Starling and sparrow

We put out some bread for the birds, and it wasn't long before they began to arrive. The larger bird is a starling. They're quite common here, roost in trees in flocks of hundreds at a time, and make quite a distinctive chatter.

The smaller bird is a sparrow. He moved just as I took the photo. Older digital camera has a long delay between press and capture. Sparrows are so ubiquitous that I almost never think to take their photo. They're here year round and take advantage of just about any food they can find. If you put out a slice of bread, a sparrow will be along within the hour to eat it.

Yes, the snow is really almost to the top of the 4 foot picket fence, but that's where I shovel it when I'm clearing the sidewalk.

Skywatch Friday

An unofficial Skywatch Friday post.

The actual sky today looks like a photographer's 18% grey card. Solid overcast without any details at all. So I went back a few weeks to find this one. It's amazing how many cloudy days we have!

Lost pyramid?

Taken in Vale Cemetery, this pyramid looked very out of place when I took the photo. Of course, my eyes were overwhelmed with the whiteness... this particular photo looks almost as though it's buried in blowing sand.

Sunrise, reflected

Way underexposed but I like how it turned out. I was trying for one of Babooshka's star-burst photos but the camera wasn't having any of that nonsense. Of course if I'd put the thing in manual I'd have had better control of the situation! But my brain was addled from the cold, and I ended up with a series of ludicrously under- or overexposed images.

This one just seemed... well like a keeper. I like it like this, on it's side, with the fence slats at the bottom (that's how I held the camera - I might be talking myself into this!) It seemed reminiscent of a summer day at the beach.

A very welcome mental image right about now!

Ham radio

I go radio contesting 4 times a year. In January, I drive around the Northeast with my good friend Sigurd. He's ingeniously put a complete 10-band station in and on a Honda Element.

For various technical reasons, that basically means he's put 10 radios, 10 amplifiers, a whole bunch of wires and cables and switches to control it all into the back of this Element!

This is one of our stops. We met a woman who lives on this road - she was very kind! She saw us down at the end of the road and drove down in the cold to say hello and ask what we were doing. You can imagine we get asked that a lot! The number one question we hear? 'Can you hear me now?'

That's yours truly raising the 6 metre antenna to its full height. We keep the antenna down low when we drive and raise it up when we reach a spot we want to operate from. '6 metre' refers to the frequency band, not the length or height of the antenna (thank goodness!) Temperature about 12F (-11C) and blessedly, very little wind.

This particular contest is a VHF and up contest, sponsored by the American Radio Relay League. Here is a link to comments made by last year's contestants. That basically means 'short distance' communications - less than 250 miles or so.

Roosting turkeys

Not the clearest of photos. Hand held at dusk. The old CoolPix 950 has decent low light performance, hurrah!

Outside temperature about 3F (-16C) when I took this. A bit of wind. The colour and shake captures what I felt when I was standing there. I can't imagine what these birds feel like.

These birds are Meleagris gallopavo, the North American Wild Turkey. They are quite large - about 3 feet from beak to tail (90cm) and weigh in at 9 pounds (4kg). Seeing them fly up into these trees, maneuvering among all those branches is quite a sight. Their wingspan is about 4 feet (1.2m) - I can't believe they do it, but they obviously feel the work of getting up there is worth it. Local predators would be foxes and dogs.

Skywatch Friday

Yet another informal Skywatch Friday post. I don't have a stock supply of photographs yet and so I'm never sure whether Friday will bring me photo-friendly weather or not!

This is the chimney of my house of all things. I rarely see smoke coming from it - my house is heated with natural gas which is very clean (little soot) so I only see smoke when it's really cold out. The National Weather Service tells me the current temperature is -12F (-24C) and as the sky is crystal clear, the ground has had no help holding the heat in.