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View allAll Photos Tagged superglue
I didn't really have a good head for him so I went for something more simple. His hair does have a blue tint but I'm not sure if it's visible. His cape was made from sports wear fabric, which was then superglued to hold its place. Enjoy :)
... Drift is such a patient model ... no ears were harmed for this photo -in case you were wondering- no superglue was used, just a few hairpins ...
... a special Christmas hug from Drift to Paul's son Marc … I hope you like the hats ;) ...
... Happy Holidays ! …
LIMG_9370_lr
for macro mondays 'four elements'
It's amazing how much fun and frustration you can have once you discover a dandelion seed will balance on the edge of a glass!
Sunset on the last night of the year, very cloudy but nice to get out for some fresh air!
My tripod is on its last legs (pardon the pun), superglue and ducktape saw it through for this shot, kind of embarrassing... I have a new one waiting but still need the head to arrive..
Slope beach, Seaham.
Happy New Year!!
Photo by Steven Iceton of www.steveniceton.co.uk
Commonly called the pinching beetle, this guy can give you an eye-watering bite. He uses those large mandibles to fend off competing males at breeding sites. Notice the little hooks at the end of each leg that qualify as feet. These beetles will stick to your finger or hand like superglue if they can get a toe-hold. Surprisingly, they feed on sweet tree sap.
Five minutes after arrivng at the campsite I took my boots off and put my slippers on ( they have a huge hole from my left big toe, ) and went to get some water.
When I got back I stubbed my toe on the plywood floor, slipped and the toenail caught on the ply. Ripped it clean off. I've never seen so much blood. In to Keswick and bought disinfectant and some dressings, hobbling around in a blood filled slipper. Squelch, squelch, squelch.
Wouldn't mind but I'd bought some superglue to stick the seal back on the ply but as usual I never got round to fixing it.
So no Wainwrights for me, not even low level ones. Road side locations and very very short walks!
Such an idiot:)
No Need to comment. Just an oldie to wish everyone a Happy Valentines Day
xx
The pink colour was altered from blue using a hue slider in picnik
sharpened the little beasties up a little then softened the whole photo 30%. ereased the softening off the mayflies.
turned the saturation and temperature down to make the blue zing a little more.
Oh yes and a little orton, but only a little.
And no i ididn't superglue them together like that ;-) They are just in lurrrve
MakingOf "Blueberry on ground support on glass ball"
To be honest: the blueberry is fixed to the bottom support with a drop of superglue ;-)
See the result: www.flickr.com/photos/wolfgang-kynast/52027212572
If you view the above picture large there are three distinct red beads on the aphid. Are those little mites on the aphid? They must be really, really tiny if they are.
Linyphiidae presumed Linyphia triangularis
Interestingly, Rui feels the "mites" are actually drops of defensive fluid secreted by the aphid - looking at the link Rui gives in the comments it seems to be a quick hardening fluid - sounds like a sort of superglue!
-Slime mold
-Drawing
-foto
I'm not sure where I got the idea for this picture from😂.
The slime mold on the top of the colored pencil is in any case a diderma tigrinum.
I came across something similar on the internet & really liked it, so I thought I'd give it a go. I collected many potential pebbles at the seaside last weekend , and this is my first attempt. I varnished the pebbles with clear matt varnish, painted eyes on them (googly eyes would melt!) then superglued them together.
I quite enjoyed my bit of creativity, relaxing and fun. I like how they are highlighted by the candle light, like a pebble family gathering around a fire. Another photo in normal light below.
After much anguish.. I tore into my unit. This soldier needed a face lift. Lots of soaking to get the wood to bend.. but it worked! - lomo.wood. (not yet varnished)
wrose bit was digging out all the old superglue barely holding down the 'pleather'
this is my prototype micro lens I made out of a busted 50mm, with the aid of some blue-tack, superglue, and tape i managed to arrange and space the lenses in a way that enables me to focus as close as 5cm. been working on it all day and then found this dead, very small fly to test it on.. think this could be fun after a bit more work on it.
Captured with Helios 44-2 lens. At first I was like: "Oh, too bad, it could have been a nice photo." Then I thought maybe it's even more interesting this way and I've walked back to my new subject. After all, I don't carry superglue with me at all times.
Mrs F went ballistic with me earlier today when she found out that I had superglued this dead housefly to the rim of a flower vase so that I could photograph it. I couldn't see the issue and still can't but we can't all agree all of the time can we. I found the dead fly on a window ledge and almost threw it away but thought it's colours were too good to treat it like that.
Anyway, the disagreement has passed, the fly is in the bin and the vase has been cleaned.
PS, the flies colours are natural and haven't been enhanced in any way.
Nikon P60
Bellows made by Kathay Technology Industrial Co., Ltd. this is scary. One day, the entire lens mount suddenly fell off and came off. To my surprise, the lens mount was fastened with superglue. It would be very troublesome if an expensive lens suddenly fell off, so I drilled a hole with a pin vise and then screwed the mount parts by myself. It was a cheap bellows, but considering the trouble and damage, it is a bitter regret that I should have imported Novoflex from the beginning. The lens installed this time is Fujimoto Enlarging Lens 135mm F4.5, a Fujimoto brand lens for enlargement, which is a Tessar-type lens with 4 elements in 3 groups for 4x5 film enlargement prints. Because of its large image circle, it can be used with the “Nikon PB-4 Tilt-Shift Photography Bellows” to take agitated shots, making it a good purchase. This Fujimoto-branded lens was produced by the Congo brand on an OEM basis and is the original “Congo Enlarging Lens ALTO 135mm F4.5” lens. However, when the lens was produced on an OEM basis, the optics remained the same, but the lens barrel design was completely different and more masculine to match the Fujimoto design. Therefore, the impression when you hold the lens is completely different, but the “Congo Enlarging Lens ALTO 135mm F4.5” has a more feminine design.
This lens is a little dark, but it is my favorite lens because of its beautiful bokeh effect due to its perfect circular aperture.
"Was he slow?"
Pretty simple but here's Baby. Hair is made with ProCreate, Justin Hammer head and the earbuds are superglue-coated string, and the rest is paint.
Great movie, definitely recommend it. :p
I drink cheap beer. I take the bottle caps and superglue cheap magnets to them. I put my magnetized bottle caps on things; traffic signs, popo cars, long haul trucks, FedEx drop boxes, etc. I carry a few in my pocket when i travel, and share the love.
#12 on our 'Before We Get The Hellouta Here!' list was to cat-proof the fridge, where I keep my caps, holding up family snaps, fortune cookie lies, overdue library book hate mail. Our tribe of cats, always on the scout for a cheap thrill and limited by a lack of an opposable thumb, figured out how to race through the kitchen like derby girls, leap at a kitchenette chair with rollers, and use that kinetic energy transfer to slam the chair into the fridge and knock down the tacked up contents, which are then scattered about the kitchen for the next few minutes. Stepping on an upturned bottle cap at 3am on a ice box raid is not enjoyable.
Serves me right.
“Love is the irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired.”
-Robert Frost
Each color of a rose has a particular meaning.
For example, white roses mean purity, yellow roses mean friendship and the orange (and coral) rose means desire.
1 ) Dragonflies were some of the first winged insects to evolve, some 300 million years ago. Modern dragonflies have wingspans of only two to five inches, but fossil dragonflies have been found with wingspans of up to two feet.
2 ) Some scientists theorize that high oxygen levels during the Paleozoic era allowed dragonflies to grow to monster size.
3 ) There are more than 5,000 known species of dragonflies, all of which (along with damselflies) belong to the order Odonata, which means “toothed one” in Greek and refers to the dragonfly’s serrated teeth.
4 ) In their larval stage, which can last up to two years, dragonflies are aquatic and eat just about anything—tadpoles, mosquitoes, fish, other insect larvae and even each other.
5 ) At the end of its larval stage, the dragonfly crawls out of the water, then its exoskeleton cracks open and releases the insect’s abdomen, which had been packed in like a telescope. Its four wings come out, and they dry and harden over the next several hours to days.
6 ) Dragonflies are expert fliers. They can fly straight up and down, hover like a helicopter and even mate mid-air. If they can’t fly, they’ll starve because they only eat prey they catch while flying.
7 ) Dragonflies catch their insect prey by grabbing it with their feet. They’re so efficient in their hunting that, in one Harvard University study, the dragonflies caught 90 to 95 percent of the prey released into their enclosure.
8 ) The flight of the dragonfly is so special that it has inspired engineers who dream of making robots that fly like dragonflies.
9 ) Some adult dragonflies live for only a few weeks while others live up to a year.
10 ) Nearly all of the dragonfly’s head is eye, so they have incredible vision that encompasses almost every angle except right behind them.
11 ) Dragonflies, which eat insects as adults, are a great control on the mosquito population. A single dragonfly can eat 30 to hundreds of mosquitoes per day.
12 ) Hundreds of dragonflies of different species will gather in swarms, either for feeding or migration. Little is known about this behavior, but the Dragonfly Swarm Project is collecting reports on swarms to better understand the behavior. (Report a swarm here.)
13 ) Scientists have tracked migratory dragonflies by attaching tiny transmitters to wings with a combination of eyelash adhesive and superglue. They found that green darners from New Jersey traveled only every third day and an average of 7.5 miles per day (though one dragonfly traveled 100 miles in a single day).
14 ) A dragonfly called the globe skinner has the longest migration of any insect—11,000 miles back and forth across the Indian Ocean.
This one decided to take a ride with me and perched on my upper arm as I was driving around the shore of Lake Walk In Water, in Polk County Florida.
Well this little lady was trying to catch insects on the tree while keeping an eye on me too. Amazing traction and grip! No animals were harmed in the making of this image! Amazingly, this was just a beautiful prelude to seeing a Long Eared Owl, about 10 minutes later. Nature rambling as it used to be called, is so much better than TV.
BTW, the more LNRs make rambling possible for those with mobility difficulties, the better!
Completed Shadow Sanctus Captain! Hooray!
More stuff I've done:
- Tried to tone down the purple highlights and tie them together with a few diluted washes. Result: Mixed success. The front ones look OK, but now they've lost some of their pop. The back ones, who can say... I've been looking at them too long ^_^
- Gem Stones are done. Not happy with a couple of them, but only noticed the problem when they're blown up on the photos... Usual method of doing them, just using the greens and yellows instead of the red, orange and yellows...
- The backpack! I've said it before I'll say it again. I dislike Space Marine backpacks. They're boring as hell and seem to take forever... Pain in the ass...
- Completed the Base with one more drybrush of a light grey and then added some brown plant stuff. No clue what the model name is...
Stuff I'm not happy with:
- The handle part of the weapon under the guard is rough as hell. If I'd noticed it before hand I would of tried to chip away some of the superglue build up, but I didn't. Bah...
- No freehand... Again... Sorry Whalemusic, don't feel confident to slap some freehand on him so this is how he ends. I know I should be trying it, but honestly I didn't have the heart to screw it up and have to fix what I've shanked...
---
This ends my Trade Marine Obligations... I think? Anyway, I'm moving onto a project for myself next. It involves 12 miniatures, all ordered from GW which cost me an arm, but they're worth it... But I wanted specific miniatures... If anyone wants to guess about what the 12 miniatures are for shout out... I'll give you naming rights of one of them if you get it... Hmmm what has 12 miniatures in a GW game?
The swimming club door lock has again been filled with superglue by someone with a serious grudge... so we cannot get into our arch premises to change. However, this morning I got a wakeup call from Henry saying he and Janet were building a bonfire down on the beach by my house using the wood washed up by the shipwreck. So I rang Kev who lives nearby and we all went for our swim nd got to have a nice warm outdoor changing room. Now that's what I call good friends.
singer Fanny Bloom of "La Patere Rose" puts her heart and soul into the keyboard at Canada House/Paradise during the official SXSW showcase on March 18.
Making the most of my week off from work - I'm just waiting for my brother (www.flickr.com/photos/robert_stocker/) to make a comment to tell me that I've got too much time on my hands :)
Finding the right glue to build this cube from matchsticks was tricky - PVA and superglue were useless... Evostick's Serious Glue worked a treat!
Inspired by a book that I read just before Christmas called 'Hyperspace: A Scientific Odyssey Through the 10th Dimension' by Michio Kaku and how a 'Flatlander' may visualise a three-dimensional cube by examining it's shadow and how we with our 'three-dimensional' brains may similarly appreciate and conceptualise higher dimensions.
This amiibo was incredibly easy to make. I found the smallest salt shaker possible, filled it wish salt, and glued it shut. The small pile of salt was made using a simple cone shape made from clay, coating it in superglue, then dipped in salt.
In case you were wondering, this amiibo scans as Bayonetta in Smash 4. :)
It’s a Monday evening for me, yet time has lost all traditional meaning for those fighting in Ukraine and those fleeing, besieged and tormented. Once again, I show my solidarity towards Ukraine and their plight by creating a photograph, and once again I dedicate this image to the Public Domain. Anyone can use this image in any way they like without license, permission, or credit to me. I encourage all artists to use their craft to create symbols of support for Ukraine. It’s easy to feel powerless but we can all utilize our skills and opportunities to help.
In my previous post, I had mentioned that my wife and I had run a car-load of food to the refugee centre here in Varna, Bulgaria. Knowing that I had a way to directly help, a number of people contacted me to see if there was a way to donate towards the cost of these groceries. We’ve done two trips so far with a third planned for tomorrow morning. If anyone wants to contribute, I’d be happy to run multiple trips a week or more. I’m not a charity and cannot provide you with tax receipts, and you’d have to trust me with your money.
I’m just a stranger on the Internet for most people reading this, and you absolutely shouldn’t trust a stranger with your money. You can find a list of charities doing good work in Ukraine here: www.cnbc.com/2022/03/09/heres-a-list-of-top-rated-chariti... . And there is a video on that page that specifically states to avoid charity scams by staying away from individual appeals. Even still, if you know me personally and you’d like to help my efforts, I’d welcome it. Thank you so much to those who have offered help already.
If you are in Canada and wish to eTransfer funds to me, you can send it to don.komarechka@gmail.com . If you are anywhere else and wish to use PayPal, send the funds to don@komarechka.com with a note “Donation for Ukraine refugee aid” so I can properly sort all the donations that come in. The food we’re supplying is the kind that doesn’t require a lot of prep work: fruits, canned fish, cured meats, juice etc. that doesn’t require a kitchen to prepare. After tomorrow’s grocery run, we will ask a coordinator what they need the most, and then go out and source exactly that. We’ve also picked up some art supplies for the kids.
This image was created in a similar way to one I shot for Earth Day last year ( www.flickr.com/photos/donkom/51148150819/ ). Gerbera daisy petals bent into the shape of a heart, with a droplet at the center. In this case, using the same blue and yellow construction paper as a backdrop. These petals are tricky to work with – they were wrapped around a small cylinder (the protecting cap for the hypodermic needle I use to place the droplet worked well) and kept tightly wound for a half an hour. They kept the curve I needed to put them together, but they were still too “springy”. A tiny dot of superglue was used to hold them together; nothing like a bit of foreign aid to help out, right? At first the image had a wider crop, but I decided to make the heart shape interact with all the edges of the frame, creating strong trigonal geometry and bringing more focus to the delicate, dangling drop.
Ukraine’s war for the right to exist is at a very pivotal point. I feel more and more like Ukraine’s allies need to step up further and stop the lawless, soulless, catastrophic destruction of life. I won’t tell you what to think, but I would suggest letting your elected government officials know your thoughts. It’s one thing to opine on social media, but it’s another to write influential letters to those who can take greater action than any individual. The world has become a “global village”, and it’s one of the reasons why my family and I moved to Eastern Europe. The actions of many nations have indicated that this is also a global fight. It’s a war unlike any other in history with incredible worldwide aid for Ukraine and sanctions for Russia that are unprecedented. As a global fight unlike any other, we must all think differently. I will not be a passive bystander when my actions can make a difference in the biggest human tragedy of my existence.
Stay strong, Ukraine.
the lead singer for the British group The Grammatics performs at the Yorkshire SXSW day party on Thursday, March 18 in Austin, Texas
TGIF and have a good Friday and weekend...back to day 3 of the music fest! :-)
or the band known as Geeks--from Japan, playing at midnight Friday night! ;-)
have a good Thursday--gotta run!
Ya know....It's harder than it looks to superglue a house of cards together.
I successfully glued cards to a dining table, an outside table, a plastic bag, a newspaper, and of course, me. Before finally deciding "screw it, I'll use cellotape".
So the bottom half of this tower took a painstaking hour and a half to glue together, whilst the top half was stuck together in a slapdashery manner taking about 5 minutes.
Extra photos and Behind The Scenes photos on my Tumblr.
Tiki Torches are good for more than just fire. :)
It was one of those issues that had been troubling me from time to time. Not exactly burning a hole in the vacant space between my ears, but just now and again poking its head above the parapet. Quite how much difference it would really make was uncertain, but anything that helped was worth trying.
In all but a few respects, the tripod I’ve been using for the last five years does exactly what I need it to. It’s sturdy, made of seemingly indestructible carbon fibre and fully extended, is slightly taller than me - although that last point is hardly a towering achievement. Ideally I’d prefer it if the centre column could be removed so I could bring it closer to the ground at times, but all in all, it’s a good tripod from a reputable manufacturer. It’s been to Iceland twice, and it’s held firm in many an Atlantic gale down here in Cornwall. Admittedly one of the lower leg sections likes to absent itself from the main body on occasion, but a small socket spanner and a few choice swear words always resolves the matter.
But what would, or should make it an even more robust ally in those heavy conditions seems to me an odd omission by the manufacturer. One that for some time had me seriously considering another significant investment in a new tripod. Why, for a piece of kit that’s clearly been designed for outdoor use did they not include a set of spikes? And although they are available as optional extras, the compatibility chart didn’t even list my model. But we’ve been through a lot together and I was sure there was a hack that would resolve the matter. One set that did look as if they might just about fit cost sixty quid, and were out of stock with most online providers. So I improvised, bought a set that was slightly too large at thirty quid and set about finding something to make them fit. A rubber flange in each gap if you will. A few sections from an old watch strap did the job, and although if I really pulled hard they would come free, they seemed to be fairly securely attached. Maybe I should refit them with hefty dollops of superglue. Added insurance and all that.
So now my tripod has spikes. And if I need them retracted, I simply screw out the feet and then there’s no danger of scratching anyone’s parquet floor. Not that I know anyone posh enough to have a parquet floor. And then I can screw them back in again to ward off approaching brigands. Obviously I would need to invite said wrongdoer to wait for approximately thirty seconds before attacking me while I prepare the tripod for means of self defence, but once ready, I feel confident that a small delinquent rabble would be kept at bay by an enraged middle age tog welding a three pronged spear at them.
Once assembled, it seemed rude not to give my adaptation a spin and take it somewhere I could look at the sea, and both Ali and I had a fancy for the cliffs above Porthtowan. After a week of rain, what weather forecasters euphemistically refer to as “quiet conditions,” had arrived. Maybe not the sort of feistyness to really put those spikes through their paces, but we just wanted to see the ocean. And so she went over the cliffs, armed with a rabbit obsessed spaniel, and I went for one of my favourite winter views, armed with lots of warm layers and a newly weaponised large camera accessory.
I didn’t need to ward off any threatening types. The only person who did approach me was a young woman, looking distinctly chilly in her yellow dungarees and accompanied by a large dog. She asked me what time it was and said she’d spotted a seal in the water. We agreed it was a lovely afternoon. I also discovered a track that led to steps down the cliffs I’d never seen before. I gave it a try and found a slightly lower vantage point, but when I descended further, I found the steps ran out at a narrow shelf with a twelve foot drop onto the rocks below. A scramble looked possible, but as the rocks are accessible from the beach anyway, there seemed little point. At least it’s an escape route if I read the surfline app back to front and get cut off by the tide. There are quite a few of these almost invisible tracks, well used by the surfing community. You just need to know where they are in the event of not wanting to swim to safety.
The lovely afternoon brought a suitably glowing sunset, the first of three consecutive glorious golden hours that will make their way into these pages in due course. Porthtowan, a place I’ve often overlooked, really earns its stripes at this time of year when everything is reduced to black and gold, the colours of our wild and windswept county. Not so windswept today, so the jury is still out on the spikes, but they’ll surely be tested more rigorously soon. And so far, all three of them are still where I put them. As long as I keep remembering to check they’re all still there each time I move the tripod, everything will be just fine.
British singer and songwriter VV Brown gives an electrifying performance during a special show and taping during SXSW on Friday, March 19 at the Gas Pipe stage. More images from her set to come later.
for more information on miss brown...google or wikipedia are your friends!
copyright 2010 jmtimages...all rights reserved
Many of you have requested a Poseable Arms Tutorial, so here it is, as promised! I explained the best I can, but if you have further questions, don't hesitate to ask. Have extra pieces in case of an accident; you may need multiple test trials for this (I know I did :P). I hope you can use this tutorial to improve your figures! View on all sizes for close-ups on the instructions.
What you will need:
-Torso - www.bricklink.com/PL/973.jpg?1
-Arms - www.bricklink.com/PL/981982.jpg?0
-Old skeleton arm - www.bricklink.com/PL/6265.gif?0
-Lever - www.bricklink.com/PL/4593.gif?0
-A crafting knife
-Superglue
-Andrew
No i have not lost the plot and spent time stacking up these pebbles , how they managed to stand up in the wind i have no idea , well done to the person(s) who managed this :-)
...with a porcelain butterfly
The bracelet is an inexpensive but a tastefully put together piece, which my daughter loves. The porcelain is a 'Franz porcelain' piece with stunning craftsmanship and elegance.
In the HMM excitement, I accidentally dropped it... now it is in five pieces, ouch!
I've kept the pieces so I can do one of those Japanese 'broken is beautiful' type fuse with gold (I wish)! or at least fix with superglue!
#Trinkets
#MacroMondays
#HMM
this blindess is re-writing me, altering who i am
you are aborting my eyes and my memory.
i am detoriating.
VIEW THIS LARGE
IVE BEEN TAGGED ahhh
1. i watched a texture tutorial for photoshop yesterday so i can do it now! yay
2. i havent had a hair cut for 10 months
3. im sick of getting superglue on my fingers.
4. my money account is not interested in getting bigger.
5. my house has a lot of drafts and likes to keep opening and closing doors
6. i really dislike politics and govertments.
7. i went to an art gallery last week to see a famous work.
8. a lot of my ideas right now are failing to co-operate.
9. i really really enjoy thunderstroms
10. i would like to be left overnight in a supermarket.
11. im not very good at school.
12. i have a horrible urge to often want to follow ambulances.
13. i cant write poetry
14. i hate hate the smell of fried mushrooms
15. im terrible at science.
16. and maths is even worse.
People. PLEASE DON'T use superglue for Blythe eyechips. Don't use it on Blythe overall. Pretty please.
After several hours in the freezer and a painful procedure including a nail, a hammer, a knife and me injuring my thumb I managed to get rid of ONE eyechip. The leftovers are worthless now, of course.
This summer we abandoned our first hike when we reached Burney Falls State Park, which is on the Pacific Crest Trail. While we were drinking beers and cooling off from the 100 degree temperatures we met a hiker named Josh Perry. He was attempting to break the speed record for completing the entire 2650 mile PCT. At that time the speed record was 51 days supported (for example, with a team that provides you with food and shelter as you travel) or 60 days self-supported (for example, making all your own arrangements for food and shelter, etc along the way). The former was set in 2021 by a heavily supported ultra-marathoner sponsored by Adidas. The latter was set by Heather Anderson in 2013.
Perry was going self-supported but trying to break both records, which would have required a daily average of over 53 miles. At the time we met him he was above that pace more than half way through, but needless to say that takes a tremendous toll on the body. He was, to our eyes, looking terrible. His feet, in particular, were covered in deep open cracks and sores that were bleeding and looking pretty funky. Mrs. Orca, who often dispenses minor first aid to ragged characters on trail, literally glued these wounds closed using a tube of vetbond, a kind of superglue marketed for pets.
Honestly we did not think he stood a chance of finishing near the record, and we were really concerned for his actual safety. But in fact he did finish in 55 days, handily beating the self-supported record and coming pretty close to the supported one, all things considered. This is all the more amazing considering that things actually got much worse for him farther along the trail before he finished.
To say that this version of hiking and what Mrs. Orca and I do are not in the least related would be an understatement. Not only could I not do what these folks do, I do not believe I could take any pleasure in it even if I could do it. But, even though I can't begin to understand them, they are remarkable nonetheless.
Burney Falls, Burney Falls State Park, California.
some closer portrait looks at singer v v brown during her Aol/Spinner pop-up live performance on March 19 at SXSW in Austin, Texas.
The #MacroMondays #Swag challenge
A 1cm square lapel badge from the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, superglued to my rucksack. They fall off, y'know. A nice lady at one of their reserves insisted I took it when I presented my membership card to gain entry one morning.
Upper class Victorian ladies liked birds. Or, more accurately, they liked their plumage and, let's face it, a bird does not last long without it, particularly when they are shot to obtain it. Emily Williamson liked birds too, but she preferred them to be in one piece and flapping a bit. In 1889 she and a number of like-minded other ladies created The Society for the Protection of Birds, specifically to oppose the fashion for the murderous millinery which allowed the hats of the more fashionable ladies in society to be adorned with the gorgeous feathers of great crested grebes, egrets, birds of paradise and the like. After all, the male-only British Ornithologists Union was doing nothing about it. So it was left to the ladies to write to the papers, speak to shopkeepers who stocked feathers, contact those who wore them and to persuade the greatest fashion-setters of the age, The Royal Family, to change their own taste in hats. Progress was made. In 1899, Queen Victoria instructed those of her regiments which wore osprey feathers in their headdress to stop doing so. 10 years after it started, the campaign was clearly gaining traction.
In quite rapid order (1904) the society gained Royal Charter status and in 1921 The Importation of Plumage (Prohibition) Act was passed. It was a good start, but great crested grebes are as British as robins and sparrows are, so their plumes did not have to be imported. Still work to do then, but this was the first successful campaign by the RSPB. From that humble yet important single issue beginning, the RSPB has evolved into an influential organisation with a membership of over a million. It speaks for our birds and thereby indirectly for all flora and fauna, exerting pressure home and abroad, running over 170 reserves in the UK. Access to reserves is free to members and is a cheap (or is that cheep?) day out for others.
The stylised bird used for its logo is an avocet a bird extinct in the UK before it bred at RSPB Minsmere and which is now widespread enough to be seen with pleasure but not much surprise from train journeys where the tracks pass through the appropriate habitats.
Another success attaches to ospreys, which, having been persecuted to extinction in the UK, unexpectedly returned to breed at Loch Garten in 1954. Egg collectors raided their nest, but undeterred the birds returned the following year. The RSPB mounted a 24/7 guard on the nest, resulting in a successful breeding season. Although still scarce, ospreys, summer migrants to the UK and at the very north of their range, now breed at various places throughout the UK. The organisation also encouraged marsh harriers to breed at and spread from Minsmere. In 1971 that reserve had the UK's only breeding pair. Today there are around 600 pairs at various sites, still a very scarce bird, but improving. The RSPB was also involved in the successful reintroduction of red kites in The Chilterns. I now see them fairly regularly 100 miles away. Avocets and red kites are no longer on the UK conservation red list, but there is no reason for complacency. Of all birds, the house sparrow is regarded as common, yet its numbers have crashed and it was added to the red list on the very day the red kite was taken off it.
Incidentally, Minsmere has a cafe which serves quite superb cakes. It's almost a pity to leave them behind to actually do a bit of birdwatching, but I digress. The photo was taken as shown using 32mm of extension tubes. It's a colour photo of a very monochrome subject.
HMM all.
"You will notice a silvery, shiny sheath on the new pin feathers. These are most obvious on the top of the head and can appear as little silver spikes. "birdchannel
"Like peacock tails and a lot of other goofy feathers, quail crests (or plumes), which are actually made of six separate feathers, are apparently for impressing potential mates.
Jennifer Calkins and Nancy Burley caught a bunch of Gambel's Quail, one of the three species with a crest. They clipped the crest feathers off some of the quail and stuck them on others with superglue to make extra-long crests. Then they put a female quail in a cage with two males, one normal one, and one with a "crest extension," and timed how long the female spent hanging out with each male. Each time they repeated the experiment with a different female quail, she spent longer hanging out with the male with the crest extension than the normal one. Except in one case where the extra feathers fell off." from Quora.
"Like peacock tails and a lot of other goofy feathers, quail crests (or plumes), which are actually made of six separate feathers, are apparently for impressing potential mates.
Jennifer Calkins and Nancy Burley caught a bunch of Gambel's Quail, one of the three species with a crest. They clipped the crest feathers off some of the quail and stuck them on others with superglue to make extra-long crests. Then they put a female quail in a cage with two males, one normal one, and one with a "crest extension," and timed how long the female spent hanging out with each male. Each time they repeated the experiment with a different female quail, she spent longer hanging out with the male with the crest extension than the normal one. Except in one case where the extra feathers fell off." My quail is a California Quail.