Wild orchids in May

Here in Scotland we think of the main orchid season as starting in mid-June, but after the recent hot weather I wondered which species I could find already in flower in May.

No surprise that the first was the Early Purple Orchid (Orchis mascula), near Aberfoyle on 22nd May.

More of a surprise, on the same day, was a number of Lesser Twayblades (Neottia cordata) on the Menteith Hills.

On 25th May we found some Northern Marsh Orchids (Dactylorhiza purpurella) coming into flower near Fintry.

By 26th May, large numbers of Heath Spotted Orchids (Dactylorhiza maculata) were in flower on the lower slopes of Ben Lomond.

Just in time, this Common Twayblade (Neottia ovata) at Dumbrock near Milngavie managed to open one floret on 28th May.

Hungry birds

Our garden seems full of hungry birds just now, and some have become very tame. The most demanding for food are the starlings, jackdaws and blackbirds. One of the jackdaws appears almost as soon as I open the door, and the male blackbird has been hopping right up the steps to try and beat the other birds, occasionally even feeding from my hand. At first he was scared of the starlings, but then he discovered that he was able to scare them by being extremely aggressive. One of the starlings stood up to him, and there were some fights, both on the ground and in mid-air, that were so fierce that neither got any food.

Yesterday I decided to mow the front lawn, so I wasn't as attentive to their needs as usual. I was very surprised to turn around and find a female duck approaching the duck food trays, as most of the mallard ducks that now visit us are quite nervous and fly off if we open the front door, yet this one didn't seem much bothered about the mower. Just then, Fred shut the garage door, and that was too much for her. She flew off, and I went to find Fred. I was rather puzzled to hear noises coming from the house as I was sure he must be at the garage. Then I realised what had happened. I had left the front door open a few inches for the cable to the mower, and the male blackbird had taken advantage of my absence to find out where the food supply was. Unfortunately he went too far and ended up in our sitting room where he panicked. He must have been there for some time before I found him, because that end of the room was covered in black feathers as he continued to flutter against the window. I opened the window and out he went.

I didn't see much of him for the rest of the day. Today he is back and as demanding as ever, but his manners towards the starlings seem to have improved. I think he has lost just a bit of his confidence as a result of his adventure.

Much ado about nothing

"In the beginning there was nothing. God said, 'Let there be light!' And there was light. There was still nothing, but you could see it a whole lot better."
Ellen DeGeneres, (attributed)

"God made everything out of nothing, but the nothingness shows through."
Paul Valery (1871 - 1945)

"There is still a difference between something and nothing, but it is purely geometrical and there is nothing behind the geometry."
Martin Gardner (1914 - 2010),

What comes into mind when you think of the solar system? A collection of planets of different colours and textures, all displayed together on one page? Or perhaps one to each page?

Last year, Mishka Henner produced his "Astronomical," a publication which represents a scale model of the solar system. The sun fills most of pages 1 and 2. Jupiter and Saturn are quite small on their respective pages. The other planets are not much more than dots. But what impresses you most are the other pages. Page after page of nothingness, representing the true distance between the objects we recognise. The entire publication consists of 12 volumes, each of 506 pages. That's a total of over 6000 pages, of which all are plain black apart from the 12 that show the sun, planets and asteroid belt. An awful lot of nothing.

An online version of the same idea can be viewed at www.phrenopolis.com/perspective/solarsystem/
The sun fills most of the screen and the planets lie to its right. As you scroll, you are lucky if you don't miss the tiny spots that are the other planets before you arrive at Pluto on the extreme right. The author claims that the page is over half a mile wide.

Another version, rather larger in scale, can be seen at
www.phrenopolis.com/perspective/index.php

But what about the other end of the scale? The atoms that the planets, including ours, are made of contain protons and electrons. If the mass represented by the proton of a hydrogen atom were to be represented by a circle 1cm across, the electron would be about half a kilometre away. (see Visionlearning). However, when it comes to atoms, things aren't really as simple to understand as this. Nevertheless, there's still an awful lot of nothing.

For further discussion, see Physics Forums discussions
"Atoms are 'nothing but' space versus 'mostly' space"
and
"If all the empty space of atoms were removed, how big would this earth be?".

"Man is equally incapable of seeing the nothingness from which he emerges and the infinity in which he is engulfed."
Blaise Pascal (1623 - 1662)


Bending ice spike

Regarding my last post, thanks to Professor Erlend M. Schulsen of the Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth, New Hampshire, US, for his explanation as to why the ice spike bent:

"As to why the spike bent in time--the plastic hinge: You have here a superb example of creep deformation, also known as viscous flow --think molasses. Under its own weight, warm ice (and your ice undoubtably was at a temperature close to its melting point, if not right at the melting point) deforms plastically in a time-dependent or viscous manner. Temperate glaciers do the same thing, although more slowly. The action in your case occurred more quickly because the driving stress acting on the load-bearing area (i.e, on the most narrow part of the waist)was probably much higher than that acting on ice within a glacier, amplified by the bending of the spike. Indeed, creeping seems not the right word here. Running, perhaps?"