Padfield

[NickB]

....relatively speaking

[Padfield]

....relatively speaking

Exactly!

Winter is full-on here and the forecast maximum for today near Martigny was -1°C, after a night of -10°C. The recent sun has melted most of the valley snow but it still felt bitterly cold in the shade.



I spent the morning searching for purple hairstreak eggs. These are amazingly hard to find this year and I only found two despite extensive searching. Two years ago a casual search of almost any suitable oak would turn up a few eggs - this year the same oaks are quite egg-free. I hope this is something to do with a change in laying behaviour but there's no real reason to believe this. The species was numerous in July so it's a bit of a mystery. Here's one of the eggs I did find:



I didn't look for brown hairstreak eggs but did notice in passing this fresh sprig of blackthorn that must have come out during the hot December spell:



Through force of habit I checked the usual hot-spots for winter butterflies but was not surprised to see nothing flying, given the temperatures. Nevertheless, just as I was about to head home, at 1.20pm, a small tortoiseshell appeared, apparently struggling to keep airborne but occasionally lifting quite high into the sky. It crossed the path in front of me and settled in a vigneron's garden. His car was in the drive so I didn't go in for a photo but did take this pure proof shot of my first butterfly of 2012 from the path:



I hope he found somewhere to go back to sleep as tomorrow the temperature is not forecast to reach higher than -2°C.

Guy

[Padfield]

On Sunday I checked briefly on Aurelian and found he had moved ever so slightly since my last visit. This is him on 7th Jan:



On Sunday he had shifted position:



I hope he's not getting restless. Fortunately, snow has fallen since then and he will have been kept well chilled.

He was not the only one feeling the blood-rush on Sunday. In the sky, buzzards were mewing and circling in what appeared to be prenuptial joy:



Guy

[Susie]

Stunning landscape as ever, Guy

Your buzzards look happier than the very bedraggled one I saw sitting in a tree this afternoon. It looked thoroughly fed up!

[NickB]

Fingers crossed for Aurelian....I think the birds are behaving as if it IS spring; I've had a blackbird singing at 10:30pm this evening and the temperature was still over 8C.
His sheer exuberance and joy, at proclaiming he was here, was wonderful to listen to....!
(I just wish I could stop him sitting outside my window at 5:00am in the morning and doing the same )
N

[Padfield]

The blackbirds here are wisely waiting their time. This was the scene as I left for school this morning:



The bus from the valley was perfectly on time.

Guy

[Jack Harrison]

I'm jealous again.

What altitude is the snow line on the distant mountains?

Jack

[Padfield]

Hi Jack,

The snow/rain limit has been zooming up and down recently, with various bands of unsettled weather coming in. In the last couple of days it's snowed down to about 600m but the snow there has melted rapidly as it's been quite warm. Tomorrow the limit will go up to about 1200m, then descend again through to Saturday (500m, which is not much above the valley floor).

http://www.meteosuisse.admin.ch/web/fr/ ... etail.html

Above 1200m the snow is wonderfully thick - fantastic conditions for anyone coming out here to ski!

Guy

[essexbuzzard]

Your buzzards certainly seem to be full of the joys of spring. When we see them soar like that,they seem to be doing it for sheer pleasure,but they are probably re-confirming their pair bond,which, in buzzards,lasts throughout the year,and probably for life. The pair i saw in Sussex today were much more purposeful-they were mewing and plumeting at an intruding buzzard,who was quickly seen off! It was quite spectacular.

[Jack Harrison]

I often went soaring with Buzzards in my glider. But one day was pure magic and is my most treasured memory of 50 years as a pilot (18,000 flying hours).

I was over the Cairngorms on a beautiful spring day but needed a little more height to get back to the airfield at Aboyne in Deeside. I joined a Buzzard (or it joined me — I can’t remember which) and we soared up together to cloud base at around 6,000 feet. That bird was so very close and we kept looking at each other. I can still “see” it today in my mind’s eye. Why was it so high? It had no need to go that high when on the lookout for food. My inescapable conclusion was that it was there for the same reason I was — for the pure enjoyment of living. He gave me once last look, half-closed his wings and dived down in display flight.

For a few minutes, I had joined that bird in its world. I felt truly privileged to be allowed to share it with him.

Jack

[essexbuzzard]

Wow,that sounds like a fantastic experience, Jack!
Around our old home near Penzance,Buzzards were common from as far back as i can remember, but where i live now in Essex,it is only in the last 10 years that we have seen them regularly near our home.
This is one of the birds that gives me the very most pleasure (hence my UKB name) and to this day i still enjoy every one.
Sorry Guy,i've hijacked your post,i'll stop waffling now!

[Padfield]

No problems, essexbuzzard - it's all good stuff!

I was up before the crack of dawn to take a group of kids to CERN. We are fortunate that at the moment the beam is turned off for 17 weeks of routine maintenance and technical checks. Because of this we were able to take the lift down into the bowels of the earth and see the actual CMS detector that made the headlines so recently with its tantalising hints at the existence of the Higgs particle.

This was our guide, Zoltan, a Hungarian physicist working on the CMS. I asked him to hold the sign up but there was of course no radiation risk today.



This is yours truly in front of the CMS detector itself.



When the accelerator's up and running that central pipe carries two beams of proton pulses travelling in opposite directions at almost the speed of light. These are focused into a tiny region about a micron across (if I remember correctly) where some of them collide and spray avalanches of short-lived fundamental particles radially through the detector.



As I mentioned in my diary a year ago, when I last went, CERN contains both the hottest and the coldest places in the known universe! The massive magnets that bend the proton beams are supercooled to 1.9°K (about -271°C), making them over a degree cooler than intergalactic space, while the proton collisions represent temperatures close to those of the Big Bang...

Guy

[Wurzel]

That looks mighty cool Guy! And the name Zoltan, rings a bell...was Flash Gordan or "Dude where's my car"?

Have a goodun
Wurzel

[Padfield]

I had to look up that cultural reference Wurzel! But yes, apparently there is a Zoltan in 'Dude, where's my car?'

The big freeze has arrived. I'm quietly confident there won't be any butterflies around here for a bit:


(info from http://www.snow-forecast.com/)

But it's beautiful.

Guy

[David M]

Looking at those figures, Guy, it's amazing that butterflies survive at all.

It's pretty cold here too at the moment, and it's a nice dry cold as well - minus 3 last night but no frost as there was no moisture in the atmosphere to freeze. It's set to get worse!

[Jack Harrison]

minus 3 last night but no frost as there was no moisture in the atmosphere to freeze

I must correct this common misunderstanding. Just because the moisture level is low (and it can never be zero) does not mean that there is no frost. What it does mean — as was the case last night — that there is no visible deposit. But there is still a frost.

This exact point was raised at a lecture by BBC weatherman Bill Giles that I attended. Bill politely corrected the questioner.

Just because you can't see it, it doesn't mean that there is no frost.

Jack (wearing amongst other things, my weatherjack hat)

[The Annoying Czech]

I think I can equal your winter suffering, Guy

[David M]

minus 3 last night but no frost as there was no moisture in the atmosphere to freeze

I must correct this common misunderstanding. Just because the moisture level is low (and it can never be zero) does not mean that there is no frost. What it does mean — as was the case last night — that there is no visible deposit. But there is still a frost.

This exact point was raised at a lecture by BBC weatherman Bill Giles that I attended. Bill politely corrected the questioner.

Just because you can't see it, it doesn't mean that there is no frost.

Jack (wearing amongst other things, my weatherjack hat)

Okay, okay - there was no visible frost this morning.

[Paul Wetton]

Didn't recognise you in the trendy hat Guy.

Then again maybe it was the shirt and tie that threw me off the trail.

[Pawpawsaurus]

The big freeze has arrived. I'm quietly confident there won't be any butterflies around here for a bit:


(info from http://www.snow-forecast.com/)

Down to -25°C on Friday night? Eek!

Fingers crossed for Aurelian. At what temperature will his antifreeze start to become ineffective?

Paul