Returning home from Cors Dyfi last Tuesday afternoon, I popped into Machynlleth to do some shopping. Right next to the library there were around 40 or so of these wonderful birds perching in a nearby tree - waxwings.

Will this winter be a 'Waxwing Winter' in the UK? 

What an absolute pleasure to see these winter visitors. Waxwings are starling-sized birds that breed high up in the coniferous belt of northern Scandinavia. In the UK we sometimes call them Bohemian Waxwings due to their sudden appearance from the east, but there are two other species in the world: The Japanese Waxwing and the Cedar Waxwing that breed in Canada and the northern states of America.

They are called waxwings due to the deep red appendages that are attached to their secondary/tertiary feathers and sometimes tail feathers. The wax in question being sealing wax - the type used to seal letters and important documents in years gone by. Both sexes are similar in size, but the males have a sharper edge to the black throat bib and broader yellow tail band and white 'V' angle on the primary feathers.

Market day in Machynlleth on Wednesday, but this female waxwing had her own veg stall overlooking the town

One of the birds, a juvenile from this breeding season, was a little different. He (I think it's a male) had a metal ring on his left leg. I have written about the virtues and benefits of bird ringing before, and how over the last century and more we have learnt so much about bird ecology and migration patterns by studying ringing recoveries. That's how we know where Nora is from, for example, and the Glaslyn male in north Wales - both Rutland Osprey Project birds.

Unfortunately, because I focused the camera on the waxwing's head, the metal ring on the leg is slightly out of focus (you don't get much 'depth of field' with telephoto lenses!), so the numbers cannot be read. Our good friends Tony Cross and Mike Hayward tried to catch this individual on Thursday in a mist net, but without success.

Should have focused on the leg!

Mike did manage to get a shot though. A first year bird and most probably the same bird as I photographed a couple of days before. Infuriatingly, however, Mike could still not see enough of the numbers to make a full ID. What Mike and Tony did tell me though, is that these rings are different to the BTO rings that we use in the UK, and are consistent with the metal rings used in Norway. Makes perfect sense, doesn't it?

Mike got a better image - almost definitely a first-winter Norwegian waxwing. © Mike Hayward

Whilst Mike and Tony were busy with the waxwings on Wednesday, I had another meeting down at Cors Dyfi. As often happens, the meeting overran, and by the time we headed for the car park, it was pitch black and I'd brought the camera with me in vain. Or had I?

Directly over the reserve was a full moon in all its glory in a cold, clear sky. To the left of it was another celestial light only much, much smaller. I just about managed to get it, and the moon, into the frame of the camera and took a few shots before heading off home to warm up. I quickly put the best shot on the Dyfi Osprey Project Facebook page and asked if anyone knew what the other lights were.

What were those things on the bottom left?

The answers soon came back. Lo and behold, it was Jupiter and four of its moons - Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto. What a result! So many people commented and suggested different websites to go to and applications to download to view the night's sky in real time.

I quickly downloaded an App called Star Walk, pointed the iPad towards the moon, and there it was. Just to the left of the moon was Jupiter, just like in the photograph I had taken an hour or so before.

The snapshot feature of the Star Walk App 'took' this image

Next month Montgomeryshire Wildlife Trust will start building the 360 Observatory on Cors Dyfi. It will be a fantastic place to watch and learn about birds and wildlife. But it's called '360' for a reason.

All living things are a product of their environment. We are shaped and designed to best fit and survive based on what is around us. The moon, for example, has a gravitational force on the earth, which in turn dictates tidal patterns. Tidal flows on estuaries govern what fish survive there, which in turn has a direct effect on osprey populations. It really isn't that hard to connect astronomy and wildlife. The moon influences reproductive behaviours and strategies in a host of living organisms from insects to amphibians to us.

The '360' part of the 360 Observatory means not only that we will be able to see in every direction, but also experience and learn much more than just about ospreys or birds in general. 360 degrees - the big picture. How about astronomy nights led by an expert now and again, moth evenings (there's the moon connection again), photography events, botany, history, geology? The list is almost endless. And yes, we will have birding events too, of course. Nightjars anyone? Dawn chorus?

Nora's surprise. An osprey, a mullet and a barn owl. Nocturnal meets diurnal.

In the last Ceulan blog, I spoke about Citizen Science and how much of a powerful tool it can be in improving our understanding and learning of what exists around us. Within a matter of minutes of putting the Jupiter image up, people from literally around the world were sharing their knowledge and experiences on our Facebook page (thank you). Advice on the solar system, websites, apps, telescopes, and even offers to help set up the Astronomy nights once the 360 Observatory is built (yes please Kris Fry!).

Just over 400 years ago in Italy, this was happening (from Wikipedia)..

As a result of improvements Galileo Galilei made to the telescope, with a magnifying capability of 20X, he was able to see celestial bodies more distinctly than was ever possible before. This allowed Galilei to discover sometime between December 1609 and January 1610 what came to be known as the Galilean moons. On January 7, 1610, Galileo wrote a letter containing the first mention of Jupiter’s moons. At the time, he saw only three of them, and he believed them to be fixed stars near Jupiter. He continued to observe these celestial orbs from January 8 to March 2, 1610. In these observations, he discovered a fourth body, and also observed that the four were not fixed stars, but rather moons orbiting Jupiter.

I find it utterly amazing that I, and millions of others around the world, were looking at the exact same moons that Galileo was on that January night 400 years ago. If only we could send a Leica or Swarovski back in time a few centuries to help him. Galileo and his peers were observing the world around them and starting to learn and make sense of how things worked and how they were related and interconnected to each other. Just a few years later, Isaac Newton was sitting under an apple tree in Cambridge, England, doing exactly the same thing. The study of birds and wildlife in general, however, was still in its infancy.

At the same time as Galileo was peering through his homemade telescope in Padua, northern Italy, people in the UK thought that Barnacle geese came from shellfish. In fact, Barnacle geese were considered to be fish and were therefore eaten on Fridays by Catholics. The renowned English ornithologist, Gilbert White, much later in 1789, thought that swallows hibernated in the winter, thereby explaining away their complete disappearance from his Selborne home in Hampshire.

Today, we know differently, of course. British swallows migrate to sub-saharan Africa. Barnacle geese are certainly birds, not fish, and breed on Arctic islands of the North Atlantic. We know where ospreys go to in the winter and we also know where waxwings come from. Of course they don't come from Jupiter, but 400 years ago they may as well have done.

I suppose this week more than any has reinforced in my mind that wildlife does not exist in isolation. To learn more about ospreys or waxwings or Barn owls, it helps to understand how the whole system works - the big picture. In school, we walked from the History class to the Chemistry class to the Maths class, because it is easier to learn that way. The 360 Observatory will be a classroom specialising in everything for everybody from everywhere. Can't wait.