David Bradley's Nature Matters

13 May – Drive to Poole 14 May – Upton Country Park 15 May – Brownsea Island – no Red Squirrels Whimbrel in flight, Brownsea Island 16 May -Cold Spring Safari with Birds of Poole Harbour and then to Corfe Castle An indifferent Black-tailed Godwit alongside mating Common Terns with otherwise-engaged Sandwich Terns behind Juvenile Shag resting on a buoy in Poole Harbour

Asbestos, a group of silicate minerals, is well known as a fire-resistant building material that saved millions of lives (protecting buildings and allowing us to slow our vehicles quickly!). But its reputation is completely tarnished by the fact that this fibrous mineral gets into the lung and causes several lethal diseases. I interviewed a specialist years ago who told me that every single person in the world has at least a million asbestos fibres in their lungs, but the risk of developing…

I had a rather rare moth in the moth trap last night. An Eastern Bordered Straw, Heliothis nubigera. This species is known only as a rare immigrant species that first turned up in the UK in 1958, according to the UK Moths site. Just three were recorded that May and lepidopterists noted that they were part of a larger irruption into Europe. The site goes on to say that there were no more sightings until a single specimen was seen in 1992 and another in 1999. But, in the summer of 2006 there was…

We made the second annual trip with my birding friend Al to RSPB Titchwell and Snettisham. It was cooler than previous days and windy and a quite cloudy morning. We saw some, but not all of the usual suspects, but there were a couple of distant Spoonbill, which redeemed things a little and after lunch as the sun came out we once again caught up with the Spotted Flycatcher there. Spotted Flycatcher Spoonbill Ringed Plover Talk of Turtle Doves at the Snettisham “Country Park” and we set off that…

I’ve mentioned previously how I am creating “wild” patches in our front and back gardens to augment the presence of our wildlife pond. At the moment, the front is under the regime of NoMowSummer, not just NoMowMay (which helps nothing). Leaving it to go wild for the full summer means that all the invertebrates that are attracted early on by the wildflowers that emerge can benefit across their full lifecycle into the autumn. Soft-brome grass growing wild in our lawn, this seedhead has yellow…

Welcome to the Wild Fen Edge! I’ve rebooted my old wildlife project as a WhatsApp group it’s still called Wild Fen Edge and it’s the place to share your sightings of wildlife, ask questions, get IDs and more if you’re in the local area we known as the Fen Edge Patch. The Fen Edge Patch is centred on Cottenham and includes the nearby villages of Rampton and Willingham, Landbeach and Waterbeach. I’ve also co-opted Histon, which isn’t technically in the patch, but has at least one nature reserve…

So many species are on the decline because of urbanisation, intensive agriculture, and, of course, climate change. Yet some are taking advantage of the new conditions. A butterfly is redrawing the map of Britain with little fanfare. A couple of observers spot something unusual at the edge of a field, others check-in a few days later and see the same species, and suddenly a butterfly that in the post-industrial world seemed limited in its range, is now finding new territory in the margins. The…

Original post – 24 Feb 2026, updating date to keep it in my blog menu recents list Peacock – 23rd Feb Brimstone – 24th Feb Small Tortoiseshell – 25th Feb Holly Blue – 10th March Comma – 19th March Small White – 30th March Green-veined White – 5th April Orange Tip – 8th April Speckled Wood – 8th April Red Admiral – 23rd April Large White – 23rd April Common Blue – 3rd May Painted Lady – 3rd May Our first butterflies of the year appeared on 23rd February, a Peacock, in our garden. On the 24th,…

Mrs Sciencebase and I were pleased to finally see Water Voles (five of them, as it happens, all adults, we reckon) at RSPB Fowlmere. They were feeding on water cress in the chalk stream, known as The Shep, that runs through the reserve. Previously, I’ve only caught glimpses of this species elsewhere and once watched a Grey Heron gulp one down whole! Could a Water Vole look any more coy? The European Water Vole (Arvicola amphibius) is the character Ratty of Wind in the Willows fame. Watching…

Electromagnetic fields (EMFs) are everywhere, generated by power lines, mobile phones, Wi-Fi routers, and countless other technologies. This ubiquity has led to a persistent question: could non-ionising EMFs increase cancer risk? To answer that, it helps to start with some basic physics. Radiation exists on a spectrum. At the high-energy end is ionising radiation (like X-rays and gamma rays), which carries enough energy per photon to ionise molecules, break chemical bonds, and directly damage…

Now, the Common Nightingale, as the name suggests, is quite active at night, but they do sing during the day too, but it isn’t at all common in England despite the first bit of its name. It’s a migrant species that occurs in East Anglia and the South East of England. The first place I’d heard them here was on the heathland of the Suffolk coast, during a camping trip many years ago, and then more recently on Westleton Heath, not far from NT Dunwich Heath, RSPB Minsmere, and Sizewell nuclear…

Excire sent me a copy of their software, Excire Foto, for review. I’d been looking for a decent way to sort through more than two decades’ worth of digital photos. Other programmes that came up in my search seemed to fall short of what I needed—either that or they required a monthly subscription, which I’m always loath to pay. Excire is a one-off payment and seems to do pretty much all I need. Excire Foto search of my archives for “bird in flight against a blue sky”, very accurate results, and…

The Orange Tip butterfly, Anthocharis cardamines, is a familiar spring species across Europe. The eponymous orange wingtips are present only in the males, but both male and female have a green mottled pattern on the underside of the wings, which helps with camouflage when they’re at rest. Male Orange Tip butterfly, a master of sexual chemistry When they’re not at rest, there’s some a surprisingly sophisticated bit of chemistry going on during mating. The male passes not only sperm to the female…

I’ve got a confession…I’m not necessarily who you thought I was…I’ve lived a double life, erstwhile part-time science writer David Bradley, but always art-school bluesman Stardust Stanhope. Here’s the write-up that’s destined for the Chronicle scoop… Born in the shadow of the shipyards during the coal-dusted winters of the early 1970s, Stardust Stanhope was never destined for a quiet life. While the rest of the North East was looking at the gutters, Stanhope was looking at the stars, or at…

I finally got a photo of an adder, Vipera berus, at RSPB Minsmere. It slithered across the footpath as we headed for one of the hides on our mid-April visit, and Mrs Sciencebase almost trod on it. Thankfully, she didn’t, the Common European Adder (or Viper) is venomous. Not poisonous note, venomous. If it bites you, you may well succumb to its venom. It is probably quite edible, rather than being poisonous. Common Adder, Vipera berus Anyway, there’s another linguistic point to be made about an…

Photography has always involved a process of development, an interpretive stage that sits somewhere between capture and presentation. From the chemical alchemy of early darkrooms to the algorithmic polish of modern software, photographers have consistently shaped their images in pursuit of clarity, mood, and impact. My recent heavily cropped, high-ISO image of a Dartford Warbler was, by any technical standard, far from ideal: noisy, soft, and lacking the crisp detail one hopes for in wildlife…

It’s quite magical watching dozens of Sand Martins darting about in front of the holey cliff at RSPB Minsmere, viewable from the cafe table outdoors. The cliff is basically a rocky bank full of small holes and those holes provide these migrant visitors with nest sites for this summer’s breeding. They’ll burrow in, up to a metre or so, and make a chamber lined with vegetation and feathers as a nest at the end of the tunnel. The Sand Martin, Riparia riparia, is a small and understated bird, it’s…

There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.

I’m well into my ninth season of garden moth trapping, which basically involves enticing moths into the garden using an ultraviolet lamp, hoping they will settle on the egg trays in the trap that act as roosting spots for them overnight, and then identifying, counting, and photographing them in the morning, before letting them back … Continue reading "Mercury – the winged messenger of the nocturnal gods"

There are countless AI medical diagnostic tools being used by health services the world over. They allow vast numbers of scans and images from patients, biopsy samples, and microscope slides to be checked over very quickly for obvious health problems. The NHS uses one called DERM to check suspicious skin moles. The AI is trained … Continue reading "Playing check-a-mole"

A paper in a well-known journal from a major publisher on the subject of using nanogels for wound healing is packed with bizarre phrases that have nothing to do with the paper. It came to light this week on BlueSky via research integrity expert Leonid Schneider of For Better Science. A quick scan of the … Continue reading "Reaction roll genocide"

I almost missed a moth in the garden last night, a Brindled Beauty, Lycia hirtaria, one of the geometer (inchworm) moths in the family Ennominae. It’s one of those species in which the males have plume-like antennae. It’s subtly, but distinctively patterned. Unfortunately, the one in the garden last night had lost most of its … Continue reading "Moth of the Moment – Brindled Beauty"

Once or twice a year, sometime in March and then again in early April, I put a little rubber bung in one of those little gauze laundry detergent bags and hang it a sunny spot in the garden. The rubber bung arrived from a lepidopterist supplies company  in March 2019 and is covered in a … Continue reading "Moth of the Moment – the royal succession"

First, it’s a tragedy when once-thriving coastal towns fall on hard times, leaving younger generations with few meaningful prospects. There was a time when fathers, grandfathers, and great-grandfathers could expect a job for life in fishing or shipbuilding. The same over the whole country, even the world. That all began to erode decades ago, as … Continue reading "Depressing conversations"

Back in late 2023, a paper appeared in the journal BMC Genomics (Nakano M et al., 24(1):735; DOI: 10.1186/s12864-023-09841-0) that demonstrated that an extract from the caterpillar frass (faeces) of the Swallowtail butterfly (Papilio machaon) could block the proliferation of colon cancer cells, specifically HCT116 cancer cells. I must confess I’d not checked in with … Continue reading "Swallowtail frass and colon cancer"