Swansongs.

Where did this word with familiar connotations of final performance, arise? It’s strange how many innocent words one might use over a lifetime without ever giving them a second thought.

Until in the case of this word, for me today, I did.

After more rare sights, more thoughts, and a little more information about bat-chasing drones, and “drone”-chasing drones, I’ve tried to draw them together into a coherent (?) blog post, and a poem of this title:

 

Swansongs

The hills may look as green,

The flowers still bloom and sway,

A landscape, still, serene and free.

Yet watch a while, be watched, and scan

Those silent crows on dead ash trees.

 

The air seems clear, breathe deeply, thrill

As rain falls soft, contented sheep

Still graze within this pastoral scene.

Beware these trite impressions

Of this special, pleasant land.

 

No Whoopers here to test the myth

No Silver Swans to sing their last

No tracheal bends, no falling scales.

The drone-chased bat – strange early sign

Of brooding brew. The food web fails.

 

Then glorious swallows’ last goodbye?

Skimmed low. Wasted, o’er the fresh mown bent

Around the clatter of Italian blades.

Better cheered, flag-waved, in fine French halls

Gold medal worthy – style, flair, charm.

 

Was this our swallows’ slick swansong,

Will they return, grace Welsh skies still,

Will meadows throng, will Emperors fly,

Or will Zersetzung smother, triumph, rule?

Trees advance. Forgotten witches?

 

08/08/2024

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Is this too much of a riddle?

Let me begin by way of explanation and to save “false/mis” interpretations of the journey to its creation.

After the excitement of putting together my YouTube of what I thought were honey bees chasing a (very rare) day flying bat, I sent the video link to a number of contacts across the honey bee and wider bee world, and awaited feedback. Like a swarm cluster sending out scouts to locate a potential new home, I didn’t have long to wait. The reports came buzzing back. It seems beekeepers have acquired many of the efficient and enquiring traits of their beloved charges.

Meanwhile, mulling over the thought that if these bees (which I originally suspected might have been male, stingless drones) had been duped into chasing this dark object flying through the sky (the bat), since they’re primed for sexual encounters up there with virgin honey bee queens, maybe they’d chase birds as well? ( I should add that when I came up with this, my second hypothesis that the bees I’d observed might be drones, quick off the mark for aerial sex with a bat, and ran it past Fiona, she did what she often does. Laughed in derision).

Undeterred, I googled “honey bees chasing birds”, and came up with lots of options for bats chasing bees, but also this one, of bees chasing a (mechanical) aerial drone. With its very eye catching creative montage complete with colour cues to attract me, and click it open! (Well done, Adam)

I watched his video, the story and pictures he showed of his bee splattered drone – once Adam had guided it back to the ground. I also noticed, as one of his other comment contributors had, that most of the bees in the still images were drones, with their huge eyes. So maybe I was on the right track thinking my bat chasing bees were drones?. But then what about all the stings on the aerial drone, when it was recovered, which Adam described?

The other slightly disconcerting feature of Adam’s story was how many other drone flyers had had similar experiences – multiple impacts from a “swarm of bees” attacking the drone. At least I now knew that acquiring a drone, or even hiring a drone operator to try to track drones on their flights out to the aerial drone congregation areas (DCA’s) wasn’t a sensible idea! Something I’d been toying with for a while.

Within a few days a number of far more experienced bee keepers than me had volunteered comments:

Firstly no one seems to have seen or be aware of such a bee/bat interaction before.

Secondly I had comments that honey bees have very poor auditory perception so that they’d be unlikely to ‘hear’ the bat, or respond to its prey/navigational echolocation clicking type sounds.

Thirdly, apparently drones are attracted to locations with strong thermal air currents and many people have tried to categorise common features in the landscape which might define DCA’s. There’s some insight into drone behaviour and their importance in free living honey bee biology and their mating with virgin queens in the following two excellent lectures by Dr. David Tarpy, and the late Kim Flottum from the archive of the wonderful National Honey Show:

Plus another great video with more details by Dr. Larry J. Connor, on “Secrets of Drone congregation areas”, which you’ll need to click on here to watch:

There’s great insight in Connor’s lecture into German research on drone congregation areas: just how many drones are produced by colonies; how many are needed in an area to make viable DCAs; and how the apparently crazy and risky concept of bees massing high in the sky away from their homes, (roughly 25% of queens never return from their mating flights) with multiple matings of the virgin queen bees is vital to preventing in-breeding. A real problem leading to consequent lack of vigour within the colony, which is a point that David Tarpy’s talk also covers very well.

After thinking about this more, it occurred to me that all the slate roofs, dark limestone chippings, and terrace slabs of the environment around our house, buildings and yard would indeed, at least on a part sunny day, create air temperatures a few degrees higher than the surrounding ambient temperatures over pasture. There’s also an interesting sort of landscape dividing line with the land dropping away below the house and yard; rising sharply above it, and a fairly continuous line of trees and buildings along the contour that the house and yard sit on. The annotated satellite view (from many years ago) shows the layout of Hives, buildings and the yard where most of the Bat footage was taken. And a scale to illustrate approximate distances between colonies.

One responder wondered if the bees were instead tree bumblebees, Bombus hypnorum, which will aggressively defend their nests.

Finally today, a comment from Professor Tom Seeley, who is a distinguished lifelong researcher in the honey bee world. He agreed with my thought that he sees 2 drones tracking the bat in one of the clips. But also he added that on one occasion he’d used a slingshot to fire a pebble into a known DCA and watched drone honey bees zoom in on it from behind in an attempt to mate with it! I’ve just found this new interview with Professor Seeley, about his latest book, (Piping Hot Bees and Boisterous Buzz Runners) which gives you a great insight into what a wonderful and influential writer and scientist he is.

So I’m really grateful to everyone (Andrew M, Paul H, Dave G, Steve R, Ann C and thanks to Ann passing my email on, to Tom S) for the time they’ve spent on this, and their comments. In due course I might try to create another short video with just the slowed down bee-bat interactions. It’s a lengthy editing process and it has occurred to me that interpreting such poor quality images, where I’d been trying to concentrate on keeping the bat centre frame, without any awareness of honey bees drifting in and out of the focal plane is a bit like trying to interpret a 3D image from a 2D Xray. Except that the image was a moving video, and not a still, and the bees are tiny specks on the screen!

My other final thought is that at least it gives me a challenge for next year, once the drones become really active again – buy myself a catapult and get Fiona to fire a few pebbles high above the yard, to see what happens, whilst I have the camera set up on a tripod and focused in the right plane to capture some clearer footage. Or not, if the whole episode was a one-off.

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A couple of days ago I was out in the top wildflower hay meadow cutting some of the surplus hay for green hay. We often see swallows skimming low over the meadow – particularly in May when the chafer grubs have emerged. I’ve noticed that we still have a pair trying to rear a second brood of just two chicks in our barn, and the adults have been more active of late. However, I’ve never had them behave in the way that they did this year. On many occasions, for short periods, the swallows flew really close to me, banking in circles around the very noisy BCS Powerscythe as I moved back and forth across the field. It was the most wonderful experience having them fly so close and low. One could appreciate their speed, agility, timing and get better views of the fabulous mix of plumage colours that one normally glimpses at a distance.

I didn’t have the camera, and anyway couldn’t have filmed it myself so rang (amazingly I now sometimes keep my grandad phone in my pocket when I’m working outside) Fiona to see if she could have a go. On 3 separate times she tried, and as soon as she appeared, the swallows moved away from being so close to me, and gradually left the field.  So I have no such images, just memories. I’ve also failed miserably to ever capture footage of just how amazing it is to witness their normal low level flight scenes – they fly so fast and low. But how come I’ve never had this very close contact with them before?

I’m guessing I was disturbing small insects with the mowing, maybe grass moths, and the birds were swooping in low and close to catch these before they dropped back down again.

But somehow it seemed to me more than that. There was a really close, almost personal connection with their repeated close flights.

That they were almost making a big statement.

I fear we’ll soon lose them as visitors to Gelli Uchaf – some recent visitors from South Wales were surprised that we still had them breeding here. Nearly everyone else locally has noticed a crash in their numbers in the last few years.

This got me thinking. Maybe it will be their parting display. Their swansong.

And so a journey of discovery has occupied me today. It seems “swansong” has an interesting and very long history dating back to early Greek records, where in many forms of art and writing, it was considered that the often silent, graceful birds finally make some sounds just before they die.

The first European literature mention of “swansong” seems to have been the early nineteenth century German references to “Schwanengesang”, a song like that fabled to be sung by a dying swan. By a very curious synchronicity, one of the music pieces I included last time was indeed Liszt:’s ‘Lieder aus Franz Schubert’s Schwanengesang’, S. 560: No. 7. Here’s a beautiful sung version of the original Schubert song with lyrics by the German poet Ludwig Rellstab. Sung here by counter tenor Philippe Jaroussky, with Jérôme Ducros accompanying him.

The common European Mute swan is, as its name implies, not known for any calls. However other swans like the migrant Whooper do have short booming songs, in part because they have a very strange extra loop of the trachea (windpipe) which is actually embedded in the bone and cartilage of the keel (sternum). The dissection image below shows just how convoluted the trachea is, compared to mammaIs and many birds. I wonder, as a waterfowl, if it isn’t the equivalent of a U bend trap to reduce the risk of water finding its way into the lungs? Swans with this tracheal anatomy, like the Whooper, have been noticed to make a series of drawn out notes as air escapes the lungs for the final time, when it expires, through this tortuous route – possibly justification for the dying swan song myth?

Dissection and image of Trumpeter Swan by James Smallwood.

Moreover, I then found that the English composer Orlando Gibbons had composed a beautiful Madrigal, “The Silver Swan”, which amazingly, Fiona recalled singing whilst at school with her Madrigal choir, when I mentioned it to her. How strange a coincidence is that? But Gibbons didn’t write the words, he just composed the music. The interesting and anonymous lyrics were given to Gibbons, it’s thought, by his benefactor, Sir Christopher Hatton, from some anonymous poet:

“The silver Swan, who living had no Note,
when Death approached, unlocked her silent throat.
Leaning her breast against the reedy shore,
thus sang her first and last, and sang no more:
Farewell, all joys! O Death, come close mine eyes!
More Geese than Swans now live, more Fools than Wise.”

I was very struck by the last line. Which made me google “what was happening in Britain in 1612”, the date of publication of Gibbons book of Madrigals.

And the link above, dear readers is what came top of the list of searches. A review of the short history book about the Pendle Witch Trials of 1612 by David Holding. I’ve just bought a copy. I’m sure this has no relevance to today’s Britain, but who knows. Perhaps we should all know about it? I’m intrigued.

I’m taking the liberty to quote from “Elspeth” a history student’s review of this work, on the Oxford University site. The second paragraph seems strangely appropriate, some 412 years later:

The Pendle Witch Trial centred upon the accusation that 12 so-called ‘witches’ from the rural Pendle Hill area of Lancashire were involved in the murders of 10 people. 11 went to trial, and of those, 10 were found guilty, and sentenced to execution by hanging. The normal rules for evidence were abandoned in witchcraft trials, which resulted in the most condemning evidence being given by 9-year-old Jennet Device, who testified against her own mother, brother, and sister. Such a large number of executions was highly unusual, and it is estimated that the Pendle Witch Trial alone accounts for around 2% of all executions for witchcraft between the early 15th and early 18th centuries.

This becomes even more interesting when you consider the way in which Lancashire was viewed at the time. It was seen as lawless and wild in this period, partly due to the lack of control that authorities in London had over it, as a result of the large geographical distance between them. Moreover, it was a traditionally Catholic County, which caused problems for the devoutly Protestant King James I, who also happened to have a deep fascination, and fear of witches (this may sound familiar if you studied Macbeth for GCSE English Literature!). This religious, cultural, and social conflict adds a whole new depth to the tale of the Pendle Witches, who were almost certainly innocent members of the community. Their vulnerability due to their age, religion, and social status made them easy scapegoats in an anti-witch, anti-Catholic, and (arguably) anti-northern narrative.

I’m not surprised the poet wanted to remain anonymous, if that was what was happening all around him. Or her. Or it could have been their very own swansong.

Better to hunker down, hide and avoid trouble.

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Yesterday, I had a session cutting back new bramble shoots extending over fences and into fields. They’ve grown incredibly fast this year, and if left, will root and require vastly more work to remove next year. As I snipped one section off, a large and beautifully marked, but unfamiliar caterpillar revealed itself. I regretted not having the camera with me, so just carried on for 10 minutes, then kicked out some piles of green hay, and eventually glanced at the area where I’d seen it before walking back up the hill. Surprisingly, it was still there, having shifted to a small piece of bramble stem, with a very munched leaf. I picked it up and wandered back to take some photos once I’d retrieved the camera from the house.

And here it is. Later, I pulled out my copy of Jim Porter’s ‘Caterpillars of the British Isles’ and was thrilled to discover it was the larval form of an Emperor Moth, Saturnia pavonia. The only member of the Saturniidae family of moths found in the UK, and a group which includes many of the world’s largest moths, including the silk moth. Indeed most species of the Saturniidae spin a silken cocoon in which the adult larva pupates. Many years ago I’d been thrilled to find and photograph on one occasion only, a splendid specimen of a female moth, amongst heather on Mynydd Llanllwni during the day. These are very large, attractive moths and whilst the female is nocturnal, the male flies during both day and night. This is the first time I’ve found a larva, which happens to be close to mature size. It’s also exciting to find it on our land, where since we’ve laid a few hedges we now have vastly more brambles – which is one of a few larval food plants for the caterpillar. After taking its photo, I took it to a hedge with plenty of brambles and carefully laid it down.

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And then, before all these discoveries linked to my already decided ‘Swansongs’ title for the poem triggered by thinking about the swallows’ display, I’d read this. The news yesterday that Peter Kyle, recently appointed Science, Innovation and Technology Secretary of our government has just given the “National Security Online Information Team” (NSOIT – a helpful sounding group, eh?) the task of monitoring online activity which ventures into discussing the deaths of the three children killed in Southport and the rioting across cities in Britain in recent days. This decision comes just months after MPs had called for an independent review of this secretive unit’s clandestine activities, following its monitoring of several prominent figures during the Covid pandemic.

“The unit, which is linked to Britain’s intelligence agencies, was originally named the Counter Disinformation Unit (CDU – a bit scarier, perhaps?) It was founded in 2019 with the aim of identifying and countering “false information” spread by foreign states (bold- sic) to mislead and influence the domestic population. In November 2023, it was rebranded the National Security Online Information Team (NSOIT) (that sounds so much better, doesn’t it? sic) after being accused of suppressing free speech (Bold-sic).

Examples of their activity included them flagging for removal online posts by senior Conservative, Labour and Green politicians which were critical of government policy but did not contain factual inaccuracies.”

Enjoy your blogs and podcasts whilst you can, folks…

And don’t forget.

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As a speedily written addendum after a little more reading, here are some other interesting bits of British history from the 1600’s which readers might enjoy being reminded about. They confirm what an extended, febrile period it was for the United Kingdom. The arrest and trial of the witches of Pendle Hill thus sits as a small, though illuminating episode within this restless narrative. 

“History never repeats itself, but sometimes rhymes.” – Mark Twain.

1603 – Death of Queen Elizabeth I 

1603  James VI of Scotland crowned King of England (as James I of England)

1603 A significant outbreak of the Plague

1605 On 5 November, the Gunpowder plot is uncovered, in which Guy Fawkes and other catholic associates attempted to blow up the King and the Parliament of England.

1618 Execution of Sir Walter Raleigh – one of the most notable Elizabethan era figures. (in part to appease the Spanish) 

1625 King Charles 1st is crowned after his father (James 1) dies.

1626 Charles dismisses parliament

1628 Charles recalls parliament

1629 Charles dismisses parliament for a second time – and it isn’t recalled again until 1640.

1639 England and Scotland are engaged in what becomes known as the Bishops’ Wars, until 1644

1640 The “Long Parliament” is summoned by Charles.

1642 The English Civil War begins. They comprised 3 civil wars fought, up to 1651 between the King’s Royalists, and Parliament forces under Oliver Cromwell. These wars were part of a wider conflict involving Wales, Scotland and Ireland, known as the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. It’s estimated that up to 200,000 people lost their lives, or 4.5% of the population. 

1649 King Charles 1st executed. His execution resulted in the only period of republican rule in British history, during which Oliver Cromwell ruled as Lord Protector of the Commonwealth. This “Interregnum” lasted for 11 years until 1660 when Charles’s son, Charles II, was restored to the throne.

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We’ve come an awfully long way since then as a nation.

(Particularly in the last 12 years, since Rowan Atkinson (Mr. Bean), made the following perceptive speech about the importance of free speech in a democratic country. Part of an eventually successful campaign to remove the word ‘insulting’ from Section 5 of the Public Order Act of 1986. If you click on this link, you will read how this important legislative change came to happen. And also note who was the Director of Public Prosecutions at the time.)

Or have we?