Ed Soldat
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edsoldat.bsky.social
Ed Soldat
@edsoldat.bsky.social
22 followers 24 following 16 posts
Engineer, formerly in space science and exploration, now space sustainability. Happiest in a sea kayak, out looking for wildlife to photograph, or exploring interesting corners of history through my family tree.
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edsoldat.bsky.social
The familiar signs of spring at my local nature reserve - hawthorn blossom, comma butterflies, wood anemones and chiffchaffs
#photography #naturephotography #spring #blossom
A hawthorn bush laden with white blossom, bright under a blue sky, and standing out against the tans and reds of the clearing it stands in. A bank of small trees and bramble thickets surrounds the clearing with a mixture of bare branches and fresh leaf growth. A comma butterfly, sunning itself with wings open on a stone set in a dirt track. Its wings are edge on to the camera, but cast a shadow on the track, revealing their distinctive ragged shape A patch of white wood anemone and yellow celandine flowers growing up from the woodland floor. A chiffchaff, perched on the centre of three slim vertical branches, studded with leaf buds just beginning to open. The chiffchaff is on the far side of the branch, showing its pale white and yellow underside, black-striped throat, and stubby tail. It is calling, with head raised and beak open.
March 30, 2025 at 9:47 PM
edsoldat.bsky.social
A couple of stops on the way to visit family up north (V&A Dundee and Dunnottar Castle)
#scotland #photography #reflections
A corner of the V&A Dundee museum on a misty day. The building resembles a white pyramid, sliced into horizontal sections, restacked with the smallest sections at the bottom, then twisted into a half-spiral. The building rises out of a circular pool that reflects its geometry. Interior of Dunnottar Castle - a collection of roofless stone buildings surround a grassy courtyard. The mirror-flat water in a wide circular well in the centre of the courtyard reflects the surrounding ruins and the blue sky above.
March 20, 2025 at 9:41 PM
edsoldat.bsky.social
A glimpse into the past. The dry stone entrance hall to a five thousand year old house at Skara Brae.

#orkney #archeology #history
A view down a narrow passageway, sunk into the ground, and lined with dry stone walling. The stones are grey with white lichen, and arranged into neat rows. The stones are mostly of consistent height along each row, with height varying between around two and six inches. The walls are topped with grassy turf as they reach surface level. The passageway turns a corner to the right then the view extends through a stone-lintelled doorway on its left, to a room with a large hearth or table stone against its back wall.
February 22, 2025 at 1:10 PM
edsoldat.bsky.social
A woodland of bare trees with yellow and reddish bark. A carpet of snowdrops, growing out of red leaf litter, stretches away across the forest floor
February 1, 2025 at 12:25 AM
edsoldat.bsky.social
Episode 5 of #diggingforbritain provides some interesting background to my great-great grandparents' migration to England from Scotland / the US. It describes the coal-driven expansion of Bedminster, where they settled in 1877, and excavates a nearby water mill they likely knew 1/2
Two black and white photos. One shows a man of about 30 in a dark suit with big lapels with swept back hair and an extensive beard. The other shows a slightly younger woman in an ornately fringed formal dress, posed on a set standing beside a column evoking a classical Greek or Roman scene.
January 27, 2025 at 12:09 AM
edsoldat.bsky.social
The Summer Isles, Wester Ross. Eileen Ristol, centre, is now uninhabited, but was once home to two families of crofters and a fish curing station (1840 census).

My 3 x great grandfather was a fish curer there. Family lore says he left to seek his fortune in the US.
#summerisles #genealogy #history
A scattering of low islands fill the mouth of a sea loch, viewed from the green and brown moorland of the mainland, under a sunny sky filled with a tumble of cumulus clouds.
January 11, 2025 at 2:11 PM
edsoldat.bsky.social
My 4 x great grandfather was a founder of the Birmingham Political Union. Leading campaigners for UK voting reform in 1832, they hoped a broader electorate would vote for currency reforms.

1833's landslide of new MPs instead abolished slavery.
#history #genealogy

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birming...
Birmingham Political Union - Wikipedia
en.m.wikipedia.org
January 10, 2025 at 11:27 PM
edsoldat.bsky.social
The wreck of the Steep Holm on Tuskar Rock, off Porthcawl. The Port Talbot Guardian reports the crew's dramatic rescue by the Mumbles lifeboat when the dredger ran aground in a storm in 1968. The captain had to leap for the lifeboat as it steered perilously close to the rocks.
#shipwrecks #history
A rusting cylindrical boiler, the size of a van, half submerged amidst sharp seaweed-strewn rocks. Beyond, shadowy hills rise on the far side of a grey sea, beneath patches of blue sky visible between banks of low cloud.
January 9, 2025 at 11:53 PM
edsoldat.bsky.social
Spring tide at Newport Wetlands
#naturephotography #rspb
A view across the Severn Estuary into the setting sun. The sky is criss-crossed with wisps thin cloud, the sea gently rippled. The sunset lights the clouds and the sea, against which the grasses and reeds of the bank in the foreground are silhouetted.
January 9, 2025 at 11:31 PM