Back in the mists of time

Back in the mists of time we had an idea to help the National Museum of Wales by cleaning / conserving / scanning and digitising the Morrey Salmon glass plate negatives. 

We have heard from the museum that that they are working through putting information into their systems and they should be available soon to view online

It's just worth a few moments to see the scale of what we handed over to them 

That includes a lot of things that are sized to be useable, but to get there we had an awful lot more to work through in terms of the full sized iamge files and various versions of things in backups etc. 

So this is the full scope of what we generated in 3 years!

If people wonder why some of the numbers are so different it's primarily because I digitised everything in a RAW format from my cameras and then created a full sized JPG file and then a working useable resized version to share with the team. 

I also creaed a lot of backup versions of things that the team was editing. We also had some information from the Museum which we did not need to send back to them as they already had it

   

 

Bioscience winner 2025

Hannah Mofeez Croft is announced to be winner of the second year student fieldwork prize being in honour of  Professor Ursula Henriques and Dr Mary Gillham being thanked for her excellent talk on 

"freshwater macroinvertebrate communities in urbanised and natural river habitats in the Cardiff area" 

by Mike Dean President of the Society 

More details about the prize and winners here https://cardiffnaturalists.blogspot.com/p/biosciences-award-winners.html 

Salmon and Ingram exhibition at the National Museum of Wales

It was an absolute pleasure to meet with Hugh Salmon and his daughter Jennifer at the opening of the exhibition showing some of his fathers and her grandfarthers pioneering work at the National Museum of Wales 

Project worker Rob Nottage and President Mike Dean are left and right of them respetively with Ben Rowson of the Museum who put the exhibition together on the far right 

The exhibition includes information about Morrey and Geoffrey and focusses on some of the key events such as the 1934 International Ornithological Congress and Morrey's military service 

A video of some of the pictures runs alonside prints of some of the images including the early colour picture from 1911

And his camera is on display

 

Some good nature information and pictures

 Want something to read? 

Like looking at pictures 

The latest newsletter is online at https://cardiffnaturalists.org.uk/htmfiles/newsletter.htm 

Morrey Salmon and Geoffrey Ingram's Diaries - March 1913

Working on the Morrey Salmon images such as the one of a Blackbirds nest taken in April 1912  it became clear that there was a lot of untapped information in the diaries that the National Museum of Wales had stored as part of the Collection 

However on initial review it became clear that what the Museum had stored as Morrey Salmon's diaries were actually Geoffrey Ingram's and the Salmon diaries were missing. 

Luckily a number of the Salmon diaries have been located by the family and have been passed to the project team and are now being transcribed (the handwriting is difficult) and we have the following from this time 102 years ago

Sunday 2nd March 1913	6.4am. HNS & HMS. Port Talbot to Porthcawl.
Saturday 8th March 1913	5.45am.  HMS.  Radyr Quarry & Wood.  Found beginning of 1 Thrushes nest and another half finished & partly lined.  Wren not started under old tree.  Heard Goldcrest.  Saw Redwing & Bullfinch.

This suggests that he went to the first location with someone else (it could be one of his brothers or Herbert Short) and the second location himself. His entries are very brief 

Compare that with the following by Geoffrey Ingram who kept a fascinating detailed diary of bird sightings and behaviour at this same time 

March 2nd 1913

Watched a Missle Thrush mobbing a pair of Jackdaws in the grounds of Roath Court. The birds wished to alight on a beech tree that the Thrush had evidently selected as a nesting site 7 it was very amusing to watch is chasing the poor Doves from pillar to post

March 5th 1913

Started out by myself at 6.10 A.M. for the Wild Park. Thrushes, Blackbirds, Robins & Hedge Sparrows singing as I cycled up. A number of Duck on the lake mostly Mallards & Tufted although I heard a Wigeons whistle several times. Chaffinches & Wren singing as I entered the Wild Gardens Had a look through the wood & around the South-east end but found no signs of any nest. Saw a Magpie & heard a Green Woodpecker. Also saw a pair of Long Tailed Tits two or three Moorhens Great Tits, Blue Tits, & heard the Bullfinches. Nice clear morning & very mild Marsh Mallows, Daisy’s & Primroses in bloom & leaves appearing on Hawthorn, Honeysuckle, Field Rose & a number of other Trees & Shrubs

All of their records went into the Cardiff Naturalists Bird reports and subsequently into the County Avifaunas and we owe these pioneers a huge debt of gratitude for their work which we can now use to see how the city and climate have changed over the intervening 102 years    

Note the spelling of Mistle thrush, this is how it was recorded in his early dairies, the more usual modern spelling was adopted later

Picture now copyright National Museum of Wales, used under CNS licence

Declaring Success on the Salmon Negatives

 We've reached the point where all of the Salmon negatives have been cleaned and stored in acid free paper and boxes. 

Well we though t we had and we should manage it this week. What we found out at the last minute from Robin the Museum's photographer was that there were a few extras stored within the Dark Slides and he arranges to have these taken out for us so we have just a handful to deal with this week 

So there are a little over 3100 done and we have spent something like 2500 person hours on this as a team of volunteers which is incredible

We are now working on the archive and that's turning up a whole heap of new information, but more of that to come.  

In the mean time here are some nice pictures 

Red-backed Shrike Young in nest 22/6/1921

Grey heron, Thaw Valley 12/4/1925

Merlin and chicks, Ireland Moor, Radnorshire, 6/7/1952

Ronald Lockley (left) and Ex-king Ferdinand of Bulgaria (centre) at the IOC congress 1934 onboard a Royal Navy Destroyer "borrowed" for the day to ferry birdwatchers around 3 islands 

Billy the seal and Victoria Park Zoo

As the team are working on the Morrey Salmon photographs project we sometimes come across a number of pictures which are not part of his core wild bird photography hobby 

One of the places that he visited from time to time was the (now defunct and from other information that is probably a good thing) Victoria Park Zoom 

Here is a quick selection of pictures that you may find of interest 

A seal which we presume to be the famous Cardiff  "Billy the Seal" 

A Pelecan

Some Grey Crowned Cranes