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Yellow-legged gull

The yellow-legged gull (Larus michahellis) is a large gull found in Europe, the Middle East and North Africa, which has only recently achieved wide recognition as a distinct species. It was formerly treated as a subspecies of either the Caspian gull L. cachinnans, or more broadly as a subspecies of the herring gull L. argentatus. The genus name is from Latin Larus which appears to have referred to a gull or other large seabird, and the species name honours the German zoologist Karl Michahelles.

Classification
It is now generally accepted that the yellow-legged gull is a full species, but until recently there was much disagreement. For example, British Birds magazine split the yellow-legged gull from the herring gull in 1993 but included the Caspian gull in the former, but the BOU in Great Britain retained the yellow-legged gull as a subspecies of the herring gull until 2007. DNA research, however, suggests that the yellow-legged gull is actually closest to the great black-backed gull L. marinus and the Armenian gull L. armenicus, while the Caspian gull is closer to the herring gull and the lesser black-backed gull L. fuscus, rather than being each other's closest relatives.

There are two subspecies of the yellow-legged gull:
 * L. m. michahellis Naumann, 1840 : nominate, found in western and southern Europe, northwestern Africa, and the Mediterranean.
 * L. m. atlantis (Dwight, 1922), syn. Larus fuscus atlantis, Dwight, 1922 : found in Macaronesia (the Canary Islands, Madeira, the Azores). This subspecies is also sometimes known as the Atlantic gull and is potentially a full species in its own right. Birds breeding on the Atlantic coasts of Morocco, Portugal and Galicia (and spreading north from there) are usually also included here, but are sometimes considered to be a third subspecies, L. m. lusitanius. Atlantic Ocean birds have darker wings and back in comparison with Mediterranean birds, creating a more pronounced contrast to the white parts.

There is also the subspecies L. m. omissus, first described in 1928 by the Russian ornithologist Theodor Pleske.

Distribution
The breeding range is centred on the Mediterranean Sea. In North Africa, it is common in Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia and increasing in places. Recent breeding has occurred in Libya and Egypt. In the Middle East, a few breed in Israel, Palestine and Syria with larger numbers in Cyprus and Turkey. In Europe, there are colonies all along the Mediterranean coast, and also on the Atlantic islands and coasts north to Brittany and west to the Azores. It also breeds on the western side of the Black Sea; here it overlaps with the Caspian gull but there is a difference in habitat, with the yellow-legged gull preferring sea cliffs and the Caspian gull flatter shores. In recent decades birds have spread north into central and western Europe. One to four pairs have attempted to breed in southern England since 1995 (sometimes hybrid pairs with lesser black-backed gulls), though colonisation has been very slow.

Many birds remain in the same area all year round, but others migrate to spend the winter in mild areas of western Europe or head south as far as Senegal, Gambia and the Red Sea. There is also extensive northward post-breeding dispersal in the late summer, with numbers in southern England high from July to October. It is reported as a vagrant to northeastern North America and Nigeria.

Description

The yellow-legged gull is a large gull, though the size does vary, with the smallest females being scarcely larger than a common gull and the largest males being roughly the size of a great black-backed gull. They range in length from 52 to 68 cm in total length, from 120 to 155 cm in wingspan and from 550 to 1600 g in weight. Among standard measurements, the wing chord is 40.8 to 47.2 cm, the bill is 4.6 to 6 cm and the tarsus is 5.6 to 7.5 cm. Adults are externally similar to herring gulls but have yellow legs. They have a grey back, slightly darker than herring gulls but lighter than lesser black-backed gulls. They are much whiter-headed in autumn, and have more extensively black wing tips with few white spots, just as lesser black-backed. They have a red spot on the bill as adults, like the entire complex. There is a red ring around the eye like in the lesser black-backed gull but unlike in the herring gull which has a dark yellow ring.

First-year birds have a paler head, rump and underparts than those of the herring gull, more closely resembling first-year great black-backed gulls in plumage. They have a dark bill and eyes, pinkish grey legs, dark flight feathers and a well-defined black band on the tail. They become lighter in the underparts and lose the upperpart pattern subsequently. By their second winter, birds are essentially feathered like adults, save for the patterned feathers remaining on the wing coverts. However, their bill tips are black, their eyes still dark, and the legs are a light yellow flesh colour.

The call is a loud laugh which is deeper and more nasal than the call of the herring gull.

Diet

Like most Larus gulls, they are omnivores and opportunistic foragers. They will scavenge on rubbish tips and elsewhere, as well as seeking suitable prey in fields or on the coast, or robbing smaller gulls and other seabirds of their catches. Although urban populations are generally opportunistic scavengers, they can shift to a predatory diet if necessary; this was observed during the lockdown of Italy in 2020, when the lack of food scraps led the yellow-legged gulls of Rome to take prey as large as rats and rock doves.

Atlantic gulls in Gibraltar have been observed and photographed picking and eating fruit from olive trees in flight.

Reproduction
Yellow-legged gulls usually breed in colonies. Eggs, usually three, are laid from mid March to early May and are defended vigorously by this large gull. The nest is a sometimes sparse mound of vegetation built on the ground or on cliff ledges. In some places, such as Gibraltar, Galicia and Portugal, they have started nesting on buildings, inside cities and even on trees. The eggs are incubated for 27–31 days and the young birds fledge after 35–40 days.

title: Yellow-legged gull


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Talk:Extrapolation

Removing statistics content
I am removing the sentence ..."The extent to which an extrapolation is accurate is known as the "prediction confidence interval", and is usually expressed as an upper and lower boundary within which the prediction is expected to be accurate 19 times out of 20 (a 95% confidence interval)." ... on the grounds that while this might be possible it requires a large set of context and assumptions which are not stated. Also removing from Category:Statistics for now. Of course there is the possibility of including some properly contextualised statistical content. Melcombe (talk) 15:52, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

extrapolation - literature
I don't know if this is the correct section to write a comment? I was just wondering that the entry for "extrapolation" doesn't mention the literary aspect at all. It's a quite common method in science fiction or utopian/dystopian literature. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Moonlight1981 (talk • contribs) 19:45, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

French curve extrapolation
A missing link (the site http://www.aidscjduk.info/ is down and seems do have been so for some time) aroused my curiosity. I could not find any mention of this technique outside of this article (and copies thereof) and cannot remember anything like it from my own numerics lecture. As the primary source is missing, no secondary sources can be found, and the section does not actually explain anything about the technique, I suggest removing this section. 134.93.136.193 (talk) 14:26, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

Rational extrapolation
A suspected or known asymptotic behavior may be imposed on the extrapolating function, as the only term which does not tend to zero. When the asymptotic behavior is polynomial in nature, one can model the function using a rational function such that the desired asymptotic behavior is achieved while still matching the specified points. Compared to polynomial extrapolation, rational functions offer the following trade-offs: (1) Rational functions can model a larger variety of functions, (2) rational functions may have poles (zeros of the denominator), (3) only when all poles are imaginary, then the intermediate value theorem applies, (4) with a numerator of degree n and a denominator of degree d, when n>=d, then the asymptotic behavior will be that of an (n-d) polynomial, (5) it is more work to determine the coefficients.

For example, say a researcher has some data and knows that the asymptotic behavior must be linear. A linear equation may fit the data poorly and generalize (extrapolate) poorly as well especially when the data exhibits cusps or any nonlinearity. A rational function with a numerator of degree three and a denominator of degree two will have the linear asymptotic behavior while also being able to model the nonlinearities. The main drawback is that the total degrees of freedom may need to be constrained to avoid overfitting the data. The simple linear equation, $$a x+b$$, has two degrees of freedom. A rational function of the form, $$ \frac{x^3}{a*x^2+b}, b>0 $$, would also have two degrees of freedom and only imaginary poles.

Anyone who thinks the rational extrapolation should be added should read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polynomial_and_rational_function_modeling. 67.1.117.144 (talk) 02:53, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

Can extrapolation go backward into the past as well as into the future?
That question should be answered in the article.2600:8801:BE31:D300:350B:FC57:5D61:625E (talk) 00:59, 23 April 2022 (UTC) James.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Talk:Extrapolation


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Caspian gull

The Caspian gull (Larus cachinnans) is a large gull and a member of the herring and lesser black-backed gull complex. The scientific name is from Latin. Larus appears to have referred to a gull or other large seabird, and cachinnans means 'laughing', from cachinnare 'to laugh'.

Description
It is a large gull at 56 – long, with a 137 to 155 cm wingspan and a body mass of 680 –. Among standard measurements, the wing chord is 38.5 to 48 cm, the bill is 4.6 to 6.4 cm and the tarsus is 5.8 to 7.7 cm. The Caspian gull has a long, slender bill, accentuated by the sloping forehead. The legs, wings, and neck are longer than those of the herring gull and yellow-legged gull. The eye is small and often dark, and the legs vary from pale pink to a pale yellowish colour. The back and wings are a slightly darker shade of grey than the herring gull, but slightly paler than the yellow-legged gull. The outermost primary feather has a large white tip and a white tongue running up the inner web.

First-winter birds have a pale head with dark streaking on the back of the neck. The underparts are pale and the back is greyish. The greater and median wing coverts have whitish tips forming two pale lines across the wing.

Distribution
The Caspian gull breeds around the Black and Caspian Seas, extending eastwards across Central Asia to north-west China. In Europe, it has been spreading north and west and now breeds in Poland, eastern Germany, southern Russia and all year round in Ukraine. Some birds migrate south as far as the Red Sea and Persian Gulf, while others disperse into Western Europe, in countries such as Sweden, Norway and Denmark or the Benelux and even North of France. Small numbers are now seen regularly in Britain, especially in South-east England, East Anglia, and the Midlands.

Breeding
It typically nests on flat, low-lying ground by water, unlike the yellow-legged gull, which mainly nests on cliffs in areas where the two overlap. The breeding season starts from early April. Two or three eggs are laid and incubated for 27 to 31 days.

Feeding
They are scavengers and predators with a very varied diet. During the breeding season, they often eat rodents such as ground squirrels, flying some distance into the steppes to find them.

Classification and subspecies
This form has a troubled taxonomic history, summarised in the herring gull article. The Caspian gull used to be treated as a subspecies of the herring gull, but it is now treated as a full species by many authorities (e.g. the British Ornithologists' Union records committee). Some authorities include the yellow-legged gull (L. michahellis) within L. cachinnans, but it is also now commonly considered to be a separate species.

The steppe gull or Baraba gull (L. (cachinnans) barabensis) may be regarded as a subspecies of the Caspian gull or as a separate species. It is also very similar genetically to its northern neighbour, the taimyrensis race of Heuglin's gull. The steppe gull breeds in Central Asia, particularly northern Kazakhstan. Its nonbreeding range is still little-known, but most are thought to winter in southwestern Asia from the Persian Gulf to northwestern India. There are possible records of this form from Hong Kong and South Korea.

The Mongolian gull (L. (vegae/cachinnans) mongolicus) may be classed as a subspecies of the Caspian gull, a subspecies of the Vega gull, or as a species in its own right. It breeds in Mongolia and the surrounding areas and migrates southeast in winter.

Identification

 * (identification article including 34 images of Caspian Gulls of various ages)
 * (addresses identification in juvenile plumage)
 * (detailed identification paper, covering typical individuals)
 * (addresses identification in juvenile plumage)
 * (detailed identification paper, covering typical individuals)
 * (detailed identification paper, covering typical individuals)

title: Caspian gull


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Oakland, Maine

Oakland is a town in Kennebec County in the U.S. state of Maine. The population was 6,230 at the 2020 census. Oakland is 4 miles (6 km) west of Waterville and approximately 18 miles (29 km) north of Augusta, the state capital. Waterville and Augusta are service centers for Oakland, and many Oakland residents commute to jobs in those areas.

History
The area that is now Oakland was first settled in about 1780 by colonists of English descent from Massachusetts and New Hampshire. At that time, the region was known as Taconnet after Indian Chief Taconnet, an Abenaki nation sachem. Farmers found the area's fertile soil good for cultivation, grazing and dairy farming, while the water power provided by the Messalonskee Stream was useful for manufacturers. The area was incorporated by the Massachusetts General Court in 1771 as part of Winslow. In 1802, the area of Winslow west of the Kennebec River was incorporated as Waterville.

The Androscoggin and Kennebec Railroad arrived in 1849, spurring Waterville to boom as a mill town. With several manufacturers of farm implements, it became known as the axe and scythe capital of New England. Other factories produced canned goods, tinware, carriages, furniture, tools, machinery, woolens, lumber, coffins, leather, boots and shoes. There was a granite quarry.

In the 1870s, manufacturers in the western section of Waterville, unhappy with taxation in the town, petitioned the Maine State Legislature to designate their industrial district as a separate town. In 1872, Oakland became the southern terminal of the Somerset Railroad, connecting first to North Anson, then to Bingham, and finally to Moosehead Lake. On February 26, 1873, the area was incorporated as West Waterville. In 1883, it was renamed Oakland.

The town's ponds and lakes are home to a number of summer camps. Downtown contains some notable architecture, including Memorial Hall, built in 1870, and the Oakland Public Library, a Carnegie library built between 1913 and 1915. Both are listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The completion of Interstate 95 in the 1960s increased Oakland's relationship with the Augusta area, and to some extent the Greater Portland and Bangor areas.

Geography
According to the United States Census Bureau, the town has a total area of 28.17 sqmi, of which 25.67 sqmi is land and 2.50 sqmi is water. Oakland is drained by four major waterways: McGrath Pond, Salmon Lake, East Pond and Messalonskee Lake and Stream.

The town is crossed by Interstate 95, and state routes 11, 23, 41 and 137. It borders the towns of Belgrade to the southwest, Smithfield to the northwest, Fairfield to the north, Waterville to the southeast, and Sidney to the south.

2010 census
As of the census of 2010, there were 6,240 people, 2,543 households, and 1,793 families living in the town. The population density was 243.1 PD/sqmi. There were 3,024 housing units at an average density of 117.8 /sqmi. The racial makeup of the town was 96.7% White, 0.4% African American, 0.4% Native American, 0.9% Asian, 0.1% Pacific Islander, 0.3% from other races, and 1.1% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 1.3% of the population.

There were 2,543 households, of which 32.2% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 53.6% were married couples living together, 11.7% had a female householder with no husband present, 5.3% had a male householder with no wife present, and 29.5% were non-families. 22.8% of all households were made up of individuals, and 7.4% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.45 and the average family size was 2.83.

The median age in the town was 42.3 years. 22.8% of residents were under the age of 18; 7.4% were between the ages of 18 and 24; 23.9% were from 25 to 44; 32.5% were from 45 to 64; and 13.2% were 65 years of age or older. The gender makeup of the town was 48.5% male and 51.5% female.

2000 census
As of the census of 2000, there were 5,959 people, 2,352 households, and 1,651 families living in the town. The population density was 231.5 PD/sqmi. There were 2,847 housing units at an average density of 110.6 /sqmi. The racial makeup of the town was 98.27% White, 0.15% Black or African American, 0.23% Native American, 0.55% Asian, 0.08% from other races, and 0.70% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 0.52% of the population.

There were 2,352 households, out of which 35.6% had children under the age of 18 living in them, 54.9% had married couples living together, 11.1% had a female householder with no husband present, and 29.8% had non-families. 23.6% of all households were made up of individuals, and 8.8% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.53, and the average family size was 2.98.

In the town, the population was spread out such that 26.9% were under the age of 18, 7.5% from were between 18 and 24 years, 30.2% were between 25 and 44 years, 24.4% were between 45 and 64 years, and 11.0% were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 37 years. For every 100 females, there were 95.8 males. For every 100 females aged 18 and over, there were 92.6 males.

The median income for a household in the town was $34,934, and the median income for a family was $43,654. Males had a median income of $33,382, and females had a median income of $24,286. The per capita income for the town was $19,406. About 9.0% of families and 10.1% of the population were below the poverty line, including 11.4% of those under age 18 and 4.9% of those aged 65 or over.

Oakland is also home to R.S.U. 18 – the local school district. There is Messalonskee High School, which enrolls around 700 students, and has an 826-seat J. Duke Albanneese Performing Arts Center.

Sites of interest

 * Memorial Hall
 * Oakland Area Historical Society & Museum

title: Oakland, Maine


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English folk music

The folk music of England is a tradition-based music which has existed since the later medieval period. It is often contrasted with courtly, classical and later commercial music. Folk music traditionally was preserved and passed on orally within communities, but print and subsequently audio recordings have since become the primary means of transmission. The term is used to refer both to English traditional music and music composed or delivered in a traditional style.

There are distinct regional and local variations in content and style, particularly in areas more removed from the most prominent English cities, as in Northumbria, or the West Country. Cultural interchange and processes of migration mean that English folk music, although in many ways distinctive, has significant crossovers with the music of Scotland. When English communities migrated to the United States, Canada and Australia, they brought their folk traditions with them, and many of the songs were preserved by immigrant communities.

English folk music has produced or contributed to several cultural phenomena, including sea shanties, jigs, hornpipes and the music for Morris dancing. It has also interacted with other musical traditions, particularly classical and rock music, influencing musical styles and producing musical fusions, such as British folk rock, folk punk and folk metal. There remains a flourishing sub-culture of English folk music, which continues to influence other genres and occasionally gains mainstream attention.

Origins
In the strictest sense, English folk music has existed since the arrival of the Anglo-Saxon people in Britain after 400 AD. The Venerable Bede's story of the cattleman and later ecclesiastical musician Cædmon indicates that in the early medieval period it was normal at feasts to pass around the harp and sing 'vain and idle songs'. Since this type of music was rarely notated, we have little knowledge of its form or content. Some later tunes, like those used for Morris dance, may have their origins in this period, but it is impossible to be certain of these relationships. We know from a reference in William Langland's Piers Plowman, that ballads about Robin Hood were being sung from at least the late 14th century and the oldest detailed material we have is Wynkyn de Worde's collection of Robin Hood ballads printed about 1495.

16th century to the 18th century
While there was distinct court music, members of the social elite into the 16th century also seem to have enjoyed, and even to have contributed to the music of the people, as Henry VIII perhaps did with the tavern song "Pastime with Good Company". Peter Burke argued that late medieval social elites had their own culture, but were culturally 'amphibious', able to participate in and affect popular traditions.

In the 16th century the changes in the wealth and culture of the upper social orders caused tastes in music to diverge. There was an internationalisation of courtly music in terms of both instruments, such as the lute, dulcimer and early forms of the harpsichord, and in form with the development of madrigals, pavanes and galliards. For other social orders, instruments like the pipe, tabor, bagpipe, shawm, hurdy-gurdy, and crumhorn accompanied traditional music and community dance. The fiddle, well established in England by the 1660s, was unusual in being a key element in both the art music that developed in the baroque, and in popular song and dance.

By the mid-17th century, the music of the lower social orders was sufficiently alien to the aristocracy and "middling sort" for a process of rediscovery to be needed in order to understand it, along with other aspects of popular culture such as festivals, folklore and dance. This led to a number of early collections of printed material, including those published by John Playford as The English Dancing Master (1651), and the private collections of Samuel Pepys (1633–1703) and the Roxburghe Ballads collected by Robert Harley, 1st Earl of Oxford and Mortimer (1661–1724). Pepys notably mentioned in his famous diary singing the ballad Barbara Allen on New Year's Eve, 1665, a ballad that survived in the oral tradition well into the twentieth century.

In the 18th century there were increasing numbers of collections of what was now beginning to be defined as "folk" music, strongly influenced by the Romantic movement, including Thomas D'Urfey's Wit and Mirth: or, Pills to Purge Melancholy (1719–20) and Bishop Thomas Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry (1765). The last of these also contained some oral material and by the end of the 18th century this was becoming increasingly common, with collections including Joseph Ritson's, The Bishopric Garland (1784), which paralleled the work of figures like Robert Burns and Walter Scott in Scotland. It was in this period, too, that English folk music traveled across the Atlantic Ocean and became one of the foundations of American traditional music. In the colonies, it mixed with styles of music brought by other immigrant groups to create a host of new genres. For instance, English ballads, along with Irish, Scottish, and German musical traditions when combined with the African banjo, Afro-American rhythmic traditions and the Afro-American jazz and blues aesthetic led in part to the development of bluegrass and country music.

Early 19th century
With the Industrial Revolution the themes of the music of the labouring classes began to change from rural and agrarian life to include industrial work songs. Awareness that older kinds of song were being abandoned prompted renewed interest in collecting folk songs during the 1830s and 1840s, including the work of William Sandys' Christmas Carols Ancient and Modern (1833), William Chappell, A Collection of National English Airs (1838) and Robert Bell's Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of the Peasantry of England (1846).

Technological change made new instruments available and led to the development of silver and brass bands, particularly in industrial centres in the north. The shift to urban centres also began to create new types of music, including from the 1850s the Music hall, which developed from performances in ale houses into theatres and became the dominant locus of English popular music for over a century. This combined with increased literacy and print to allow the creation of new songs that initially built on, but began to differ from traditional music as composers like Lionel Monckton and Sidney Jones created music that reflected new social circumstances.

Folk revivals 1890–1969
From the late 19th century there were a series of movements that attempted to collect, record, preserve and later to perform, English folk music and dance. These are usually separated into two folk revivals. The first, in the later 19th and early 20th centuries, involved figures including collectors Sabine Baring-Gould (1834–1924), Frank Kidson (1855–1926), Lucy Broadwood (1858–1939), and Anne Gilchrist (1863–1954), centred around the Folk Song Society, founded in 1911. Francis James Child's (1825–96) eight-volume collection The English and Scottish Popular Ballads (1882–92) became the most influential in defining the repertoire of subsequent performers, and Cecil Sharp (1859–1924), founder of the English Folk Dance Society, was probably the most important figure in understanding of the nature of folk song. The revival was part of a wider national movement in the period around the First World War, and contributed to the creation of the English Pastoral School of classical music which incorporated traditional songs or motifs, as can be seen in the compositions of Percy Grainger (1882–1961), Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872–1951), George Butterworth (1885–1916), Gustav Holst (1874–1934) and Frederick Delius (1862–1934). In 1932 the Folk-Song Society and the English Folk Dance Society merged to become the English Folk Dance and Song Society (EFDSS). Some of these revivalists recorded folk songs on wax cylinders, and many of the recordings, including Percy Grainger's collection, are available online courtesy of the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library and the British Library Sound Archive. The second revival gained momentum after the Second World War, following on from the American folk music revival as new forms of media and American commercial music appeared to pose another threat to traditional music. The key figures were Ewan MacColl and A. L. Lloyd. The second revival was generally left wing in politics and emphasised the work music of the 19th century and previously neglected forms like erotic folk songs. Topic Records, founded in 1939, provided a major source of folk recordings. The revival resulted in the foundation of a network of folk clubs in major towns, from the 1950s. Major traditional performers included The Watersons, the Ian Campbell Folk Group, and Shirley Collins. The fusing of various styles of American music with English folk also helped to create a distinctive form of guitar fingerstyle known as 'folk baroque', which was pioneered by Davy Graham, Martin Carthy, John Renbourn and Bert Jansch. Several individuals emerged who had learnt the old songs in the oral tradition from their communities and therefore preserved the authentic versions. These people, including Sam Larner, Harry Cox, Fred Jordan, Walter Pardon, Frank Hinchliffe and the Copper Family, released albums of their own and were revered by folk revivalists. Popular folk revival musicians based their works on songs sung by these traditional singers and those collected during the first folk revival.

There are various databases and collections of English folk songs collected during the first and second folk revivals, such as the Roud Folk Song Index, which contains references to 25,000 English language folk songs, and the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library, a multimedia archive of folk-related resources. The British Library Sound Archive contains thousands of recordings of traditional English folk music, including 340 wax cylinder recordings made by Percy Grainger in the early 1900s.

Progressive folk
The process of fusion between American musical styles and English folk can also be seen as the origin of British progressive folk music, which attempted to elevate folk music through greater musicianship, or compositional and arrangement skills. Many progressive folk performers continued to retain a traditional element in their music, including Jansch and Renbourn, who with Jacqui McShee, Danny Thompson, and Terry Cox, formed Pentangle in 1967. Others totally abandoned the traditional element and in this area particularly influential were the Scottish artists Donovan, who was most influenced by emerging progressive folk musicians in America like Bob Dylan, and the Incredible String Band, who from 1967 incorporated a range of influences including medieval and eastern music into their compositions. Some of this, particularly the Incredible String Band, has been seen as developing into the further subgenre of psych or psychedelic folk and had a considerable impact on progressive and psychedelic rock.

There was a brief flowering of English progressive folk in the late 1960s and early 1970s, with groups like the Third Ear Band and Quintessence following the eastern Indian musical and more abstract work by group such as Comus, Dando Shaft, The Trees, Spirogyra, Forest, and Jan Dukes De Grey, but commercial success was elusive for these bands and most had broken up or moved in very different directions by about 1973. Perhaps the finest individual work in the genre was from artists early 1970s artists like Nick Drake and John Martyn, but these can also be considered the first among the English 'folk troubadours' or 'singer-songwriters', individual performers who remained largely acoustic but who relied mostly on their own individual compositions. The most successful of these was Ralph McTell, whose 'Streets of London' reached number 2 in the UK Single Charts in 1974, and whose music is clearly folk, but without much reliance on tradition, virtuosity, or much evidence of attempts at fusion with other genres.

British folk rock

British folk rock developed in Britain during the mid to late 1960s by the bands Fairport Convention, and Pentangle which built on elements of American folk rock, and on the second British folk revival. It uses traditional music, and compositions in a traditional style, played on a combination of rock and traditional instruments. It was most significant in the 1970s, when it was taken up by groups such as Pentangle, Steeleye Span and the Albion Band. It was rapidly adopted and developed in the surrounding Celtic cultures of Brittany, where it was pioneered by Alan Stivell and bands like Malicorne; in Ireland by groups such as Horslips; in Canada by groups such as Barde; and also in Scotland, Wales and the Isle of Man and Cornwall, to produce Celtic rock and its derivatives. It has been influential in those parts of the world with close cultural connections to Britain, such as the US and Canada and gave rise to the subgenre of Medieval folk rock and the fusion genres of folk punk and folk metal. By the 1980s the genre was in steep decline in popularity, but has survived and revived in significance as part of a more general folk resurgence since the 1990s.

Folk punk
In the mid-1980s a new rebirth of English folk began, this time fusing folk with energy and political aggression derived from punk rock. Leaders included The Pogues, The Men They Couldn't Hang, Oyster Band and Billy Bragg. Folk dance music also became popular in the 80s, with acts like the English Country Blues Band and Tiger Moth. The decade later saw the use of reggae with English folk music by the band Edward II & the Red Hot Polkas, especially on their seminal Let's Polkasteady from 1987.

Folk metal

In a process strikingly similar to the origins of British folk rock in the 1960s, the English thrash metal band Skyclad added violins from a session musician on several tracks for their 1990 debut album The Wayward Sons of Mother Earth. When this was well received they adopted a full-time fiddle player and moved towards a signature folk and jig style leading them to be credited as the pioneers of folk metal, which has spread to Ireland, the Baltic and Germany.

Traditional folk resurgence 1990–present
The peak of traditional English folk, like progressive and electric folk, was the mid- to late-1970s, when, for a time it threatened to break through into the mainstream. By the end of the decade, however, it was in decline. The attendance at, and numbers of folk clubs began to decrease, probably as new musical and social trends, including punk rock, new wave and electronic music began to dominate. Although many acts like Martin Carthy and the Watersons continued to perform successfully, there were very few significant new acts pursuing traditional forms in the 1980s. This began to change with a new generation in the 1990s. The arrival and sometimes mainstream success of acts like Kate Rusby, Bellowhead, Nancy Kerr, Kathryn Tickell, Jim Moray, Spiers and Boden, Seth Lakeman, Frank Turner, Laura Marling and Eliza Carthy, all largely concerned with acoustic performance of traditional material, marked a radical turn around in the fortunes of the tradition. This was reflected in the adoption creation of the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards in 2000, which gave the music a much needed status and focus and the profile of folk music is as high in England today as it has been for over thirty years.

Folk clubs
Although there were a handful of clubs that allowed space for the performance of traditional folk music by the early 1950s, its major boost came from the short-lived British skiffle craze, from about 1956–8. New clubs included the 'Ballad and Blues' club in a pub in Soho, co-founded by Ewan MacColl. As the craze subsided from the mid-1950s many of these clubs began to shift towards the performance of English traditional folk material. Many became strict 'policy clubs', that pursued a pure and traditional form of music. By the mid-1960s there were probably over 300 in Britain. Most clubs were simply a regular gathering, usually in the back or upstairs room of a public house on a weekly basis. They were largely a phenomenon of the urbanised middle classes and known for the amateur nature of many performances. There were also 'residents', who performed regular short sets of songs. Many of these later emerged as major performers in their own right, including A. L. Lloyd, Martin Carthy, and Shirley Collins. A later generation of performers used the folk club circuit for highly successful mainstream careers, including Billy Connolly, Jasper Carrott, Ian Dury and Barbara Dickson. The number of clubs began to decline in the 1980s, in the face of changing musical and social trends. But the decline began to stabilize in the mid-1990s with the resurgence of interest in folk music and there are now over 160 folk clubs in the United Kingdom, including many that can trace their origins back to the 1950s.

Folk music and the radio
The difficulty of gaining regular appearances on television in England has long meant that radio has remained the major popular medium for increasing awareness of the genre. The EFDSS sponsored the BBC Home Service radio program, As I Roved Out, based on field recordings made by Peter Kennedy and Séamus Ennis from 1952 to 1958, which probably did more than any other single factor to introduce the general population to British folk music in the period. Also important were occasional radio shows, such as Lomax's Ballads and Blues (1951), MacColl's Radio-ballads (1958–64) and The Song Carriers (1968). John Peel frequently included folk music of his Top Gear show on Radio One from 1968, but dropped it when punk arrived in the 1970s. The most consistent source of folk music on radio, has been BBC Radio 2. In 1967 "My Kind of folk" was broadcast on Wednesdays. In 1970 "Folk on Friday" began, presented by Jim Lloyd. In 1972 it became "Folk on Sunday". "Folkweave" was presented by Tony Capstick 1975–8. "Folk on Two" (Wednesdays) began in 1980. In 1998 Jim Lloyd retired from the programme and was replaced by Mike Harding. In 2007 it was renamed "The Mike Harding Folk Show". In October 2012 it was announced that Mike Harding would be leaving the programme to be replaced by Mark Radcliffe. Ian A. Anderson, editor of "fRoots", also presented the occasional series for Radio Two. He hosted a World music programme on "Jazz FM" and then spent 10 years broadcasting on the BBC World Service. He currently hosts "fRoots Radio" on the web. For over twenty years, until 2006, Charlie Gillett presented World music on BBC London.

Folk festivals

Folk festivals began to be organised by the EFDSS from about 1950, usually as local or regional event with an emphasis on dance, like the Sidmouth Festival (from 1955) and the Keele Festival (1965), which was abandoned in 1981 but reinstituted three years later as the National Folk Festival. The EFDSS gave up its organizing role in these festivals in the 1980s and most are locally run and financed. One of the largest and most prestigious English folk festivals at Cambridge was founded in 1965 and attracts about 10,000 people. Probably the largest is Fairport's Cropredy Convention, which since 1979 has provided a venue for folk, British folk rock, and rock artists; it now attracts up to 20,000 people a year as well as performances for Fairport Convention and their friends. Like rock festivals, folk festivals have begun to multiply since the 1990s and there are over a hundred folk festivals or varying sizes held in England every year.

Ballads
A ballad is a form of verse, often a narrative story and set to music. Many ballads were written and sold as single sheet broadsides. They are usually narrative in structure and make considerable use of repetition. The traditional ballad has been seen as originating with the wandering minstrels of late medieval Europe. There have been many different and contradictory attempts to classify traditional ballads by theme, but commonly identified types are religious, supernatural, tragic, love, historic, legends and humour. Many ballads were brought by English settlers to the New World, thus contributing in part to the bedrock of American folk music that had been established via the Afro-American rhythmic traditions, the blues aesthetic, and the cross-pollination of the American immigrant cultures at the time.

Carols
A carol is a festive song. In modern times, carols are associated primarily with Christmas, but in reality there are carols celebrating all festivals and seasons of the year, and not necessarily Christian festivals. They were derived from a form of circle dance accompanied by singers, which was popular from the mid-12th century. From the 14th century they were used as processional songs, particularly at Advent, Easter and Christmas, and to accompany religious mystery plays. They declined after the Protestant Reformation which banned many religious festivals, but some famous carols were written in this period, including 'The Holly and the Ivy' and they were more strongly revived from the 19th century and began to be written and adapted by eminent composers.

Children's songs

The earliest vernacular children's songs in Europe are lullabies from the later medieval period. From soon after we have records of short children's rhyming songs, but most nursery rhymes were not written down until the 18th century. The first English collections were Tommy Thumb's Song Book and a sequel, Tommy Thumb's Pretty Song Book, are both thought to have been published before 1744, and John Newbery's, Mother Goose's Melody, or, Sonnets for the Cradle (c.1785), is the first record we have of many classic rhymes. These rhymes seem to have come from a variety of sources, including traditional riddles, proverbs, ballads, lines of Mummers' plays, drinking songs, historical events, and, it has been suggested, ancient pagan rituals. Roughly half of the current body recognised 'traditional' English rhymes were known by the mid-18th century. From this period we sometimes know the origins and authors of rhymes, like 'Twinkle Twinkle Little Star', which combined an 18th-century French tune with a poem by English writer Jane Taylor and 'Mary Had a Little Lamb', written by Sarah Josepha Hale of Boston in 1830. The first, and possibly the most important collection to focus in this area was, James Orchard Halliwell's, The Nursery Rhymes of England (1842) and Popular Rhymes and Tales in 1849. At the height of the revival Sabine Baring-Gould produced A Book of Nursery Songs (1895), and Andrew Lang produced The Nursery Rhyme Book in 1897. Children's songs, unlike folk songs, have remained part of a living and continuous tradition, for although added to from other sources and affected by written versions, most adults pass on songs they learned from oral sources as children.

Erotic folk songs
It has been noted by most recent commentators on English folk song even if it was a bit immoral, that love, the erotic and even the pornographic, were major traditional themes and, if more than ballads are considered, may have been the largest groups of printed songs. Many collectors in the first revival either ignored such songs, or bowdlerized them for publication, as Francis Child and Cecil Sharp did in their collections. In the second revival, erotic folk song was much more accepted as part of the canon of traditional song, helped by the publication of books such as Gershon Legman's, The Horn Book: Studies in Erotic Folklore (1964) and Ed Cray's, The Erotic Muse: American Bawdy Songs, which printed many previously unpublished songs (1968). In England A. L. Lloyd was the key figure in introducing erotic songs to the canon, lecturing and publishing on the subject. He recorded The Foggy Dew and Other Traditional English Love Songs in 1959, and then The Bird in the Bush, Traditional Erotic Songs in 1966 with Frankie Armstrong, and Anne Briggs. He drew a distinction between erotic songs, i.e. those that dealt with love and suggested sexuality through innuendo (like 'The Bonny Black Hare' and 'The Bird in the Bush'), and pornographic songs that were explicit and therefore unworthy of attention. Some authors, however, find these distinctions more difficult to maintain. Although erotic songs became part of the standard fare in folk clubs and among folk rock musicians, relatively few of the more explicit songs have been placed on record.

Hornpipes
The hornpipe is a style of dance music thought to have taken its name from an English reed instrument by at least the 17th century. In the mid-18th century it changed from 3/2 time to 2/2, assuming its modern character, and probably reaching the height of its popularity as it became a staple of theatrical performances. It is most often associated with the Sailor's Hornpipe, but has formed the basis of many individual and group country dances into the modern period. Like many dances it was taken up in Scotland and Ireland and given a distinctive national character and moved to America with emigration.

Jigs
Jigs are a style of dance music developed in England to accompany a lively dance with steps, turns and leaps. The term jig was derived from the French 'giguer', meaning 'to jump'. It was known as a dance in the 16th century, often in 2/4 time and the term was used for a dancing entertainment in 16th century plays. The dance began to be associated with music particularly in 6/8 time, and with slip jigs 9/8 time. In the 17th century the dance was adopted in Ireland and Scotland, where they were widely adapted, and with which countries they are now most often associated. In some, usually more northern, parts of England, these dances would be referred to as a "Gallop" – such as the Winster Gallop from Derbyshire (though this owes its origins to the Winster Morris).

Morris dance

A morris dance is a type of English folk dance, usually accompanied by music, and based on rhythmic stepping and the execution of choreographed figures by a group of dancers, often using implements such as sticks, swords, and handkerchiefs. The name is thought to derive from the term 'moorish dance', for Spanish (Muslim) styles of dance and may derive from English court dances of the period. References have been found that suggest that morris dance dates back to the mid-15th century, but claims of pre-Christian origins are now largely dismissed. Morris dance appears to have been widespread in England by the early 17th century, particularly in pastoral areas, but was suppressed, along with associated festivals during and after the English Civil War. It recovered after the Restoration in 1660 but was in steep decline after agricultural and industrial revolutions by the 19th century, when collectors like Cecil Sharp recorded the practice, particularly from versions of dance he found in the Cotswolds. This led to a revival of the tradition, although it may also have affected form and practice. Morris dance took something of a back seat to unaccompanied singing in the second revival, but received a further boost when it attracted the attention of British folk rock musicians like Ashley Hutchings, who produced several albums of dance music, including the influential Morris On series from 1972. Traditionally Morris dance was accompanied by either a pipe and tabor or a fiddle, but from the mid-19th century most common instruments were the melodeon, accordion, concertina and drums. Particularly in Cotswold and Border morris, many tunes are linked to particular dances. Morris dance survives in the distinct local traditions of Cotswold morris, north-west morris, Border Morris, rapper dance and Long Sword dance.

Protest songs
Perhaps the oldest clear example of an English protest song is the rhyme 'When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?', used in the Peasants Revolt of 1381. Songs that celebrated social bandits like Robin Hood, from the 14th century onwards can be seen as a more subtle form of protest. With the Levellers and Diggers in the mid-17th century, more overt criticism surfaced, as in the ballad "The Diggers' Song". From roughly the same period, songs of protest at war, pointing out the costs to human lives, also begin to appear, like "The Maunding Souldier or The Fruits of Warre is Beggery", framed as a begging appeal from a crippled soldier of the Thirty Years War. With industrialisation from the 18th century. A surprising English folk hero immortalised in song is Napoleon Bonaparte, in songs such as the "Bonny Bunch of Roses" and "Napoleon's Dream". As labour became more organised songs were used as anthems and propaganda, for miners with songs like "The Black Leg Miner", and for factory workers with songs like "The Factory Bell". These industrial protest songs were largely ignored during the first English folk revival of the later 19th and early 20th century, but were recorded by figures like A. L. Lloyd on albums such as The Iron Muse (1963). In the 1980s the anarchist rock band Chumbawamba recorded several versions of traditional English protest as English Rebel Songs 1381–1914. Ewan MacColl became the leading writer of English protest songs in the 1950s, with pro-communist songs such as "The Ballad of Ho Chi Minh" and "The Ballad of Stalin", as well as volatile protest and topical songs concerning the nuclear threat to peace, most notably "Against the Atom Bomb". The leading voice of protest in Thatcherite Britain in the 1980s was Billy Bragg, whose style of protest song and grass-roots political activism was mostly reminiscent of those of Woody Guthrie.

Sea shanties

Sea shanties are a type of work song traditionally sung by sailors. Derived from the French word 'chanter', meaning 'to sing', they may date from as early as the 15th century, but most recorded examples derive from the 19th century. Shanties were usually slow rhythmic songs designed to help with collective tasks on labour-intensive sailing and later steam ships. Many were call and response songs, with one voice (the shantyman) singing a lead line and the rest of the sailors giving a response together. They were derived from varied sources, including dances, folk songs, polkas, waltzes and even West African work-songs. Since different songs were useful for different tasks they are traditionally divided into three main categories, short haul shanties, for tasks requiring quick pulls over a relatively short time; halyard shanties, for heavier work requiring more set-up time between pulls; and Capstan shanties, for long, repetitive tasks requiring a sustained rhythm, but not involving working the lines. Famous shanties include, the 'Blow the Man Down and 'Bound for South Australia', some of which have remained in the public consciousness or been revived by popular recordings. There was some interest in sea shanties in the first revival from figures like Percy Grainger, who recorded several traditional versions on phonographs. In the second revival A. L. Lloyd attempted to popularise them, recording several albums of sea songs from 1965.

War songs
In England songs about military and naval subjects were a major part of the output of ballad writers from the 16th century onwards, including one of the earliest British ballads 'The Ballad of Chevy Chase', which deals with the events of the Scottish victory of the Battle of Otterburn in 1388 and may date to the early 15th century. The conflicts between England and Spain in the later 16th and early 17th centuries produced a number of ballads describing events, particularly naval conflicts like those of the Spanish Armada. The English Civil War (1642–1653) produced a subgenre of "Cavalier ballads", including "When the King Home in Peace Again". Many of these were adapted and reused by Jacobites after the 'Glorious Revolution' of 1688. The Anglo-French Wars of the 17th and 18th centuries saw more descriptive works, usually couched in patriotic terms, but some, like 'Captain Death' (1757) dealt with loss and defeat. As regimental identities emerged songs were adopted for marching, like 'The British Grenadiers', based on a 17th-century dance tune. Output became a flood during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars (1797–1815), seeing numerous patriotic war songs, like 'Heart of Oak' and the emergence of a stereotype of the English seaman as 'Jolly Jack Tar', who appeared in many ballads and on stage. As the musical hall began to take over the lead in popular music and folk song declined, folk song ceased to deal with contemporary wars in the later 19th century.

Work songs
Work songs include music sung while conducting a task (often to coordinate timing) or a song linked to a task or trade which might be a connected narrative, description, or protest song. The two main types of work song in England are agricultural work songs, usually are rhythmic a cappella songs sung by people working on a physical and often repetitive task, like the 'Harvest song' common in south-west England. The songs were probably intended to increase productivity while reducing feelings of boredom. Rhythms of work songs can serve to synchronize physical movement in a group or gang. Industrial folk song emerged in Britain in the 18th century, as workers took the music with which they were familiar, including ballads and agricultural work songs, and adapted them to their new experiences and circumstances. Unlike agricultural work songs, it was often unnecessary to use music to synchronise actions between workers, as the pace would be increasingly determined by water, steam, chemical and eventually electric power, and frequently impossible because of the noise of early industry. As a result, industrial folk songs tended to be descriptive of work, circumstances, or political in nature, making them amongst the earliest protest songs and were sung between work shifts or in leisure hours, rather than during work. This pattern can be seen in textile production, mining and eventually steel, shipbuilding, rail working and other industries.

East Anglia

Like many regions of England there are few distinctive local instruments and many songs were shared with the rest of Britain and with Ireland, although the distinct dialects of the regions sometimes lent them a particular stamp and, with one of the longest coastlines of any English region, songs about the sea were also particularly important. Along with the West Country, this was one of the regions that most firmly adopted reed instruments, producing many eminent practitioners of the melodeon from the mid-19th century. Also like the West Country it is one of the few regions where there is still an active tradition of step dancing and like the Midlands the tradition of Molly dance died out in the 1930s. The region was relatively neglected by folk song collectors of the first revival. Lucy Broadwood and Cecil Sharp collected in Cambridgeshire, as did and Vaughan Williams as well as in Norfolk and Essex from 1905, but most important regional figure was composer Ernest John Moeran, who collected over 150 songs in Norfolk and Suffolk in the 1920s. The second folk revival led to the discovery of many East Anglian folk musicians, including Suffolk melodeon player Oscar Woods, Norfolk singers Sam Larner (1878–1965), Harry Cox (1885–1971) and Walter Pardon (1914–96); Suffolk fiddler Harkie Nesling (1890–1978); Suffolk singer and bargeman Bob Roberts (1907–82), many of whom recorded for Topic Records. Perhaps the most influential folk dance musical album was English Country Dance Music (1965), put together by Reg Hall and Bob Davenport with largely Norfolk musicians, it was the first instrumental recording of folk instruments. Also from Norfolk was Peter Bellamy, who in solo projects, with the Young Tradition and in theatrical productions was probably one of the most influential musicians of the post revival period. The Norfolk melodeon player and singer Tony Hall has given the tradition a unique style. East Anglia made a contribution to the British folk rock scene of the 1970s, producing the short-lived, but more recently reformed, bands Midwinter and Stone Angel, based in Great Yarmouth and the more successful Spriguns of Tolgus from Cambridge, who produced four albums. The most successful folk artists from the region in recent years are probably the Essex born Billy Bragg and the Norfolk born Beth Orton. The region is home to numerous folk clubs and hosts many folk festivals, including Steeleye Span's Spanfest at Kentwell Hall, Suffolk and the Cambridge Folk Festival, generally seen as the most prestigious in the calendar. Since 2000 the East Anglian Traditional Music Trust has been promoting folk music in the region, organising a 'Traditional Music Day' every year in August.

The Midlands
Due to its lack of clear boundaries and a perceived lack of identity in its folk music, the English Midlands attracted relatively little interest in the early revivals. However, in more recent years a distinct cultural heritage has been recognised including unique folk traditions and songs, many associated with the regions industrial connections. It has also produced a number of important performers and some particular local instruments, such as the Lincolnshire bagpipes, however the last player, John Hunsley, died in the 19th century and no actual examples of the pipes have survived. From the 19th century the instruments used appear to have been much like those in other regions, with fiddles, accordions and eventually silver and brass. Although, some traditions, like Molly dance died out in the 1930s, the Midlands retained strong traditions of both ceremonial and social dance, particularly in the south Midlands and Cotswolds and in the distinctive Border Morris from Herefordshire, Worcestershire and Shropshire. The region also furnished some important material for folk songs, including a claim by Nottinghamshire for one of the most popular series of ballads, that of Robin Hood, while local places appear in songs such as 'The Leicester Chambermaid' and 'Oxford' or 'Worcester City'. Folk song collecting in the first revival was much less comprehensive than for many other regions. In the 1860s Llewellynn Jewitt, collected songs from Derbyshire, and some songs were printed by Georgina F. Jackson in her study of Shropshire folk lore. Cecil Sharp's interest in the region was largely confined to the south, particularly the Cotswold morris villages of Oxfordshire and Warwickshire, which provided him with an archetype of English ceremonial dance. From 1905, Percy Grainger was actively collecting in Lincolnshire, acquiring recordings of songs that would provide the basis for his Lincolnshire Posy (1937). It was not until the early 1970s that the broader heritage of the region, including the many industrial and work songs associated with mining or The Potteries, began to gain serious attention. Despite this neglect there was an active folk scene in the region, which produced several key artists of the second revival from the 1960s, including Anne Briggs from Nottinghamshire, The Settlers from the West Midlands and from Birmingham one of the most influential groups of the period, the Ian Campbell Folk Group, which numbered among its members later British folk rock musicians Dave Swarbrick and Dave Pegg. Slightly later a number of folk groups came out of Derbyshire, including The Druids, Ram's Bottom Band and Muckram Wakes, which included one of the most highly regarded modern performers John Tams. Lincolnshire has produced Martin Simpson, perhaps the most highly regarded folk guitarist of his generation. Birmingham's position as a centre for folk music has been emphasised by its place as the home of the Birmingham Conservatoire Folk Ensemble, led by former Albion Band fiddler Joe Broughton, which provides something of a clearing house of promising young folk musicians. The regions has numerous folk clubs and host many major folk festivals, including those of Gainsborough, Lincolnshire; Loughborough, Leicestershire; Shrewsbury, Shropshire; Warwick, Warwickshire; and Moseley, West Midlands.

The North West
Although relatively neglected in the first folk revival North West England had a rich tradition of balladry stretching back at least to the 17th century and sharing in the tradition of Border ballads, including perhaps the finest 'The Ballad of Chevy Chase', thought to have been composed by the Lancashire-born sixteenth century minstrel Richard Sheale. Lancashire in particular was a common location for folk songs, including 'The Lancashire Miller', 'Warrington Ale' and 'The soldier's farewell to Manchester', beside several local Wassailing songs. With a variety of dialects and acting as something of a crossroads for the cultures and immigrants of England, Scotland and Ireland, there is a distinctive local character to folk music, which expressed itself in local enthusiasm that emerged as a major factor within the wider folk movement in the second revival. The key event in the history of folk music in the counties of the north west of England was the Industrial Revolution, which divided the region economically and culturally into a northern, often highland and pastoral region, in Westmorland and Cumberland and a more urbanised and industrialised southern zone with large and growing conurbations like Manchester and Liverpool, where changing social and economic patterns emerged in new traditions and styles of folk song, often linked to migration and patterns of work, these included processional dances, often associated with rushbearing and the Wakes Week festivities and types of step dance, most famously clog dancing. These were very different from the styles of dance that collectors like Cecil Sharp had encountered in the Cotswolds and were largely dismissed by him as contaminated by urbanisation, yet they were, and remain, a thriving tradition of music and dance. A local pioneer of folk song collection in the first half of the 19th century in Lancashire was Shakespearian scholar James Orchard Halliwell, and he was followed a little later by John Harland, William E. Axon, Thomas T. Wilkinson and Sidney Gilpin, who performed a similar service for Cumberland. Most of these works, although important in unearthing, and in some cases preserving, locally relevant ballads, largely depended on manuscript sources, rather than oral collection and often did not give tunes, but only lyrics. It was not until the second folk revival that the full range of song from the region began to gain attention. The region not only produced one of the major figures of the revival in Ewan MacColl but also a local champion in Harry Boardman, who from 1965 onwards probably did more than anyone to popularise and record the industrial folk song of the region, in several albums and books. The region produced no significant bands in the folk rock movement of the 1970s but can claim one of the most significant figures, as Maddy Prior was brought up in Blackpool. However, perhaps the most influential folk artists to emerge from the region in this period were folk troubadour Roy Harper and comedian and broadcaster Mike Harding. More recently it has produced some significant performers including guitarist Ken Nicol and mother and daughter singer songwriters Chris and Kellie While. The region is home to numerous folk clubs, many of them catering to Irish and Scots folk. Folk festivals include the Fylde Folk Festival at Fleetwood in Lancashire.

Northumbria

Northumbria possesses a distinctive style of folk music with a flourishing and continuing tradition. The region is particularly noted for the unique Northumbrian smallpipes and strong fiddle tradition that was already well-established in the 1690s. Northumbrian music is characterised by considerable influence from other regions, particularly southern Scotland, other parts of the north of England and Ireland. Local tunes were collected from the mid-18th century by figures including Henry Atkinson and William Vickers and in the first revival by John Bell, Bruce. J. Collingwood and John Stokoe. The short-lived Northumbrian Small Pipes Society was founded in Newcastle in 1893 and the Northumbrian Pipers' Society in 1928, and they are generally credited with keeping the distinctive tradition alive. Border ballads were a major part of those collected by Francis James Child and make up most of the sixth volume of his ten volume collection of The English and Scottish Popular Ballads (1882–98). The second folk revival saw a number of acts drawing on this work, and enjoying some success. Probably the most influential piper at that time was Billy Pigg. Performers such Louis Killen, The High Level Ranters and Bob Davenport brought Northumbrian folk to national and international audiences. The 1970s saw folk rock bands like Lindisfarne, and the more traditionally focused Jack the Lad and Hedgehog Pie. More recently, Northumbrian folk music, and particularly the use of the Northumbrian pipes, has become one of the liveliest and most widely known subgenres of folk music in Britain, with artists like fiddler Nancy Kerr, piper Kathryn Tickell and Rachel Unthank and the Winterset gaining international reputations. Currently the region has over thirty active folk clubs and hosts several major folk festivals, including the Traditional Music Festival at Rothbury.

The South East
Even excluding Sussex and London, South-east England has been one of the key areas of English folk music and collection. It had retained a strong tradition of wassailing, and seafaring songs were important in the coastal counties of Kent and Hampshire. Arguably the published collection of oral material was made in this area by John Broadwood, as Old English Songs, As Now Sung by the Peasantry of the Weald of Surrey and Sussex (1843). When the first revival was at its height in the first decade of the 20th century, George Gardiner and Alice Gillington both collected songs in Hampshire, Lucy Broadwood in Surrey, Hampshire and Oxfordshire, Alfred Williams in Oxfordshire and Berkshire and Cecil Sharp in Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, and Kent. In the second folk revival the region contributed several figures, with probably the most important being Martin Carthy from Hertfordshire. The most significant British folk rock group from the region were the Oyster Band, formed in Canterbury, while guitarist John Martyn came from Surrey and fiddle player Chris Leslie from Banbury in Oxfordshire. From the current crop of young folk musicians probably the most prominent are Spiers and Boden from Oxfordshire and Chris Wood, born in Kent. The region is host to numerous folk clubs, and festivals, including the Oxford festival and Fairport's Cropredy Convention in Oxfordshire and St Albans in Hertfordshire.

London

Despite being the centre of both folk revivals and the British folk rock movement, the songs of London were largely neglected in favour of regional and rural music until relatively recently. London, unsurprisingly, was the most common location mentioned in English folk songs, including 'London is a Fine Town', and the 'London Prentice' and it was the centre of the broadside publishing industry. From the 17th century to the 19th, street singers were characteristic of London life, often selling printed versions of the songs they sang. The capital is home to the Folk-Song Society and the English Folk Dance Society since the late 19th century (now known as the English Folk Dance and Song Society), but the most distinctive genre of London music, its many street cries, were not considered folk music by mainstream collectors and were recorded and published by figures such as Andrew White in Old London Street Cries ; and, The Cries of To-day (1885). Both Ewan MacColl and A. L. Lloyd gravitated to London in the 1950s, it was the base of Topic Records and it was there that the first folk clubs were formed before they spread out across the country. It was also the home of folk musicians like Ashley Hutchings, Richard Thompson and Simon Nicol who formed Fairport Convention, and many artists, like Bert Jansch and Davy Graham, moved there in order to be able to pursue their careers or for the greater networks and opportunities the capital allowed. More recent performers of folk music include Noah and the Whale, Emma Lee Moss, Mumford and Sons, The Border Surrender and Anna Tam.

Sussex
Sussex has disproportionately affected the history of English folk music. This was due to a flourishing tradition of folk dance, mummers plays and folk song, but also in part because of the rural nature of the county in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and yet its relatively close proximity to London. It was thus a rich and convenient place for the collectors of the first folk song revival, including Kate Lee, Lucy Broadwood and W. P. Merrick. Sussex material was used by the composers of the English pastoral school, for example in Percy Grainger's arrangement of 'The Sussex Mummers' Christmas Carol', Ralph Vaughan Williams' use of the tune 'Monk's Gate' as a setting for John Bunyan's 'To be a Pilgrim' and George Butterworth's arrangement of 'Folk Songs from Sussex'. Most important of the collector's sources were the Copper Family of Rottingdean, who emerged as authorities on folk song and eventually as major recording artists. Sussex folk song also had a formative effect on one of the major figures of the second revival, as it was as a child of five in Sussex that A. L. Lloyd first heard folk music. Other performers include Scan Tester, Henry Burstow and the sisters Dolly and Shirley Collins. Sussex songs were also the foundation of the repertoire of the influential Young Tradition. The county has over twenty folk clubs and other venues hosting folk music by organisations such as Acoustic Sussex. There are also annual folk music festivals at Eastbourne, Crawley and Lewes.

Cornwall

The music of Cornwall is often noted for its similarity to that of Brittany and, as a result of the close physical and cultural ties between the two peninsulas, some older songs and carols share the same root as Breton tunes. From the late Middle Ages the fiddle (crowd in Cornish), bombarde (horn-pipe), bagpipes and harp all seem to have been used in music. The Cornish bagpipes died out, as elsewhere in southern England, in the 16th century, but have recently been re-created. From the mid-19th century accordions became progressively more popular as a folk instrument in the county, as in the rest of the West Country. There is long and varied history of Cornish dance from the medieval period, with records of strong traditions of morris dancing, mumming, guise dancing, and social dance. These seem to have been interrupted by the Reformation and Civil War and Commonwealth in the 16th and 17th centuries. However, there was revival from the late 18th century and seasonal and community festivals, mumming and guising all flourished. In the 19th century a strong tradition of nonconformity and temperance may also have affected dancing and music adversely and encouraged choral and brass band movements, while traditional tunes were used for carols. Some community events survived, such as the 'Obby 'Oss festival in Padstow and the Furry Dance in Helston. Folk songs include 'Sweet Nightingale', 'Little Eyes', and 'Lamorna'. 'Trelawny' is often sung at sporting events and is seen by many as an unofficial anthem. Few traditional Cornish lyrics survived the decline of the language, but in some cases lyrics of common English songs became attached to older Cornish tunes. Some folk tunes have Cornish lyrics written since the language revival of the 1920s. Modern Cornish musicians include the former Cornish folk singer Brenda Wootton and the Cornish-Breton family band Anao Atao. Recently bands like Sacred Turf, Skwardya and Krena, have begun performing British folk rock in the Cornish language. The Cornwall Folk Festival has been held annually for more than three decades.

The rest of the West Country

Outside Devon and Cornwall Celtic influence on music in the West Country is much less obvious, but folk music still retains many distinctive local characteristics. As in Cornwall there are very strong traditions of folk dance and mumming, the best known being the Hobby horse celebrations at Minehead in Somerset. The maritime heritage of Devon made sea shanties, hornpipes and naval or sea ballads important parts of regional folk music. From the 19th century accordions have been a popular and accepted part of the local folk sound. Folk songs from the West Country include 'Widdecombe Fair', 'Spanish Ladies' and 'The Seeds of Love.' The region was important in the first folk revival, as the Devon-born antiquarian Sabine Baring-Gould invested effort in collecting regional music, published as Songs and Ballads of the West (1889–91), the first collection published for the mass market. He later collaborated with Cecil Sharp who, with Charles Marson, produced a three volume Folk-Songs from Somerset (1904–09). Other collectors included Henry and Robert Hammond in Dorset, the Reverend Geoffrey Hill in Wiltshire, Percy Grainger in Gloucestershire and, perhaps the most famous, Ralph Vaughan Williams' 'Folk Songs from Somerset', which provided themes for his English Folk Song Suite. In the second folk revival the most famous West country musicians were melodeon-player Bob Cann and writer, performer and broadcaster Cyril Tawney, 'The Father of the West Country Folk Revival'. In the 1970s there were figures such as Tony Rose. The same period saw one of the most surprising hybrids in music history Scrumpy and Western with bands like the Wurzels and The Yetties, who took most of the elements of West Country folk music for comical folk-style songs with affectionate parodies of more mainstream musical genres, delivered in local West Country dialects. More seriously, the West Country and particularly Devon, have produced some of the most successful folk artists of recent years, including Show of Hands, Mark Bazeley and Jason Rice, Paul Downes, Jim Causley, Seth Lakeman and his brothers. The region has numerous folk clubs and annual festivals, including those at Portsmouth and the first modern English folk festival to be established at Sidmouth in Devon along with its associated 'Late Night Extra' venue at Bulverton.

Yorkshire
Yorkshire has a rich heritage of folk music and folk dance including the Long Sword dance. Folk songs were collected there from the 19th century but, though it probably had more attention than other northern counties, its rich heritage of industrial folk song was relatively neglected. It was not until the second revival in the 1950s that Nigel and Mary Hudleston began to attempt to redress the balance, collecting Yorkshire songs between 1958 and 1978. Yorkshire folk song lacked the unique instrumental features of folk in areas like Northumbria and was chiefly distinguished by the use of dialect, particularly in the West Riding and exemplified by the song 'On Ilkla Moor Baht 'at', probably written in the later 19th century and using a Kent folk tune (almost certainly borrowed via a Methodist hymnal), but often seen as an unofficial Yorkshire anthem. Most Yorkshire folk songs were not unique and tended to be adapted to fit local geography and dialect, as was the case with probably the most commercially successful Yorkshire song, 'Scarborough Fair', recorded by Simon & Garfunkel, which was a version of the Scottish ballad 'The Elfin Knight'. The most famous folk performers from the county are the Watersons from Hull, who began recording Yorkshire versions of folk songs from 1965. Other Yorkshire folk musicians include Heather Wood (born 1945) of the Young Tradition, the short-lived folk rock group Mr Fox (1970–2), The Deighton Family, Julie Matthews, Kathryn Roberts, and the Mercury Prize nominated Kate Rusby. Even considering its position as the largest county in England, Yorkshire has a flourishing folk music culture, with over forty folk clubs and thirty annual folk music festivals. In 2007, the Yorkshire Garland Group was formed to make Yorkshire folk songs accessible online and in schools.

title: English folk music


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English music

English music may refer to:

 * Folk music of England
 * Music of the United Kingdom
 * English Music (novel), 1992 novel by Peter Ackroyd

title: English music


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Flying Nun Records

Flying Nun Records is a New Zealand independent record label formed in Christchurch in 1981 by music store manager Roger Shepherd. Described by The Guardian as "one of the world's great independent labels", Flying Nun is notable for bringing global attention to the Dunedin sound, a cultural and musical movement in early 1980s Dunedin.

History
The label formed in the wake of a flurry of new post-punk-inspired labels appearing in New Zealand in the early 1980s, in particular Propeller Records in Auckland. Shepherd had intended to record the original local music of Christchurch, but soon the label rose to national prominence by championing the emerging music of Dunedin.

"Ambivalence" by The Pin Group (the first band of Roy Montgomery) was the first release from Flying Nun, although "Tally Ho" by The Clean was the first release to draw public attention to the label, as it unexpectedly reached number nineteen in the New Zealand charts, bringing the label unanticipated profile and income. There followed the seminal Dunedin Double, a release which cemented the place of the southern city in the forefront of New Zealand independent music. Flying Nun moved into the full-length album market in 1982 with the Ego Gratification Album by Chris Knox and Beatin Hearts by Builders (recorded 1982, Auckland).

Many of New Zealand's most prominent kiwi rock and alternative bands have signed to Flying Nun at some stage in their careers. In 2000 Australian youth radio network Triple J produced a list of the thirty "Greatest New Zealand acts of all time", twenty of them by Flying Nun artists. The label has been home to various styles of music, including the much-debated Dunedin sound, "high-end pop with a twist", lo-fi experimentation, strongly Velvet Underground-influenced pop, minimalism, industrial, and rock-electronic crossover.

In 1999 Matthew Bannister of The Sneaky Feelings wrote Positively George Street: A Personal History of the Sneaky Feelings and the Dunedin Sound, covering the New Zealand music industry of the 1980s, including Flying Nun.

In 1990 Festival Records bought a fifty-percent stake in Flying Nun, and then in 2000 merged it with Mushroom Records, bringing Flying Nun into the Festival-Mushroom Records family of companies. Warner Music Group acquired Flying Nun as part of its purchase of FMR (Festival Mushroom Records) in 2006. A consortium that included Shepherd bought back the label from Warner on 21 December 2009, for "more than what I sold it for". New Zealand musician Neil Finn, his wife Sharon, and another business partner together own a quarter-share in the repatriated record label.

In 2013, American label Captured Tracks announced plans for selected reissues of Flying Nun's back catalogue.

In the 2018 Queen's Birthday Honours Shepherd was appointed an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit (ONZM) for services to the music industry.

In the 2020s, Flying Nun ventured into retail with both an online store and physical locations selling records from their own artists alongside other albums on vinyl and CD. In 2022 they opened a record shop on Cuba Street in Wellington, and in 2023 they opened another retail store on Auckland's Karangahape Road.

In 2022, Canadian author Matthew Goody published Needles and Plastic: Flying Nun Records, 1981–1988, a comprehensive book charting the label's history, associated figures, and every release or band put out during its first seven years. The book took 10 years to write, and includes live photos, posters, artwork and other documentation.

Roster, early 1980s to mid-1990s

 * Able Tasmans
 * The Axemen
 * Bailter Space
 * The Bats
 * The Bilders
 * Bird Nest Roys
 * The Chills
 * The Clean
 * Crude
 * The Dead C
 * Dead Famous People
 * The Expendables
 * Exploding Budgies
 * From Scratch
 * Alastair Galbraith
 * Goblin Mix
 * The Gordons
 * The Great Unwashed
 * Headless Chickens
 * Jean-Paul Sartre Experience
 * David Kilgour
 * Chris Knox
 * Look Blue Go Purple
 * Loves Ugly Children
 * Mainly Spaniards
 * Marching Orders
 * The Max Block
 * The Pin Group
 * The Puddle
 * The Renderers
 * Scorched Earth Policy
 * The Skeptics
 * Snapper (band)
 * Sneaky Feelings
 * The Stones
 * Straitjacket Fits
 * Tall Dwarfs
 * The Terminals
 * This Sporting Life
 * 3Ds
 * The Verlaines
 * The Vibraslaps

Roster from the mid-1990s
Since the mid-1990s many of the original stable of artists have split up or moved to other labels, including Xpressway Records (Port Chalmers, New Zealand), Arch Hill Recordings (Auckland), Powertool Records (Auckland), South Indies, Paris or Matador Records (United States). A similarly varied new generation of bands is signed to Flying Nun, including:

 * Aldous Harding
 * Badd Energy
 * Betchadupa
 * Bressa Creeting Cake
 * Cloudboy
 * The Courtneys
 * The D4 (formerly)
 * DARTZ
 * Die! Die! Die!
 * Erny Belle
 * Fazerdaze
 * Garageland
 * Gerling
 * Ghost Club
 * Grayson Gilmour
 * HDU
 * Mermaidens
 * The Mint Chicks (formerly)
 * Pan Am (formerly)
 * Pavement
 * The Phoenix Foundation
 * Reb Fountain
 * Recitals
 * The Subliminals

Compilations
Flying Nun also released numerous compilations of a cross-section of its artists. These are now often the only easy-to-find documents of certain featured artists.

 * Tuatara (1985)
 * In Love With These Times (1990)
 * Roger Sings the Hits (1991)
 * Getting Older 1981-1991 (1991)
 * Pink Flying Saucers over the Southern Alps (1991)
 * Shrewd: A Compilation of NZ Women's Music (1993)
 * The Sound Is Out There (1995)
 * Pop Eyed (1996)
 * 15 – Flying Nun Records (1996)
 * Topless Women Talk About Their Lives (film soundtrack) (1997)
 * How Much For Trade? – 1998 Flying Nun Sampler (1998)
 * Scarfies (film soundtrack) (1999)
 * Under the Influence - 21 Years of Flying Nun Records (2002)
 * Speed of Sound (2003)
 * Very Short Films (music video compilation DVD) (2003)
 * Second Season (music video compilation DVD) (2004)
 * Where In The World Is Wendy Broccoli? (2006)
 * Flying Nun 25th Anniversary Box Set (2006)
 * Tally Ho!: Flying Nun's Greatest Bits (2011)
 * Time To Go: The Southern Psychedelic Moment 1981-1986 (2012)

title: Flying Nun Records


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User:DavidFisher

David Fisher Sydney, Australia Caver, classical music nut, mainframe database programmer, all-purpose eclectic.

title: User:DavidFisher


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Alpine swift

The alpine swift (Tachymarptis melba, formerly Apus melba) is a species of swift found in Africa, southern Europe, and Asia. They breed in mountains from southern Europe to the Himalayas. Like common swifts, they are migratory; the southern European population winters further south in southern Africa. They have very short legs which are used for clinging to vertical surfaces. Like most swifts, they never settle voluntarily on the ground, spending most of their lives in the air living on the insects they catch in their beaks.

Taxonomy and systematics
The genus name is from the Ancient Greek takhus, "fast", and marptis, "seizer". The specific name melba comes from 'melano-alba' or 'mel-alba', the two colours that Linnaeus mentioned in his description. A total of ten sub-species are currently recognised (see distribution below).

Description and biology
This is a large swift measuring 20–22 cm in length with a wingspan of 54–60 cm with broad wings and tail with a shallow fork, superficially similar to a large barn swallow or house martin although unrelated to these two species, since swifts are in the order Apodiformes. The resemblance could be due to convergent evolution, reflecting similar lifestyles. Upper parts are olive-brown with sharp and long wings with wing-tips appearing blacker; underparts with white throat (often not easily visible) and highly visible and distinctive oval white belly patch encircled by olive-brown breastband, flanks and undertail-coverts. Races tuneti and marjoriae paler, with grey-brown plumage; archeri averages paler than tuneti, with shorter wings; maximus is the largest race, with very dark, blackish plumage; africanus and nubifugus smaller than nominate, with blacker plumage, smaller throat patch and blacker shaft-streaks on white areas; willsi and bakeri both smaller, with darker plumage and broader and narrower breast bands, respectively; dorabtatai has broader breast band and shorter wings than nubifugus and is separated from bakeri by its paler plumage and broader breast band.

Alpine swifts breed in mountains from southern Europe to the Himalaya. Like common swifts, they are strongly migratory, and winter much further south in southern Africa. They wander widely on migration, and are regularly seen in much of southern Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. The species seems to have been much more widespread during the last ice age, with a large colony breeding, for example in the Late Pleistocene Cave No 16, Bulgaria, around 18,000–40,000 years ago. The same situation has been found for Komarowa Cave near Częstochowa, Poland during a period about 20,000–40,000 years ago.

These apodiformes build their nests in colonies in a suitable cliff hole or cave, laying two or three eggs. Swifts will return to the same sites year after year, rebuilding their nests when necessary, and pairing for life. Young swifts in the nest can drop their body temperature and become torpid if bad weather prevents their parents from catching insects nearby. They have adapted well to urban conditions, frequently nesting in old buildings in towns around the Mediterranean, where large, low-flying flocks are a familiar feature there in summer. Alpine swifts have a short forked tail and very long swept-back wings that resemble a crescent or a boomerang but may (as in the image) be held stretched straight out. Their flight is slower and more powerful than that of their smaller relatives, with a call that is a drawn-out twittering (listen at right).

Alpine swifts are readily distinguished from the common swifts by their larger size and their white belly and throat. They are around twice as big as most other swifts in their range, about 20 to 23 cm in length, with a wingspan of 57 cm and a weight of around 100 g. By comparison, the common swift has a wingspan of around 42 cm. They're largely dark brown in colour with a dark neck band that separates the white throat from the white belly. Juveniles are similar to adults, but their feathers are pale edged.

Distribution and habitat
It is a polytypic species found all year-round in eastern and southern Africa, Madagascar, western peninsular India and Sri Lanka, with larger non-breeding distributions in western, eastern and southern Africa, parts of the western edge of the Arabian peninsula, and breeding across southern Europe in the west across Turkey, northwards through the Caucasus and along the east coast of the Black Sea to the Crimean peninsula and Central Asia up to Turkestan and to the south along Iran and Afghanistan up to Balochistan in Western Pakistan and further east along the Himalayas. There are also scattered populations in northwestern Africa with an isolated population in Northern Libya. The distribution of the 10 sub-species are: (1) A. m. melba (76-120g) described originally by Linnaeus (1758) with type-locality Gibraltar distributed across southern Europe (east from Iberian Peninsula) and northern Morocco and east through Asia Minor to northwest Iran and wintering in west, central and east Africa, (2) A. m. tuneti (95-110g) described by von Tschusi in 1904 with type-locality in Tunisia and distributed across central and eastern Morocco eastwards to Libya and through Middle East and Iran (except northwest where A. m. melba) to southeast Kazakhstan and up to western Pakistan, and wintering in west and east Africa, (3) A. m. archeri described by Hartnert (1928) with type-locality Hargeisa, in Somaliland distributed from the Dead Sea depression at the borders of Israel and Jordan, south to southwest Arabia and Somalia, (4) A. m. africanus (67-87g) described by Temminck (1815) with type-locality in South Africa distributed across east and southern Africa and southwest Angola with some populations of this sub-species wintering in east Africa, (5) A. m. maximus (128g) described by Ogilvie-Grant (1907) with type-locality in the eastern slopes of the Rwenzori mountains at 10,000-12,000 ft distributed across Uganda and DR Congo, (6) A. m. marjoriae described by R D Bradfield (1935) from Quickborn, Damaraland distributed in Namibia and adjacent western South Africa in the northwestern parts of Northern Cape, (7) A. m. willsi described by Ernst Hartnert (1896) from Madagascar and endemic to the island, (8) A. m. nubifugus described by Koelz (1854) distributed across the Himalayas and wintering in central India, (9) A. m. dorabtatai described by Abdulali (1965) distributed in western peninsular India, (10) A. m. bakeri described by Hartert (1928) from Sri Lanka distributed only on that island-nation. In the western palearctic, temperate and mediterranean zones, it is typically in the mountains but occasionally in lowlands, while in remainder of sub-Saharan Africa and south Asia, it occurs in a larger variety of habitats ranging from sub-desert steppe to mountains. It typically breeds below 1500 m but may sometimes go up to 2300 m. In the tropical parts of it range in Kenya, it has been recorded breeding above 4000 m and in the Himalayas, it has been observed foraging at 3700 m. Seen entering probable nesting sites at 2100 m on Madagascar.

Behaviour and ecology
It has a powerful and rapid flight with deep slow wing beats. They are known to engage in twilight ascent, which is characterised by increased flight activity and gaining altitude and longer-distance horizontal flights at dawn and dusk, possibly part of social interactions between individuals. Alpine swifts spend most of their lives in the air, living on the insects they catch in their beaks. They drink on the wing, but roost on vertical cliffs or walls. A study published in 2013 showed Alpine swifts can spend over six months flying without having to land. All vital physiological processes, including sleep, can be performed while in air. In 2011, Felix Liechti and his colleagues at the Swiss Ornithological Institute attached electronic tags that log movement to six alpine swifts and it was discovered that the birds could stay aloft in the air for more than 200 days straight.

Food and feeding
The alpine swift's diet consists mainly of arthropods, principally insects but also spiders. Insects across 10 orders and 79 families were documented in the diets of individuals from Africa and Europe, with the homoptera, diptera and hymenoptera being the most often consumed.

title: Alpine swift


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User talk:DavidFisher

Hello David, welcome to Wikipedia. Here are some useful links in case you haven't already found them;

 * How to edit a page
 * How to write a great article
 * Naming conventions
 * Manual of Style

If you have any questions, see the help pages, add a question to the village pump or ask me on my talk page. I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian!

Angela 07:59, 23 Nov 2003 (UTC)

title: User talk:DavidFisher


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Korabl-Sputnik 1

Korabl-Sputnik 1 (Корабль Спутник 1 meaning Vessel Satellite 1), also known as Sputnik 4 in the West, was the first test flight of the Soviet Vostok programme, and the first Vostok spacecraft. It was launched on May 15, 1960. Though Korabl-Sputnik 1 was uncrewed, it was a precursor to the first human spaceflight, Vostok 1. Its mass was 4540 kg, of which 1477 kg was instrumentation.

The spacecraft, the first of a series of spacecraft used to investigate the means for crewed space flight, contained scientific instruments, a television system, and a self-sustaining biological cabin with a dummy of a man. It was designed to study the operation of the life support system and the stresses of flight. The spacecraft radioed both extensive telemetry and prerecorded voice communications. After four days of flight, the retro rocket was fired and the descent module was separated from its equipment module, but because the spacecraft was not in the correct flight attitude when its retro fired, the descent module did not reenter the atmosphere as planned.

The descent module re-entered the atmosphere on September 5, 1962, while the equipment module re-entered on October 15, 1965. A 20-pound piece of the descent module landed in Manitowoc, Wisconsin in the northern United States.

Giovanni Battista Judica Cordiglia, who set up his own amateur listening station at Torre Bert near Turin, is reported to have claimed that radio signals were received on November 28, 1960, which could have originated from this spacecraft; the spacecraft is known to have radioed prerecorded voice communications. It has led some to believe a conspiracy theory that the spacecraft may have been crewed by the Lost Cosmonauts.

title: Korabl-Sputnik 1