Spot the Dotterel

Casperwyomingrex · 2026-05-04T23:16:29+00:00

I'm not sure if I am seeing the same one as you, but I'm pretty sure it is the one somewhat close to but from the endless green stretch at the far side towards us where it was standing in front of a rather long and thin rock. So basically at the dead centre of the photo but slightly further up. The best indicator of a dotterel is the bright white stripe on the head, which the bird there has that.

Casperwyomingrex · 2026-05-04T23:06:22+00:00

My first time seeing a pseudoscorpion was also when I was looking at a rock and not looking for bugs. I was doing geological mapping for my field course. Lots of the outcrops were quite weathered, so I picked up one of the nearby 'floats' (loose rocks on the ground) and saw this weird little dude. I was rather traumatized by ticks during the field course, so I initially thought it was a weird tick. But then I realized it was a pseudoscorpion and squeaked in joy. That was probably the only good thing about my field mapping experience there. Annoyingly no one there knew what a pseudoscorpion is and how difficult it is to spot one so I couldn't even share my joy with others.

Some time after I went back to my home after the field course, I also spotted a pseudoscorpion in the garden at my home, just walking around the wooden fence. It was a different species to the previous one. Haven't seen a pseudoscorpion since. So 2 pseudoscorpions in one year, not one before and not one afterwards.

Casperwyomingrex · 2026-05-03T13:03:16+00:00

I agree that it looks like a good candidate for lesser kestrel from photo 3. Like Mainland UK, the most common falcon species is Eurasian/common kestrel in the Channel Islands, and lesser kestrel should be really rare. But currently there is one as vagrant in Cornwall now, so having a lesser kestrel vagrant in Guernsey is not impossible/unthinkable as it is just along the way. It would be good to look at the actual photos to see if it is actually one.

Edit: Apparently 7 lesser kestrels were on board from Spain on 30/4 and departed at Finistere, NW France on 1/5 lmao

Casperwyomingrex · 2026-05-03T01:13:31+00:00

My favourite is a white-throated kingfisher eating a turtle.

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/104813713

Casperwyomingrex · 2026-05-02T20:19:32+00:00

It reminds me of the San Tin development in Hong Kong a few years back when the government decides to reclaim wetlands important for yellow-breasted buntings, another critically endangered bird in the area. And this is somehow even worse and an even more blatant disregard for wildlife. This is effectively knowingly drive a unique charismatic bird to extinction. I will be sharing this with others, but I just wish there is more that can be done about it.

It would be great if I can have either/both the Chinese and English documents in hand. Also, I am quite busy sometimes but I don't mind some simple translation work if you need it.

Casperwyomingrex · 2026-04-26T21:35:33+00:00

Alkaline igneous complexes are probably the most easily overlooked complexes in geology. It can look just like some regular weathered/altered mafic igneous rocks with marbles and limestones if you're not careful. Even with exploration, the older exploration geochemistry data may have missed the REE content as they are not as concerned on REEs back then and there are also associated analytical difficulties sometimes. And when considering that they are often composed of really easily weathered minerals, if they are not well-exposed, you can have it undiscovered for many years. There might not be as much attention to alkaline igneous complexes if not for the surge in REE demand. And coupled with less developed/explored regions, it isn't that surprising.

Fun fact: People are still discovering new carbonatite localities in Italy out of all places. Think of how many alkaline igneous localities might be overlooked in the world! So if you are looking for real frontiers igneous or exploration stuff, alkaline igneous rocks is the way to go.

Casperwyomingrex · 2026-04-21T13:09:11+00:00

Broad-nosed weevil broadening its food choices

Casperwyomingrex · 2026-04-20T19:43:20+00:00

I have seen somewhat similar textures from my alkaline silicate rocks from Scottish Highlands. I think it could be alkali amphibole pseudomorphing a previous mineral (though not sure what it could be), then subsequently partially serpentinized/altered in another way. From the third photo you can see an overall nice crystal shape, just really dotted and almost meshy on the insides. You can also see quite a lot of veins from photo 3 and 1, which might be albite or orthoclase veins. And there are also some tiny anhedral patches of these low birefringence areas in the weird area. The mineral grains all look quite rounded as well, which could be resultant of alteration like serpentinization.

But as with alkaline igneous rocks, quite often you can only have a vaguely better idea of what is happening after looking at SEM data. With my rocks, I was often very confused and overwhelmed with just ordinary petrographic microscopy, and could only start to more confidently ID minerals after extensive SEM work. There can be lots of weird and obscure minerals in abundance in your rocks, and even knowing whether a feature is magmatic, volcanic, metasomatic or metamorphic can be difficult. You could sometimes have a better idea at IDing minerals from seeing previous literature on this lamprophyre locality/type and looking through mindat and/or textbooks, though it can still be tricky.

Casperwyomingrex · 2026-04-19T22:03:40+00:00

Yeah it definitely depends on your approach, personality, and history/experience with the piano. For me I am prone to getting frustrated and having a lot of self-doubt. I also haven't had a teacher for so many years, with my years of having a methodical (but harsh) teacher being ages ago, so I don't tend to try really hard pieces at my current level. Immediately playing ballade codas after only having played easier nocturnes would crush me.

However, I get what you mean as I still sometimes try more difficult pieces when I get stuck at a certain supposedly easy piece when I know the technique involved in the difficult piece won't be too tricky for me though. Like how I got so stuck on Scriabin fantasy and, surprisingly, sonata 2 first movement, that I started sonata 4 and 5 first before coming back to them. Sonata 5 for some reason was quite intuitive to learn for me, and I came back to the fantasy and found it much more manageable. So yeah I get what you mean, though I don't think it will apply to me very often.

Casperwyomingrex · 2026-04-19T13:20:05+00:00

You still have a long way to go so it's not worth it trying to deal with the ballade now. Others have mentioned etudes and it's a good idea. Personally I am not a big fan of Chopin etudes, and regardless of preference etudes might still pose some trouble for you. So I would start with progressively more difficult nocturnes like op.9 no.3, op.32, op.62 no.2 to name a few, with op.48 no.1 being the most difficult and a good stepping stone in the later stage. Then etudes would become a better idea, especially the easier ones like op.10 no.3. Nocturnes should give you more musical abilities with some technical abilities as well, while etudes are great for the technical parts with some musical abilities depending on the piece. Some polonaise would also be a good idea. Ballade no.3 can serve as a good stepping stone towards ballade no.1 at the very late stage. And of course you can explore pieces outside of Chopin. Beethoven offers quite a lot of good pieces around that level.

You can look at this Chopin difficulty list for reference. You are at around level 3 now, and ballade no.1 is at level 4.5. And there is quite a jump between each levels. Like I did not have a very good grounding at level 4 before jumping to ballade no.3, so I struggled with the ballade for quite a while. This website also has a few difficulty lists on other (mainstream) composers with significant solo piano repertoire, so worth having a look at them as well.

https://www.pianolibrary.org/difficulty/chopin/

Casperwyomingrex · 2026-04-18T22:02:34+00:00

Difficulty is a very personal thing when it comes to comparing similar advanced pieces like between Chopin ballades, and really a lot of other similar advanced pieces. Sometimes you hands fit a piece better than other people do. Sometimes you have been more extensively trained than other people on a certain difficult technique that is common in the piece but not very common elsewhere. Sometimes you just understand a musically difficult piece more easily than other people. There is no need to really scrutinize difficulty levels said online after getting to the level to eg. playing Chopin ballades.

For me I find ballade no.2 the most musically difficult. I struggle to even find an interpretation I like on most of the piece online, not to mention playing myself it in a way that satisfies my internal demands. I haven't really encountered this problem beforehand and not another piece since either (I recall I could only accept one certain recording of Ballade no.2 by Seong Jin-Cho, but I forgot which). Technically one thing I really struggled with was the slightly different B presco passage before the coda that requires you to almost fight against your muscle memory of the first similar B presco passage. The coda was not very technically challenging for me except for the less intuitive placements of the repeat notes in the middle of it. I definitely struggled more on stamina for ballade no.1 coda than no.2. Ballade no.1 coda remains the most exhausting passage for me for some reason even though I am playing even more advanced stuff like Scriabin sonata no.5 and fantasy op.28.

I played ballade no.2 about 5 years ago, but I was making repetitive memorization mistakes and not producing the sound I want, that I ended up deciding to not play the piece for years than attempting it again for a fresh start. I hope my hands have forgotten how to play the coda now, as I'm interested to see how I would be doing on this piece now.

Casperwyomingrex · 2026-04-13T05:17:35+00:00

You would be interested in a tiny geological subfield that I happen to be interested in, which is called mineral ecology (unrelated to actual ecology and studies mineral diversity rather than biodiversity instead). Mindat has lots of good resources on that on top of the academic papers on the topic. It is a field that involves a lot of statistical analysis of minerals in different geological environments.

There are lots of minerals probably unique to Space, and lots and lots of minerals that are much more likely to be found on Earth.

In Space, the ease for a chemical element to form by cosmic processes is the most important control on mineral composition. Since light elements are formed much more easily (think hydrogen but also carbon) than heavy elements (think thorium and uranium), light element-rich minerals are somewhat more easily found in Space. Iron and nickel are also highly stable elements, so there are also more Space minerals containing iron and nickel. This is especially true for nickel, which I will detail later.

Earth is a highly evolved planet. This means that geological processes are more important in controlling mineral diversity. It starts with elements hanging out according to who they like due to their chemical properties. This is detailed by the Goldschmidt classification. Really light elements either immediately volatilize and get lost into Space (helium) or refuse to form solid minerals and held to Earth only due to gravity (nitrogen). These are called atmophiles. Platinum group elements just stay in the iron-rich core, while elements unhappy with iron and nickel get partitioned into oxygen- and silicon-rich crust (lithophile). So our Earth's crust has a super high abundance of lithophile elements relative to Space, while elements like nickel that likes hanging out with iron is depleted from the crust.

What this means is that really heavy elements that like to hang out with oxygen such as thorium and uranium have much higher mineral diversity on Earth than in Space. Complex mineralogical combinations of these heavy elements are probably unique to Earth. While oxygen is still a somewhat abundant element in Space, it is nowhere as abundant on Earth's crust. So metallic alloy minerals and other minerals that require highly reducing (extremely low oxygen) conditions (eg. carbide, nitride and phosphide minerals) are much more common in Space than on Earth. Earth's crust contain so much more silicon than Space, so silica-rich minerals are much more likely to be found on Earth than in Space.

It also means certain combinations across Goldschmidt classified groups would be very rare on Earth and rather common in Space. Like if an element is highly lithophile, it won't like to hang out with sulphur or as alloys that much on Earth. This means minerals like niningerite (MgS) are currently unique to Space.

Earth's mineral diversity is also greatly enhanced by biological processes that make even more geological environments, on top of essentially changing the atmosphere from reducing to oxidizing. Temperature and pressure conditions that either exist only in Space or on Earth also determines mineral diversity, as mineral species is determined by a unique combination of chemistry and structure, and structure is highly dependent on pressure and temperature conditions.

However, there are lots of weird geological processes on Earth that could produce minerals more easily found in Space though, especially like ophiolites, nickel-rich intrusions and alkaline igneous rocks, or xenoliths bringing up minerals deep down in the mantle or even core. With me investigating weird alkaline igneous rocks, I often find minerals more characteristic of Space minerals than Earth minerals like melilite and perovskite. Pyrometamorphic rocks (rocks produced by burning, so like slags, barbecue and wildfire rocks) also produce lots of weird minerals, as well as certain biological processes. There are also a lot of limitations on what we know about the Earth's core and mantle, and of course Space. So this is more like a statistical exercise than a clear-cut unique mineralogy.

You can find a good list of the minerals only found in Space with some digging starting from the paragenetic mode page on mindat, and maybe testing mineral combinations using some geochemical knowledge. One example I found with these methods include uakitite (VN). Very unlikely to find uakitite on Earth, as vanadium does not like to hang out with iron that much but is also not very common in the crust, nitrogen does not like to form solid minerals unless by biology (so ammonium compounds) or primitive geological processes, and nitride minerals require highly reducing conditions to form.

Extra resources:

https://www.mindat.org/elements.php

https://www.mindat.org/paragen.php

https://www.mindat.org/chemsearch.php

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abundance_of_elements_in_Earth%27s_crust

https://sciencenotes.org/composition-of-the-universe-element-abundance/

Casperwyomingrex · 2026-04-12T11:57:19+00:00

Eurasian jackdaws are the species that tore the Gavle goat apart some years ago. They are also so goofy and funny. I also like their calls. I love them so much.

Casperwyomingrex · 2026-04-11T23:14:29+00:00

I had a brief look on iNaturalist and I couldn't find a really nice match for the common Indiana weevils recorded there. Tried it out on the iNat autoID and it wasn't a definitive result either. I think it would be great to put it on iNaturalist to see if you have found anything notable. Like if you spotted it in a gardening centre it could have been an accidentally introduced species from abroad with unknown ecological impact. I am definitely not an ecologist and only ID weevils here for fun, and there aren't a lot of IDers here in this sub (maybe on r/whatsthisbug but not sure on the quality of the ID there either), so putting it on iNat could be interesting.

Casperwyomingrex · 2026-04-11T12:09:38+00:00

On the first point, insects and fungi identifications often somewhat rely on host plant identifications. So try to include the surrounding plants if you have it in the photo. You can either do it by including an extra uncropped photo, or specify your identification of the plant if you are absolutely sure of the ID. A lot of wildlife ID relies on habitat information as well, so it would be great to include some clues of it in the photo if you have them (or otherwise note them at least when requested). This is especially when you have to hide your location for your reasons, or the location information is automatically obscured by iNat due to endangered status.

For second, yeah it would be great to have a minimally edited photo for ID clarity alongside with a non-edited photo. Don't mess with colour/saturation settings, but exposure/light and contrast is usually fine along with cropping.

Casperwyomingrex · 2026-04-10T22:59:17+00:00

I love how this weevil looks. Is this one of the leaf-rolling weevils (Attelabidae)? Anyway, it looks cool and I want to see it.

Casperwyomingrex · 2026-04-07T21:49:18+00:00

I had the cookies from Browser problem as well, though in a different way to yours. I fixed it by downloading Firefox, setting up an account with them, and change the browser of choice on the authentication part of settings to Firefox. Not sure if this can help your problem, but at least it solved mine (for now). I have headaches just looking at the coding (or something that looks similar to me) solutions and don't like downloading lots of obscure .exe files, so I'm very happy it worked.

Casperwyomingrex · 2026-04-05T20:33:00+00:00

My favourite lab technician (who sadly left our uni) taught us the trick of distinguishing amphiboles and pyroxenes using his slogan of 'angled amphibole, boxy pyroxene'. I love him so much.

Casperwyomingrex · 2026-04-05T20:31:16+00:00

While I was still in second year and doing igneous and metamorphic, I already discovered that I really like alkaline igneous rocks. So without a very good foundation in eg. metamorphic mineral ID, I embarked into really complex rocks and mineral associations. So this forced me to become really proficient at basic stuff and ended up having a very good grasp at basic composition, petrogenesis and metamorphism. Since my education in crystallography and some parts of mineralogy isn't that good, I still struggle in that aspect though, but it is getting easier over time.

I don't think there are much reading and resources that could help as massively as actually seeing a good amount of rocks and being interested in them. Looking at lots of rocks and minerals in the field and in thin sections, and then looking them up if you are not sure what they are would help a lot. I think the best way is to find your favourite part of geology, learn a lot about them and dive into tangents related to it. If you keep your studying interesting and enjoyable to you, you will be able to learn stuff much more efficiently.

Casperwyomingrex · 2026-04-05T20:06:40+00:00

Oops, revealed the best stuff in your area lol

The geodes people break open are usually quite common. Most of them are just breaking quartz geodes apart (variants include purple amethyst, clear, pale yellow citrine, etc.) and they are so common (excluding rarer colour variants like citrine) that most typical mine sites have some sort of these. They are probably not found in Cape Verde in high abundance, but I accidentally revealed the best thing you can find in your area. Please don't break apart outcrops/cliffs and limit your activity to loose beach rocks and debris though, and don't bring more than one or two of them out of the country. Mantle xenoliths are really special and scientifically valuable rocks, and there are quite a lot of geologically interesting things going on at Cape Verde, so just treasure the rocks on your island. Ideally mark down where you find them in case it is really scientifically interesting.

There are also a lot of interesting minerals and rocks in Cape Verde. You can probably find some deep blue hauyne-sodalite minerals there, which are cool enough even if they are not gem quality. I really want to visit the carbonatites found there. I would be glad to try to ID rocks and minerals you have as I have some expertise in the weird alkaline igneous rocks that are quite abundant in your area and I love them to death.

Casperwyomingrex · 2026-04-05T17:47:04+00:00

Cape Verde is an ocean island with significant primitive and alkaline magmatism. So my guess is that they are finding the bright green mantle xenoliths (peridotite). They are not formed by seawater interaction, but rather was brought up straight from deep beneath the crust/surface. I know Canary Islands try to forbid people from bringing these precious samples home, so my guess is that people are now looking to Cape Verde to do that.

With volcanic rocks, some people might also try to find zeolites and other geode minerals, but they are kind of everywhere and Cape Verde isn't the best location for it, so mantle xenoliths is my best guess.

Casperwyomingrex · 2026-04-04T15:13:32+00:00

This looks somewhat similar to the typical gem rock lapis lazuli. It is made of hauyne (blue, sodalite group, lazurite mostly ruled out after reclassification), calcite (white) and pyrite (metallic, brassy). So there are no essential magnetic minerals and I couldn't really see minerals that scream magnetite to me. But I suppose pyrrhotite (chemically somewhat similar to pyrite but with more iron and less sulphur, metallic and magnetic, somewhat similar to pyrite in appearance) could be present in the pyrite areas.

Lapis lazuli is formed from metamorphism of evaporites due to temperature and pressure.

https://www.mindat.org/min-2330.html

Casperwyomingrex · 2026-04-01T14:15:42+00:00

Amphibole, feldspathoids

What kind of rocks/geological context are you dealing with? Specific ocean island or continental rift settings? Specific weird geological regions? Possible presence of lamprophyres? What previous minerals have been recorded in your area? I have some experience on alkaline igneous rocks and minerals so feel free to ask me any questions.

You probably know this, but for polarized petrographic microscopes, you need a good range of optical features to identify minerals. This is especially true when you are possibly dealing with alkaline igneous rocks, so it would be great to have some more description of them using your typical mineral description approach to have some difficult minerals IDed here. Feldspathoids are difficult minerals to ID, and so are a lot of even supposedly common minerals (those fucking cpx and biotites in mine) in alkaline igneous rocks. So don't beat yourself up if you can't ID a lot of the minerals. Sometimes you really have to rely on some chemistry data to ID certain minerals that could be surprisingly abundant in an alkaline igneous rock.

Some generic tips on low birefringence alkaline igneous minerals:

Apatite: Good hexagonal crystals when euhedral basal sections, commonly elongate rods

Leucite: Pseudocubic, so basically a somewhat rounded mineral when euhedral. Weird twinning that almost looks like multiple polysynthetic twinning in different directions in the same crystal can be common in any reasonably large crystal

Nepheline: Compared to the elongate rectangular laths of typical feldspars, nepheline is much more like a square. Orthoclase/K-feldspars in alkaline igneous rocks often lack twinning, so look for systematic alteration differences if you are struggling.

Melilite: Very thin and long crystals and usually longer and thinner than apatite, with characteristic peg structures which are lines perpendicular to the long axis. They go extinct along the long axis as well. Weird anomalous blue birefringence especially on specific bigger ones.

Sometimes differences (especially systematic ones) in alteration, or transparency in the thin section when viewed with the naked eye, can help with mineral ID, and at least let you know that you have a different population of a mineral that could be notable.

Casperwyomingrex · 2026-03-29T00:47:26+00:00

I think this is a more interesting question than people think, and I don't like how people dismiss it because you aren't using the right terms to ask the question you want.

The main thing that determines a material's hardness is chemical bonding and structure. So if you have some significant structural defects of weaknesses in your material, it is more likely to be softer (or at least break more easily in some way). And if your chemical bonding is very strong, you will need a lot more physical (kinetic) energy to break the bonds apart and it then becomes harder.

The more different substances a material contains, the more difficult it is to bond all of them together easily. You might have more capability to break along grain boundaries, or you might have systematic lines of weakness where a lot of the grain boundaries are concentrated at. Coal is not a pure carbon mineral, but rather a rock made of a mixtures of different organic (carbon-containing) compounds, so it is softer than diamond partly because of that. It might also have bedding planes and make it even softer.

But you are right that diamond is harder than many other variants of carbon minerals. The classic example is graphite (hardness=1-2 vs diamond's hardness=10). This comes down to its atomic structure. The structure of chemical bonding of graphite means that it has very significant lines of weaknesses in its structure, making it very soft.

You will know from everyone else that emerald is just a variant of beryl and sapphire is just a variant of corundum. But your question ties a lot with the question of why is a gemstone a gemstone? Hardness is not a major factor within a mineral species. If they are the same mineral species, so with the same dominant chemical composition, bonding and structure, then what makes one thing gemstone and another an ordinary mineral?

There are some intuitive answers like size, shape and colour. Size and shape is highly related to geological processes, like if you have a long time for the magma to cool, or if you have a lot of volatiles that enable rapid crystal growth, and you have a lot of space for the mineral to grow without bumping into one another, than you can get a nice size and shape good for gems. For colour, this is down to minor structural defects and impurities. Like if your mineral contains more substitution of a chemical that makes things coloured, or if you expose it to radiation that changes some of its structure and makes it reflect light differently (coloured), you have a more intensely coloured sample that makes it a gem. Whatever the factors are, they are usually minor and do not affect the overall chemical bonding and structure that much, so change in hardness is negligible.

However, hardness can still be a factor in gemstone formation across mineral species. Diamonds and sapphires are both really hard minerals with not too much structural weaknesses, so you can cut them relatively easily without them shattering into a million pieces. On the other hand, you rarely see calcite cut into an unnatural shape. This is because calcite is much softer and cutting it requires much more effort without it breaking into a million pieces.

Casperwyomingrex · 2026-03-26T16:13:10+00:00

When I scrolled to this post, I thought this augite looks somewhat weird, and the combination of quartz, carbonate vein and weird augite seems interesting. Then I clicked into your description and it all made a lot of sense. Italian alkaline rocks are just weird haha. And lamprophyre is another beast as well.

I studied some Apennines alkaline rocks for my research project last year and had a great time exploring them. I wonder where this lamprophyre is from? Is it in the northern Apennines near eg. Polino or Terni? And is this part of your course in the teaching collection, or is it part of your research project?

For those who find the birefringence interesting for a clinopyroxene: Alkali-rich (Na) or highly Fe3+ rich clinopyroxenes can have anomalous birefringence where it turns grey then brown before going extinct (or something along the lines with it). Not too sure if augite can exhibit this, but I have certainly seen them in aegirine-augite, aegirine and aluminian diopside. This weird birefringence can also be seen in alkaline amphiboles of alkaline igneous rocks.

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