Martin Collinson
@docmartin2mc
Britain's Top Vicarious Birder. Aberdeen Wildife DNA lab. Aniridia research. Likes birds, stamps, ghosts, art, and wasps. Leeds United #lufc because I was bad in a previous life.
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The appropriately named Dark Green Fritillary on the clifftops today.
Loirston Loch on fire today, metaphorically. The Great Crested Grebes have a stripy chicken, an Osprey circled for a bit, and the Little Grebes have families.
Ngl it was a shock. Presume these 2 have failed to breed elsewhere and moved here.
With Download Festival then a trip to Scarborough I missed the last 2 weekends at Loirston Loch and while I was away *Great Crested Grebes moved in!!* My first at this site and less than annual in my 10K radius. Occasional fly-bys on seawatches. #winning
PeopleWhoHaveTwoSpeciesOfOrchidGrowingInTheirLawnSayWhat?? What?
Plenty of Cuckoo action at Red Moss of Netherley this morning. 4 birds including this shifty-looking female, surveying the Mipits quietly.
The art world was shocked today by a new analysis of John Constable's iconic painting 'The Hay Wain'. Confocal X-ray imaging of the canvas revealed that Constable originally intended to portray the mill pond populated by cute little ghosts. #art #thehaywain
Found a long-dead Little Auk behind the dunes today. One from winter wrecks. A6 notebook for scale. #HolyIsland
Behold! My beautiful genotyping PCRs. So clean. Many beauty. Much science.
An old fashioned used-to-be Mealy/Common Redpoll in the garden today. Digi-binned.
In Llandudno hotels you have to pay the bill by passing biscuits through the window to the rent collectors.
I've never seen one before, but presume this monster is Queen of the Tree Bumblebee people. Found on our kitchen floor.
But Black Red genetics still confuses me. There is more than one 'eastern clade' and it's not clear what these refer to. See attached gene tree, sorry for the mess. 2/2
A Pochard at the other side (can you tell) or Loirston Loch was a very handy 10K radius year tick. Ring-necked Duck still here.
Still tidying. Behold school exercise book from age 13. Religious education - 40 pages of blood-curdling military history
Rearranging bookshelves. Found 20s year-old Martin's pen drawings of rarities what I saw. 1990 Holkham Red-breasted Nuthatch, 1991 Waxham Lark Sparrow, and 1991 St Andrews Chimney Swift. #birding
From Facebook. Looks like a Golden Eagle on Holy Island yesterday. #birding
Ring-necked Duck still at Loirston Loch. Very handsome. And an arty pic of Slav Grebe at Inchgarth