Quiet Magpie

An entomologist by training, with interests in ornithology, botany, nature, and survival skills.

[aberrantceramics]

Anyone recognize the body shape of this happy (true) bug?

[quietmagpie]

Been quite a few years, but it looks like a giant water bug to me (Belostomatidae). If not, definitely one of the other aquatic groups!

[quietmagpie]

Lots of road kill, but no dermestid beetles. I know you are here, beetles. I will find you eventually.

[quietmagpie]

Narrator: they didn't

[boatgrave-deactivated20250901]

[addicted2wasps]

I was today years old when I heard about the incredible Incense-Cedar Wood Wasp. Syntexis libocedrii is the only living species of Symphytan in the Anaxyelidae. It is considered a living fossil since the family has an extensive Mesozoic fossil record. It has the unique ability to oviposit in burnt incense-cedar. The wood is often still smoldering when the sawfly is laying its eggs. Nature is fascinating.

[simplytolkien]

[sitting-on-me-bum]

A magpie finds a curious perch in Richmond Park, UK.

Photograph: Max Ellis/Caters News

[quietmagpie]

Greetings. These last several years have been a Bad Time, but I'm not dead yet! Perhaps I will even post things in future - who knows!

[quietmagpie]

I carved this in December 2019 as a wedding present for an entomologist friend of mine. It’s made from cow bone and carved in the shape of a damselfly--one of her favorite insects!

I gave it to her in a blue silk pouch (made from a reclaimed op-shop shirt) that I embroidered with a dragonfly. I unfortunately didn’t take a picture of the pouch, which is a shame, as the dragonfly turned out great and I made some of the tidiest eyelets I’ve ever done.

[quietmagpie]

Lucet I turned in 2019 out of a forked branch of Japanese maple. I cured the wood for several months prior to turning this. A neighbour pruned a huge branch off his tree and left it by the side of the road. Other neighbours reported that he had done this before and it had stayed there for months before peoples’ complaining got him to deal with it. I decided to take advantage of the situation and abscond with it! It’s been great to work with, and also an amazing firewood.

The lucet cord I made was for use in home-made bras.

[quietmagpie]

Maybe it’s because my brain is addled from reading 50-100 scientific papers a day for a massive lit review, but this is simultaneously the funniest and saddest title for a scientific paper I’ve ever seen.

[a-quieter-life]

Upcycled apron I made in 2019. I drafted my own pattern for it of a 1950′s advert I found. It has six (6!!) pockets for holding clothes pegs. Having this apron makes it loads easier to hang the washing, as I’m no longer trying to juggle a basket in addition to my damp laundry!

This apron is made from damaged op-shop jeans from an op-shop that was closing down. The white one had some serious thigh damage, the blue denim had a crotch stain, and the floral pattern had been (badly) sewn into a miniskirt by an etsy seller from Colorado 7+ years before and still had its tags on. That one is a bit of a mystery to me as I’m in New Zealand! All the scrap fabric went into draught excluders for windows and doors to keep the place a bit warmer in the winter, and cooler in the summer.

There’s more than enough space in the big pockets for all the clothes pegs I’ve been making. I turn them from wood I’ve harvested and cured myself–meaning they’re very low-impact, but also precious! I keep them inside the apron indoors rather than out in a bucket in the weather like my flatmates do. Both the apron and the clothes pegs have done well for me over the last couple years, and it looks beautiful hanging from the wall as a bonus!

[quietmagpie]

Wooden toys I made as part of a local woodworking group. The toys the group made were given to low-income children in 2018. I always loved these velcro veggies as a kid, so decided to make some for someone else to enjoy.

Woods used:

Mushroom: pittosporum

Onion: chestnut

Carrot: totara

Knife blade: kānuka

Knife handle: mystery scrap tropical hardwood

[quietmagpie]

Some bone carvings I did in 2018 right before my life started unraveling--a raven bookmark (seen here marking my place in Epictitus’ Discourses), and a crochet hook with a deer on it for my husband to pull in the loose ends of his naalbinding.

These are all made from deer bone that my hunter friend traded to me for a lesson in hide tanning.

Further additions to my personal aesthetic--viking home on the prairie.

[quietmagpie]

@tubeboy replied to your photo “Armillary sphere made in a joint effort between my husband and myself....”

tubeboy1: You are wrong. In an armillary sphere, the large moving cage is the celestial sphere. In the center, there is earth (classic geocentric armillary sphere) or the sun (modern version, but not really good working because of parallax). The tilted ring on the moving cage is the ecliptic or zodiac ring. On this ring, the twelve zodiac signs are marked which where the antique scale of the ecliptical coordinate system of the sky. The sun moves on this path and needs one year to finish the travel between the stars. Usually the moving cage is mounted inside a ring which is the local meridian. And this ring usually rests in a cradle with a horizontal plate which represents the local horizon. Look here https://youtu.be/M0chCdFEaP0 And here https://youtu.be/AaWuJHQL-bQ 

The armillary sphere we made contains a sphere celeste (originally, we planned to have an exchangeable sphere terrestre, but never got around to embroidering continents). If your objection is about the animation, then, yes, 0 degrees Aries on the globe celeste should be connected to 0 degrees Aries on the zodiac ring and everything should spin together--I just wanted to make a cool gif.

When my husband uses it as a teaching implement to show people about medieval astronomy, he aligns the two manually. It’s not as convenient as if they were connected, but it works well enough.

[quietmagpie]

Surprising benefits of cycling

So easy to park! You can:

tie bike to “No Parking” signs in the city centre

pull off on the side of the road to pick up shiny things

ignore the fact that all the parking spaces in the grocery store parking lot are taken by people panic buying things in advance of the lockdown and tie your bike to a lamp post

stop on the side of trails and bridges to enjoy the view without committing a parking violation!

[quietmagpie]

I saw the SpaceX satellites last night. It was disorienting, like watching a stop-motion overlay of a shooting star. It seemed like some kind of cosmic ill-omen--almost dystopian, like they were finally coming to take the night sky away from us, as detailed in some of the darkest science fiction of last century.

[quietmagpie]

Excerpt from Reader’s Digest Complete Book of the Garden, published 1967.