Month: September 2007

This amazing crystal garden grew over about 3 days (not 24 hours as it says on the packet). Unfortunately the packet does not say what the chemicals involved are so the educational effect is less than it might be.

The picture is of a creative billboard to advertise chewing gum in Vilnius. It was a lightening trip to Lithuania when I wasn’t sure that I would even get there because SAS planes have been falling to pieces and they have been cancelling many flights. But I did get there and we had our final meeting for the VOCA2 project including a conference in Kaunas where I gave a short talk.

We had a trip to Vilnius which included lunch in the revolving TV tower, scene of bloody fighting when Soviet tanks moved in and killed 14 people 16 years ago. We could even see the attack plan in the little museum on the ground floor. It turned out that our tour guide had been part of the Singing Revolution afterwards. The weather was fine and dry, the food good and the hotel more than comfortable. Everyone seemed to be getting married and there were TVs everywhere which I found distracting.

The poor old Greenland White-fronted Goose continues to decline in abundance because of poor production of young, but we still don’t know what causes them to find it difficult to breed! There are plenty of theories, but not much hard evidence. Amongst the front runners for an explanation is the arrival of Canada Geese in west Greenland during the summer; they have recently colonized from their previous breeding range in North America. Their highly aggressive behaviour makes them dominant over White-fronted Geese and so we need to know more about their relative abundance. After 2 years of disappointment because of bad weather, Tony finally managed to complete an aerial survey of the important parts of the breeding grounds in late August 2007. The team found almost 6 times as many Canada Geese as Greenland White-fronted Geese (remember there were very few Canada Geese at all in west Greenland back in the mid 1980s). They also found 500 geese from another North American population, the Lesser Snow Goose, so the Yanks are really coming in large numbers to west Greenland, fuelled by large expansions in all goose numbers in that continent. After the flying was finished, he helped colleagues catch small birds (using mist nets) to screen them on behalf of the US authorities for the presence of avian influenza, amidst concerns there that Greenland forms a bridge for the disease to be transmitted via breeding birds up there that migrate either to the New World or the Old. The photo shows the settlement at Uummannaq which he flew over during one of the longer flights to the north of the breeding range.

Then on Sunday we went to Legoland on a lovely sunny day. The picture is of Gwen on a Jungle Racer which the girls went on about six times. We traditionally have lunch in the hotel and this year they had the best buffet lunch we have had in years and all for a reasonable price too. Makes up for having to pay for car parking I guess.

Can you guess what it is that Mia and Gwen are standing next to in the picture? You can click on ‘comment’ below and write down your guess.

This was Gwen’s birthday weekend. We kicked off by going to see Shrek the third and then went to see Stomp which is indescribable but basically involves people making music out of household objects such as brooms, water cooler bottles and plungers. You can get an idea from the video below: Go straight to the 3 minute mark for the changeover to the kitchen part.

There are much better quality clips here http://www.stomp.co.uk/08_filmography.htm

I had a trip to Belgium end of August/beginning of September which was the final meeting of an EU project. I had not been to Belgium for about 10 years. The picture shows a drinks machine in Brussels airport. The mannequin pis was dressed when I went past. He was in the middle of a beer festival and they had changed his flow to beer!

I managed many of the stereotypical Belgian things such as a waffle, chips, beer and mussels although not all at the same time. We had a guided tour round parts of Brussels which was very interesting for a change. See more photos at http://www.flickr.com/photos/49622478@N00/