DrRoyB
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drroyb.bsky.social
DrRoyB
@drroyb.bsky.social
43 followers 140 following 130 posts
Retired academic, but still a pedagogue. Volunteer at BBOWT's Warburg Reserve, Bix valley, Henley. Plodding cyclist, hasty photographer of wildlife, fond rabbit owner.
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drroyb.bsky.social
The latest from Le Musée d’Orsay's 'Box of Nuggets'. Performers of Freda Swain's 1950 piano quartet about the sea, dropped digitally into Henri-Edmond Cross's painting, Après-midi à Pardigon. Amid the AI dross on YouTube, a precious nugget of human creativity. Look at the resources put in play here!
December 4, 2025 at 5:03 PM
drroyb.bsky.social
23.11.25, the De Panne Beach Endurance race. Mass start into the vast horizontals, the lead group soon heading into vanishing point. 52km of being sandblasted with wet sand. Cycling at its most existential: no landscape, just an illimitable surface. Wonderful spectacle.
Shortly after the mass start, the groups of participants begin to split. The front group of the race on the sands. Once a rider falls behind the group, there is no way back. The chasing group, the leading trio vanished from sight. Trying to avoid wet cold feet, a rider lifts his front wheel into a shallow beach watercourse.
November 26, 2025 at 3:57 PM
drroyb.bsky.social
Textile Art butterflies by Paula Robinson (Freehand machine embroidery). She represents her subjects as accurately as possible, without fantasy. Insects are intricately textured things. (I had gone to a Xmas Craft Fair, intending to buy presents for others.) Look for thelittlebunnystudio.co.uk
A Peacock butterfly in machine embroidery. A Swallowtail butterfly in Machine embroidery. The original is approximately twice life size. Detail of the stitching, capturing the texture and shine of the scales. The artist does the iridescent elements in metallic thread.
November 15, 2025 at 5:04 PM
drroyb.bsky.social
Down the Nut Walk, near Crazies Hill, today Nov 4th. Cob nuts, hazel, sweet chestnut and walnut saplings were planted in 2007. It's beautiful. Roe deer in the fields to either side.
The photograph shows a long perspective under medium growth trees planted to form an avenue in 2007. Roe dear herd, seen through the trees. View back up the avenue of nut trees to the stile at the entrance. Roe deer, wary, but not frightened away.
November 4, 2025 at 4:43 PM
drroyb.bsky.social
Delaminated headstone, Sonning churchyard. Leica Monochrome setting, Lumix G9ii.
November 3, 2025 at 9:50 PM
drroyb.bsky.social
Fungal textures: Artist's Bracket (?) on a tree stump, Fairy inkcaps on decayed burr wood, intricate as a Bosch painting of hell.
Sonning Lock, Berkshire side.
Large Ganoderma bracket fungi on a tree stump I was separated from the fungi by spiked railings, so could not try the white underside as an artist's medium (I believe this is Artist's Bracket). In Africa, Gorillas eagerly consume it - possibly for health benefits? The image includes dead burr growth on a Chestnut tree stump, and Fairy Inkcap fungi (plus the corner of a cast iron grave marker). Sonning Churchyard, Berkshire. Detail of previous image.
November 3, 2025 at 4:10 PM
drroyb.bsky.social
This robin is a detail in a painting, one which I hadn't noticed before. Can you think what famous scene it is in? Answer in Alt Text.
A detail from Millais' famous painting of Ophelia - one that often gets cropped out. A robin surveys the tragic scene with its beady eye. Being just a robin, it does not share in the pathos.
October 30, 2025 at 5:28 PM
drroyb.bsky.social
The Warburg reserve, where I volunteer on Fridays, has always been famous for its fungi. A guided walk yesterday revealed some fine examples. IDs in Alt text #fungi
Hedgehog fungus. The mycologist in charge was trying to id a rather nondescript group of fungi, picked one, and was a little embarrassed - and delighted - to discover what it was. Giant Club. Our guide had been told years ago that these spore shooting fungi grew under a particular beech tree, and had looked for them for years. 2025 delivered this rarity. Warted amanita. It has just thrust up through the soil, and soil particles are visible. Blue Roundhead. The most striking I have ever seen - it is the reserve's speciality fungus.
October 18, 2025 at 1:29 PM
drroyb.bsky.social
Stocking Webcap (Cortinarius torvus) at the Hurley Chalk Pit reserve today. Such a sculptural, colourful fungus, and not common. In an attempt to do it full justice, I focus-bracketed and then image stacked using focusstackingonline.com
A photograph of a fungus, a Stocking Webcap, taken from ground level to show its bulbous stipe and rich-coloured gills.
October 16, 2025 at 4:36 PM
drroyb.bsky.social
www.youtube.com/watch?v=6THV... From the Musee D'Orsay's delightful 'box of nuggets' series of works by 19th-20th century women composers, Louise Héritte-Viardot's 'Flies and butterflies' movement, with the performers digitally dropped into Berthe Morisot's 'Butterfly chase' painting.
October 6, 2025 at 6:53 PM
drroyb.bsky.social
After Martha www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4... I have read a lot or prose in my time. This, though written in deep grief, is exceptional for its dignity, seriousness, and effectiveness. The power of this indictment of a hospital hierarchy that could not be questioned - hence, rightly, 'Martha's law'.
Paul Laity · After Martha
For the hospital, and for the NHS, it was a closed case, another preventable death: medicine is imperfect, such things...
www.lrb.co.uk
October 1, 2025 at 1:20 PM
drroyb.bsky.social
For my 71st birthday, the hearteningly vivacious Cachua la Despedida: "I must be made of bronze, Or diamond, or of ruby. Either death is afraid of me, Or I shall not know death." Codex Trujillo, c.1780. www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0UC...
September 24, 2025 at 8:04 AM
drroyb.bsky.social
'The King of Kashmir.' These aquamarines in the native matrix will be centrepiece in the Cullen Hall of Gems and Minerals, Houston. Daniel Trinchillo tells the story of the heroic excavation of this mineral pocket at www.mardanifineminerals.com/wp-content/u... Further comment in the alt text.
A mineral dealer, Daniel Trinchillo, stands beside an astonishing aquamarine cluster mined in the mountains of Pakistan. Humanity used to value sea green aquamarines, collectors are now avid for sky blue. Local miners just used to extract the crystals: Trinchillo gradually persuaded them that they must use diamond chainsaws, and extract the mineral still in its matrix. All over the world, poor people endure punishing labour in harshest conditions to supply our avidity and cupidity. A YouTube video of the excavation of the King of Kashmir includes shameful comments, gloating over this. Local miners. Three of these men own the cliff, successful miners give them a share in what is realised after what they excavate is sold. The miners work 300 meters up a cliff, and found the mineral cavity having tunneled 80 meters in. A miner photographed looking into the pocket into which the minerals grew, starting 10 millions years ago. Finally, after intense labour, the main body, weighing 250kg, was removed. Crystals shaken from their place of growth by earth tremors could be cleaned of secondary crystal growth, and plugged back into place.
September 15, 2025 at 8:19 PM
drroyb.bsky.social
Nothing you have seen in your life prepares you for Nestor Vega dancing the Malambo Mayor. You have seen your new look, while I have to go now and practice my zapateados and cepillados. www.youtube.com/watch?v=7c4g...
September 4, 2025 at 9:52 PM
drroyb.bsky.social
Memorialising the young (2). Church of St Bartholomew, Lower Basildon. John Theodore Frank Olive, who died of leukemia at 14, 2005, loved dinosaurs. His Grandfather is remembered on the same gravestone.
July 27, 2025 at 2:42 PM
drroyb.bsky.social
Memorialising the young, 1. The Deverell Brothers, drowned 1886, Church of St Bartholomew, Lower Basildon. Sculpture by William Wetmore Story. How could their parents bear this record of the last moments of their children? Black Box Recorder's track about them: www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6iw...
The toe descends into the fatal waters. I think the statue might be read as the younger boy going in first, and the older also drowning when trying to rescue him. Harold (16) and Ernest (15): "They were lovely and pleasant in their lives, and in death they were not divided" The pathos of the statue makes this a gloomy place, it affects the atmosphere.
July 27, 2025 at 2:37 PM
drroyb.bsky.social
So what we have here is a culturally totemic Mexican ballad, La Llorona, 'The Weeping Woman', back translated - because the story has pre-Hispanic roots - into Mayan, and sung by Leydi Jazmin. The lilting music is so in love with easeful death for the Medea figure. www.youtube.com/watch?v=XW2D...
July 22, 2025 at 7:36 PM
drroyb.bsky.social
www.nga.gov/exhibitions/... Current exhibition at the NGA, Washington, looking at the entomological illustrations of Joris Hoefnagel (1542-1601). He was a sometime illustrator of Books of Hours, who somehow made the marginal subjects central, and serious.
A Swallowtail butterfly, exactly observed by Joris Hoefnagel in Animalia rationalia et insecta (ignis) (c1575-82) Orange-tip, Painted Lady, Small Tortoiseshell and Green-veined White. Meadow brown, Gatekeeper, Clouded Yellow and - NGA says Bath White, but he's better than that, he has put together the Clouded Yellow and its white female 'helice' form. The NGA seem unable to explain why Hoefnagel grouped his insects under the element, 'Ignis'. He probably saw them as spontaneously generated by heat from the sun.
July 2, 2025 at 12:31 PM
drroyb.bsky.social
A wall display in the entrance hall of the Royal Berkshire Hospital promoting organ donation. Not using fantasy butterflies, not using AI butterflies, but identifiable species! It's suggesting Psyche (the soul / the butterfly) metamorphosing to a new form.
June 7, 2025 at 9:19 PM
drroyb.bsky.social
Evening in the church of St Grada, Ruan Minor, Lizard peninsula. The masonry, pitted with tool marks, the dangling bell ropes, that sense of nature taking over a monumental work - all these things reminded me of the engravings of Giovanni Battista Piranesi.
The photograph depicts the lower masonry of the tower of a neglected church in Cornwall. Invasive plants taking root on memorial tablets. St Grada and Holy Cross Church. The tower stands above the vestry area of the church: this is kept locked for safety reasons. How can masonry so massive be failing? I have edited the b/w photos to bring out the resemblance to the engravings of Giovanni Battista Piranesi.
May 27, 2025 at 12:28 PM
drroyb.bsky.social
Inside the Halliggye fogou. Hidden away on the Trelowarren estate, SE of Helston. Possibly built by British folk fleeing west from Anglo-Saxon invaders after the collapse of the Roman empire. Place of refuge, or storage, or a ritual site, nobody knows.
The photograph shows the interior of a fogou in Cornwall, looking out from the inner chamber towards 19th century steps down into this enigmatic structure of (?) the 4th century. Main chamber, and the low entrance into the inner chamber. View into the inner chamber of the fogou.
May 26, 2025 at 5:11 PM
drroyb.bsky.social
Edith Pageaud put this on YouTube a few days ago. She's playing Scarlatti's B minor sonata, K27, in her own transcription:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPjB... More or less anyone can make music on a guitar, but to make a guitar sound like this! Watch her right hand. Consummate artistry.
May 16, 2025 at 4:47 PM
drroyb.bsky.social
I was in Andalusia last week doing wildlife, and these are White-headed Ducks at the Rambla de los Morales. All the stocky charisma of a puffin: a bird that might have been designed by an infant school class armed with crayons
The rare and unusual White-headed Duck The White-headed Duck has a blue beak - why wasn't it called the Blue-beaked Duck? The males have heads with some black feathers, the females are white-headed.
May 12, 2025 at 7:44 AM
drroyb.bsky.social
My sister, enjoying Antibes, found time to send me this delight. It's an 'International Letter' - a postcard in effect, commemorating 150 years since 'Carmen' was first staged in 1875. Carmen is the actual stamp, you can see the perforations round her. What a sweet design!
French postcard incorporating the stamp. It commemorates 150 years of performances of Bizet's 'Carmen'. Two euros 10 from https://francestampphilatelystore.laposte.fr/shop?types=stamp_sold_individually&page=1
April 11, 2025 at 6:34 PM
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Fugue for Saxophone in D Minor (Opening). French exponents of joyous pop, Deluxe, are confronting and reflecting a new seriousness in their forthcoming 7th album. Watch the big reveal in full here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=XA1_...
April 6, 2025 at 10:35 AM