The worlds dolphin populations are made up from almost forty species varying in size from 1.2 m and 40 for the Maui's dolphin, and up to 9.5 m and 10 tonnes for the killer whale. They are found worldwide, mostly in the shallower seas of the continental shelf. So clearly, with this much variation within the dolphin family, you can expect the same variation in each species diet.
So, while some dolphins eat fishes like herring, cod or mackerel, others species will prefer to eat squids.
Of course, the largest of all the dolphin species - the killer whales - will also eat marine mammals like seals or sea lions and sometime even turtles.
Usually, the amount of fish that they eat depends on the kind of fish that they hunt. While mackerel or herring will contain a lot of fatty oils in their bodies, squid will not have so much, therefore, to get enough energy required for their activities, dolphins will have to eat a lot more squid than mackerel.
On average, a dolphin with a weigh of 200 to 250 Kg will eat between 10 and 25 Kg of fish every day.
How do dolphins catch their food
As you can expect, various methods of feeding exist among and within species, some apparently exclusive to a single population. Fish and squid are the main food, but the false killer whale and the orca (the true killer whale) also feed on other marine mammals like seals. They have been known to eat penguins and even sea turtles!
One common feeding method is herding, where a pod squeezes a school of fish into a small volume, known as a bait ball. Individual members then take turns ploughing through the ball, feeding on the stunned fish.
Corralling is another method where dolphins chase fish into shallow water to more easily catch them. In South Carolina, the Atlantic bottlenose dolphin takes this further with "strand feeding", driving prey onto mud banks for easy access.
In some places, orcas come to the beach to capture sea lions. Some species also hit fish with their tails, stunning them and sometimes knocking them out of the water.
There are few plants that can bring a touch of the Mediterranean to the garden as effectively as a palm tree and what's more, there are so many attractive species to choose from - including a decent selection of cold hardy varieties!
The trouble is though, palm trees can be extremely cumbersome to transport and expensive buy, but there is an answer. Grow your own palm trees from seed! Yes it will take time, but you can grow as much stock as you like and the comparative costs are negligible.
How to germinate palm tree seeds
Before you begin, be aware that the best results will usually come from fresh seeds. Try only to germinate ripe seeds and avoid immature, green seeds. If you are collecting palm seeds yourself the ripe seeds will be within the mature, coloured fruit and ready to drop. Poor germination results are usually the result of either old or poor quality seeds.
The most frequently used germination technique is the 'Baggie' technique. Its popularity is down to its simplicity which means you may need to use more sophisticated methods of germination with more exotic seeds.
To begin with, soaks the seeds for 24 hours in warm water. Then place the seeds with either some slightly damp moss or a formulated palm seedling compost mix into a transparent plastic baggie. You may also wish to as a small handful of perlite to this mix to help aeration. Avoid overly damp compost as this can encourage fungal rots amongst the germinating seedlings. Seal the baggie and then place in a warm, bright environment at about 80 to 85 degrees Fahrenheit.
Be aware that germination rates are going to vary wildly depending on the species of seed sown so you will need to keep a reasonably close eye on the seedlings after a few weeks.
Once the seeds have germinated, un-zip the baggies. remember to keep the substrate damp but please make sure that it is not waterlogged. When the seedlings have grown about an inch or so they can be potted on and moved to a protective environment until they are ready to be transferred outside.
Propagating lavender from cuttings is surprisingly easy so long as you take them at the right time of year. Luckily you can get two bites of the cherry regarding this as you can take lavender cuttings either in the spring - just before the plant comes into flower, or in the autumn around august time.
Because Lavender has been propagated by cuttings for thousands of years you should be reasonably successful even if you have the minimum of experience. Begin with 3 inch terracotta pots, fill with a good quality compost such as John Innes 'Seed and Cutting' or you can make your own by mix approximately 3 parts peat moss with 1 part horticultural grit or vermiculite. The most important thing here is that the compost is well drained. Dampen the mixture then poke a small hole about 1 to 1½ inches deep into the soil into which you will plant your 'freshly -cut' cuttings.
How to take a lavender cutting
Taking a cutting from a healthy mature lavender plant will not harm it, and besides - it will need to be cut back hard at the end of summer anyway to encourage strong healthy growth in the spring. Using a sharp, sterilised knife or secateurs, cut a small branch off the lower half of the plant that is about 3-5 inches long. Make sure that the branch is soft and not woody. Strip the bottom half of the cutting of leaves, place in the hole in soil that you prepared earlier then close the hole with soil. There is no need to use rooting hormones on lavender cutting, but no harm will be done if you are addicted to using it.
Water your new plant thoroughly after planting. For the first couple of weeks keep the soil damp, but then water less frequently. At this point water when the soil begins to get dry, but before the plant displays any distress. Too much water will kill your new lavender plant. When attempting to propagate lavender, this is the most common mistake.
After about 6 weeks you can move your new lavender plant to a larger pot or into the ground. If planting lavender in the ground, dig the hole about 1 ft wide and about 8 inches (20 cm) deep. Prepare the soil by mixing sand, peat moss or compost, and your native soil. It's most important that the soil drain very well. Fill the hole far enough with your soil mixture that the plant will be at the proper level when the hole is filled the rest of the way. Before filling add a teaspoon full of bone meal or another slow release fertilizer. After removing the plant from the small pot, pour a small amount of root stimulator on the roots, then cover with soil.
Whenever you are making a roast chicken dinner make sure that you keep enough of the cooked chicken meat back for this gorgeous recipe for homemade chicken soup. In fact, you can ‘kill two birds with one stone’ by making your own stock too and adding it to this very recipe. Click here to find out how to make your very own home made chicken stock.
So, just how do you make chicken soup?
Ingredients
55g/2oz butter 2 onions, peeled and sliced 2 sticks celery, finely chopped 2 carrots, peeled and finely diced 25g/2oz plain flour 1.2 litres/2 pints of chicken stock 450g/1lb cooked chicken, skinned and shredded 1 tbsp freshly chopped parsley salt and freshly ground black pepper
How to make chicken soup
To begin with, melt the butter in a large saucepan over a medium heat then gently fry the onions, celery and carrots until they begin to soften.
Now stir in the flour and cook for a further 2 minutes. Add the chicken stock and bring the mixture to the boil, stirring as you do so, then reduce the heat until the mixture is simmering. Now simmer for another 10 minutes until the vegetables begin to soften.
Add the cooked, shredded chicken and carry on cooking until it is heated through. Season to taste with salt and freshly ground black pepper. Pour into warm bowls then stir in the parsley and serve with a couple of oven warmed, homemade bread rolls filled with a generous spread of butter and grated mature cheese.
When cooking hearty meals you can't beat the flavour of a good old, home made stock. So with that in mind, don't waste your old chicken bones once your Sunday roast is over, put them to good use by making a proper stock put of them. You can be as fancy or as simple as you like. My Nan just used to chuck the chicken bones by themselves in as she would put any extra ingredients in the main dish. I like to add some celery and an onion, and/or a few shallots, but that is through force of habit.
However, if you want to get really fancy then try this recipe, but my Nan - God rest her soul - will probably tell me that all I have made is rubbish soup. I will leave it to you to decide.
Ingredients
1 x chicken carcass 2 x carrots, scrubbed or peeled, and cut in half 2 x large onions, halved 2 x stalks of celery The green tops of 1 or 2 leeks 6 cloves of garlic, peeled Salt and ground black pepper Cold water
How to make chicken stock
Place chicken carcass (broken up slightly if possible) into a large saucepan. Add the vegetables, season, then cover with cold water.
Bring to the boil and simmer for a couple of hours until all the flavour has been drawn from the turkey bones.
Pour through a sieve and discard the bones and vegetables. Cheat!Of course you can always do what I do, which is to remove all the bones and large pieces of anything my slotted spoon can drag out. After that I attack what's left with a hand held blender.
Allow to cool for a while and if there is any fat floating on the top of the stock, skim it off and discard.
Taste the stock - it should have a good flavour. If you want it a bit stronger, just reduce it down a bit. Use what you need and freeze the rest of it until required.
If you have reasonable success with main-crop onions then you should have no problems at all with growing garlic. Why? Because their cultivation needs are almost identical.
Furthermore, it is definitely a crop worth growing yourself because the absolutely best garlic you can get is garlic that is lifted fresh from the ground – known as wet garlic. This garlic is sweeter, less pungent and far more digestible than dried garlic, and the only way to guarantee your personal supply is to grow it yourself.
It’s all in the preparation, and if you can, you should be preparing your garlic bed by the end of summer. The reason for this is simple - the secret in getting really big bulbs with plenty of divisions, is to get them planted in the ground by around the middle of October.
Dig in plenty of well-rotted farm manure as garlic plants love to be grown in a rich fertile soil, but strangely, they don’t care for high levels of nitrogen and so avoid planting on freshly manured soil. Instead, dig over and add manure to the ground several months before planting which means you could be preparing your garlic bed as early as August. You may wish to add a little bonemeal at this time.
Drainage is also important as garlic will rot in water-logged conditions so if you intend planting into heavy soil add plenty of organic matter and even consider adding horticultural grit to improve its drainage.
If you soil is too acidic – below pH 5.5 – you will need to add lime to the bed, but only do so according to manufactures recommendations. In general, garlic plants will prefer a pH of between 6.0 and 7.5.
When planting at this time of year you must stick to using specific cultivated varieties such as ‘White Pearl’, 'Albigensian Wight', 'Early Purple Wight', ' Iberian Wight', 'Lautrec Wight' - widely regarded as Frances finest garlic, and Purple Moldovan Wight, all of which are known to suitable for growing our northern climates.
Unfortunately, if you try to some of the larger supermarket bulbs they have probably been treated to prevent sprouting and are highly likely to die off in the cold, wet weather.
Start by dividing the cloves of garlic from the bulb and then set the largest and healthiest looking cloves aside for planting.
Plant the garlic cloves 4 inches apart in rows 8 inches apart. Place them in an upright position, no more than 1 ½ inch below the soil surface - the bottom of the clove can be identified by its flattened, slightly concave end.
From May, try adding a general fertiliser - like growmore - every four weeks for extra fertility, but you can also consider adding micro-nutrients - in particular boron and zinc – which are important in garlic production in order to get the best taste. Consider giving your garlic plants a periodic liquid feed of seaweed based fertiliser but if your garlic plants are clearly growing well this will probably be unnecessary.
Although it’s important to grow garlic in a free draining soil, they will still need watering especially in hot, dry weather.
When growing garlic in rows, leave enough space between the rows to get your hoe in for weeding. However, always hand-weed between your garlic plants as they are easily damaged by garden tools.
Your garlic should be ready for harvesting any time between August to September depending on both the weather and individual varieties. The bulb will be mature when the foliage turns yellow and begins to tip over, but you will need to leave them for another couple of weeks before lifting.
The problem with harvesting garlic is knowing when they are ripe in order to lift them. Harvest them too early and the bulbs will be too small, but harvest too late and the bulbs will begin to loose their quality.
If the weather is wet in early August, pull up a single bulb and see how many sheaths (the thin papery layers that surround the bulb) you can peel off the bulb, if the answer is three then the bulb is ready to be lifted. If you can remove four or more layers then it is best to wait another couple of weeks or at least until most of the leaves have turned brown. Once lifted, most of the bulbs can be washed and dried, and then placed into a warm dry part of the garden to dry out, however if rain is forecast then they will need to be brought indoors. Once dried off, these bulbs should now keep in good condition for 3 months or more.
Looming in quiet splendour over modern Athens is the awe inspiring Acropolis. Best known for housing the iconic Parthenon, it is also home to another mysterious and beautiful temple called the Erechtheum. The Erechtheun was completed in 406 BC, reputedly on the spot where Athena and Poseidon battled for control over Athens. The Parthenon however, was begun earlier in 447 BC but completed an incredibly short 9 years later in 438 BC although decorations of the Parthenon continued until 432 BC.
It is the most important surviving building of Classical Greece, generally considered the culmination of the development of the Doric order. While its decorative sculptures are still considered some of the high points of Greek art, the Parthenon itself is regarded as an enduring symbol of Ancient Greece and of Athenian democracy and one of the world's greatest cultural monuments. The Greek Ministry of Culture is currently carrying out a program of selective restoration and reconstruction to ensure the stability of the partially ruined structure, which you can see in the above video clip.
The Parthenon itself replaced an older temple of Athena, which historians call the Pre-Parthenon or Older Parthenon, that was destroyed in the Persian invasion of 480 BC. The temple is archaeo-astronomically aligned to the Pleiades. Like most Greek temples, the Parthenon was used as a treasury. For a time, it served as the treasury of the Delian League, which later became the Athenian Empire. In the 5th century AD, the Parthenon was converted into a Christian church dedicated to the Virgin Mary. After the Ottoman Turk conquest, it was turned into a mosque in the early 1460s, and it had a minaret built in it.
In 1687, the Parthenon suffered its greatest blow when the Venetians under Francesco Morosini attacked Athens, and the Ottoman Turks fortified the Acropolis and used the building as a gunpowder magazine.
On 26 September a Venetian mortar, fired from the Hill of Philopappus, blew the magazine up and the building was partly destroyed. Morosini then proceeded to attempt to loot sculptures from the ruin. The internal structures were demolished, whatever was left of the roof collapsed, and some of the pillars, particularly on the southern side, were decapitated. The sculptures suffered heavily. Many fell to the ground, and souvenirs were later made from their pieces. Consequently some sections of the sculptural decoration are known only from the drawings made by Flemish artist Jacques Carrey in 1674. After this, much of the building fell into disuse and a smaller mosque was erected.
In 1806, Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin removed some of the surviving sculptures, with the Ottoman Turks' permission. These sculptures, now known as the Elgin Marbles or the Parthenon Marbles, were sold in 1816 to the British Museum in London, where they are now displayed. A few sculptures from the Parthenon are also in the Louvre in Paris, in Copenhagen, and elsewhere, but over fifty percent are in the Acropolis Museum in Athens.
There exists a well publicised dispute around the Parthenon Marbles which were removed by the Earl of Elgin, which are now houses in the British Museum. While a few Parthenon marbles can still be seen on the building itself, the Greek government has campaigned since 1983 for the British Museum to return these sculptures back to Greece.
However, the British Museum has steadfastly refused to return the sculptures, and successive British governments have been unwilling to force the Museum to do so partly because this would require significant legislation. Nevertheless, talks between senior representatives from Greek and British cultural ministries, and their legal advisers took place in London on 4 May 2007. These were the first serious negotiations for several years, and there were hopes that the two sides may move a step closer to a resolution.
In 1975, the Greek government began a concerted effort to restore the Parthenon and other Acropolis structures. After some delay a Committee for the Conservation of the Acropolis Monuments was established in 1983. The project later attracted funding and technical assistance from the European Union.
An archaeological committee thoroughly documented every artefact remaining on the site, and architects assisted with computer models to determine their original locations. Particularly important and fragile sculptures were transferred to the Acropolis Museum. A crane was installed for moving marble blocks which was also designed to fold away beneath the roof-line when not in use. In some cases, prior re-construction was found to be incorrect, but these were dismantled, and a careful process of re-restoration began. Originally, various blocks were held together by elongated iron H pins that were completely coated in lead, which protected the iron from rusting. Stabilizing pins added in the 19th century were not so coated, and therefore rusted. Since rust expands, the expansion caused further damage by cracking the marble. Fortunately, all new metalwork now uses titanium, a strong, light, and corrosion resistant material.
The Parthenon will not be restored to a pre-1687 state, but the explosion damage will be mitigated as much as possible. This will be achieved by restoring the structural integrity of the edifice (important in this earthquake-prone region) and to restore the aesthetic integrity by filling in chipped sections of column drums and lintels, using precisely sculpted marble cemented in place. New Pentelic marble is being used from the original quarry. Ultimately, almost all major pieces of marble will be placed in the structure where they originally would have been, supported as needed by modern materials. While the repairs initially show as white against the weathered tan of original surfaces, they will become less prominent as they age.
The Erechtheun
The Erechtheun was completed in 406 BC, reputedly on the spot where Athena and Poseidon battled for control over Athens. The structure actually unites two separate temples. First the east porch which once sheltered an olive wood statue of Athena, while the second is the west porch which held a statue of Poseidon. Of course, the most famous feature of the Erechtheun is the south porch which is held up by six columns in the shape of voluptuous, drapery-clad maidens.
These beautifully carved stone maidens are collectively known as the Caryatids, possibly named after the woman of Caryae, who were famed for their beauty and served as Athenien slaves. It was probably for this reason alone that inspired the Ottoman commanders to convert the Erechtheum temple into a hareem during their occupation!
Although the six Caryatids are of the same height, build, and similarly attired and coiffed, they are in fact are not the same. Their faces, stance, draping, and hair have all been carved uniquely. The three on the left stand on their right knee, while the three on the right stand on their left knee.
And if you were wondering why they have such large 'French plaits', it is because their bulky, intricately arranged hairstyles serve the crucial purpose of providing static support to their necks. Otherwise this section of the statue be the thinnest and therefore structurally weak.
Unfortunately, the six Caryatids the you see on the south porch today are only copies, but the originals still exist. Five are being restored while on display at the new Acropolis Museum, while the sixth was removed by Lord Elgin in the early 19th century and is currently housed in the British Museum in London.
The Acropolis housed Caryatids currently stand on a special balcony that allows visitors to view them from all sides. The pedestal for the Caryatid that was removed to London remains empty.
The Romans also copied the Erechtheion caryatids, installing copies in the Forum of Augustus and the Pantheon in Rome, and at Hadrian's Villa at Tivoli.
Even in today’s world of high rise skyscrapers, the Roman Colosseum remains hugely impressive. While almost two thirds of the original building had been destroyed by earthquakes, fires, or plundered for its once glistening stone by Roman Popes and aristocrats, it still stands as a glorious but troubling monument to Roman imperial power and cruelty.
Inside the Roman Colosseum, and on top of the subterranean ranks of arches and columns, Romans for centuries cold-bloodedly killed thousands of people. these would have included Christian martyrs, anyone who they regarded as a criminal, and their coveted professional fighters - the gladiators.
The Roman Colosseum was born in the aftermath of Nero's extravagance and the rebellion by the Jews in Palestine against Roman rule. Nero, after the great fire at Rome in AD 64, had built a huge pleasure palace for himself (the Golden House) right in the centre of the city. In AD 68, faced with military uprisings, he committed suicide, and the empire was engulfed in civil wars.
The eventual winner of these civil wars was Vespasian (emperor AD 69-79), and it was his idea to shore up his shaky regime by building an amphitheatre - or pleasure palace for the people - out of the booty from the Jewish War - on the site of the lake in the gardens of Nero's palace.
Known then as the Vespasian amphitheatre, the Colosseum was a grand political gesture. Suitably for that great city, it was - and eventually remained - the largest amphitheatre in the whole of the Roman Empire.
In its day, the Colosseum was capable of seating 50,000 spectators which, besides gladiatorial contests, was also used for such public spectacles as mock sea battles, animal hunts, and re-enactments of famous battles, and dramas based on Classical mythology.
The building ceased to be used for entertainment in the early medieval era, but it was later reused for such purposes as housing, workshops, quarters for a religious order, a fortress, a quarry, and rather surprisingly, a Christian shrine.
Indeed, it was very possible that the Colosseum would have disappeared altogether were it not for the amphitheatre's reputation as a Christian sacred ground. Even so, the cathedrals of St Peter and St John Lateran, the Palazzo Venezia and the Tiber's river defences all exploited the Colosseum as a convenient quarry.
In the 21st century the Colosseum is an iconic symbol of Imperial Rome as well as one of Rome's most popular tourist attractions. It still has close connections with the Roman Catholic Church, as each Good Friday the Pope leads a torchlit "Way of the Cross" procession that starts in the area around the Colosseum
Eventually there were well over 250 amphitheatres in the Roman empire - so it is no surprise that the amphitheatre and its associated shows are still the quintessential symbols of Roman culture.
