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 

Morrey Salmon Photographic collection

We're up and running fully now with the Morrey Salmon Photographic collection cleaning (and subsequently digitsing). 

Here he is in the 1980s with his third camera 

Copyright National Museum of Wales used under CNS licence

He was recognised as an incredible man notonly in this field but because of his military service in WW1 and WW2. Some of that is noted in his biography 

“Col. Morrey Salmon must now be regarded as the father of British bird photography” (Eric Hosking OBE. Bird photographer).

“He was a legendary figure from way back in the early days of conservation in this country” (Sir Peter Scott CH, CBE, DSC & Bar, FRS, FZS, Founder of the WWT and WWF).

“He – by quite extraordinary efforts well outside what might be regarded as a norm – made a major contribution to RAF operations in North Africa, the Mediterranean and the Balkans. His dedication and professional competence set a standard which has been reflected in RAF Regiment operations ever since” (Air Vice-Marshall Donald Pocock).

“I especially valued the leadership he was able to give in Wales in regard to ornithology and conservation” (Max Nicholson, President RSPB).

“He was a great Naturalist and a great Welshman” (Roger Lovegrove RSPB).

From his first bird photograph taken in 1909 to his later work we will be looking at it all 

Lapwing by Morrey Salmon copyright National Museum of Wales used under CNS licence

After the introduction training a couple of weeks ago where Lisa from the National Museum of Wales taught us how to clean glass lantern slides and glass negatives we had our first full session today with about 100 glass negatives cleaned and repackaged into acid free archival envelopes. 

This is a "long haul project" with over 3600 objects currently noted to be dealt with and that doesn't mean just cleaning and repackaging we have to identify the pictures and locations and put information togetether about each one from his diaries and notebooks and other CNS resources so there is a long way to go. 

But we thought you may like to see a few pictures of the current volunteers at work and some of the pictures we are already working on. 

As you can see from the sparrow on the birdbox some of the pictures are sadly in a bad way, but many more are in almost perfect condition and the quality of the photography given the equipment available is nothing less than amazing. 

There is a lot more of this story to tell so keep watching out for future posts.

Eleanor Vachell will be featured on this Thursday's episode of The Great British Menu

 We've had a message from the family of Eleanor Vachell our 64th and first female President 

Dear all

I thought that you might be interested to know that Eleanor Vachell will be featured on this Thursday's episode of The Great British Menu.  Apparently Eleanor was the inspiration for one of the Chefs,  Ali Borer.  No idea is what capacity but I thought people might be interested.  

Here is the link:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000v4gv/great-british-menu-series-16-11-wales-mains-and-dessert

So how does a famous botanist inspire a famous chef? You will need to watch to find out.  

Ali Borer is now head chef of Nutbourne Restaurant in London.

Members in His Majesties Forces

We remember those who served in WWI especially at this time - a time of reflection on the service of individuals not of politics

Here is the record of the members of the Society who served as at 1915 when volume XLVIII of the transactions was published. Sadly we did not continue this tradition 

At this time therefore we specifically pay respects to  George Widowfield who died in France 

You nay like to read about the service of some of our members who became presidents of the Society and are on our 150th anniversary website

Dr Alfred Sheen C.B.E., M.S., F.R.C.S., (1869-1945) 39th President

Geoffrey C.S.Ingram (1883-1971) 53rd President

Archibald Henry Lee O.B.E., M.C., M.A. (1890-1970) 59th President

Col Morrey Salmon CBE, MC, DL, DSc, (1890-1985) 72nd President

Outstanding and Famous Speakers of the last 150 years

As the 150th Anniversary year comes closer to drawing to a close, the weather has been so wonderful that it has been hard to find time to sit behind a computer and do more work on the pictures we took from the Society archives.

However I have managed to place another page into the 150th Anniversary pages on the website regarding Outstanding and Famous Speakers of the last 150 years (well as far as 1922) which us where I have got to for now.

From Fridtjof Nansen ...

Through Winston Churchill...

To George Mallory ...

There have been some incredibly well known names who have spoken to the Society and to the public on behalf of the Society.

It was in this spirit that we put on the wonderfully successful Iolo Williams lecture at the start of our 150th anniversary year.

All the Presidents Men and Women

No this is not a reference to the 1976 film about the Watergate Scandal and no it does not include Robert Redford or Dustin Hoffman, but it does include a few scandals and a few hero's and gives some thoughtful insight into the history of the Society and the changing history of the way people view science, culture and wildlife over the ages.

The President's pages are now all live on the website and the Society history section is now substantially complete so what does all of  this tell us.

One thing is that we have a lot of information available about some fascinating people and it has been a real pleasure to explore all of this and share it with the people of Cardiff and through the internet the world.

In doing this I have amassed a personal archive of over 1000 images, snippets of information and I have created 117 webpages with about 350 images on them totally a bit over 70Mb if information (which admittedly is a very small number in terms of file sizes these days)

Robert Drane, Thomas Henry Thomas, William Adams

Interestingly in these days of social media and where GDPR regulations are coming into force to ensure that people's personal details are kept private, it is the earliest presidents who were the easiest to research as the details of the daily lives of the forward thinking people who formed the Cardiff Naturalists' Society were documented on an almost daily basis in the local newspapers of which there were many, covering what was at that time a relatively small, but fast growing town.

The details recorded about people's attendance at scientific lectures and the events of the Society in those early days would probably have people reaching for lawyers in order to sue someone these days.

Eleanor Vachell, Franklen G.Adams, Henry Heywood

The research into those early years was massively helped by the wonderful National Library of Wales Newspapers on-line site. it is fantastic how those early newspapers (up to 1919 as far as I can tell) are scanned and OCR'd to make the information available

Also the fact that we as a society agreed and made available our Reports and Transactions to be scanned into their Welsh Journals on-line site was a wonderful boon. The same scanning and OCR process has made searching for information about former members much easier than reading through about a meter of bookshelf every time I wanted to look something up. One note on this is that not all journal copies are coming up in the searches.

The National Library have been made aware and they say that they have scanned and OCR'd them all, but there is a problem with some metadata which is preventing some issues appearing. Hopefully they will sort this out sometime soon and I will be able to perform another set of searches to see if anything more comes up

A H Lee and unknown junior member, A H Trow, A W Sheen

The Glamorgan Archives have also been wonderful and a number of the pictures have come from materials that we have deposited at the archives and are available for any bonafide researcher to make use of.

Things got harder to research after about the 1950's  whilst the society was still thriving at the time, the level of coverage in local newspapers started to drop and by the 1970's things seem to get very hard and it is not until the 2000's where we start to find information getting easier to find again in the internet age.

I suspect that gap will be filled in in some way with the scanning of further publications and a lot more information coming onto the internet, but there are likely to be gaps still in those years where the telephone took over from letter writing and there is nothing to place in the archives.

Sir Cyril Fox, Canon Charles J Thompson, Charles Vachell, A W Sheen

Also in those years the fragmentation of scientific interests led to many more specialist groups being setup and a loss in the overall place that a local general natural history society had in Cardiff's culture. Such is not uncommon, but also not always the case, but one thing is clear from my experience is that the published press have a much lower interest unless a story that could grab a headline is placed on their plate with little work for them to need to do.

Other institutions have been very helpful as I have come across items that relate to things in their collections and I would like to list some other information sources and institutions that have been particularly useful or helpful at this time (there are yet more people or institutions which are individually thanked within the pages)

• National Museum of Wales 
• Cardiff University
• Guernsey Museum
• Dr Mary Gillham Archive project
• Vachell Family Archives
• www.cardiffparks.org.uk 

Linda Nottage, Mary Gillham, Peter Price

Noting recent privacy aspects, we have left it up to living people as to whether they want a page in the system and some have not yet decided or got around to providing a set of information that they are happy with. There are also a few people who I have struggled to find any information about (mostly in that information blackout age) and I need to continue the search, but that will have to be as a much lower priority project.

So I may well come back and update some of those pages and it's worth keeping an eye out for updates. 

Andy Kendall
Publicity Officer and 113th President 

Many thanks to the Archives

As regular readers of these blog posts will know we have been exploring the history of the Society and we have had a lot of help along the way from the staff and volunteers of the Glamorgan Archives

It was a real pleasure to give a talk to them recently an as an added attraction they brought some of the CNS materials out from the archives for us to have a look at.

One day I hope to go back and spend a week or two reading it all and looking for some more interesting stories

Especial thanks to Fiona Diggins (on left in the bottom picture) for setting it all up

100 Presidents on-line

The title says 100 Presidents on-line.

However it's not actually true, there are 104 if you count them one way and only 97 if you count another

The way I have been posting these updates is from the sequence of Presidential occupancies and not the actual web pages.

I have just posted Presidential occupancy 100 that being Dr Joyce Lloyd who I am glad to say I knew and was a lovely person to talk to about wildlife adventures she had had, and someone who said she enjoyed hearing about my adventures as well. However Presidential occupancy 101 Mrs Mairead Sutherland is already on-line as we had a wonderful obituary of her in electronic format and it was easy at the start of this project to create that page.

There are some others already on-line out of sequence so the number of presidential occupancies is 104

However the number of files that have gone on-line is just 97 for the simple reason that some presidents were in post for a number of years, and that some were presidents for more than one term, just not in sequence

There are a few people who are still living who have not agreed for a profile to go on-line or have just not managed to get around to providing one. Anyway I'm still saying that 100 are on-line, and there are just 15 left to do to complete the project

Thomas Henry Thomas Paintings

As many readers of this blog will know we have been exploring the past of members of the society though the ever increasing Presidents Pages. Tthough this we have had some interesting internet comunications and some more fascinating information has come to us.

The family of Charles Tanfield Vachell and Eleanor Vachell  made contact with the society via our Twitter account showing us some interesting pictures of them and other pictures tht were in an album belonging to Eleanor

In these we spotted a picture by another of our former Presidents T. H. Thomas and after some emails back and fore we are able to now share with you some colour pictures by the illustrious artist and former president

We are very happy to have these to add to the information that we have about Thomas as the web pages we put together were a little "grey"

So now in colour (click images for larger versions)

Glamorgan in Purple and Gold from Quantox, Somerset ...

An Umbrella shop in ??? ...

Pandy Mill nr Bettws Y Coed in Winter...

We are extremely grateful to the Vachell family for sharing these treasures from their family archives with us and we hope to be able to continue this relationship in order to bring you more fascinating history of not only the Society, but of Cardiff and Wales as well

50 Presidents now on-line

Back in November I commented that as part of our 150th Celebrations I was putting information about each of our presidents onto our website

At that point I had reached 25. now I have reached the milestone of 50 presidential write-ups on the site and learned an awful lot about the society and the history of Cardiff at the same time

I have continued to learn and am sharing it in the hope that others will find it as interesting as I have done, or at the very least it will be of use to future researchers and harder for people to ignore the truth of the past (as I have found in some academic white up's of some events)

I've added

• The president who served in three wars as a doctor running three major hospitals as he did it 
• The president who was the first director of the National Museum but did not live to see it built
• The president who rented 2 islands (Grassholm and Skomer) to protect them for the future
• The president who lost an eye in WWI

And many more

Why not take a look at http://cardiffnaturalists.org.uk/htmfiles/150th-08.htm and read about it for yourself

There are a lot of interesting people to come, but it is taking time to do this and I hope you will not mind me taking the rest of this 150th year to complete the task

Of course in so much work there may be mistakes I have made or information or links between people I have not found. if you spot anything please just drop me a note via the contact form (top right of the page) and I will happily sort things out 

Regards

Andy Kendall

25 Presidents online

As part of our 150th year celebrations I have been reading about and extracting information about our former presidents

I have now reached the milestone that the first 25 Presidents are now on-line and available to read on The Presidents Page

You can read about: -

• The President who founded the Library
• The President who worked out how to stop coal dust exploding
• The President who campaigned for sewage to be treated before being put into the Severn estuary
• The President who completed the first Flora of Glamorgan (with a lot of help from his daughter who also became a President in due course)
• The President who was the first Chancellor of the University
• The President who found the first Welsh Dinosaur remains
• The President who beat Marconi to the wireless experiments at Lavernock
• The President who designed the Old Library and thought he should have designed the town hall and the museum 
• The President who was an expert on the brewing of sake
• The President who was one of the first up the Matterhorn
• The President who repaired an eye with an electromagnet

and many more fascinating facts 

As well as these first 25 there are the pages about some of our later presidents which were created for the exhibition at the Cardiff Story museum and are still on-line, and as I felt it was only right a brief summary about myself

(A word of warning the links at the bottom of the pages do not take you forward and back properly. I will be revising all of these once the exhibition is closed and I can do a tidy up not worrying about the pages we put live for the exhibition) 

‘A most agreeable and enjoyable day’

As part of our 150th we have been partnering with a number of organizations and they are joining in with our celebrations

Recently I have had emails from Tony at the Glamorgan Archives who has penned a number of articles for their website based on our archive materials

https://glamarchives.gov.uk/2017/09/12/fossil-ferns-reedalso-antique-silver-ring-specimen-white-rock-founding-cardiff-naturalists-society-september-1867/

https://glamarchives.wordpress.com/2017/10/05/carry-on-up-the-nile-the-first-public-lecture-programme-launched-by-the-cardiff-naturalists-society-27-november-1873/

https://glamarchives.wordpress.com/2017/10/12/a-most-agreeable-and-enjoyable-day-the-cardiff-naturalists-societys-field-trip-to-tintern-abbey-june-1873/

I don't have any pictures from 1873, but that trip was led by a geologist so I hope you enjoy these geologists eye view of the Abbey with some pictures taken when Rhian and I had a day out there

These views show a range of building stones used at different places in the Abbey, and the impact that weathering has had on many of these stones. Many of the stones were not intended to be out in the weather because the structure would have had a roof, however some were clearly laid in different angles and you can see how water has got into the layers of rock and differentially weathered some of the layers

Presidential Games...

No this is not a reference to any goings on in the US at the moment, It's more a comment about how much fun I have been having reading about and learning about the people who preceded me as President of the Cardiff Naturalists' (something I still consider to have been a great honour after many years)

I know I am reading about Victorian times and the way people looked at and thought about things was very different and you have to consider that some of t...he people who were appealing for great things to be done were also employers who expected hard work in unpleasant conditions. However to see amongst the former presidents the people who campaigned for things like the Free Library, Miners benevolent funds and for the establishment of many of the great institutions of the city I think shows people of vision

The list of pages with information about former presidents is growing at http://cardiffnaturalists.org.uk/htmfiles/150th-08.htm and I hope that some of the current members find this of interest.

Regards
Andy

An Evening with Iolo Williams - Pictures from the evening

It was a SELL OUT ! and we had a wonderful time!

Even before the event it was clear that Iolo was a success with the crowd and he happily spent so much time having his picture taken that we had to ask some people to go directly in 

And it wasn't just the public who wanted a picture he made sure that the Museum warding staff felt welcome to pose for a picture

Once we did manage to get everyone to their seats, our president Chris Franks made the introductions and welcomed everyone to the event

It wasn't long before Iolo was entertaining us all with his tales of learning to tickle fish in his younger years

His explanations of how he had worked with the Gurka's and SAS on the protection of wild bird nests during his 15 years with the RSPB had the whole audience in raptures.

 And his tales of working with the television crews on many programs including springwatch (team in the background) were fascinating

Questions and Answers would have probably gone on all night had we permitted it !

but we had to bring things to a close with the drawing of our prize raffle (winner Judith Bradley collecting the first prize from Iolo)

After that we went into the main hall for the private reception for members.

Sorry if you have recently joined - we would have loved to have everyone through for that for everyone and new members included, but  it would have been cost prohibitive and we had to make that a member offer before the general ticket sales started

We did manage to get this picture of former and current presidents with Iolo.

From left to Right : - Steve Howe, Joan Andrews, Andy Kendall, Thomas Henry Thomas (statue of the 16th president created for the museum Dinosaur Babies exhibition), Linda Nottage, Iolo Williams, Patricia Wood, Chris Franks)

A good time was had by all...

Especially Chris ...

Do you know of William Adams (1813-1886)?

I didn't until I was given a box of glass slides which were found in a Church that was being turned into a community center in Cardiff so from then on I knew what he looked like, but not a lot more

Here's a copy of that picture : -

I was aware of his name from the records and of course his name is recorded in the first edition of the Society transactions

When we started researching the history of the Society the fact he was a geologist interested me and I decided to look for some more information

Like many of our former members and presidents he seems to have been driven to do good works wherever he was.

This has now gone into the 150th Anniversary web site to support our exhibition at the Cardiff Story museum you can see the page here - http://cardiffnaturalists.org.uk/htmfiles/150th-11.htm

Cardiff Naturalists’ Society marks 150th Anniversary with a series of fascinating events

This year Cardiff Naturalists’ Society www.cardiffnaturalists.org.uk marks its 150th Anniversary with a series of fascinating events, starting with a prestigious lecture and an exhibition.

In addition to its usual programme of wildlife, environmental and natural history events, it is hosting a special event entitled “An evening with Iolo Williams” in the Reardon Smith Lecture Theatre at the Amgueddfa Cymru/National Museum Wales, Cathays Park, Cardiff, at 7 pm on October 5th 2017.

Tickets for the Evening with Iolo Williams will be priced at £12.00 for adults and £6.00 for children, with a special event as part of the evening for members of the society.

Details of how to purchase tickets for the event will follow in the near future.

There will also be an exhibition at the Cardiff Story Museum, The Hayes, Cardiff, entitled Cardiff Naturalists' Society: The first 150 years! showing the rich history of the society and the many things its members have contributed to the city of Cardiff, the wider South Wales area and the whole of the UK.

This will also feature an Audio-Visual presentation showing some of the wonderful wildlife that we learn about in our indoor meetings and then head out to see on our trips to local wildlife sites, and some of the unusual and rare things we have found in recent years. The exhibition will run from Monday September 4th to Sunday November 26th 2017

Entry to the Cardiff Story Museum is free, opening hours are available on http://www.cardiffstory.com/

To keep up to date on these events and for further information about the society please visit our website or via social media on our: -

Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/groups/CardiffNaturalists/
Twitter feed @CardiffNats
Blog http://cardiffnaturalists.blogspot.com/

BRENT VALLEY SANCTUARY

We were recently sent this

Hello,

I'm renovating my house at the moment and when clearing out, I came across this flyer.

I saw that the society is still running so just thought I'd send a pic as perhaps it's of interest to someone there.

Cheers,

Ross

I admit that I hard not heard of the sanctuary so with a bit of help from the internet

"The members of a branch of the Selborne Society bit upon an admirable idea. London grows outwards : every year the grip of the town fastens more and more on vanishing country, and where it fastens it generally kills.

With the coming of the town and its roads and railways the country has to be protected, if it is to survive at all, against the enemies the town brings with it ; against wanton spoiling and defiling, against the destruction of its birds and beasts, against the trippers and streets hawkers who grub up its ferns and flowers.

The Brent Valley branch of the Selborne Society looked at the practical side of that difficulty as it affected their own neighbourhood. Why should not they, while there was yet time, secure and protect a sanctuary of wild life, particularly bird life ?

A wood, one of the few remaining in the district, seemed to offer the opportunity of such a sanctuary, and after some negotiation it was arranged with the farmer on whose property it stands that the fences surrounding the wood should be kept up and that a keeper should be appointed. "

I admit to not finding any recent references so any information would be appreciated.

To Read more about the sanctuary take a look at this old reference http://archive.spectator.co.uk/article/15th-january-1910/9/the-brent-valley-bird-sanctuary

Book Availability

In a recent post we told you of a new book Footpints in the Sands of Time telling the fascinating Life story of Colonel Morrey Salmon

A couple of updates to this are that there is a review of the book in the latest edition of Nature Cymru magazine by Well known Welsh ornithologist David Saunders, and we've also been told that the book is on-sale in the National Museum of Wales bookshop in Cathays Park so if you want to browse a copy it's now possible to get your hands on a copy more easily

We also still have copies of some of our society and May Gillham's publications - if you want to contact us you can see what's there by looking at the Publications Order Form

Regards
Andy

Footprints in the sands of Time

Just published ... A new book about one of our most famous members

Colonel Harry Morrey Salmon is fondly remembered as one of our most illustrious former members, however many of us are now too young or recent a member to know him (including me which is a situation I regret because he seems to have been a truly inspirational figure)

As the book flyer says, he was Hailed as "Welsh Ornithologist of the century" and "Father of British Bird Photography". He was awarded the Gold Medal of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds in 1971

We are therefore very happy to be able to promote a new book that has been published by members of his Family

You can download a flyer with full details of the book and how to order a copy by clicking here

He was treasurer of the National Museum of Wales which is an organization that the society has always had close links with and they now house his photographic collections

Having just read his obituary which can be found online here and a number of other on-line references to his illustrious military career (in both world wars) I can say that I will be getting a copy and hope to be able to bring you a review fairly soon

Regards
Andy