I just noticed that the last time I blogged it was about Bowland… Anyway, as it was another nice day today, after finishing my Saturday housework, and eating lunch, I decided to drive up to Langden valley. This proved to be rather quiet on the bird front, except for good (albeit distant) views of a male merlin dashing across the hillside in the “usual” valley. I took the high road, and hung around for a while in all the likely wooded valleys listening and looking for Ring Ouzels, but had no luck (but did get some great views across the hills: it wasn’t too hazy). I was a bit peckish when I got back down, and would have given the snack wagon some custom, but sadly they were packed up and ready to go

For a bit of a change of scene yesterday afternoon, I decided to have a drive up the Bowland valley to Dunsop Bridge. Unfortunately, so had a lot of other people (the car park was full), but as usual, they rather petered out once I’d walked a bit of the way up the valley! Bird-wise it was a bit quiet, with just a few Siskins, Buzzards calling somewhere, and a couple of Grey Wagtails which I had a go at photographing on the way back. Nice and peaceful though, apart from the inexplicably-placed diesel generators at two points: they seemed to be powering some sort of water-fiddling-with plants.

After searching in vain for Dippers on the way up, I heard the unfamiliar sound of one singing (so unfamiliar that I didn’t realise what it was until it started calling instead) and then a couple flew past, either entangled in a territorial dispute, or possibly a courting ritual. It’s strange how the two things can be confused when we look at birds: imagine you saw a woman running down the street shouting at a bloke trying to pick him up (or does that just show my lack of world experience…). For your viewing pleasure, pincha aqui para ver el video del Grey Wagtail!

Overheard in the corridor: “well yes, at the last ONS meeting we had biscuits…”.
This reminds me of story I heard about a visit of maths professor from (I think) Edinburgh to UCL. The conversation in the common room was running a bit low, so one of the UCL chaps asked the visitor “Do you have biscuits in Edinburgh?”

Well, actually not so magnum… I’m trying to learn the Lutoslawski Variations on a theme of Paganini for two pianos just now. The only snag is that there’s only one of me (I have a lead on that in the shape of somebody I met who has two in their house, and into the bargain is a fantastic pianist, but that’s for the future). Anyway, I decided to have a go at recording a tiny bit that I’ve been learning, and doing a bit of multi-track mixing. Here is the result

I was just idly Facebooking, when I noticed a “choral evensong appreciation society” run by one Nicholas Rutter. Just on the off-chance, I messaged him to ask if he was related to a certain famous choral composer, and he said yes, John Rutter is his dad! In other news, my pictures of the eclipse appeared in the local paper, “The Visitor” today: fame at last (or is it that a friend of mine works on the graphics desk… still, it was him who asked me at least…). They incorporated them very well in the print version (it’s online at http://www.morecambetoday.co.uk/ViewArticle2.aspx?SectionID=34&ArticleID=2100668 but it doesn’t look quite as good)

Today and yesterday I was on a fantastic weekend playing string quartets at the house of a local musical couple called Barbara and Walter Fairburn. We had two “coached” sessions (with a string teacher called Dierdre Ward, who is a real pro, but lives in the posh bit of Morecambe, more properly called Bare), and the rest of the time was set aside for just playing stuff speculatively! Over the course of the two days, I played the following quartets:

• Shostakovich: No. 8
• Beethoven: Op. 18 no 3,4 and 6
• Dvorak Op. 51
• Borodin No. 2
• Mozart: “Dissonance”, KV465 and “The Hunt”, KV. 458

So, plenty of good stuff to get our teeth into there (I suppose using bows might have been better in retrospect, but there you go…).

I took part in the same thing last year, when I’d hardly played any string quartets: I certainly noticed the difference this year with so much more experience under my belt, particularly in the importance of counting, and I just seem to be able to play much more accurately (except, alas, in Mozart’s 1st violin parts, bit of a nightmare there, and I really hope the local cat population was safely locked indoors).

After a bit of a ropey start yesterday with the Shostakovich (I’d been practising it rather too fast for the others to cope with, and I hadn’t realised quite how hectic the cello part was), we really managed to get the 2nd movement pretty tight for our tutored session today. One interesting point that came out was that playing aggressively loudly on the E string just doesn’t work (just leads to scratching) so the thing to do is make it “ring”, by moving the bow fast. In the passage in question, the 2nd violin was in octaves with me, so we got her to play out much more, which really helped! The 3rd movement confirmed that my off-string technique leaves much to be desired (so much so that Dierdre suggested that I just play it on the string for now, until I learn how to do spiccato properly, at the moment it kind of makes the right noise, but it’s so rhythmically inaccurate that it’s more of a hinderance in ensemble playing)

An added bonus of the weekend was making three musical contacts. A woman called Leah and I were chatting about home education (she’s just about to pull her 6-year old daughter out of school to go it alone), and it also turned out she’s looking for an accompanist! Secondly, Rachel Lee (a pianist-cum viola player) has two pianos at home: we’re probably going to have a bash at the Lutoslawski Paganini Variations, if I can manage them. And finally, it turned out that Val Snelling is very keen on the Shostakovich 8th Quartet, so I’m going to try to arrange for Ruth Self and her to play it with me and CJ sometime!

A fantastic weekend then, now it’s back to Hankel operators etc.

Exciting stuff in the skies tonight, as a total lunar eclipse coincided with miraculously clear skies in Lancaster! While I was outside on the drive taking pictures through the ’scope (see here for the results), one of our student neighbours walked past, and my mum and I showed him what the fuss was about. I thought he looked vaguely familiar, and he’d got out of a Hungarian number-plated car, and eventually these two things clunked together in my brain, and I realised he was an undergrad called Peter I’d already met at the International Café! Past (postgrad) Hungarians had confused the issue, so I thought it couldn’t be the same bloke… We chatted for some time while tracking the moon (it was at the red stage by then) and he mentioned he could speak Spanish (and in fact had lived in Andalucía for two years): so there I was standing outside on a cold March night, watching a lunar eclipse while talking Spanish to a Hungarian. What a strange but exciting evening; to add to it all (and just to warn you, this is rather a niche moment coming up) when he’d gone I heard the clear “wee-oos” of Wigeon flying over (presumably on migration)

I quite often read El Mundo, mostly because it’s completely free, and has loads of extra features, unlike elpais.es! There have been a number of videos of the 11-M trial online at the moment: this one has one of the defendants describing what he did on 11th March 2004, at times soundly eerily like he’s recording a GCSE listening exam!
http://www.elmundo.es/elmundo/2007/02/19/videos/1171879705.html

A nice skein of 70 Pink-footed Geese flew over the house at what seemed like about double roof height (i.e. very low) this morning, heading south (but this would probably be a local movement, rather than anything epic!)

After hearing my mum’s regular sightings of a Kingfisher on the canal near the aquaduct, I thought I’d have a look today: my attempt seemed doomed to failure with the total absence of blue (or orange) streaks, and no squeeky noises on the way out. However, a last-ditch scan of the trees in fading light near the canal turning circle came up trumps when I found the fabled Kingfisher perched low down in an ash tree. It sat there for quite some time before going for a fish, and perching in a less prominent position. There was almost no other ornithological interest on the walk, except for a heard Long-tailed Tit.