all there was

 

02-04-26

Ticking off the days and skooshing through the dregs of Winter. Can't really call those overcast low cloud days, Spring. Nothing Spring-like about them. I kinda hate treading water like this, just waiting for an eventual sunny day when I can get out with the camera. I am nearly recovered enough from my back-and-leg-fest (which is over 7 weeks in duration now) to go running. I should probably do that. I have been running for buses and because its there but have not yet put running kit on and done the 4 mile circuit. Partly because I don't want to aggravate a nearly cured condition, partly because that hasn't been a part of any regime for over 7 weeks and I've forgotten the joys. Also: lazy.

I just mentioned this to Mary who said it reminded her of Sinead:

It's been 3 days and seven whole weeks

Since they took your love away

I went to the doctor and guess what he told me, guess what he told me?

He said girl you better try to have a run no matter what you do,

But he's a fool.

Breaking news: I put down the mouse and went for a run, goaded on by my own inertia (or lack of) and the fact that if Storm Dave (who picks those names?) ever appears, the weather won't get any better and there'll be even less incentive to get out the door wearing lycra in the next few days.

4 miles. It was okay. Not great, not awful. First run on strava in 54 days. (8minute-miling 7 weeks ago reduced to 9minute-miling today.) I've been off strava all that time but recording cycles and walks as if I was giving a hoot. I have not been giving a hoot. I have no running ambitions other than for some fitness and to burn calories. Oh and I'd like to run the Edinburgh Half in 8 weeks with my nephew and his husband-to-be. But that's more about family connections than competitive running.

And if I can't run, (pretty sure I can) then I'll have to eat slightly less. As I said a few blogs ago, the paracetamol diet I was on - munching painkillers throughout the day and night - spoiled my appetite. It was like a poor man's ozempic. I stopped drinking wine (as much) and wasn't interested in several foods and drinks I previously enjoyed. Oddly I came out of Winter hibernation a bit lighter than I've been in a long time, even though I've been exercising less. I shed the sort of weight - maybe 6 pounds - that I'd failed to do before Tenerife in December when I was trying to get beach-body ready! I have tried not to put it back on since (despite my appetite returning in spades) and seem to be just a little over 12 stone. If I keep up the same food intake I might just, if I start running regularly, limbo under the 12st mark for the first time in a few years. Not the worst start to the year. (Now that 7 weeks of sleepless-in-sciatica has eased off.)

Anyway back to the 2nd April. I had a plan to visit Warriston. It is coming alive at this time of the year and I hadn't been there for a while. Trouble was I thought there might be more butterflies in the Botanics. I swithered between venues right up to the cut off point in St Marks with the deciding factor being maybe bumping into Water Rail Dan along Powderhall and suggesting the minx was in fact a stoat. Dan wasn't there and the Botanics, while lovely in a thin sunshine was neither brimful of butterflies not worth the walk to get there. 

phone pic of the Kazak Pear, now at its finest

well worth a visit if you can get the instagrammers out of the shot

Tell a lie: I was very happy to go past the Kazak Pear which was in full blossomy bloom. I wasn't the only one appreciating it. I got out my mobile which I forget has a camera function and takes reasonable wide shots. Which my large camera does not, without changing lenses.

I checked all the reasonable spots to expect butterflies in the rock garden and the rhododendron copse and beside the pulmonairia. Zilch, nada, nothing. Not even a great tit to stand on my hand. Squint Bill, the robin with the misaligned lower mandible was there and for once I actually got him to come and sit on my hand briefly.  

Squint Bill

Buff-tailed bumble

Tree bumblebee

magnolia

I didn't stay long in the Botanics, feeling disappointed with the lack of photographic subjects. It just wasn't quite warm enough for the insects I hoped to see. Heading along Warriston Gardens to the cemetery, at the entrance to the Goldenacre playing fields there, are a few flowering bushes that sometimes attract hovers and bees. Not that much there either.

Lunuled aphideater(?)

Nomad bee (Fabricius?)

7 spot ladybird

primrose

chaffinch

After a general sweep below the crypts I went to the In Loving area, but no commas. I'd heard there was one the other day and decided to return after a short walk through the tunnel. I put down birdseed and there were the usual suspects: great tits, a robin, wood pigeons, stock doves, crows, squirrels and more distant bullfinches and blackbirds. I had a wander but equally there wasn't much going on. 

wood pigeon

chaffinch (m) checking for sparrowhawks

aggressive (but friendly to me) robin

come on if you think you are hard enough....

The bluetits were suprisingly helpful today, posing quite well for the camera and even doing splashy bathy in the stream. I'm guessing they are romantically paired off and since the eggs probably haven't yet been laid still enjoying an upbeat nestbuilding time of it. Well that's how I read it. I suppose they will be glad to be out of the cold, hungry Winter and into an abundant Spring. And there's that old bloke who arrives with bread, seeds and peanuts for us.

(That was written before the heavy sleety snow fell on the 5th April.)

female blackbird with the locally popular highly-coloured beak

although it's usually the males who sport a very orange beak

I saw this blue tit sitting up in the holly bush and only had a second or 2 to get a photo. The colours all work well together but in the rush for a photo I didn't take the time to frame it well. I nearly chopped the tail in the first photo but there is something more pleasing about that composition than the second one which is perhaps standing more centrally in the framing but doesn't look as good.

the squirrels are becoming tamer 
as the result of the regular free snacks

the crows remain cautious but always show up
at the top of the pecking order

no ID suggestions of this fungus on Obsidentify,
google suggests Coral spot fungus Netria cinnabarina

he used to be a runner

Syrphus torvus - hairy-eyed hover

wren

Warriston is a great place to hear and see wrens. They do seem to be everywhere at the moment and making their presence felt with that noisy song they angrily shout. Lots having rap-battles and territorial disputes. Which is fine if they are too busy to notice me sneaking up on them to video. (See video!) About the only thing today in good numbers.

and quite a few robins too

the bluebells are out
which means the orange tips won't be far behind

nature trail cam

My pals at the council have placed various trail cams around the cemetery. They have also put up notices letting folk know they are there and that they are movement triggered. They haven't said where they are placed and the official target is badgers and foxes (I think.) The signs also have a secondary proposition (threat is too strong a word!) that they may record people maybe being where they shouldn't be or doing what maybe shouldn't be done. (I have seen younger more limber people scaling the fence barriers the council put over the unofficial entrances people previously used.) Since I don't fall into that category (young or limber!) I haven't bothered to look for the cameras. However I saw one today, the first I have chanced upon, near the river. I am not aware of any results from these cameras and whether the council have had fun filming anything of interest. I must ask Paul. Some might be tempted to put on a puppet show (I'm thinking Harry Hill-like badgers etc.) from behind the camera. But not me, no way! 😄

chaffinch

great tit

great tit (f) and video star

male blackbird with orange++ beak

shouty wren (video star)

comma

Eventually after a while in the riverside area I returned through the tunnel to the In Loving area. There was a comma there (at last). It was doing quite a bit of chasing bees and anything else flying through its air space, so would land in a different spot after each sortie. I asked if it could please land atop a daffodil as there are a few in the area. And that would make a better photo.

There were also a couple of fun distractions to get caught up with while I waited for the comma to capitulate. One was a treecreeper who flitted nearly continuously between the old felled oak near the War Memorial (which is busy regrowing) (the oak, not the memorial) and a couple of nearby trees. It was fairly unbothered by my presence although never came down to eyelevel.

The other was a pair of great tits nest building. When I was stalking the comma I could see them taking the moss off a horizontal gravestone and flying 80 yards past the W.M. To give the comma a rest from my hovering over it, I snuck over to behind another gravestone, nearer to the great tit nest. A canny spot where they wouldn't see me but land nearby with a mouth full of moss and I'd get a great photo. 

While they didn't mind my company at the mossy stone they instantly saw me lurking a bit closer to their nesting area and immediately filed a complaint with some loud peeping. They did not pose for pics. I apologised and went back to the comma who (at last) was sitting on a very thorny branch of bramble which straddled a daffodil. Oh well, that's probably as good as it gets for now. I went for a wander over to the crypts, to leave the creatures here in peace.

treecreeper (turned through 90' to fit the space)

great tit with nesting materials

great tit giving me the evils

long-tailed tit

cluster fly?

gonna be a lovely nest!

stock dove high above

blue winter anenome

Lenten-rose

Greater periwinkle

Okay I'm just showing off here. This robin sat waiting, hoping I might put some food on a nearby stone for him, and indeed his wishes came true. While he was waiting, I took his photo which I was pleased with until I got home and saw that unfortunate branch behind, which distracts. I opened the pic in photoshop and used the cloning tool to paint out all the distrations. Maybe 20minutes to do what A.I. can do in seconds, but hey I quite enjoy it and it's the only painting I do these days. It fine tunes your eye to analyse exactly what you are seeing. Most of the time I don't bother to remove distrations as it is too much work for something nobody is going to spend more than a moment looking at. Anyway it lifted this photo considerably and I was so proud of the result I am showing you the before and after while I bask in my artwork glory. I also tidied up all the bird poop. But the robin, apart from at the stick edge, was untouched.

maybe I should just get the A.I. version. Colin R has been showing
me some excellent things it can do, removing offensive grass blades etc.

robin's reward

nearly said thank you

Just at the point I was leaving, I spooked up this second comma near the crypts. It's prob wondering where all the flippin ivy has gone! I went into super-ninja stealth mode but it was very flighty and buggered off before I got anything more than a quick record shot. Slightly annoying as it looked like it might have been a better condition model. Curses! Hopefully I'll get to interview it next visit.

another Syrphus torvus says u-know-who

lots of (snakehead?) fritillaries

another wren

chiffchaff - another video star

So I have been making lots of short videos lately. (I do this because I enjoy it. And don't see much on the internet covering the same ground that is of vastly superior quality.) If you have been noticing them on facebook you are not alone. I keep them short because if you make them longer, people stop watching after 23 seconds. Or fewer. (Facebook doesn't tell you this but youTube does. In fact it tells you more than you want to know about viewing stats of your cherished babies and how the world treated them like dirt!) If you keep them really short and can catch the public's attention in what is a sea of shouting pick-me people then eventually the algorithm notices and puts your reels in front of many more people. 

Now my ambitions (and chances) to be an influencer are slim to none. However if I am making quality video work and want it to be seen by more people, I should be aware of how the system works. Just a month or 2 ago I'd get a message saying my views of a video posted on facebook a week previously had just reached 100 views. I was thrilled. I wasn't sure how many was good but I could see the view count of the same videos on youTube and they went from single figures to around a hundred at the top end. With an occasional outlier doing 350 views. And no idea what made the difference. One Sanderling video on youTube has 1965 views (nearly twice that of the next best) and another (pretty similar, shot 3 months later) has 75 views. I have not a scoobie what the difference is.

Since I started posting reels on facebook every week or more, the figures have climbed. I was regularly getting the 100 views message. And then the 200 views message. And then the 20second reel (all facebook videos are called reels) of the wren in slo-mo sitting on a fence post recently got over 1000 views. Wait what? Also it did that in a few days. There doesn't seem to be any messages for between 200 and 1000 views. I googled how to see how many views your reels get. Go to your status page and click on reels. All your reels come up in boxes with a number, the number of views in the bottom left hand corner. In a short while I had gone from averaging a dozen or two views, to a hundred or two views. Something was going on. A few names of people living in foreign countries came up in "likes". (India? Are wrens big in India?) I should maybe look into this. 

I can't show all my reels on a single screen
so this is a scroll past them on my facebook page
numbers of views on bottom left of each one

To watch any of the intructional videos on youTube about how to increase your viewing figures on facebook reels requires a lot of fortitude and a cast iron stomach. Influencers and would-be influencers tell you how to optimise your reels. What to do. What not to do. You have to get people onboard, maybe by asking questions but never by saying "like and subscribe" a big no-no for reels as facebook does not approve! You should use portrait not landscape format. (Okay I'm out, fuck all of those people and their mobile phones.) Other stuff, like posting regularly and consistently (which I have been accidentally doing) I will continue doing.

But other stuff (using trending audio) just gives me the boak and is precisely the worst of what the tiktokkers and their internet polluting lies and shameless attention-seeking looks like. And a pox on all that. I am not looking to go viral but if I could get my work in front of the Springwatch team for consideration I think the best of it is of sufficient quality. And that doesn't happen by accident. So if you see me shouting pick-me pick-me a bit more in the near future, you'll know what it is about. My apologies in advance. I'll try to keep it short. Well it kinda has to be. I can't post anything larger than 100mb on my blog. If larger I have to youTube it and then embed or link that on my blog and facebook, which doesn't count as a reel. (Just checked and facebook seems to now have a max size of 1GB. But only 90seconds. Or maybe 3 minutes depending.) Also I am trying to post more of my shorter work on youTube to establish a channel there. I have about 50 videos there which you can see if you find any one and then click on my name. However I'll have to use my own soundtracks if I ever try to earn money from that, although as yet that hasn't been a consideration.

another wren

grape hyacinth

blackbird

A word or two about the video below: the second clip at 7 secs of the wren was shot at the wooden bridge over the WoL at St Marks Park. A bike approached as I was filming and you can hear the moment it hits the far end of the bridge followed by it getting closer and louder and then, as it goes by, it wobbles the wooden sleeper I am standing on, making a vibration on the video. I found this amusing so left it in. All the rest of it was shot in Warriston.

latest reel to limbo under 100mb

7miles in 5hrs03mins