The Mother of Parliaments Reopens

A few days after the British parliamentary election - with its rather surprising and unprecedented (and undoubtedly historic) outcomes - I am in London and strolling past the Houses of Parliament.

This also happens to be the same day that the MPs are famously turning up for the first day of the new session..

On the opposite side of the road from the House, the temporary TV studios that the BBC and other media have been using are being rapidly dismantled.

There are a few film crews still hanging around on the grass but the new and re-elected all seem to be shut away inside.

 

A couple of little studios tucked away besides Westminster Abbey

The Big BBC Studio (you can't see in through the glass)

The same from behind - showing how it fits up against the Henry Moore sculpture

Within - a new parliament is assembling

A swift visit to Luxembourg

A lizard of Luxembourg.

I was very pleased to recently have the opportunity to visit the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg. This is the last Grand Duchy in the world. It is It is bordered by Germany to the east, Belgium to the west and north and, to the south, France.

Luxembourg has its own language, although its people are famously multilingual, and is a very small country
(2,586.4 km² or 998 sq miles).

What I had not expected to find was that its main city has a deep ravine running through its middle with spectacular bridges spanning it. 

Here are some views:

'Grund -level' - this is the district at the base of the ravine; known as The Grund.
Notice extensive caves in the cliff face.

A view of the same from above. The old Abby (centre left) is now a smart conference centre.

A famous landmark in the restaurant district. The
wording says something like: 'We want to stay the
way we are".

An elderly gentleman waves in front of the Palace

The widely recognised golden lady on top of
tall plinth that has become synonymous with the
country.

The Catholic Cathedral in full festival mode

And outside the cathedral - an old friend and a
genuine Luxembourger, Pierre Gallego.

The Homeless Lady who feeds the birds in Central Park in New York City

This is short video is about Lee Francis Rogers and her beloved birds in Central Park.

It features some of the birds that I previously wrote about around the bird feeders in Washington DC but above all it is a song of joy about what wildlife can bring to us... with a little encouragement. 

(Thank you Ran).

Click HERE to view video, and turn your volume on!

What's at the bird feeder in Washington DC?

There are some bird feeders and bird boxes outside the offices of the Humane Society of the United States on the outskirts of Washington DC. Here's a quick look at what comes to these feeders.

Northern Mockingbird

A wren shows off the accommodation he has to offer

White-throated sparrow

A red-winged blackbird

A familiar face - a European sparrow

A northern cardinal (male)

And again.

Nantucket - from farmers to whalers

When, in 1659, the first Englisher settlers arrived on the sandy and boggy little island of Nantucket - a pile of sediment left behind by the last glaciation - their primary interest was farming. They thought that the low-lying scrubby land might suit their sheep. The resident Native Americans, especially the tribe living on the western-side of the island, had long exploited stranded whales and knew how to utilise the huge bodies that sometimes washed in. The whales were numerous then - both right whales and grey whales came close inshore,

Indeed it seems it was the live stranding of grey whale (a species long absent from the Atlantic) some ten years after the first English settlers arrived that inspired the start of shore-based whaling. They forged a harpoon and killed and butchered this one whale and thus started an enterprise that dominated Nantucket for the next two hundred years.

Initially, the whalers used old masts planted in the shore to form look-outs (there were no suitable high points). This was a winter activity and along with the look-out poles the watchers built shacks on the shore for shelter. (These little shacks helped to define the architecture of the island.)

Later, when the near-shore whales (the rights and the greys) started to run out, the whale boats started to venture further out. Then, as legend has it, in 1712,a boat was driven even further off shore by a storm and found itself surround by sperm whales. Capturing one they found the whale's head was full of a remarkable and pure oil. A substance that then inspired an industry that eventually reached out from Nantucket all across the world. The adventures of the  whalemen inspiring Herman Melville to write Moby Dick, which is loosely based on the true story of the loss of the whaleship Essex which really was sunk by a whale.

The Essex story will be retold in a new movie - In the Heart of the Sea - to be released later this year and something that the Nantucket whaling museum has marked with a new exhibition 'Stove by a whale'. Here reported in local paper:

.
By 1748, there were sailing ships  in the fifty to seventy tonnes range involved in the whale industry and operating out of Nantucket. Together they brought home 11,250 tonnes of oil.

The architecture tells the story of changing times.

The oldest house on the island: 1686

The local houses are all typically wooden - transporting brick or stone thirty miles from the main land was too expensive. Most, like the ancient one above, are clad in shingles - tiles of wood that weather to grey.

Whaling in its heyday brought great wealth to some and this is still reflected in some of the grand villas in town.

Hadwen Houzse - a granf mansion built in 1845 by whale oil and silver merchant William Hadwen  

1873 - Starbuck Villa

Below a modern shingled building - the light brown singles are new. The trellises are for roses = another specialty of the island and which will bloom from June.

And on top of many roofs across the island are odd little fenced platforms. Legend has it that these are the platforms from which wives watched for their whalemen husbands to come home. However, they were originally built around chimneys and helped care for these key and dangerous structures in the wooden houses. Perhaps they served both purposes.

Roof platform

Even this little tree house has a roof platform

And this is what it was all about. 

The liquid gold that could be scooped from the head of a sperm whale.

This sample on display in the Nantucket whaling museum taken from the head of the same young whale that stranded nearby and whose skeleton hangs from the roof of the museum.

Pure raw sperm whale oil.

Nantucket - some birds and some views from the shore

This is Jetties beach, just outside Nantucket town. Some spectacular real estate backs down through the dunes to the seashore.

Brent goose

Eider duck

A great black back gull battles a spider crab

A rare (near threatened) Piping Plover

Jetties Beach strandline marked by empty slipper limpets,
and fragments of horseshoe ans spider crabs,

Nantucket - signs of whales and whaling

The modern town of Nantucket has many images that point to its whaling heyday - here is a sample.

First here is the famous Nantucket Whaling Museum - appropriately topped with a 'sounding' (diving) sperm whale and with a classic carved whaling scene on its front aspect.

The Nantucket Whaling Museum

Museum weather vane

The harpooner does his work in this giant wall plaque on the front of the museum.

This a classic scene of 'yankee whaling' - the giant sperm whale has been rowed up to in a small boat launched from the mothership (the sailing vessel in the background left). 

The harpooner drives home one or two harpoons. The whale will attempt to flee, but the harpoons have rope attached and the rope will play out and the boat will be pulled through the water. If the whale sounds there may not be enough rope and the boat may be upended. The aim is to tire the whale and again get close to it so that it can be lanced with a long sharp pole. Its vital organs pierced, the final scene was often 'fire in the chimney' - red blood coming from the blow hole - as the animal died.

Emblem on Town Hall

A whaling ship is the symbol of the local chamber of commerce

Other whaling references around the town:

Cachelot (here a house name) is the alternative name for the sperm whale.

Queequeg's - a restaurant names after the character in Moby Dick

another whale weather vane

And there are hundreds of items for sale - like this T-shirt - that carry
the characteristic square headed form of the sperm whale

Whaler's lane

And here is a curious thing - in the back of the town's very nice book shop lurks a dolphin skeleton. 

It stranded on the island but no one seems to know why it is in the shop.

Book store dolphin skeleton/