As seen down the microscope |
|
 |
One of the joys of owning a microscope is examining samples of pigeon droppings and working out what some unrecognisable items might be. Not everything you see in pigeon faeces will be an infectious organism. Recently, I came across a very odd looking object. Initially as I only saw one, I thought it might be some artefact that had occurred during the preparation of a salt flotation sample. Then I saw others in a different samples. The drawing (left) shows the object, like a flies head with the two large eyes. |
|
I suspected that I might be looking at pollen. It could not be grass pollen because the grass was not flowering. However, the trees were. I simply took a wet cotton tipped swab and brushed it over the flower. This gave me the picture as shown on the right. (Total magnification x100)
My wife tells me that it is a Rowan tree. Out the front of the house there is a Cherry tree.The pollen from this looked the same. Why draw them? Well, two reasons firstly drawing helps you look closely at things and secondly, the microscope camera has broken. So if you see something odd down your microscope why not share the picture so that we can all learn and perhaps help with the identification. |
|
Rowan Tree 
| Cherry Tree 
|
I have just completed the same exercise with grass flowers. My drawings are shown below. My drawings are not brilliant so as you can see I have used squared paper to help me get the sizes approximately correct. I used squared paper for the tree pollen, it is just that the lines did not scan. |
I happened to be doing a salt flotation and saw many coccidia in samples from young birds. Hence, it was quite simple to move from one coverslip to the other to estimate the size comparison with grass pollen. Grass pollen is about 1.5 to 2 times bigger than a coccidial oocyst. |
Grass Pollen total magnification x 100 
| Grass Pollen total magnification x 400 
|