Cooking With Richard

The elderberries were really disappointing this year, but we eventually found a single tree which had a small crop that we could pick:

Last year was much better …

Update

After cleaning them up, here are the totals:

• Elderberries: 2 lbs (about 1 kg)
• Brambles: 1 lb (about 500g)
• Tiny spiders: 4 (1 rescued, 3 will end up in a crumble)

and more time-lapse Tokyo photography.

Tring has a small but rather wonderful Natural History Museum. Actually it is more properly known as the Walter Rothschild Zoological Museum, which is now managed by the Natural History Museum in London. The collection is marvellously Victorian — 4000 stuffed animals, a spectacle rather than an education.

This tiny fellow turned up in the garden today. We think he’s a garden warbler, a plain tiny brown bird who migrates to the UK during Spring and Summer only.

The photos aren’t really good because he uses the cover of the trees and bushes and doesn’t come out.

There were plenty of common birds in the garden today, including this beautiful juvenile blue tit. I can tell this is a juvenile because his (or her?) crown isn’t yet blue, but more of a black colour.

This is one of the blackbirds’ daughters. She seems to like to sit around in the garden in the late afternoon just sunbathing. Crazy …

Ahhhhhh …..

(more…)

Baby bluetit in the tree:

Two baby bluetits eating:

This is probably their mum:

What you looking at?

Greattit mum and baby. Update – I think these are actually Coal tits:

Look at that sky …

Zoomed:

The weather was miserable all over the bank holiday weekend. Today was hardly better but there were at least a few brief sunny spells. A bloke came over to fix the boiler and he grumbled about the state of our back lawn, which is looking more jungle than bowling green at the moment. It’s not exactly my fault if there haven’t been any days in May when we’ve had the happy coincidence of no rain and no work.

Anyhow, after one rainy spell, a double rainbow:

Previously the lovely ふみねこ said “Oh lord” …

In the garden today, a male blackbird:

and a robin:

and their lunch:

[Editor’s note: The next two photos look quite similar, sorry if you can’t tell the difference]

and another blackbird:

This prompted a small WTF moment when I was in the supermarket today:

Jeyes Fluid “Kills bird flu”. Well I’m sure it does. So does bleach, or probably washing up liquid.

Tonight’s lunar eclipse.

I was using my camera with the rubbish 300mm lens, in our back garden:

Full moon, taken at around 9pm:

This is about when we can see the eclipse:

Half-eclipsed in the earth’s shadow:

More:

What doesn’t really come out well in photographs, and what you don’t know unless you read stories about 19th century travellers: The lunar eclipsed moon has an uncanny bloody quality about it. We know that this is caused by light filtering through the earth’s atmosphere, but still it is unsettling. I tried to capture this in this photograph, taken with a 1 minute exposure during the eclipse:

JBS Haldane’s seminal essay: On being the right size.

These are quite cool, but can we eat them?