Not What I Expected

I spotted only one visitor to the new feeder yesterday.
I had expected it to be a House Sparrow or Blue Tit not ......



...... a Magpie.
It did its best to get its head through the bars but left empty beaked.
As far as I could tell it was the only visitor.
There were no beak marks in any of the jars of peanut butter.
Early days yet. It had only been up for a few hours.

The bird table has had lots of activity, mainly House Sparrows, Starlings and Blue Tits.
An occasional visitor is a Coal Tit.

 

As is usual at this time of year the Coal Tit will take black Sunflower seeds and hide them in the ground or in a crevice in a tree trunk. I have watched them do both in previous Winters.

New Feeder

Today I took delivery of a new bird feeder from C J Wildlife, where I purchase most of my bird food and feeders. Fast next day service with free carriage on all orders until the end of the year.



This one is designed to hold jars of peanut butter. This is specially made for birds and comes in several varieties.



Most peanut butter for human consumption is not usable as it contains added salt.

This feeder can hold three jars and has a guard to let smaller birds have a chance of feeding.
Here it is fitted to the end of my shed





Now I wait to see who will be the first to try it out. A few years ago I tried a single jar open feeder. The Starlings soon found it and the jar was empty in less than a week.

Spotless

Sunspots are very rare while the Sun is in solar minimum for activity. There was a small, short lived one about eight days ago which scientists worked out was part of the next Solar cycle.

Yesterday there was a transit of the tiny planet Mercury across the visible surface of the Sun. I have found it easy photographing Sun spots but shooting this event was far more difficult. First I tried the Canon M5 with the 400mm zoom lens. No problem photographing the Sun, with a proper solar filter to protect the camera, but Mercury didn't show at all well. In the end I swapped the camera body for my trusty Canon 70D. It has an annoying 'fault' where successive auto exposure shots may vary wildly .  As it happened the very last shot I took captured the tiny black dot of Mercury as it moved between us and the Sun.



It can be seen about a fifth of the way across at mid height in this cropped photo.
The Sun is about 1,391,000 Km (864,327 miles) in diameter
Mercury is about 4,879 Km ( 3,032 miles) in diameter, 38% the size of the Earth.

There won't be another chance until 2032.

Monday Mystery

Last week's mystery object was more difficult as there was nothing to give an idea of scale.



I can quite see the possibility of it being a horn of some sort, but, in fact it is only one inch long.
Kris was correct. Well done. It is a claw, one of Penny's dew claws. I don't know whether all breeds of dog shed them. Penny does occasionally and so did Bobby the Lurcher. Only the second one I have found in the seven years she has been with me.  Look closely and you will see the bottom end of the old claw is hollowed out. This is where the new claw was growing, partly inside the old one.

Thank you to all who had a go at guessing.

Here we go with a new close view

 

of what?

Please leave your guess in the comments.
They will be revealed, along with the answer, next Monday.

St. James' Church spire, Louth

On Friday's video I pointed out how the spire of St. James' Church, Louth, towers above the town.

 

As I have mentioned before, Louth is in a valley. The tower and spire of the church were made tall enough to be seen from surrounding villages.

Not for the first time we went for a walk down one of the old farm tracks in the village. From the entrance to a field it is possible to see the Lincolnshire Wolds and the spire of St. James' Church. After all the recent rain the atmosphere and viewing were clearer than I have seen on previous attempts.

A wide view


It is possible to make out the spire but by zooming in you can see just how far the tower and spire rise out of the valley about four miles away from my village..



Also viewable from the edge of the village is one of Europes tallest masts.

Belmont TV mast


Built on high ground it stands 1154 ft (351.74m) above the ground.
The mast is about 10 miles away from me.

Wet, Wet, Wet

The rain arrived about 5.30 a.m. on Thursday and didn't stop for 24 hours. My weather station recorded a total of 52.8m mm of rain, a bit over 2 inches.

Thursday
 

Friday morning
 
 
As far as I can gather the average for the whole month of November here is about 70mm. It was not the sort of day I would choose to travel to town voluntarily but I had an optician appointment. In fact I had two appoints booked for yesterday.  The other being at the local medical practice.

As always I videoed my car journeys. This is a few clips from the visit to Louth.
It is by way of an experiment. I used a Mac app called VideoSpeak to add some comments.
Not my voice but one chosen from dozens available in the app.



In the app you play the video, stop it where you want a comment and type it in.
Then choose a voice which will speak the typed words.

Music soundtrack is Riders of Rhythm Force. A track given away many years ago on a PC Home magazine cover CD.

All Fall Down

Autumn colours on trees last for such a sort time.
One day of strongish winds and most fall to the ground.