snow day

Jan. 5th, 2010 06:56 pm
urban_greenwatch: (Default)
I tried the frost underfoot today and decided it was worth trying the towpath. By way of reward I didn't fall into the river, but I did see:

Magpies and magpies and magpies.
A mixed flock of Blue Tits and Great Tits.
Two winter flocks of Long Tailed Tits.
A cheeky Redwing.
A pair of sparrows foraging in a leaf-choked gutter.
That thrush again, ducking into the ivy.
An explosion of woodpigeons as I passed six foraging too close to the path.
Assorted gulls, mallard, geese, blackbirds, coot and a swan.

After that I wasn't expecting the walk home to stand out, but I was wrong. It was both brought forward a little and made enormously more exciting by the presence of snow!

snow!

Falling snow fills the negative space of the urban environment, making what is usually air a mass of exciting whirling particles, suddenly visible in all its glorious three-dimensionality. This usually invisible and ignored space is suddenly given turbulent life and I see now that it is full of current and eddies, gusts and breezes, particles around which ice can form and fall. The disturbances to the flow caused by vehicles, trees, buildings is suddenly revealed, and as if someone had dropped dye into a wind-tunnel, the air becomes suddenly visible, tangible and real.
urban_greenwatch: (heron)
This morning the ice had melted and rain was seeping from a flat grey sky. My heart leapt at the sight of such congenial weather. After a week of teetering to the busstop over glass-slick pavements fearing each slush-slippy step, finally I could return to the tow-path.

With cheerful (albeit slightly damp) humour I decided to record my morning bird list, which reads:

House Sparrow (1)
Crow (4)
Pigeon (8)
Magpie (11)
Black Headed gull (20+)
Mallard (10)
Coal Tit (1)
Coot (8)
Robin (3)
Blackbird (1)
Collared Dove (3)
Song Thrush (1)
Canada Goose (30+)

This is the clear identifications only. I've left out all the half-glimpsed or heard-not-seen birds. It's quite disappointing, especially the tits. Where are the Wagtails? The Redstarts? The Long Tailed Tits? Where are the Swans?

However, one thing on that list was a surprise! I wouldn't normally expect to the see a Thrush on the tow path, and there he (or she - they're not sexually dimporphic at all) was, hopping into the ivy with a beak full of something.

I peered round the bush and found myself face-to-beak with a thrush with a banded snail ready for smashing. I'd probably just startled him off an anvil stone.

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February 2010

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