Macro on Monday - Guess What

Another set of good answers to last week's puzzle picture with Adrian, Keith, Wilma and anon gaining a for correctly identifying part of an electric fence with Jan as runner up deducing the electric part.

   

This was a temporary set up while some sheep were allowed to graze in what is normally an arable field.
   

This week we are back to a pixellated photo, in fact a crystallised photo processed in Photoshop Elements 10. Can you work out what this flying punctuation mark is?
Guess what:


No prizes, just for fun.

RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch

These are my observations for this year's RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch. The record sheet for common garden visitors can be downloaded from the RSPB site HERE. It is just to help with recognition and recording. It does not have to be sent in. You do not have to use their record sheet, any piece of paper will do to note down your observations.



Some of the colours may look a bit peculiar as my printer is having a bad ink colour day.

The full results for birds landing in my garden during a one hour period today were:

Starling        9

House Sparrow   6

Blackbird       5

Chaffinch       3

Wood Pigeon     3

Tree Sparrow    2

Dunnock         2

Crow            2

Jackdaw         2

Pheasant        1

Blue Tit        1

Great Tit       1

Magpie          1

Robin           1

Greenfinch      1

Collared Dove   1

As ever, some of the birds which normally arrive in larger numbers stayed out of view and some I rarely see made an appearance.

Friday at the Flicks - Blackbird

Not a lot found to video during the week. I did try for some of the Tree Sparrows but that didn't come out very well so all I have is this of a male Blackbird at the Birdy Bistro with lots of Sparrows twittering in the background:



The weather conditions have taken a nosedive today so that may encourage more birds to visit the garden over the weekend for the RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch.

Wings on Wednesday - Pheasant + Tree Sparrows + BGB

The cock Pheasant continues to be a regular visitor to the garden.



Another regular Winter visitor is the Tree Sparrow. They spend most of the year in the hedgerows of the local fields but in Winter will often join with the House Sparrows to visit garden feeders. They seem to have bred well last season as I now get up to a dozen visiting at the same time.



BGB  (RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch)
For those in the UK the weekend 28th / 29th January is the RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch weekend. The idea being to watch for any one hour period on one of those days to record the maximum number of each species of bird which visits a garden. Full details can be found on the RSPB site HERE.

AURORA:
Apparently the last aurora was one of the most spectacular seen in the Artic regions. Unfortunately none has been seen this far South but I did see a report that the previous display was seen at Tan Hill in Yorkshire.
A picture can be seen in The Telegraph HERE.
Also some photos on the BBC News site HERE.
Plenty of orange sky here but that was just the street lights reflecting from mist and low cloud!

Macro on Monday - Guess What

Once again last week's puzzle photo was a resounding success with congratulations and     going to John, Anon, Wilma, Adrian and Glo for identifying the ice crystals formed during an early morning frost on my garden.


  

On to this week's puzzle picture of a shocking find at the edge of a local field.
Guess What:


Just for fun. No prizes.

AURORA:
The effects of the CME mentioned on Saturday were later than forecast and not as extensive as had been hoped for. I understand the Aurora could be seen over the north of the American continent last night and the effect was strong enough to compress the Earth's magnetic field for a while.

This morning Sunspot 1402 erupted producing a long duration M9-class Solar flare (the most powerful kind). It is expected to give a strong glancing blow to the Earth's magnetic field on Jan 24/25.

Further information HERE on the SpaceWeather site.

I have never seen an Aurora but live in hopes, especially as we approach the peak of the 11yr cycle of Sunspot activity. One thing I have managed in the past when I was an active amateur radio enthusiast was to bounce radio signals off the charged particles during an aurora. It does strange things to radio signals and the person you are talking to sounds like they have a severe case of laryngitis as only the breathy part of the sound is left and all tone is missing.  To contact someone to my East, say Holland or Germany, we both have to point our aerials towards the North to use the Aurora but if we try to communicate directly the chances are the signals that way are too weak to be detected.

My aerial setup as it was then:

Main mast bottom to top; 6m beam, 2m beam, 70cm beam and 2 times 23cm beams.
Small mast: 4m beam.
Occasionally I used to put up a set of aerials for working through amateur satellites. Great fun trying to keep a beam pointing at a satellite as it dashes across the sky above and working a transmitter at the same time.

BOBBY:
Boby is active and eating well now we seem to have his medication sorted out. The main battle is getting all the pills down him though his usual liking for jam tarts helps as the tablets hide nicely in the jam!  Another is keeping up with him when we set out for a walk.

Possible Aurora 21/22 Jan 2012

There is a possibility of Aurora activity to be good tonight for those lucky enough to be in the right place to see it.

A report on SpaceWeather.com states that active Sunspot 1401 erupted on the 19th producing an M3 class solar flare and a full halo coronal mass ejection which is expanding almost directly in the direction of the Earth. Strong magnetic storms are possible and the predicted impact is 22.30 UT (+-7 hrs) today.

A tweet from the British Geological Survey says:
Next 24hrs - QUIET. Expect STORM conditions late on Sat to Sun due to full halo CME seen on 19th. Good chance of seeing aurora in the north.

The BGS site also has the following storm warning:

On 19 January there was an M3.2 X-ray solar flare and
an associated full-halo Coronal Mass Ejection (CME). We expect
this CME to strike Earth's magnetosphere in the next 24 to 36 hours.

Following this event there is an increased risk of a geomagnetic
STORM from late on 21-JAN to 22-JAN (UK time). There is also an
increased chance of viewing the aurora borealis (or australis)
during local night-time hours, assuming dark and clear skies,
though this is dependent on the configuration of the interplanetary
magnetic field (IMF) embedded in the solar wind. 


For a simple explanation of what causes an aurora take a look the the web site of  The Center for Computational Heliophysics in Hawaii HERE.

Friday at the Flicks - A Pheasant Morning

Once again the cock Pheasant made a brief visit to the Birdy Bistro but this time there was no room for it to get at the feeders.




When it went for a walk across the garden I threw some peanuts on the grass. It didn't take long before he was gobbling them down and didn't even mind when I sneaked out the back door with the Lumix TZ7 to shoot some video.



Have a great weekend observing the wildlife around you.