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Not a native to the UK, but a game bird introduced from the far east.
Game keepers all over Scotland hatch pheasant eggs in incubators in preparations for the coming shooting season.
The birds become so used to human contact that they walk (they seldom fly) towards their executioner thinking they are about to be fed, then ❗️, and its lights out for pheasant.
There are even hybrid versions now, even completely black ones, just to give the killers a bit of variety.
The Pheasant is protected by the Game Acts, which give protection during the close season and allow shooting from September to February.
A view towards the castle headland across the East Harbour on a Foggy April afternoon.There was very little wind ad so the East Harbour was mill pond calm and allowed for the reflection of the yachts moored in the harbour.
Thanks for viewing this and other images in my photo stream.
The backlit trees were taken with Yashica Minister D, Ilford Pan F 50 at ISO25. Developed in Fomadon Excel.
porte d 'accès en redescendant du fort,vers le château et où la ville,la plage
🇬🇧access door coming down from the fort,towards the castle and where the town,the beach
🇩🇪 Zugangstür von der Festung hinunter zum Schloss und zur Stadt und zum Strand
Pilgrimage to the Richtberg Taferl
Pilgerweg zum Richtberg Taferl
Weyregg am Attersee, Oberösterreich
2007
Contax G2, Planar 2/45 mm, Fuji Acros, Rodinal
Print auf Foma Retrobrom mit Moersch ECO 4812
Selentonung MT 1
Like three years ago, starting the new season with a wonderful and enchanting Hubble's Variable Nebula (NGC 2261)
Previous approach: www.flickr.com/photos/olegbr/8552071862/in/dateposted/
I wanted to personally check whether it still variable ...
It was found that this is so :)
Here animation L-channel 200%: olegbr.astroclub.kiev.ua/files/astrofoto/NGC2261/NGC2261_...
Of course, 3 years - a very large interval for observing the changes in the nebula. Everything is much faster: www.umanitoba.ca/science/astronomy/cbrown/imaging/hvn/ana...
In 2013-2016 animation, I drew attention to the star just above the nebula, which is for 3 years significantly shifted to the right.
To heighten the effect, combined with the current picture image DSS., For about 60 years, the offset is already pretty decent. olegbr.astroclub.kiev.ua/files/astrofoto/NGC2261/NGC2261_...
Here www.astrosurf.com/mcianci/ngc2261.html Italian colleague calculated that the proper motion (proper motion) of the star 0.2" per year. The name is NLTT 16798 and is listed as High Proper Motion Star: simbad.u-strasbg.fr/simbad/sim-id?Ident=NLTT+16798
Explanation: What causes Hubble's Variable Nebula to vary? The unusual nebula pictured above changes its appearance noticeably in just a few weeks. Discovered over 200 years ago and subsequently cataloged as NGC 2661, the remarkable nebula is named for Edwin Hubble, who studied it earlier this century. Hubble's Variable Nebula is a reflection nebula made of gas and fine dust fanning out from the star R Monocerotis. The faint nebula is about one light-year across and lies about 2500 light-years away towards the constellation of Monocerotis. A leading variability explanation for Hubble's Variable Nebula holds that dense knots of opaque dust pass close to R Mon and cast moving shadows onto the reflecting dust seen in the rest of the nebula. (text:http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap991020.html)
This picture was photographed during 4 and 6 February 2016 in Khlepcha observatory, Ukraine.
Equipment: home assembled reflector 10 in., f/3.8
Mount WhiteSwan-180 with a control system «Eqdrive Standart», camera QSI-583wsg, Televue Paracorr-2. Off-axis guidecamera QHY5L-II.
LRGB filter set Baader Planetarium.
L = 29 * 600 seconds , bin.1, RGB = 11 * 300-450 seconds, bin.2 each filter. About 8 hours.
FWHM source in L filter 2.10"-2.97", sum in L channel - 2.55"
The height above the horizon from 40° to 48°, the scale of 1"/ pixel.
Processed Pixinsight 1.8 and Photoshop CS6
Another wintry scene from our walk above Carperby where we live. This is looking north-east toward the delightfully named Angelhaw Hill.
IMPORTANT: for non-pro users who read the info on a computer, just enlarge your screen to 120% (or more), then the full text will appear below the photo with a white background - which makes reading so much easier.
The color version of the photo above is here: www.lacerta-bilineata.com/ticino-best-photos-of-southern-...
THE STORY BEHIND THE PHOTO:
So far there's only been one photo in my gallery that hasn't been taken in my garden ('The Flame Rider', captured in the Maggia Valley: www.flickr.com/photos/191055893@N07/53563448847/in/datepo... ) - which makes the image above the second time I've "strayed from the path" (although not very far, since the photo was taken only approximately 500 meters from my house).
Overall, I'll stick to my "only-garden rule", but every once in a while I'll show you a little bit of the landscape around my village, because I think it will give you a better sense of just how fascinating this region is, and also of its history.
The title I chose for the photo may seem cheesy, and it's certainly not very original, but I couldn't think of another one, because it's an honest reflection of what I felt when I took it: a profound sense of peace - although if you make it to the end of this text you'll realize my relationship with that word is a bit more complicated.
I got up early that day; it was a beautiful spring morning, and there was still a bit of mist in the valley below my village which I hoped would make for a few nice mood shots, so I quickly grabbed my camera and went down there before the rising sun could dissolve the magical layer on the scenery.
Most human activity hadn't started yet, and I was engulfed in the sounds of the forest as I was walking the narrow trail along the horse pasture; it seemed every little creature around me wanted to make its presence known to potential mates (or rivals) in a myriad of sounds and voices and noises (in case you're interested, here's a taste of what I usually wake up to in spring, but you best use headphones: www.youtube.com/watch?v=AfoCTqdAVCE )
Strolling through such an idyllic landscape next to grazing horses and surrounded by birdsong and beautiful trees, I guess it's kind of obvious one would feel the way I described above and choose the title I did, but as I looked at the old stone buildings - the cattle shelter you can see in the foreground and the stable further up ahead on the right - I also realized how fortunate I was.
It's hard to imagine now, because Switzerland is one of the wealthiest countries in the world today, but the men and women who had carried these stones and constructed the walls of these buildings were among the poorest in Europe. The hardships the people in some of the remote and little developed valleys in Ticino endured only a few generations ago are unimaginable to most folks living in my country today.
It wasn't uncommon that people had to sell their own kids as child slaves - the girls had to work in factories or in rice fields, the boys as "living chimney brushes" in northern Italy - just because there wasn't enough food to support the whole family through the harsh Ticino winters.
If you wonder why contemporary Swiss historians speak of "slaves" as opposed to child laborers, it's because that's what many of them actually were: auctioned off for a negotiable prize at the local market, once sold, these kids were not payed and in many cases not even fed by their masters (they had to beg for food in the streets or steal it).
Translated from German Wikipedia: ...The Piazza grande in Locarno, where the Locarno Film Festival is held today, was one of the places where orphans, foundlings and children from poor families were auctioned off. The boys were sold as chimney sweeps, the girls ended up in the textile industry, in tobacco processing in Brissago or in the rice fields of Novara, which was also extremely hard work: the girls had to stand bent over in the water for twelve to fourteen hours in all weathers. The last verse of the Italian folk song 'Amore mio non piangere' reads: “Mamma, papà, non piangere, se sono consumata, è stata la risaia che mi ha rovinata” (Mom, dad, don't cry when I'm used up, it was the rice field that destroyed me.)... de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaminfegerkinder
The conditions for the chimney sweeps - usually boys between the age of 8 and 12 (or younger, because they had to be small enough to be able to crawl into the chimneys) - were so catastrophic that many of them didn't survive; they died of starvation, cold or soot in their lungs - as well as of work-related accidents like breaking their necks when they fell, or suffocatig if they got stuck in inside a chimney. This practice of "child slavery" went on as late as the 1950s (there's a very short article in English on the topic here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spazzacamini and a more in depth account for German speakers in this brief clip: www.youtube.com/watch?v=gda8vZp_zsc ).
Now I don't know if the people who built the old stone houses along my path had to sell any of their kids, but looking at the remnants of their (not so distant) era I felt an immense sense of gratitude that I was born at a time of prosperity - and peace - in my region, my country and my home. Because none of it was my doing: it was simple luck that decided when and where I came into this world.
It also made me think of my own family. Both of my grandparents on my father's side grew up in Ticino (they were both born in 1900), but while they eventually left Switzerland's poorest region to live in its richest, the Kanton of Zurich, my grandfather's parents relocated to northern Italy in the 1920s and unfortunately were still there when WWII broke out.
They lost everything during the war, and it was their youngest daughter - whom I only knew as "Zia" which means "aunt" in Italian - who earned a little money to support herself and my great-grandparents by giving piano lessons to high-ranking Nazi officers and their kids (this was towards the end of the war when German forces had occupied Italy).
I never knew that about her; Zia only very rarely spoke of the war, but one time when I visited her when she was already over a 100 years old (she died at close to 104), I asked her how they had managed to survive, and she told me that she went to the local prefecture nearly every day to teach piano. "And on the way there would be the dangling ones" she said, with a shudder.
I didn't get what she meant, so she explained. Visiting the city center where the high ranking military resided meant she had to walk underneath the executed men and women who were hanging from the lantern posts along the road (these executions - often of civilians - were the Germans' retaliations for attacks by the Italian partisans).
I never forgot her words - nor could I shake the look on her face as she re-lived this memory. And I still can't grasp it; my house in Ticino is only 60 meters from the Italian border, and the idea that there was a brutal war going on three houses down the road from where I live now in Zia's lifetime strikes me as completely surreal.
So, back to my title for the photo above. "Peace". It's such a simple, short word, isn't it? And we use it - or its cousin "peaceful" - quite often when we mean nice and quiet or stress-free. But if I'm honest I don't think I know what it means. My grandaunt Zia did, but I can't know. And I honestly hope I never will.
I'm sorry I led you down such a dark road; I usually intend to make people smile with the anecdotes that go with my photos, but this one demanded a different approach (I guess with this latest image I've strayed from the path in more than one sense, and I hope you'll forgive me).
Ticino today is the region with the second highest average life expectancy in Europe (85.2 years), and "The Human Development Index" of 0.961 in 2021 was one of the highest found anywhere in the world, and northern Italy isn't far behind. But my neighbors, many of whom are now in their 90s, remember well it wasn't always so.
That a region so poor it must have felt like purgatory to many of its inhabitants could turn into something as close to paradise on Earth as I can imagine in a person's lifetime should make us all very hopeful. But, and this is the sad part, it also works the other way 'round. And I believe we'd do well to remember that, too.
To all of you - with my usual tardiness but from the bottom of my heart - a happy, healthy, hopeful 2025 and beyond.
We haven't really had much proper winter weather yet this year, apart from one night when it briefly snowed and then melted very quickly. So I have had to go back a couple of years for a seasonal image this year. This was the view one cold and pale morning looking north along the main ridge of the Malvern Hills from the ice covered Iron Age Hill Fort that is Herefordshire Beacon towards Worcestershire Beacon in the distance on the left.
Hope you have a good one!
6.1.2020, Salisbury Plain, South Georgia.
King penguins form huge breeding colonies; for example, the colony on South Georgia Island at Salisbury Plain holds over 100,000 breeding pairs and the colony at St. Andrew's Bay over 100,000 birds. Because of the very long breeding cycle, colonies are continuously occupied year-round with both adult birds and chicks.
The king penguin feeds its chicks by eating fish, digesting it slightly and regurgitating the food into the chick's mouth.
Because of their large size, king penguin chicks take 14–16 months before they are ready to go to sea. This is markedly different from smaller penguins, who rear their chicks through a single summer when food is plentiful. King penguins time their mating so the chicks will develop over the harshest season for fishing. In this way, by the time the young penguins are finally mature enough to leave their parents, it is summer when food is plentiful and conditions are more favorable for the young to survive alone at sea.
Wikipedia
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Wearing (Details above)
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Hair-NO.MATCH_NO_CONTROL (male, size 1 )
Earrings-RichB. Bailey Earrings XL - M / L