The Mermaid Inn

The Mermaid Inn

After my gap year travels were over, I went with my family on a summer holiday to Wittersham, in Kent. This is a photograph I took in Rye, another nearby town of the Mermaid Inn pub (see the silhouette of its sign?). I can't remember if we even went in the pub, but I do recall darting back to take a picture as the sun was setting and my family were heading off up the road.

Queenstown, NZ

By Lake Wakatipu, Queenstown, New Zealand

And we're back to our regular every-other-day photography service! I've been kicking myself lately because there's been a few times when I've been out and about and seen opportunities for some really interesting photos...and I haven't had my camera with me. Fail! But along with a new resolution to try to carry a camera with me more often, that's also inspired me to dig out some old pictures from before I started this blog. This one, as with several upcoming photographs, was taken on my old camera which was nowhere like as good as my current one. For a fairly reasonably-priced non-DSLR camera, my current one is great, but my previous one was not as good - but it would be a shame to let all the nice pictures I've taken on it languish on my hard drive, so I'm posting them anyway.

This photograph was taken on my gap year, when I was staying at a youth hostel by the shore of Lake Wakatipu in Queenstown, on New Zealand's South Island. I was there in May/June 2007, right as the winter season was beginning. Queenstown's a big spot for adventure tourism; me and the friend I was travelling with wanted to go hang-gliding, but the weather wasn't good enough. But we did manage a trip to an ice bar, a cruise around the incredibly beautiful Milford Sound and a speed boat trip.

Oh, and a canyon swing, which was terrifying. I refused to go bungee jumping, because I can't think of anything worse that doesn't involve actual bodily dismemberment. But we wanted to do something adventurous, and as hang-gliding was off, we settled on the canyon swing as a good alternative. I thought I could probably cope better with falling off a cliff if I was at least the right way up.

What the hell is a canyon swing? I hear you cry. Well, in this case it's a platform 360ft (109m, if you're feeling metric) above the Shotover River. You stand on said platform, after being tied into a harness, and then you jump off it, freefalling for 60m and then the "swing" aspect kicks in and you're transformed into a giant pendulum swinging wildly back and forth above the river. If you're a complete mentalist - like my friend - you can mix it up by, say, tipping yourself backwards off the platform while tied to a plastic chair. If like me you're terrified of heights, you can just jump off, though I should warn you that a split second after doing so you will be genuinely convinced that you've just accidentally committed suicide.

Blue Morpho Butterfly



Peleides Blue Morpho Butterfly

This photograph makes me highly annoyed that my hands are so wobbly. I tried so many times to get this shot and this is sadly the best one I have, I still completely failed to centre it nicely and managed to chop the tip of the butterfly's wing right off. I need a tripod or something!

Anyway, even if it's far from perfect, I just love the colours in this picture. Blue Morpho butterflies are completely stunning anyway. I hadn't realised that there are actually three species of butterfly which are commonly referred to as the "blue morpho" - morpho rhetenor, morpho menelaus, and morpho peleides. This one is a peleides blue morpho, also known as the Common Morpho, also known as The Emperor. Of course, controversy is rife in lepidopteric circles and some believe that morpho peleides is merely a subspecies of morpho helenor.

The Common Morpho is found in Central and South America, and the amazing blue colour in its wings is created by the diffraction of light from tiny scales which cover its wings. The underside of the wings is brown and much less exciting, so when it folds up and settles on a tree trunk, it's highly camouflaged.

Alice The Camel

A Bactrian Camel at London Zoo

This is a photo of a Bactrian camel, and a very handsome one too, even if he does have straw all over his face. Bactrian camels are super fluffy and have two humps, while dromedary camels are less fluffy and only have one. Strangely, although there are over two million Bactrian camels alive today, they are listed as critically endangered because most of these camels are domesticated, and only about 800 still live in the wilds of China and Mongolia.

Hay There

It's a photograph of a giraffe eating hay. Hurrah! The giraffes at London Zoo were a little sad when we saw them, because they weren't able to go outside as the ground was just covered in ice. I've never seen a giraffe slip over, but I imagine it's not something to be desired.

Mineral or Vegetable?

Brief break from my zoo pictures with a quick return to the snowy days of February. Fret not: more animals coming soon!

Hey Hey We're The Monkeys

Two squirrel monkeys

And we're back to photos of squirrel monkeys! This photograph was taken, as you've already worked out, at London Zoo.

The most famous squirrel monkey of them all was of course Miss Baker, one of the first two animals who were launched into space in 1959 and survived, along with the rhesus monkey Miss Able. She went on to live for twenty five years afterwards, receiving copious amounts of fanmail from children who'd heard of her exploits, and when she died of kidney failure in 1984, over 300 people attended her funeral.

Who knew!

The Miscreant

Escaped Pelican at London Zoo

In my last post, I mentioned that when I visited the Penguin Beach at London Zoo there were two naughty Eastern White Pelicans who sneaked into the penguin enclosure; here's a picture of one of them. Apparently the pond that the pelicans usually live in had frozen over, so they were moved to temporary accomodation next to the penguins, from which they promptly escaped, climbed onto the roof of a shed by the penguin beach, and proceeded to jump over and flap across to the pool.

Various keepers were on hand to herd the mischevious pelicans back to their temporary home, and they were both recaptured fairly quickly! It was highly entertaining though, I must admit.

Funny Looking Penguin

Juvenile Penguin at London Zoo

This photograph is of what I can only describe as a funny looking penguin at London Zoo's Penguin Beach. Penguin Beach contains four species; the rockhopper penguin, blackfooted penguin, humboldt penguin and macaroni penguin. I've looked up  pictures of each of these species, and this penguin looks like none of them. (On the day I visited, Penguin Beach also contained two pelicans who had escaped from their own accomodation and jumped into the penguin pool, but clearly this is not a pelican either.)

So on balance, I suspect this photograph is of a juvenile humboldt or blackfooted penguin, but who knows which! It's tricky to judge before their adult feathers come in. Alas, I obviously make a poor ornithologist. Ho hum! He was an obligingly photogenic fellow, whatever he is, unlike all his friends who were waddling and splashing and zooming around the pool with no thought for the humans vainly trying to get a good shot of them.

Squirrel Monkey

Common Squirrel Monkey

As promised, another squirrel monkey photograph, taken on my recent trip to London Zoo. Whilst I took dozens of photos of the monkeys, it was admittedly tricky to get pictures of them that weren't crazily blurry. They don't like to sit still (probably because in the wild this might result in being eaten).

The Common Squirrel Monkey comes from the Amazon Basin in South America, and lives in the middle canopy of the rainforest. At first, when I saw the monkey in this photo carefully examining and later nibbling his tail I wondered what he was doing, but apparently squirrel monkeys have a habit of smearing food onto their tails, and may smear urine all over themselves as well. A charming habit! I suspect that advertising that particular fact in the squirrel monkey enclosure would actually be more effective at persuading people not to try to touch the monkeys than all the signs warning that they bite.

An interesting fact about squirrel monkeys relates to their colour vision; in these monkeys, one gene on the X chromosome codes for colour vision, and there are three versions of this gene, each of which produces a pigment sensitive to a different wavelength of light. Because male squirrel monkeys have only one X chromosome, they are dichromatic (i.e. any colour which they can see can be created using a mixture of just two pure spectral lights - similar to what we call colour blindness in humans); however, because female squirrel monkeys have two X chromosomes, about two-thirds of them have trichromatic vision like humans (i.e. a mixture of three pure spectral lights is required to create all the colours which they are able to see). Researchers have successfully used gene therapy to give adult male squirrel monkeys trichromatic colour vision.

Welcome to the Jungle

Squirrel monkey at London Zoo

It's a monkey!

This weekend I went to ZSL London Zoo with my boyfriend. We had been meaning to go for about a year, because last year for his birthday present I adopted a squirrel monkey for him from the zoo,* but obviously we had to wait until the coldest weekend in the year. Being a naturally chilly person (both in temperature and personality), I wore eight layers of clothing to ensure I wouldn't get too cold. I was so bundled up I couldn't lift my arms above shoulder-height. But it was worth it!

But anyway, we had an awesome day! It was the first day of half-term, so I had expected it would be pretty busy, but in fact it was fairly quiet - I think the cold kept people at home. It was really nice being able to walk around the zoo without being buffeted by hordes of people. We went to visit my boyfriend's adopted squirrel monkey, Bounty, who lives with his monkey clan in an awesome exhibit which you can walk through. It's highly entertaining to watch them all bouncing around the place, and consequently I have a whole lot of monkey photos which will probably take over this blog for some time! Prepare to learn more than you ever needed to know about squirrel monkeys...

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*Because I kept asking what he wanted for his birthday and he kept giving me silly answers like "a monkey". I am nothing if not literal :D

Wonky Architecture in the Snow

There's a reason why I hardly ever post pictures of architecture or buildings or even landscapes on this blogs, and it's because I struggle like a small child to take pictures that are even vaguely level. The even sadder thing is that my camera actually does have a "grid" function that you can turn on, superimposing a grid onto the screen, and then you can line up the picture with the lines on the screen and not take photos that look like they've been captured by a seasick photographer on the high seas. Alas, I have only ever turned the grid function on by mistake, and I have no idea how to do it on purpose. Consequently I fear that my photographs will continue to be as ludicrously wonky as this one.

Another snowy architecture photo. I do like the colours in the photo, especially the weirdly green trees, covered in lichen. If only my hands weren't so ludicrously wobbly!

Dark Archway

If only it had been really sunny I think this could have been a good photo. We've had copious amounts of snow here for the past week, and as I missed the first day of snow, when it's all pristine as nice, due to being a hundred and fifty miles away, I was determined to catch up with the photographic opportunities as soon as possible. I went on a mad rampage of snowy photography on a very overcast day, and then today, when it is still snowy but also very sunny… I forgot to take my camera as I left the house. Facepalm! It's even more inexcusable because I got some nice pictures of snowy rooftops from my window this morning, after last night deposited another inch or so of fresh snow across the landscape. Ho hum!

I am going to the zoo at the weekend, so look out for some blurry pictures of exotic animals coming your way very soon...

Winter Berries

Lovely red winter berries on a sunny (yet extremely cold) day. It's enough to make you want to cook some kind of delicious red berry strudel.

Except I didn't know whether or not they were poisonous.

Metal Implant

I have no idea what this random yet very specifically shaped piece of metal was doing on the top of a wooden post near my house, but I rather liked the colours it's made as it gently rusts away. It's hard to find nice flowers to photograph in the winter, but I guess that doesn't mean there's nothing at all of interest around and about.

Flower... or flour?

Pictures of flowers, pictures of flowers, pictures of flowers, picture of a leaf... It's enough to make you want to scream. Like this fine gentleman, a sculpture at Buckfast Abbey (in fact, I like to imagine the sculpture represents the facial expression which is induced by trying Buckfast tonic wine. It's like alcoholic Calpol).

Being mildly obsessive, I have been monitoring my blog stats and it turns out that by far my most popular post was one in which I talked at length about the strange fact that whales are dinosaurs are always compared to buses. Unsurprisingly, these musings were unrelated to the picture of the day, which was of a flower. I'm sure that all the people wanting to find out how many buses equals a humpback whale were wildly disappointed when they discovered my blog is almost solely comprised of photographs of flowers, but at least this knowledge has somewhat strengthened my resolve to continue writing about random bits and bobs. Because it's interesting to find what people find interesting.

And so. I have been racking my brains. After my recent post about pandas, I was trying to think of something else to discuss. And then it hit me. Flower. Flour. What's going on there?

Flower vs. Flour

As it turns out, there are multiple companies whose names were inspired by these homophones. Predictably, they are bakers (I nearly said "cakists". But obviously that's not actually a word. Although possibly it should be, to distinguish between those who waste their time making bread, and those who concentrate on delicious, delicious cake).

Those who have trouble spelling will no doubt be delighted to learn that originally, the words "flour" and "flower" were spelled the same way. They both apparently derive from the Old French word fleur, which meant both "flower" in its modern sense, and also had a sense of "the finest", as in the finest part of the meal. The meal as in the ground-up grains, not the meal as in lunch dinner breakfast. Etymology is baffling. Apparently Samuel Johnson's 1755 dictionary did not recognise a difference in spelling between the two words, but by the 1830s there had, presumably, been a few incidents of unwary cooks feeding their families cakes made out of the shrubbery, and the whole mess was gradually straightened out.

I've not seen anything to support/prove this in any of the etymologies I've found, but based on my research (coughgooglingcough) I wondered whether the eventual clarification of the two words had something to do with the city of Rochester, New York; in the 1820s the town developed a famous and booming flour mill industry and then in the 1830s it also gained a renowned and thriving seed-selling business. Perhaps the residents of Rochester found it especially important to differentiate between flour and flowers; certainly the town's nickname is given initially as the Flour City and, later, the Flower City. Given how neatly the dates line up, I'm surprised I haven't been able to find anything linking the town to wider acceptance of the two spellings. Rochester, you're missing a trick.

5 Reasons Giant Pandas Are a Boost to the Economy



Stained Glass at Buckfast Abbey

 Another picture of the impressive and rather modern stained glass at Buckfast Abbey. I do like the way the light shines through it. But that's not what I want to talk about today.

There has been a surprising amount of vitriol directed at the Edinburgh Zoo's newest arrivals; two giant pandas on loan from China until 2021, Tian Tian and Yang Guan. This is largely because it is supposedly costing the zoo $1,000,000 per year to host them, which some people see as a waste of money. However, I love pandas, and so I disagree. I have thought about this complex issue in great depth, and present my conclusions below:

5 Reasons Giant Pandas Are a Boost to the Economy

1. Pandas are black and white. Therefore, as monochrome creatures, their arrival will be saving newspapers everywhere a small fortune on printing costs. Everyone knows that coloured ink is more expensive.

2. Pandas eat nothing but bamboo. As every gardener knows, bamboo grows like the blazes and is tricky to get rid of. Horticulturalists across the nation can send their unwanted bamboo to Edinburgh Zoo, and the pandas will eat for free every night.

3. Pandas are reluctant breeders, at best. Fewer panda babies means fewer claims for child support.

4. Pandas take shelter in trees or caves, but they do not build permanent homes. This means that the chance of giant pandas precipitating another subprime mortgage crisis is virtually nil.

5. Pandas, unlike many members of our great nation, are actually supposed to be fat and lazy. This means that, unlike humans of similar size and girth, they will not demand costly gastric banding procedures on the NHS.

For Bodies Dead By Drowning

House of Reception for bodies apparently dead by drowning: does very much what it says on the tin. I guess it's always useful to know where apparatus, barrow and drags are kept, for that time your come across a floating corpse...

 Not exactly the world's most artistic photo but I really liked this sign in a museum in a town in Devon. Sadly I cannot remember which town. If I could, I would highly recommend it! It's kind of a grisly topic but I suppose in the absence of proper emergency services, there are worse systems...

Freaky Stuff

Close-up of the stem of a giant gunnera plant, gunnera manicata. Them's some peculiar plants, it's got to be said!

Pitcher Perfect

This is a picture of a carnivorous pitcher plant. They lure insects into the pitcher, and they then fall in, are drowned in the liquid inside the plant, and are gradually dissolved. Nice, huh? It is a cunning adaptation to soil that's too poor for most plants to survive.