kittiwakes & 500 herring gulls, also some smaller species of other seabirds, one can observe & watch from near the courtship of the gannets & guillemots.

The sea stack "Lange Anna", Tall Anna, was until collapsed in May 1860 with an arch-like natural bridge still connected to the main island. From 1903 to 1927 the Prussian Wall, a 1.3 km long protective wall, was built along the west coast to keep the surf away from the rock base & to stop further marine erosion on the west coast of Heligoland.

In 1979 a surf cave at the foot of the Lange Anna was bricked up to prevent it from collapsing. The further deterioration due to frost damage and weather can hardly be stopped. The rock is criss-crossed with deep crevices and cracks. The necessary measures to secure the Due to the high vulnerability of a rock layer at a height of 16 meters & already represents the thinnest part of the Long Anna, there is an acute risk of the upper two thirds of the rock breaking off.

The on the other island, the dune with an airstrip, on different sections of the beaches on the dune next to Heligoland, around 600 grey seals & harbour seals have found their home again. It is only allowed to approach the sea creatures up to 30 m, not closer so as not to disturb the wild animals & protect yourself from attacks.

Formerly in Danish & British possessions, the islands, population 1,650, are located in the Helgoland Bight, part of the German Bight, in the south-eastern corner of the North Sea & is the only German islands not in the immediate vicinity of the mainland & are approximately two hours' sailing time from Cuxhaven at the mouth of the River Elbe & 3,5 hours from Hamburg with a high speed catamaran ferry.

Helgoland is located 70 km off the German coastline & consists of two islands, the populated triangular 4,2 square km main island to the west & the dune to the east.

The main island is commonly divided into the “Unterland", the lower land at sea level & the “Oberland " the upper land consisting of the plateau 40-60 m high above sea level & the “Mittelland” middle land between them on one side of the island

Northwest of the island proper Heligoland's famous landmark is found, the “Lange Anna” "Long Anna" or "Tall Anna", which is a free standing rock column, 47 meter high & weighs about 25,000 tons

Helgoland at one time Danish became in 1807 in British possessions. In 1890 Britain handed Helgoland over to Germany in exchange for the German colony Zanzibar, after World War II in April 1947 Britain tried to destroy unsuccessfully the island's military bunker & the rock-island by massive bombing with the largest nonnuclear dispersal of the history. About 4,000 torpedo heads, almost 9,000 water bombs & more than 91,000 shells of various calibre, a total of 6,700 tons of explosives, were stacked in the submarine bunker & the tunnel labyrinth on the southern tip of the rock & the coastal batteries.

In December 1950 two Heidelberg students, together with a historian professor in Heidelberg, occupied the island, on March 1st 1952 Britain returned the island Helgoland to the Federal Republic of Germany. The population was given permission to return to their island, where all buildings where totally destroyed & had to be rebuild from scratch.

👉 One World one Dream,

🙏...Danke, Xièxie 谢谢, Thanks, Gracias, Merci, Grazie, Obrigado, Arigatô, Dhanyavad, Chokrane to you & over

15 million visits in my photostream with countless motivating comments

I've been thinking for a while how to portray that emotion.

I was going to break a transparent Lego part, despite the fact that I always was against breaking Lego for art when others did it. But at the moment I felt like it was the only point of time when it was a right thing to do. Anyway, I don't have a hammer, so I couldn't do it.

Then I bought and tried to break a light bulb. Nope, it's unbreakable without a hammer, unless you are willing to pick up the shards all over the floor. And trust me, you don't want a tiniest, thinnest, almost invisible micro glass shard stuck in your foot.

So I cut a piece of package plastic instead.

I can't really comment on it, and I won't even take one particular picture like I did last year, sorry, it's not because I changed my mind or forgot or something, it's just no longer possible.

SAMSUNG CAMERA PICTURES

I found the Antarctic icepack endlessly fascinating, what I could see of it on that cruise. This is the thinnest, most northerly edge of the icepack being seen at the end of summer when it must be at its thinnest, and it's still solid glaciation hundreds of feet thick.

This is somewhere on the northern end of the Antarctic Peninsula, in February 2016.

Thinnest white stripe is a ceiling beam. Orange glow is lamplight. Shadows are blue. Yes, the impressionists were right re complementary color, and artists ignore this at their peril.

The thin crescent moon was imaged shortly before setting on October 17, 2020 from Lancaster, PA. On this date, the moon was reported to be a little over a day old, one of my thinnest crescents ever observed. The video was made of a sequence of 419 images taken with a Canon T6s and a Canon 200 mm f/2.8L II lens. (various exposures, ISO 400, f/6.3). Tracking was done with an iOptron Sky Tracker.

This particular squirrel is one of the most acrobatic squirrels I've seen. It jumps on the thinnest of branches, waits a beat for the branch to right itself and then leaps for the next. Quite a beauty.

RUNNING along a bank, a parapet

That saves from the precipitous wood below

The level road, there is a path. It serves

Children for looking down the long smooth steep,

Between the legs of beech and yew, to where

A fallen tree checks the sight: while men and women

Content themselves with the road and what they see

Over the bank, and what the children tell.

The path, winding like silver, trickles on,

Bordered and even invaded by thinnest moss

That tries to cover roots and crumbling chalk

With gold, olive, and emerald, but in vain.

The children wear it. They have flattened the bank

On top, and silvered it between the moss

With the current of their feet, year after year.

But the road is houseless, and leads not to school.

To see a child is rare there, and the eye

Has but the road, the wood that overhangs

And underyawns it, and the path that looks

As if it led on to some legendary

Or fancied place where men have wished to go

And stay; till, sudden, it ends where the wood ends.

~Edward Thomas~

This winter’s snowflake series is going to be a special one, starting with this oddly beautiful crystal – one that has helped me observe how snowflakes can grow in cascading layers and how bubbles form within the ice. I’ll be posting one a day for as long as I am able!

Occasionally I discover a snowflake that solves a puzzle or provides an insight that would be hard to discover from “normal” crystals. This is one such gem, illustrating a cascading growth style that directly evolves into the creation of “bubbles” in the ice. Let’s start with the outward growth in layers; this snowflake appears similar to a topographical map, on the top and bottom four branches!

While I cannot describe the exact method in terms of molecular growth, the direct observation should be obvious: the center of the snowflake is thicker, with “cliffs” falling down in repeating layers towards the outer edge. There are at least four distinct “layers”, with the last one showing the most interest – it’s the small pockets near the branch tips. I say “pockets” because the outer edge has also grown to the same thickness as Layer 3, surrounding Layer 4 on all sides. This thinnest layer is being filled in, but wait! Look closer.

It's easy to spot something fascinating if you know where to look. Take the top-most branch, for example. You’ll notice “bubbles” forming internally as the Layer 4 cavity begins to grow a “ceiling” of sorts. I suspect that, if the edge of the cliff between layers approaches a very steep incline, a near 90-degree edge will attract more water molecules. This in turn allows for the top edge of the cliff to grow outward, leaving an air-filled cave underneath. Eventually it may seal entirely, forming a bubble.

This would explain the abundance of vaguely-trapezoidal bubble shapes in snowflakes. I see them often, and previously attributed them to cavities forming on the outward-growing edges. I now believe that these bubbles form on internal surfaces. Because the ceiling on the bubble is so thin, this can also evoke the optical interference phenomenon that adds colour to some snowflakes; you can see the slightest bit of that in the larger central bubbles.

Questions remain. Why are the left and right branches smooth? They aren’t smooth exactly, they just have features forming on the reverse side of the crystal… but why? I have seen this countless times – surface details only appear to be present on one side of a snowflake. They commonly face each-other, as if making a sandwich with the details in the center and smooth on the outside.

Snowflake are complicated things. They do not grow in a simple outward fashion. They can grow in layers, they can grow inwards, they can sublimate (evaporate from a solid directly to gas) which creates incredibly nuanced and intricate patterns. After more than a decade of studying these skyborne gems, there is still more to discover. And so, this series will continue forevermore.

In addition to this series, I will continue to post updates on Ukraine, but will generally leave that out of the commentary for the snowflake posts. Stay tuned for more.

Additionally, just a reminder that I’ve got an exclusive macro studio bundle from Platypod that I use on a regular basis for much of my macro work. For snowflakes I utilize flash an do it handled, but when more control can be afforded, look no further than this amazing kit: www.platypod.com/pages/donkom

Standing in the midst of the Zanskar Gorge, on a full moon night, is one of the most romantic nights, that you can spend, albeit sans your partner! :-)

The frozen Zanskar river, sheathed in a pristine sheet glows an eerie white under a full moonlit night. You can feel the river gurgle under your feet & see it erupt out, breaking the ice at its thinnest, for a quick gulp of air, & submerge again under a thicker Chadar.

You can count the stars & then you see the pug marks of a Snow Leopard. Time to slide back into your tent! 😅

January 2013.

While searching for two huge ancient oaks in the Ashlade Firs part of Savernake Forest, I passed this huge beech tree (Faguc sylvatica). Apart from the overall size and shape of the tree, the trunk really stood out due to the myriad of nodules.

I visited again and measured the girth at 4.93m at 1.1m height. This is probably the thinnest part of the trunk but I could not measure at the usual 1.5m due to the protrusion (seen here towards the left of the trunk) that is the remains of a fallen limb. Fallen limbs surround the tree and currently have many types of fungi growing on them.

How about a small splash of colour to brighten your morning? And I mean small – the only notable colour here is found in the center of a snowflake “adornment” to the main crystal. Even still, it’s quite vibrant! As I like to question everything: why are some colours found in snowflakes more muted than others? Why are some colours more common?

Optical interference doesn’t produce a traditional “rainbow” of colours. The patterns and connecting colours are different from that you would see emerging from a prism. Because the same type of physics creates colours in soap bubbles, there’s a fair amount of “popular science” written about these colours, and there are charts: soapbubble.fandom.com/wiki/Color_and_Film_Thickness

You’ll notice that the more vibrant colours tend to be seen with the thinnest film. Dull green and magenta-type colours are also far more common because they readily repeat when these films become thicker. Some colours, such as the blue we see in this snowflake, are rare; blue only occurs twice, and only one instance allows this particular light-blue hue. That can also tell you the exact thickness in that area of the snowflake! Whichever ice / air layer responsible for the optical interference is roughly 250nm thick. 250 nanometers = 0.00025 millimeters.

Onto the larger snowflake, we see a lot of surface features that reveal the contours and texture this snowflake possesses, through the use of reflected light photography. Many of these features would simply appear transparent if I was lighting the snowflake from behind. It can appear chaotic on larger snowflakes, making it difficult to understand exactly how the various features form; this includes the center, which at first glance is a hexagon! But no. The geometry is fractured.

On a smaller snowflake, such features could be inspected and a hypothesis might emerge as to how the top left of this hexagon appears to break away from the rest. There might be clues on the outer edge, or details that we cannot see from this far away. The bubbles in the center also appear peculiarly asymmetrical, but these mysteries cannot be solved at this distance. We can still admire the overall beauty of the final form, however!

Oh, and can you spot the third snowflake in this image? Upper right branch, just hangin’ on. It’s tilted from the camera and doesn’t get the same sparkly “glare” effect as the other two crystals; this makes it appear transparent, but it’s a helpful remind that ALL snowflakes are transparent like glass. :)

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LA LUNE - THE MOON

Les astronautes regardent souvent la Terre et prennent des photos, créant ainsi des archives d'images à la fois belles et utiles pour la science. Mais si de nombreux scientifiques et ingénieurs de la NASA ont de nouveau les yeux rivés sur la Lune, il en va de même pour les astronautes.

Un membre de l'équipage de la Station spatiale internationale (ISS) a pris cette photo en mai 2022 alors qu'il était en orbite à plus de 400 kilomètres (250 miles) au-dessus de la surface de la Terre. À ce moment-là, l'ISS se trouvait au-dessus de l'océan Pacifique Sud, à environ 500 kilomètres au sud-ouest de Tahiti.

Seule une petite partie de l'océan est visible sur cette photo. Au lieu de cela, la vue latérale montre le membre de la Terre et plusieurs couches d'atmosphère. Les nuages planent dans la troposphère, la couche la plus proche de la surface de la planète. Plus haut, dans la stratosphère et la mésosphère, le ciel s'assombrit car il y a moins de particules pour disperser la lumière. Au loin, la Lune, au stade de glandeur, brille comme un phare à travers les couches les plus fines de l'atmosphère terrestre.

Astronauts often look back at Earth and snap photographs, creating a deep archive of images that are both beautiful and useful for science. But just as many scientists and engineers at NASA have their eyes set on the Moon again, so too do the astronauts.

A crew member onboard the International Space Station (ISS) took this photograph in May 2022 while orbiting more than 400 kilometers (250 miles) above Earth’s surface. At the time, the ISS was located over the South Pacific Ocean about 500 kilometers (300 miles) southwest of Tahiti.

Only a small amount of ocean is visible in this photo. Instead, the sideways-looking view features Earth’s limb—and layer upon layer of atmosphere. Clouds hover in the troposphere, the layer closest to the planet’s surface. Higher up in the stratosphere and mesosphere, the sky darkens as there are fewer particles around to scatter light. In the distance, the waning-gibbous Moon shines like a beacon through Earth’s thinnest layers of atmosphere.

IMAGE & TEXTE : MERCI / THANKS TO NASA

me for scale

This Golden Plover was finding plenty to eat where the snow was thinnest on the track and by the dyke leading to hookers pit at Dungeness RSPB

The Isle of Seil lies some 12 miles south of Oban, based exclusively around the slate quarrying industry.

Seil is separated from the mainland only by the thinnest of sea channels which is spanned by the elegant 18th century humpback Clachan Bridge, popularly known as the 'Bridge over the Atlantic'.

Scotland UK

I've been trying to spin thin and even (is this what every newish spinner hopes to achieve?). So far, my thinnest and evenest yet- 200 yards of sportweightish superwash merino. This is from one of my very first Funky Carolina braids- what perhaps started the whole obsession.

Still on the wheel, unsure of the yardage. This is a beautiful batt of black alpaca and blues in bamboo and tussah silk and a bit of blue sparkle.. which you can't really see in the photo.

I spun this during the Duke vs. University of North Carolina game on Wed, since this is the Duke colorway.. royal blue and black. We are hard core Duke fans in this house.... so I was staying away from working with anything that was a light blue (Carolina blue) Hurrah!! Duke WINS!!

This is my thinnest and most consistant yarn on the wheel so far!! I'm so proud :) No laceweight.. but it's progress.

Separating Tree Pipits from Meadow Pipits is not especially straightforward. Most birdwatchers rely on their songs and calls to be certain which one they are looking at. Meadow Pipits give a repeated three note seep-seep-seep, while Tree Pipits give a single buzzing teeez. Both do parachuting display flights and both will land in trees, or on the ground. Meadow Pipits are resident breeders but Tree Pipits are migrants from sub-Saharan Africa. As their names suggest, they do have different breeding habitats but Tree Pipits like open areas with a few scattered trees, rather than woodland. Tree Pipits do tend to land on trees after their parachuting display flight. Plumage-wise they look pretty similar, apart from the flanks. Tree Pipit has largely unmarked flanks with just a few very thin streaks whereas Meadow Pipit has bold streaking down the flanks, just as boldly-marked as the breast. You can see the thinnest of streaks on the flanks of this Tree Pipit. Tree Pipits also have a shortish, strongly curved hindclaw visible here, while Meadow Pipits have a noticeably longer and straighter hindclaw. But viewing the hindclaw is rarely easy.

I photographed this individual male not far from my house in the West Yorkshire Pennines. Unfortunately their numbers are on the slide and each year they are harder to find. One irony is when Linnaeus first named Tree Pipit in 1758 he named it trivialis, meaning common or ordinary. Most British birdwatchers would agree that it is anything but common or ordinary today.

Explore FP - 22.08.2009 - #23

A land of streams! some, like a downward smoke,

Slow-dropping veils of thinnest lawn, did go;

And some thro' wavering lights and shadows broke,

Rolling a slumbrous sheet of foam below.

They saw the gleaming river seaward flow

From the inner land: far off, three mountain-tops,

Three silent pinnacles of aged snow,

Stood sunset-flush'd: and, dew'd with showery drops,

Up-clomb the shadowy pine above the woven copse.

From The Lotus Eaters by Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809 - 1892)

Best Viewed Large On Black - Waitohu Stream, Otaki Beach, New Zealand [?]

Available exclusively on MyChillyBin - NZ Stock Photography

I love the way Stonechats like this male perch atop the thinnest stems. The light and tones caught my eye with this shot and a close-up wasn't need for the image imo.

hasselblad 500cm kentmere 400

Berlin-Wittenau, Village Church

Trying out the 1920s Heliar on the Super Graphic, this time on Rollei RPX 25. I must say this is a very fine film that goes very well with the old lens - however the pack I bought contained the thinnest sheet film base I have ever encountered - it's more like cling film than sheet film. This made the insertion into the sheet film holders an adverture - putting the sheets from the holder and into the development tank took even more patience...

Rollei must have changed something in the emulsion as the development times stated on the film pack differ a lot from those found in the Massive Dev Chart and other sources, so be careful when using those!

However, in the end, I must say that the nerves were worth it ;-)

Graflex Super Graphic, Rollei RPX 25 in Rodinal 1+25

Running 85 minutes late, 60029 Ben Nevis and 60028 are at the head of 6Z72 14.46 Brandon Down Goods Loop - Chaddesden Sidings, pictured approaching Welney Road Level Crossing at Manea. [Pole, 5/6 sections (~6.8m)]

60028 had taken a load of the Peak District's finest to Brandon two days earlier, with the empties supposed to return to Chaddesden in the evening. But that working was cancelled, and 60029 ran light engine to Brandon two days later (as 0Z70) and collected 60028 and the twenty-four wagons; it is assumed that 60028 had failed in some way. 60029 had arrived at Brandon well over an hour late, although had reached Ely North Jn. a few minutes early but appears to have sat on Ely West Curve for well over an hour (according to various on-line systems). The run from Brandon to Ely and back (0Z72), to run round the wagons after pulling them out of the terminal and assembling the train, set off just over an hour late and got back even later, hence 6Z72's late departure.

I'd spotted this working on RTT the previous evening, and also that the weather forecast was for evening sunshine. 6Z72 was booked through Whittlesea at 15.47 - if it didn't run early, there were no traffic jams, and I got away from work (in St. Ives) promptly, I could get to Ramsey Road (the closest spot to work where the sun angle was OK) in time. But I saw that 0Z70 had arrived late and that 0Z72 was also running late, and realised that if 6Z72 was just as late then the sun would be getting too frontal at Ramsey Road. So I changed my plans (which had included spending the evening around Werrington or even further west) and headed for Manea (closer than one of the crossings near Little Downham), guessing I'd have plenty of time - and I was right (I had nearly an hour to wait, and could have got to Little Downham!).

Of course, the clouds had rolled in, but there were a few blue holes, especially further east. As the train set off from Brandon, I thought I might be in for a chance as the clouds over the fens began to thin and burn off - although the original blue hole was actually moving away from the sun! As the train ran round Ely West Curve and straight out onto the main line, there was lots of blue sky, but a large patch of thin cloud over Manea and with a thicker bit heading towards the sun; it was bright, but the shadows had gone. However, the cloud was moving very slowly and the thinnest bits were very slowly disappearing - but I knew the train would be moving quite slowly. The sun then popped out from behind the thickest bit, but still had to negotiate a fairly wide vapour trail.

Although the signal hadn't yet been pulled off, when the train was a couple of signalling sections away I raised the pole ready for the train to appear, just as the sun got noticeably brighter: it had cleared the cloud! But I was thankful I then did a test shot, because I got an error message to say the camera couldn't write the image to a memory card. Panic - that's never happened before! I quickly tried again and got the same error message, so lowered the pole and switched the camera off and back on again. This time a test shot was successful, so I raised the pole again, doing a test shot before I'd raised it fully and then again when it was in position; the train appeared in the distance, the level crossing began to activate, and I got the shots in pretty much full sun! Just over ten minutes later the sun went behind the next bank of cloud.

Surprisingly, although I've been coming to this spot for many years, this was my first sunny shot looking this way using the pole of anything other than a DMU. And I was glad there was just about no wind, as not extending the pole this high means the farm buildings in the background end up either obscured by the train or growing out of its roof. So I was pleased with the afternoon's efforts!

To see my non-transport pictures, visit www.flickr.com/photos/137275498@N03/.

Arches National Park / Utah / USA

English:

The Landscape Arch is in the Devils Garden section of Arches National Park. Landscape Arch is an arc natural arch eroded in Entrada sandstone. It is hard to believe that a piece of rock like this can exist. In its thinnest section the arch is only 2m thick, yet it supports a span of rock 88m long. How long can he be seen?

Deutsch:

Der Landscape Arch befindet sich im Abschnitt Devils Garden des Arches National Park. Landscape Arch ist ein natürlicher Bogen aus Entrada-Sandstein. Es ist kaum zu glauben, dass so ein Stein existieren kann. In seinem dünnsten Abschnitt ist der Bogen nur 2 m dick, trägt jedoch eine 88 m lange Felsenspanne. Wie lange er wohl noch zu sehen ist ?

Crescent moon over the dusk sky

Wall House #II

Wall House #II (also known as Bye House) is an historic building in Groningen, Netherlands, that was designed by John Hejduk. it is one of his few realized designs. Heiduk originally designed Wall House #II as a residence to be built in Ridgefield, Connecticut. However, due to cost constraints, the project was abandoned. In 2000, a Dutch development company, Wilma, started building the house in Groningen, based on Heiduk's original design and later revisions. Wall House II has a very large wall as its central feature, composed of four organic-formed rooms and a long, narrow corridor. It is considered a mix of Cubist painting, Surrealist sculpture and architecture. The wall and column are constructed of reinforced concrete. The corridor is steel-framed with wooden stud walls and a stucco exterior.

In discussing the wall section of Wall House #II Heiduk stated:

“Life has to do with walls; we're continuously going in and out, back and forth, and through them. A wall is the quickest, the thinnest, the element we're always transgressing… The wall heightens the sense of passage, and by the same token, its thinness heightens the sense of being just a momentary condition…what I call the moment of the “present.”

Discussing the house colors, Heiduk referred to Le Corbusier’s La Roche House in Paris, stating:

“After that experience,” he says, “I could never do another white or primary-colored house.” In the La Roche house, the colors “were hardly apparent at first, but after you were there awhile you saw not only that they changed constantly, but that they were delicate and muted, and also saturated at the same time.”

Hejduk originally designed Wall house #II in 1973 (the first was done in 1968) for landscape architect A.E. Bye. Due to the high estimated costs of construction in the wooded area, Wall House #II was put on hold. it was proposed to other clients, but was never started.

In 1990 the Wall house II project was introduced in Groningen on behalf of the experiment “Making the City Boundaries”. On the basis of Daniel Libeskind’s masterplan, people from various disciplines were asked to design signposts along the city’s most important arterial roads, telling the story of Groningen. Libeskind was a former student of Heiduk. The Berlin architect Thomas Muller, a former student at Cooper Union, was appointed project architect. He was then working in Groningen under supervision of Kleihues. Due to building codes and construction techniques-which required, for example, leaving space between the wall and rooms for hand plastering-the house was enlarged from its original size, to 2500 square feet. Muller redrew the plans with Derk Flikkema of Otonomo Architects in Groningen, with Hejduk reviewing the drawings in each phase up until his death. The construction cost was $ 600,000 in total, and it was sold with a proviso that the public can visit it one month a year.

Hello October, month of rain and darkness, season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, time of my birthday, days of coats and boots, and month of Samhain and days of the dead, when the veil that separates our world from the Otherworld is at its thinnest.

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The Supermarine Spitfire is a British single-seat fighter aircraft used by the Royal Air Force and other Allied countries before, during, and after World War II. Many variants of the Spitfire were built, using several wing configurations, and it was produced in greater numbers than any other British aircraft. It was also the only British fighter produced continuously throughout the war.

The Spitfire was designed as a short-range, high-performance interceptor aircraft by R. J. Mitchell, chief designer at Supermarine Aviation Works, which operated as a subsidiary of Vickers-Armstrong from 1928. Mitchell pushed the Spitfire's distinctive elliptical wing with cutting-edge sunken rivets (designed by Beverley Shenstone) to have the thinnest possible cross-section, helping give the aircraft a higher top speed than several contemporary fighters, including the Hawker Hurricane. Mitchell continued to refine the design until his death in 1937, whereupon his colleague Joseph Smith took over as chief designer, overseeing the Spitfire's development through its multitude of variants.

The Witching Hour is the time of night when the veil between life and death is thinnest, allowing spirits and ghosts to travel between two worlds. The witching hour will come soon on Saturday night.

This is one of my latest necklaces. It is pure white with slightly off white to the centres. I called it Bride to Be as it reminded me of a wedding on a beach in a tropical setting. It was an extremely testing piece as using only the thinnest setting of extruder strand.

Talk about going out on a limb...This Pied Shag selected the thinnest and highest branch she or he could choose to check out what was going on in the world around it...!

Below this bird is a colony of about 40 shags who have absolutely killed that part of the big ol' pine tree that they're nesting in, and she or he could have picked any one of a large choice of lower branches, but - for reasons known only to itself - this was the one that best suited this bird's needs...!

Captured at the lagoon which stretches back from the estuary of the Waikanae River, you can read about New Zealand's Pied Shag at: nzbirdsonline.org.nz/species/pied-shag - if you have the time...!

And a footnote: in Australia, this bird is known as a Pied Cormorant... just to confuse amateur Birders!!!

Thanks for taking the time and the trouble to leave a Comment beneath this photo Folks! It's always nice to hear from you, and your comments are always very much appreciated...!

Join the Druids in this ceremony where we remember those who passed the boundaries of this life in the past year, on this special time of year when the veil between this world and the world of spirits is at its thinnest.

The Wye Valley Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB; Welsh: Dyffryn Gwy) is an internationally important protected landscape straddling the border between England and Wales. It is one of the most dramatic and scenic landscape areas in southern Britain.

The River Wye (Welsh: Afon Gwy) is the fifth-longest river in the United Kingdom. The upper part of the river passes through the settlements of Rhayader, Builth Wells and Hay-on-Wye, but the area designated as an AONB covers 326 square kilometres (126 sq mi) surrounding a 72-kilometre (45 mi) stretch lower down the river, from just south of the city of Hereford to Chepstow.

This area covers parts of the counties of Gloucestershire, Herefordshire and Monmouthshire, and is recognised in particular for its limestone gorge scenery and dense native woodlands, as well as its wildlife, archaeological and industrial remains. It is also historically important as one of the birthplaces of the modern tourism industry. The area is predominantly rural, and many people make a living from tourism, agriculture or forestry. Ross-on-Wye is the only town within the AONB itself, but Hereford, Monmouth, Coleford and Chepstow lie just outside its boundaries.

The varied landscapes of the Wye Valley can be explained by underlying rocks and structures, and how ice and then the river and tributary streams have acted upon them through time.

Close to Hereford, the geology of the area around the village of Woolhope is largely made up of Silurian limestones, shales and sandstones. To the south of this, the Herefordshire lowlands are largely underlain by red mudstones and sandstones, producing a redder soil. These rocks are softer than the limestones elsewhere, so the river created more meanders, a wider floodplain, and a gentler and more rolling landscape. Around Symonds Yat, limestones and red sandstones meet. This leads to a landscape of hills and plains, as well as substantial meanders which have formed impressive river cliffs.

The Lower Wye landscape was formed by the river acting on a series of layers of rock that dip towards the Forest of Dean. Here the river has incised into the margins of the Old Red Sandstone plateau to form a gorge with substantial river cliffs. The steepest parts of the Wye gorge are cut through the Carboniferous Limestone. Here the combined action of the river, natural joints in the rocks and quarrying have exposed many vertical faces, particularly between Tintern and Chepstow.

Geological interest extends underground, and there are many rock shelters and solution caves in the area. These include King Arthur's Cave and many others in the area of Symonds Yat and Slaughter Stream Cave near Berry Hill. At St Arvans, near Chepstow, the underground watercourses have carved out long cave systems, which exit at Otter Hole at the base of Piercefield cliffs – the only cave system in England or Wales which can only be reached through a tidal sump, making it a mecca for experienced cavers.

Lancaut and Ban-y-Gor are Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust nature reserves. They both have SSSI status being part of the nationally important Lower Wye Gorge SSSI and within the Wye Valley AONB. The Wye Valley is important for its rich wildlife habitats.

The area has three sites of international importance, designated as Special Areas of Conservation (SACs) under the European Union's Habitats Directive. These are the River Wye (Afon Gwy), the Wye Valley and Forest of Dean Bat Sites (Safleoedd Ystlumod Dyffryn Gwy a Fforest y Ddena) and the Wye Valley Woodlands (Coetiroedd Dyffryn Gwy). It supports a population of lesser horseshoe bats, a growing population of peregrine falcons, goshawks, ravens, rare whitebeam, nightjar and lesser known fish like the shad and twaite. The main Welsh populations of the small but colourful moth Oecophora bractella are found here.

In September 2006 it was reported that one colony of lesser horseshoe bats in the area had reached record numbers, with some 890 bats in a small stone barn (599 adults and 291 babies recorded).

The valley has been inhabited for at least 12,000 years. Caves near Symonds Yat and Chepstow provide evidence of settlement dating from Palaeolithic times, and finds from later stone ages such as the Neolithic have also been found. These have yielded evidence of how prehistoric human populations lived as nomadic hunters and traders.

Standing stones at Huntsham, Staunton, and Trellech all have origins dating back to the Bronze Age. Later, Iron Age forts along the lower Wye Valley, and in the Woolhope area, took advantage of the natural hilltops and promontories to form well-defended settlements. It is likely that many of these marked the edges of disputed tribal pre-Roman territories.

Watling Street ran through the Roman settlements of Ariconium (just north of modern Ross-on-Wye) and Blestium (Monmouth), and a number of other small Roman settlements are known. The first evidence of the exploitation of iron and coal in the valley is found in the Roman period, with iron working known from sites at Monmouth, Trellech and elsewhere, as well as in the adjoining Forest of Dean. The medieval boroughs of Goodrich and Chepstow, at each end of the Wye Gorge, may have originally been established at this time.

Closely following the River Wye, Offa's Dyke was built in the 8th century under King Offa to mark out the boundary between England and Wales and is, today, the longest archaeological monument in Britain. Offa's Dyke Path long distance footpath today traces the route through the Wye valley on the English bank, while the Wye Valley Walk follows the Welsh bank.

When the Normans conquered the region in the 11th century they immediately built major castles at Chepstow and Monmouth to defend the territory. Smaller castles were built at St Briavels, Ruardean, Goodrich and Wilton Castle.

Tintern Abbey was founded in 1131 by Cistercian monks, and largely rebuilt in the 13th century. It is the best-preserved medieval abbey in Wales and an outstanding example of Gothic architecture.

Many of the smaller villages in the area probably date from the Middle Ages, and much of this expansion was probably associated with the early iron industry. The medieval iron industry consumed large quantities of charcoal and much of the woodland was coppiced for this purpose. Trellech was one of the largest communities in Wales during this period.

Iron has been made in the Wye Valley since Roman times, using the ready supply of timber, good quality ore and abundant charcoal from the Forest of Dean. The river provided transport for the raw materials and finished product, and with the introduction of the blast furnace in the 16th century, its tributaries began to be used for water power.

The first brass made in Britain was founded at Tintern in 1566. Wire-making followed, with water mills situated on all the tributaries of the lower Wye. The area resounded to the noise and smoke of heavy industry for the next 400 years and gave rise to many pioneering industries. For instance, Whitebrook became famous for paper milling, when wallpaper became a fashionable way to decorate houses. At Redbrook, copper works were established by 1691, and a century later the village became one of the world's major tinplate manufacturing centres. This industry survived until the 1960s and was renowned for producing the thinnest, highest quality plate in the world. The Lydbrook valley was also a thriving centre for metal industries, such as the manufacture of telegraph cables.

The valley woodlands were carefully managed to produce mature trees for shipbuilding, or by coppicing for charcoal, and to provide bark for tanning. The valley industries were also massive consumers of timber. A ship of 150 tons, for example, required 3,000 wagonloads of timber to complete – and in 1824, 13 ships were launched at Brockweir alone.

The river was the economic backbone of the region, providing an important means of transport, trade and communication. In late medieval times, salmon weirs hindered free passage on the river, but the Wye Navigation Act in 1662 enabled the river's potential to be developed. By 1727 shallow draught boats could get upstream beyond Hereford, and a significant shipbuilding industry developed at Monmouth, Llandogo, Brockweir and Chepstow. However, by 1835 it was stated that the Wye "can scarcely be considered a commercial highway" above Monmouth, and by the 1880s Brockweir bridge was the effective upper limit of navigation.

As the 19th century progressed, the valley's industries gradually declined, and management of the woodlands lessened when there was no longer a ready market for their products.

For further information please visit en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wye_Valley

The Forest of Dean is a geographical, historical and cultural region in the western part of the county of Gloucestershire, England. It forms a roughly triangular plateau bounded by the River Wye to the west and north-west, Herefordshire to the north, the River Severn to the south, and the City of Gloucester to the east.

The area is characterised by more than 110 square kilometres (42.5 sq mi) of mixed woodland, one of the surviving ancient woodlands in England. A large area was reserved for royal hunting before 1066, and remained as the second largest crown forest in England, the largest being New Forest. Although the name is used loosely to refer to the part of Gloucestershire between the Severn and Wye, the Forest of Dean proper has covered a much smaller area since medieval times. In 1327 it was defined to cover only the royal demesne and parts of parishes within the hundred of St Briavels, and after 1668 comprised the royal demesne only. The Forest proper is within the civil parishes of West Dean, Lydbrook, Cinderford, Ruspidge, and Drybrook, together with a strip of land in the parish of English Bicknor.

Traditionally the main sources of work have been forestry – including charcoal production - iron working and coal mining. Archaeological studies have dated the earliest use of coal to Roman times for domestic heating and industrial processes such as the preparation of iron ore.

The area gives its name to the local government district, Forest of Dean, and a parliamentary constituency, both of which cover wider areas than the historic Forest. The administrative centre of the local authority is Coleford, one of the main towns in the historic Forest area, together with Cinderford and Lydney.

For further information please visit en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forest_of_Dean

During a trip to Bend, we decided a detour to Smith Rock State Park was in order. After a hot, grueling climb up the Misery Ridge trail, we crested and were descending the far trail just as a trio of climbers themselves were descending from the top of Monkey Face. I know hundreds, if not thousands, of climbers ascend and descend this rock every year without incident, but it is still a mildly anxious thing to watch a human dangling by the thinnest of cords at perilous heights. So naturally I stopped to make a few photos. While the other two were descending, this first climber and I actually struck up a conversation and I made a point to note his e-mail address, just so I could make sure I passed along the images I made on that hike. I finally got around to sending him those images, with the delay mostly being due to the fact that the roll just now got finished, developed and scanned. The speed of film as it turns out is slower than a hiker ascending Misery Ridge and much slower than a climber rappelling down Monkey Face.

Hasselblad 500C

Agfa APX (pleasantly aged but still quite good)