The Wash

For the past week I have been working off the coast of Kings Lynn, down south near cambridge. It is a protected habitat called the wash, where harbour seals regularly haul out, and is near the location of a new windfarm installation. When putting in the windfarm, piledrivers create immensely loud low frequency sounds. There is a concern that this may damage the hearing of the nearby seals. So a team from st andrews captured 25 seals from the area, and we used auditory evoked potentials to determine the hearing thresholds of the animals. To see how close they are travelling to the windfarms, we have attached GPS transmitters to them. The results will tell us if the seals travelling near the farms have damaged hearing, and if the habitat use is different near the windfarms.

Orkney

For the remainder of Monae's visit we meandered around Edinburgh (though the weather was not very cooperative for it!), but after she left Marc Emily and I took a few days to go and explore Orkney. At the far NE of scotland, the small chain of Isles is beautiful with lots of history to enjoy. The seals breed there, and we saw a few swimming around the coast. It has one of the largest collections of standing stones; they are all over the island. There are two large rings still largely intact. Castles, churches, cathedrals full of history everywhere. And several cairns that you can crawl into and explore. There are also several villages to visit that are amazingly well preserved and full of history, such as skara braewhich was settled during the late Neolithic — inhabited roughly between 3200BC and 2200BC.





It is definitely not the usual tourist season; we were probably the only visitors on the Isle. But that meant we got excellant deals for the places we stayed (we were the only ones in the hotel) and had really great access to most of the sites. A few had closed down for the winter, but for most of them you can just wander the isle alone, and pop into these sites on your own. For the Skara brae we got a personalized tour, and were able to walk in through the village which I am sure we coouldn't do with all the visitors in the summer. The wind was a bit nippy, but we were glad to go and see the beautiful islands off season.

Vacation is over, and back to work now!

Botanic gardens and history museum

Revisited the royal botanical gardens and the natural history museum today with Marc, Monae, and Emily. I took the opportunity to review all my old photo classes from highschool, and some of the photos turned out really well.

Older photos being added

Hi all,
Marc here, thought with the new year, I would throw up a couple of pictures of mine. Here are pictures that I took while in Paris with Mandy. They were switched together with a program called Microsoft Image Composite Editor.

This is the Winged Victory of Samothrace found at the Louvre. It is from 2 BC.

This is the panoroma of the view from Notre Dame.

Fireworks

On Friday, we explored the city with Emily. As part of the new year festivities, there was a torchlit procession walking with thousands of people from St Giles to Calton hill. Leading it was a group of vikings in full costume, to celebrate the scots viking heritage. Bagpipers played, fireworks were lit, and an effigy was burned. Usually it is a viking ship, but for some reason this year it was a sculpture entitled 'children at play'. So to bring in a good year, we burned a representation of children....






For New Years, Monae joined us. We hiked up the craigs, played with sparklers and laser lights, and saw the fireworks over the castle. Even remembered champagne this year!

Have a wonderful 2012!