Down by The River

Today was dull and cloudy in the main, but I had time and enthusiasm enough to take myself to the river and head out onto the patch at Jubilee Park. The water levels have dropped a lot since the last time I was there, with a big drop from the bank down to the water ....

The poor lighting was not ideal for bird photography, especially with everything on full zoom, but I pointed it at a couple of nice 5MR yearticks:

This Treecreeper was constantly active up, down and around a large tree overhanging the river and getting any shot at all was a miracle - this the only one vaguely in focus/still enough to use. A near-silent Chiffchaff was also noted but too obscured by twiggery to bother trying for a snap; no singing, just a couple of pathetic 'hooeet' calls. Best of all though were a pair of these around the pool ....

I have seen Oystercatcher at this site before, and this pair was mating frequently so perhaps they'll stay. Still plenty of Wigeon around the pool, and the lone drake Tufted Duck was now joined by a pair. Both drumming Great Spotted Woodpecker and no less than four fly-past Green Woodpeckers were nice, but oddly no Little Egrets today and sadly still no sign of Kingfisher.

Just across the road, there is a large channel/scrape that was created last year. I assume it was an attempt at flood management but it's not been effective on that front. But when the water levels drop it looks like it could be attractive to the odd common wader (and it certainly wasn't created for that purpose):

Common Sandpiper, Dunlin and LRP have all been noted around the Jubilee Park pool in past years and could easily use this. Perhaps Green or Wood Sandpiper could drop in. No waders on it today though, but both Pied and Grey Wagtail bobbing around the perimeter.

Here's a beetle from yesterday that you're going to have to take my word for ....

This is Ptomaphagus subvillosus, or at least is seems to key to that okay using Duff, a new one for me. The photo above probably looks a bit odd: that's because I spotted and took some snaps of it on the shiny black roof of Isabelle's Mini before potting it - not quite the usual habitat for this group of beetles. I've squinted at it live under the microscope but not taken any snaps as yet, and I expect it will curl up into an uncardable blob once euthanised.

The moth trap has picked up a little in terms of numbers, but not so much in species diversity. Here's a couple of NFY from the last couple of nights though:

Light Brown Apple Moth

Small Quaker

And here's some catkins to cheer us up: a few more days/degrees and these should be buzzing with inverts:

Common as Muck

I managed to nip out for a refreshing walk into the square this afternoon; nothing too strenuous, just a stroll with my net, a few pots and camera. The sun was out, mostly, after a dull start. Skylarks singing, Yellowhammers calling, but no early warblers. In fact there are still plenty of Fieldfare and Redwing around here - nothing to suggest anything moving.

When it comes to early-season flowers, I am sure that many behold the first flowering Lesser Celandines as the indicator that spring is here (along with garden and escaped snowdrops and daffs of course). However, I think on balance seeing one of these in bloom is a better indicator ....

Colt's-foot

Whereas the celandines give plenty of warning with their emergent leaves, flower buds and then the blooms, Colt's-foot just seems to emerge from nowhere with the flowers preceding the vegetation. I like that - surely they wouldn't bother if it wasn't really spring. Meanwhile the celandines keep going; they were flowering when I was last out which is getting on for three weeks ago.

 

Lesser Celandine

Of course the main thing is that the early yellow flowers, including dandelions and buttercups, are potential magnets for flies and bees. Not that I saw any on the flowers today. I did manage to net what I thought was a large fly that turned out to be a pair in cop - now pinned for later scrutiny. I've also got another fly and a couple of beetles to look at from today. Whilst out I spent some time specifically looking at and around a long-dead ash tree which had cramp balls on it. No sign of the anticipated Scarce Fungus Weevil. Later, I casually rolled a bit of random log to look underneath - nothing exciting, but when I repositioned the log I noted a bumpy variegated blob on top that I'd missed before the rolling ....

 

I sometimes find these when looking for them, but more often find them when I'm not. I just can't be that lucky, they must be genuinely common around VC55.

 

Moth Bonanza ....

.... in lots of places, just not here.

I can't remember such a poor spring for garden mothing. My garden is never great in the early and late season but this has been ridiculous. This spring has seen far more clear, cold, windy, snowy or wet nights than moderate conditions. On the few occasions when I've put a trap out, there have been more blanks than nights with a moth, and one or two moths at the most has been about it. Last night felt like it should have been much better, with mild cloudy conditions early on though it was forecast for rain in the early hours. It was certainly the best night so far this year, but it was still pants: 5 of 5sp. in the garden trap, 2 of 2sp. at the front of house actinic bulb, six species overall. Three new species for the year in that paltry lot; an Early Grey that refused to sit for a photo and I gave up after an hour, and these two:

Oak Beauty

Clouded Drab

Meanwhile spring keeps stuttering. I had a Brimstone flying through the garden yesterday, along with what was probably a Small Tortoiseshell. I've seen a few large bumble bees - only one of which lingered long enough for me to get out and look at (Buff-tailed). But whilst yesterday was nice and sunny and felt like a turning point, today has gone back to mainly grey and damp. I need a day of decent sunshine to perk me up and get me out and about walking.

Tape Tip

Yesterday was gloriously spring-like in the morning, and not too bad in the afternoon either. Warm, sunny, light breeze, perfect for getting out. I was busy. Today ... meh, wet, wild and windy. In between a return to college-taxi duties, I noted this on the front of the house:

One of those oddly leggy things that by virtue of having halteres qualifies as a fly. By the way, can you imagine how truly horrifying that 80s film would have been if Jeff Goldblum had morphed into a giant leggy twat with massive palps. He is quite tall .... Anyway.

A Tipula sp. There are a few very similar species, of which I tend to see one earlier in the year and one later. Or at least I believe I do, I don't look at enough of them critically to be certain. A quick check from the side should confirm ....

... a nice clear and obvious dark line on the side of the thorax from the neck to below the wing, which should be enough to declare this is Tipula rufina. I'm not going to pretend I keyed it all the way, I already knew what it could/should be.

A bloke that I'd never heard of died today, but whose work had a major impact on the lives of many of us that are a certain age. Lou Ottens, the lead inventor of a nifty recording device - the tape/cassette. Imagine how different life would be not having experienced the massive adrenaline rush when you pushed the buttons bang on time to record the latest pop smash without getting the radio DJ voice spoiling it ... it'd be like living in my kids generation where everything happens by magic and no one gives a shit about how it happened.

Virtually Nostalgic

Do not feel obliged to click on any of the hyperlinks!

Christmas 1983 - what did you get? Back then my interests included music and girls; natural history was something I enjoyed on the telly, but never experienced or looked for in the real world.

Christmas 1983 I was 15, and I know exactly what I got; a particularly special present that I'd clamoured for and that my parents must have felt was worth saving for. Expensive presents were not the norm in my happy childhood, I must have been a very good boy that year! It was one of these ....

The iconic Roland SH-101; a truly excellent monophonic analog synth with built in step-sequencer, Gate in/out and - best of all, a separate modulator hand grip so you could hang it with a strap like a guitar and look like a real synth-wanker. It came in grey initially, with red and blue models to follow. It only had a single oscillator, and in the great scheme of things was about as basic a synth as you could get even then. But it sounded brilliant, especially for snappy bass sounds and squelchy leads. This cost c£240 back then, a fair chunk; a decent condition one now costs £900-£1200. With heavy heart I sold mine for £250 in c1996 when I needed the money more than what was by then an obsolete and not much use to me 'gadget', before the term vintage applied and retro gear costs escalated rapidly.

This was desired as part of a plan involving a mate Kev and his cousin Liam. We'd already got some very basic keyboards (not synths), including the ridiculously popular Casio VL-Tone which (literally) was a calculator with a built in 2.5 octave keyboard, some tinkly sounds on it and a some basic rhythms (remember Da Da Da by Trio - based on a VL-Tone with some additional guitar and shit vocals, also the track Get Carter on Human League's Dare album is a VL-Tone). Anyway, around the same time that I was truly creaming my pants on finding the SH-101 was before me, Liam was enjoying the same feeling whilst Kev was going one better. He got one of these ....

Wow - look a the knobs on that. The equally iconic and in many ways more capable Sequential Circuits PRO-ONE; also monophonic, with two oscillators that could be detuned, big beefy analog sounds, again a built-in step sequencer and Gate in/out. But no grip, wooden frame and reduced synth-wanker potential. I think these were c£350 back then; you might pick one up for c£1800 now ....

With the acquisition of these three synths, we set about becoming a globally renowned electronic band. That was the plan anyway. Within a short time we'd saved and added a couple of key items to get us going properly .....

The Roland TR-606 'Drumatix'. At the time this small box was the tinniest and crapiest drum machine you could imagine, but it was affordable for us and - crucially - it could be used to sync all three synths and the drum machine together through the gates to keep in time. We used the step-sequencers to run basslines, arpeggios and simple sequences over a series of programmable electro-drum patterns, and it was a thing of spellbinding beauty. With the one exception that none of the synths had the ability to 'save' sounds or sequences etc. Every time we wanted to do something it was start from scratch and run it all again. Until we got this ....

The Tascam 244 Portastudio - a four-track cassette machine. It used both sides of the tape from the same direction, with each stereo channel on each side becoming one track. It allowed us to record the drums, bass and backings and then to play over as a more finished track. Importantly, we always used one track to record a sync signal so we could add further sequences timed in with the existing tracks. It also allowed us to 'bounce' tracks, so we could mix two tracks to one and add another allowing us to record demos. With this, and a couple of basic Boss foot pedals for delay and reverb, we were set for some great times creating sounds, crafting our songs, recording backings and eventually playing a few gigs. And locally there was no-one else doing this in the same way at the time; I'm sure other bands had synths that were played with other instruments but it was another couple of years or more before we had other local electronic bands. Later in our journey we played alongside other bands in all-electronic nights.

Before I go further we picked up another, older, monophonic analog synth in the early days that is worth a mention too ....

The Moog Prodigy, the source of the name for the band The Prodigy ... which is exactly what we had called ourselves seven years earlier before we got the proper synths and became The Red Branch.

But it was a time of technical revolution. The synths we had were already a world away from the patch/matrix synths of the late 70s, and increasingly affordable and accessible. But equipment was superseded and obsolete within a couple of years. Or months! Right at the start of our journey, MIDI was in its infancy and only included on absolute top-end gear, but soon became the industry standard. FM synthesis was new enough that no one outside of the professional world knew much about it, until the DX-7 was all over Top of the Pops. Sampling was new in the mid-80s, multi-faceted workstation synths came along, direct to hard disk recording etc etc. Our journey became more of a race to keep up than being the next global electro phenomenon.

Our growing list of equipment included: Roland TR-707 drum machine - with MIDI and gate outputs which allowed us to run analog and digital together; x2 Yamaha CX-5M computer systems which were basically half a DX-7 FM synth in a box with some sequencing software and MIDI; DX-27 FM synth; Kawai K1 digital synth; Akai s612 single-shot sampling rack; Prophet 2000 multitimbral sampling synth. Our last major purchases were the Akai s2800 sampling rack and a Roland MC-50 step sequencer (which replaced the CX-5Ms). With these two, along with a Roland DEP-5 effects rack, we could effectively create and record a whole track in one go using nothing else as the sampler was multi-voice and the sequencer held multiple patterns and tracks - like a modern computer based DAW in that respect. And we could save everything to disk. We gained control, but lost the soul.

So, what's all this nostalgic techno-bollocks all about then.

Every now and then I get an unnaturally intense feeling that I should be searching online to see if the prices of some of the properly capable vintage analog poly synths are dropping. In particular, I would massively like to own either of these beasts:

The flagship Jupiter 8. Sliders, buttons, massive sounds. Which last time I looked was going to cost the best part of £12000. Or one of these maybe ....

The Sequential Circuits Prophet-5, like a polyphonic PRO-ONE but way better than that. A slightly less eye-watering £3000 - £4000 ish.

But then I have a moment of clarity. Maybe the nostalgia is rose-tinted, the sounds are retro, the synths themselves are bigger than I have space for and - most importantly - they can't really do anything that I can't recreate on the desktop through FL Studio and virtual studio technology (VST) plug-in synths. In fact, I have working demo versions of both of the above classics that I can create sounds and record into Audacity, and then load into a VST sampler to use. For free. With no more space than the PC keyboard. Even if I put that to one side and went for it, why spend £12K on a vintage Jupiter 8 when Roland have recently launched the Jupiter X - which is like having x4 Jupiter 8s and other synths wrapped up in a keyboard package that looks like the real thing but is essentially a number of VSTs in a big box with a keyboard. For c£1700.

And anyway, modern synths are nothing like they used to be; they use a variety of wavetable, digital, virtual analog, formant, sampling and any mix of these generators to create much bigger sounds than were possible before. There are even synths that will use a 'picture' as the basis for an editable sound. Here's a demo of a VST synth I downloaded today as an example:

Arturia Pigments: colourful, powerful, virtual. No physical knobs.

I'm sure the sun will come out soon and I'll have something to photograph and take my mind of other nonsense, but today after catching up with work I've had a great time just playing with creating sounds. Relaxing for me, probably aural torture for anyone else in the house.

Here's a proper synth-wanker, on a track that largely uses (probably several) SH-101s for the synth and bass parts (though not the way he's posing with it ....).

Suck, Don't Blow!

I've had a sedentary and unproductive week on the natural history front, mainly due to feeling a bit crappy from the chemo but at least I've not missed a load of great weather in the process. I've not been completely unproductive, I've sorted out a couple of tools for the coming invert season. With the impending easement of lockdown measures coming up it seemed the right time anyway.

So, I've been busily spending money on Amazon and suchlike. I've restocked with some entomological setting pins and a couple of new handtools for dissection and fiddling about (pin handles mainly), and a couple of chemicals that might come in handy. I've ordered some white Correx board to make some flight intercept vane traps. And, most importantly, I've finally got hold of one of these ....

It's a 36V cordless model, which is actually very lightweight. That comes with having the build quality of a child's garden toy and I doubt it would survive being dropped to the ground or being abused too much. But it does suck, and I know others use this model with success so should all be good. I've sourced some jam-making muslin bags but they may be a bit big - not sure yet. Also not decided on how best to affix the bags to the tube - gaffer tape, tie-wrap, jubilee clip - all suggestions welcomed.

I hope this will get some use in the next couple of weeks - I'll wait until another prolonged dry spell so I'm not sucking up wet debris, and head out to somewhere with tussocks after the first stage of easement which seems to allow leaving home for recreation (social one-to-one, picnics, suction sampling ....).