Weather Today- in Your Vicinity

[Juanito200]

Hey guys.. Birma and DK I've enjoyed your pictures of fowl/foul weather. Just got back from Emma's first band concert.. She was in heaven.. Weather here in North Texas 8° C, wind 5mph out of the north.. Cloudy with humidity of 44% John

[aster]

Nice to see you are still cooking up a storm Yildiz, and sharing those
superb photos. Hope you are feeling better.

Thank you, David.

I'm feeling good. Nice to see you back as well. You were missing the past few days which I'm sure was for a good reason but it feels good to know you're out there and safe! : ))



Yildiz

[aster]

Tea rooms in Kelso... outdoor tables, just waiting for tourists to sit down in comfort and order a nice cold drink...

Ah! Ice tea for sure.. : )) The perfected geometry of the soft snow accumulation is striking but the whole scene is beautiful actually.


Thanks for sharing, David. : )

Yildiz

[Greg Beetham]

Hi Birma, loved those tweety birds, well done under the circumstances for sure, although I'm not sure what 'lurgey' is, maybe allergy? Thanks Yildiz, DA, the lads were here only for a couple of days to sort the roof sheets into the correct positions and cut them into the right shapes with a nibbler and put a couple of screws in too hold them in position, they did the ridge-capping as well, then they left to go back to their actual jobs, leaving me to put all the screws in. There is a lot of woodwork and gutter repairs still to be done as well.
I'm not sure what to make of the shadows of the birds in DK's photo, is that two seperate birds that happened to be in the same position?
And yeah, wow, lookit the depth of snow on top of the tables and chairs at the tea rooms...amazing, I wonder how those birds survive at minus 10C with snow and ice everywhere, I thought most birds went south for the winter?
Greg

Townsville weather: 24.8|30.2C, H75%, 19|30km/h E|ENE, mostly clear sky.

[David Kilpatrick]

They overwinter in Britain. Not all of them. But most of these small birds are not migratory. That's two birds feeding at the same time on two levels of the feeder. I was trying to catch the shadow of one in flight, but the shapes produced don't look like anything. I have a couple of different 'poses' this one is more graphic because of the repeated shape.

David

[Birma]

Thanks for the kind comments about the birds and my health. (Greg, the "lurgey" is a colloquial way of saying you have caught some sort of 'bug'. I'm always forgetting that English varies so much!)

DK's snow and -10 temperatures look shocking to us enjoying the 'warm' weather further South in the UK. It was a balmy 0 degrees centigrade today . No snow here but we had a another sharp frost, but a breeze blew the fog away to provide a crystal clear day. My wife took out the A700+Beercan and got some frosty shots I rather like. Here are a couple.


Church in the Frost by Birm, on Flickr


Frosty Lane by Birm, on Flickr

[Birma]

I wonder how those birds survive at minus 10C with snow and ice everywhere, I thought most birds went south for the winter?

As DK says, some birds do fly south for the winter, in particular those that only turned up in the spring such as swifts, swallows and martins. In the winter we get some migration within the UK, so I would expect some of DK's garden birds would have moved to where there is less snow. We also get a lot of migrating waterbirds, geese and swans from the Artic, Scandanavia and also some woodland birds from Scandanavia and Northern Europe. So the song thrush we see in the garden in the Midlands of England during December may be from Scotland, the one in Scotland may be from Norway, and ours from the Summer is now in France.

The very small birds such as the tits and wrens have to huddle together to keep warm at nights and so you can get largish flocks of them in the winter. If our poor weather holds I expect a lot will keep travelling South.

Here are some non-migrating sheep from today (also taken by my wife)


Sheep by Birm, on Flickr

[Dr. Harout]

Birma, I'm afraid you'll soon return to your A100... get well buddy

[Greg Beetham]

That does look frosty Birma, that first one is nice, I like the sheeps too, they even look happy ha ha. Yeah I suspected there would be an amount of reshuffling the deck as far as birds go, I was really surprised with the very small ones though, once the ground is covered in snow the small seed eaters would be in big trouble I imagine, if that snow stays for very long; in the case of a place like Norway with it's minus 40 or so I reckon it'd be a case of flee or perish.
Greg

[David Kilpatrick]

Birds > temperature. Two of my chickens decided not to go home last night. They just roosted on the ground next to the house at about -16C. Stupid birds. I had to dig pathways through the snow to get them out, and they were too cold to bother to move, so I picked them up and put them with some food and water. But they are quite capable of surviving a night in temperatures which would kill a naked human being within an hour or two. Small birds have a body mass disadvantage but still pretty good insulation from their feathers.

David

[bakubo]

Birma, I like that shot of the snowy sheep a lot. Good one!

You guys sure are getting some cold weather. Try to stay warm, but you certainly have some good conditions for getting good photos.

This is yesterday's sunset:

[Juanito200]

Birma- I'm glad you and yours are over the 'lurgey'. Dannelle has a cabinet full of all sorts of herbal supplements for just that sort of thing. Everything from eucalyptus for the bath water, to fresh ginger for a stomach ache. My wife and I have an unspoken agreement, I don't ask about her paints and herbal stuff, and she doesn't ask about my lenses and gear.....(too much...)
I like the Frosty Lane and the sheep photos I hope we get another great snow this year. Those sheep look like they really are smiling at you.
Henry- A beautiful sunset. Dannelle and I were in Kona several years ago, and we tried to stop and watch the sunset every night...
As for my world here in Texas, I have to turn to an indoor shot for today. Fred, our 'Mousescot'. The three on his chest represents the number of mice we used to have in the lab. The halo is for where they are now the ECU - Eternal Care Unit. We dressed him up a bit for Christmas. John
Weather now 5°C, humidity 66%, wind out of the South at 5mph

[Greg Beetham]

There's fire in the sky, nice one Henry. It might have been worth a shot at wider angle as well I think, looking at how consistant it was accross the frame.
We had chickens ourselves for many years and they sure aren't the sharpest tool in the shed, they are quite good at doing chooky stuff, i.e. scratching the ground for dainty morsels and laying the odd egg even, but forward planning and thinking outside the square certainly isn't their strong suit. We never had the freezing cold too worry about or foxes, not even the odd dingo or goanna seemed capable of getting through the wire or under it, (pretty well made chook run actually, with concrete edges), but we did loose one now and then too pythons, small ones could squeeze through the large mesh wire but couldn't get back out with the bulge, in any case the chooks would kick up a fuss when one of their number was being eaten by a python in the middle of the night, we rarely got there in time though.
Greg

ps. I see John was busy, yes I guess we should spare a thought for the poor little meeces.

[bakubo]

There's fire in the sky, nice one Henry. It might have been worth a shot at wider angle as well I think, looking at how consistant it was accross the frame.

Such as this? Leaving on a jet plane...

[Greg Beetham]

Hey Henry speaking of golden oldies, I was on the tube looking up a few last night and I just had too play this one. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiuOL1g4 ... re=related
Greg