As we enter a Bank Holiday long weekend here in Maynooth I thought I’d pass on a bit of news and a clarification about the swan(s). Some time ago I described the sad events that led to the death of one of the pair of swans that had nested on the Royal Canal for many years, along with all their cygnets. In that post I explained that one of the swans had died and the other had been taken away by the Kildare Wildlife Rescue (KWR) team. All I know is that both seemed to have been suffering from some sort of be “infection” which may or may not be the same thing that cause of death as the cygnets.
At the time I had been told that it was the female swan (the pen) that had died and the male that had been taken away to be treated. It turns out that this was the wrong way round: it was the male swan that had died and the female (the cob) that had been removed by Kildare Wildlife Rescue.
The good news, however, is that she has recovered and has now been returned to the Canal:
Picture Credit: Caroline Connolly of Kildare Wildlife Rescue
Of course she’s on her own now, having lost her partner and all her cygnets. I don’t know if she’ll find another and start breeding again. I do hope so. A lone juvenile male has been spotted on the canal recently. Might they get together?
The Harbour Swans and their Island, pictured last AprilSwans with cygnets, last May
I was looking forward to making acquaintance with the beautiful swans of Maynooth when my sabbatical is over, but I’ve heard that recent tragic events mean that won’t be happening. The title of this post is not a reference to the collective noun for swans, but literally a lamentation.
A pair of swans had been nesting for several years on the little island in the harbour of the Royal Canal at Maynooth for several years- since before I arrived here. Every spring they have raised a batch of cygnets and these have grown up each summer and departed for a new life elsewhere. I’ve always enjoyed watching the little ones grow and learn how to find food under the very watchful eye of their parents. I had no reason to think things would be any different this year. I was wrong.
The first calamity to occur, earlier this year, was that the island flooded destroying this year’s batch of eggs. The swans tried again, and managed two more cygnets, but neither survived. I’m not sure exactly what happened but it seems, various locks were opened to allow water into the section of the canal England has a much more extensive system of waterways than Ireland and when rivers are close to flooding, water is often diverted into canals to stop them breaking their banks. I guess this is what happened earlier, but I don’t know.
It was bad enough that there are no cygnets this year, but worse was to come. Recently the female swan (pen) was found to be very ill. She was taken away by Kildare Wildlife Rescue (KWR) team and cared for but sadly passed away. All I know is that it seemed to be “an infection” which may or may not be the same cause of death as the cygnets. Avian flu is a possibility, so is some form of poisoning such as botulism. Sadly, people do feed the birds in the harbour with inappropriate things so this might also be a contributing factor.
What about the male swan (cob)? Well, he has gone. I don’t know whether he died too or whether he just left. Swans mate for life and I’ve heard of cases when one of a pair has simply pined away when the other has died.
So there are no swans nesting in Maynooth anymore. It’s really very sad. Swans are beautiful creatures and the pair on the canal was really well known to the community. I hope that another pair will nest on the island before too long. It may even be that a pair of rescue birds will be rehomed there by KWR. Before that happens though, I hope they find out why exactly caused the swans to die. We don’t want more deaths
As I’ve mentioned before on this blog, over the past year or so I’ve been trying to catch up on my reading. My stack of books I’ve bought but never read is now down to half-a-dozen or so.
With sabbatical drawing to a close, the next major life even appearing on the horizon is retirement. Since that will involve a considerable reduction in income, and consequently money to buy books, and my house already has quite a lot of books in it, I thought I’d join the local public library so that when I’ve cleared the backlog of bought books, I’ll read books from the library instead.
With that in mind, I just joined the public library on Main Street, Maynooth, which is only about 15 minutes’ walk from my house. It’s a small branch library but is part of a larger network across County Kildare, with an extensive online catalogue from which one can acquire books on request. All this is free of charge.
Once I got my card, I had a quick look around the Maynooth branch. It has a good collection of classic literature (including poetry) as well as Irish and world history, which will keep me occupied for quite a while. The normal loan period is 3 weeks, which provides an incentive to read the book reasonably quickly.
I borrowed books in large quantities from public libraries when I was a child. I’m actually looking forward to getting into the library habit again.
Last night I arrived back in a very rainy Barcelona. Although I got a bit damp on the way back to my flat from the bus stop, the journey was otherwise uneventful. The one thing worthy of note is that although the approach to Barcelona Airport was a little bumpy owing to bad weather, the pilot managed to perform one of the softest of soft landings I’ve ever experienced. It was so well done that there was a spontaneous round of applause from the passengers. Clapping when the plane lands used to be fairly common, but nowadays is a rarity reserved for occasions such as this.
The end of my stint in Barcelona is now in sight so I plan to see the sights I haven’t yet seen, or at least as many of them as I can manage. Next week I have to travel to Rome for the 2024 Euclid Consortium Meeting, at which I’m doing a plenary talk on the first morning. The week after that I have to travel to Valencia to give a seminar, so it will be a busy second half of the month.
Talking of the Euclid Consortium, my term as Chair of the Euclid Consortium Diversity Committee (ECDC) closes at the end of June 2024, at which point I will also be leaving the Committee after 4 years on it. Hopefully I will find a bit more time to do research in the last two months of my sabbatical; I’ve spent about 50% of it so far on ECDC matters, and progress on writing papers has consequently been slower than I’d have liked. I hadn’t anticipated such a big increase in papers submitted to the Open Journal of Astrophysics, either but fortunately I’ve managed to get the most time-consuming aspects of that automated and since that it hasn’t taken up that much of my time.
As it happens, yesterday was the day of the Departmental Examination Board for the Department of Theoretical Physics at Maynooth. I haven’t been teaching this year, so wasn’t involved. I do know quite a few students who will be graduating this summer, though, and am a little sad I won’t be around to congratulate them. I might see some of them at their conferring ceremonies in September though.
And then there’s next academic year to look forward to. What will I be teaching, I wonder? I’m not going to think about that until I have to…
My social media feeds have been buzzing all day with images of last night’s display of the Aurora Borealis (and Australis) resulting from a large solar storm. I saw some great pictures from Ireland, including many from Maynooth and environs. I really liked this one taken from one of the ships of the Irish Naval Service:
I also saw pictures of the Aurora Borealis from the UK (even as far South as the Midlands), USA and as far South in Europe as Marseilles, not to mention New Zealand (Aurora Australis).
It’s not that unusual for the Northern Lights to be visible from Ireland, but it is extremely rare to see them from Catalonia. They were visible last night from Sabadell, just a few km North of Barcelona, though not as far as I know in Barcelona itself. I didn’t see anything, but I was otherwise engaged. The Observatory at Montsec Astronomical Park recorded the strongest level of Auroral activity for 150 years.
Auroral activity seen from Sabadell, picture credit Albert Segura Lorrio
All this reminds me that many moons ago, I once stood directly under an auroral display, in Tromsø (Norway), and I can tell you ever the word “awesome” applied to anything, this was it. The curious thing is that I had the definite feeling that there was a booming and whooshing sound to go with the light show. I wasn’t the only one there who thought they could hear it as well as see it. And I wasn’t drunk either. Well, not very.
Whenever I asked anyone about the sound my questions were dismissed on the grounds that there is no physical mechanism that could produce sound waves at audible frequencies of sufficient power to reach ground level from the altitude at which the light is generated. It must have been psychological, as if the brain wants to add a backing track when it sees something as spectacular as this. However, read at least one researcher is not so sure…
Today being 17th March, it is St Patrick’s Day, so I decided to make the most of my last day in Not-Barcelona and go watch the festivities. Here are some snaps I took on Straffan Road as the Parade made its way into town. As you can see it was a bit overcast, and it was also a bit breezy, but it wasn’t cold and everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves!
As usual, the bin wagon was the star of the show.
If you want some live action, you can see this on my Instagram:
This is my last full day in Sydney and – by sheer coincidence – it happens to be Sydney Gay & Lesbian Mardi Gras! I will probably go out later to watch some of the fun, although it seems it’s very likely to rain on the Parade; it’s very overcast this morning, although the temperature is still 24°C.
Talking of the weather, I noticed on social media that yesterday it snowed in Maynooth (and elsewhere in Ireland). The contrast with what I’ve been experiencing in Sydney will be rather extreme:
St Patrick’s House, MaynoothSt Sydney’s Opera House
I was a bit concerned that the snow might cause problems with my return flight and/or onward transport, but I’m told that it was soon washed away by rain.
I’ll only be making a brief stop in Maynooth before travelling to (different) warmer climes, of which more in due course.
With Nollaig na mBan yesterday that’s the festive season over for me, and time to resume my sabbatical. Joining the crowd of post-Christmas travellers at the airport, today I took my first flight of 2024, complete with last-minute change of gate, apart from which all went perfectly to plan. I won’t be returning to Barcelona immediately, however, as I have a things to do in various different parts of not-Barcelona.
I’m in Cardiff now, where it is fine and dry but very cold, and spending a few days in Cardiff to start with. After that I’ll be taking a train to London to attend a meeting at the Royal Astronomical Society, followed by dinner at the R.A.S Club on Friday 12th January.
Coincidentally, Friday’s dinner is rather appropriately at the Travellers Club, rather than the usual Athenaeum (which is unavailable for some reason). I couldn’t attend any of these occasions between October and December as I was in Barcelona, and for a couple of years. In fact I haven’t been able to attend much at all since the bicentennial dinner in 2020 because of the pandemic and subsequent workload issues. I’m not sure if I’ll be able to go to any others this year either, so I’m looking forward to Friday (despite having to pay the arrears on my subscription) because it is the Parish Dinner, when new members are elected. Owing to the arcane complexity of the rules, and the fact that it all happens after the consumption of a great deal of wine, this usually makes for an amusing occasion.
Meanwhile, in Maynooth, preceded by a few days of revision lectures and tutorials, the January examinations start on Friday 12th January too. Students will therefore be returning from their breaks, swapping the Christmas decorations for the austerity of the examination halls. Although I’m not involved in examinations this year, I’d like to take this opportunity to wish all students at Maynooth and elsewhere all the best for the forthcoming ordeals, and the same for all academic staff whose ordeal by marking will come in due course…
Maynooth University Library, home of the famous cat
It is 1st December 2023, which means that it’s six years to the day since I started work at Maynooth University. (Obviously, I’m not there now, but you get the point.) So much has happened in that period it seems very much longer since I first arrived. Still, it does mean that I’ve now spent 10% of my life living in Ireland. I’m very happy that I made the move all those years ago.
I won’t deny that the past six years have had their frustrations. The major one is something I haven’t mentioned this on the blog before, but when I joined the University I was promised – in writing – that the Department of Theoretical Physics would be allocated part-time computer support. Despite many reminders, that has never happened. That’s a breach of contract. A less patient employee would have sued his employer already. It’s absurd that the Department is still having to run its own computer cluster without any professional technical support. I’m writing this now to make it clear that I haven’t forgotten. I hope that this issue is remedied by the time I return to Maynooth. Six years is long enough.
On top of that, the teaching and administrative workload, especially for the three years I was Head of Department, mostly during the Covid-19 pandemic with very little support from the University, was very heavy and has made it difficult to be very active in research. Fortunately, now I’m on sabbatical so am able to do a bit of catching up with projects. Obviously the big event this year was the launch of the European Space Agency’s Euclid mission. Performance verification is still under way and the Euclid survey proper won’t start until the new year, but things so far look very promising.
I took over as Chair of the Euclid Consortium Diversity Committee in July. That has been a lot of work, actually, with very frequent telecons. You might argue that this is a distraction from actual research, and there’s some truth in that. But the most important thing is that the Euclid mission is a success, and I think that making the Euclid Consortium as inclusive and supportive a working environment as possible is one way of contributing to that.
The thing I’m probably most proud of over the past six years is, with the huge help of staff at Maynooth University Library, getting the Open Journal of Astrophysics off the ground and attracting some excellent papers. This year has seen significant growth, with submissions and publications increasing by about a factor three since last year. We’re still smaller than many of the mainstream astrophysics journals, but we’re still growing.
So, after a few years of hard and at times dispiriting slog, things are now going pretty well from a personal point of view. I do still worry about the future, though. My biggest fear for the Irish Higher Education system is that it follows the “business model” of soulless teaching factories with courses delivered by demoralized staff on casual teaching contracts. Things are definitely going that way in Maynooth and this trend must be resisted, as must the never-ending diversion of resources away from teaching and research into useless layers of management. Every time I see a job advertisement for a new management post, I think how much less it would cost to fund the technical support I was promised six years ago. What drives the University’s policies is not lack of resources but ridiculously warped priorities.
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In the Dark 