Garden and Ramsey (2)

Seasonal delay and a frosty February

Monday 9th February, 2015,

I used to wonder why the winter solstice on December 21, the shortest day of the year, wasn’t usually the coldest day of the year.  Then I watched a TV programme about climate and weather which explained seasonal delay.  The surface of the earth heats up during summer and gradually loses the stored heat during winter.  The coldest few days of the year on average are at the point where the heat loss is still slightly greater than the increasing heat from the sun due to the higher angle above the horizon and the longer daylight hours.  It was so obvious that I should have been able to work it out for myself.  According to an article in the Guardian from December 2012 the coldest day of the year in England is February 17th, with average minimum and maximum temperatures of 0.8C and 6.7C.  There can be huge variations though.  February 17’s lowest recorded temperature was -23.9C in Aviemore (Scotland) in 1879 and the highest was 17.4C in Llandudno (Wales) in 1878.  So extremes of weather are not a modern invention.

Well, we still have just over a week to go until February 17 but last week was more than cold enough.  No more snow but frosty mornings and thick ice on top of the bucket of rainwater again.  On Tuesday morning  it was well below zero.  I went down to fetch our milk which is delivered three times a week and left in a box by the gate.   My thoughts went back to my schooldays in  Natal.  I remembered our headmistress telling us that her sister (who lived in New Zealand) sometimes had to take her milk in from the doorstep quickly in winter and put it in the fridge - not to prevent it going sour but to stop it freezing solid.  It seemed an unlikely story to a class of girls sweltering in subtropical summer heat - but a very real possibility last week in the glen.

The frost on the lawn gradually melted in the sunny areas but this little primrose was still looking very cold at about eleven o’clock.

There was ice on shady puddles when we walked through Ramsey after lunch but there was hardly any wind and it was almost warm in the sun.

Wednesday was still cold, just slightly warmer.  When the edges of the ice on the bucket had thawed, I tipped up the layer of ice.  It was still over an inch thick.  Rather annoyingly, I went around most of the morning mentally humming a variation on a well known children’s song . . . “There’s ice on the bucket, dear Liza, dear Liza, There’s ice on the bucket, dear Liza, there’s Ice”.

I have been trying to compensate for my rather erratic memory by writing notes of ideas for the blog - on scraps of paper and old envelopes which promptly get mislaid. Maybe I should get a notebook - like Commissaire Adamsberg in the Fred Vargas novel that I am rereading.  He bought a small notebook . . . so that if he was struck by some interesting thought he could write it down.  His first and possibly only entry is . . . I can’t think of anything to think.  I fear that the same fate may await my notebook.

I did unearth a few of my notes.  So I can record that I spent Wednesday and Thursday mainly watching birds and clouds.

On Wednesday morning I jotted down a list of the birds which visited the feeder while I was loading the dishwasher.  It was just the usual suspects - four types of tit (great tits, blue tits, coal tits and long-tailed tits) and two types of finch (chaffinch and siskin) feeding on the peanuts and sunflower seeds; and blackbirds, robins, dunnocks and a thrush on the ground.  There were very few birds around until after 08-30.  They have other things on their minds at this time of year - selecting mates and nest sites.  The first dunnock didn’t arrive until ten past nine.  Up to no good, no doubt. They are said to be notoriously promiscuous little birds.

I tried to get a good photo of a chaffinch which was puffed up like a little ball - trying to trap the heat from its body in its feathers.  I didn’t manage to get a sharp photo but a robin posed for me - behind a frosty foxglove.

In the afternoon I got a better photo of the chaffinch.  It wasn’t as puffed up as it had been in the morning but at least it was in focus.

I was interested in these clouds on Wednesday.  They looked rather like clusters of powder puffs.  I thought that I might be able to find a name for them if I checked cloud images on Google but clouds are complicated.  Their names depend on their altitude as well as their appearance.  I did cut down the options to two - Altocumulus or Cirrocumulus - but I am probably wrong.  Both are mostly found during settled weather and are composed of cloudlets (I liked that word).  Altocumulus cloudlets are shaded grey on the side away from the sun and cirrocumulus cloudlets are pure white.

I thought that this type of cloud formation would make a spectacular sunrise - and the next morning my wish was granted.

On Thursday morning I photographed this blackbird . . . 

. . . and then noticed something very small and furry moving at the base of the feeder.  It darted out from under the sheet of plywood and back again like the proverbial greased lightning.  I grabbed my camera and got a quick shot.  I thought I had photographed the rear end of the retreating animal but when I loaded the photo on the computer I could just make out one eye peeping out from under the plywood . . . and a long nose.  It isn’t a great photo - but I may never get another opportunity to photograph a pigmy shrew.

We used to have wood mice and pigmy shrews in the garden but Alexander, our smallest male Schipperke, was a keen hunter of little furry creatures and carried out a small rodent genocide.  He also took an interest in large bumblebees and used to sit on the lawn patting them with his paw.  I thought he had exterminated all the shrews but they must be moving back into our garden now it is a dog-free zone.  I saw one at the end of summer when I was clearing the ditch and noted in the post dated 23 August 2014 . . . “I also saw someone, very small and very fast, running along the bottom of the ditch on Monday.  It might have been a pigmy shrew but it was gone almost before I saw it.”  There are some good photos and interesting observations about these tiny creatures on Phil Gates’ blog at http://cabinetofcuriosities-greenfingers.blogspot.com/2012/09/a-tiny-mammal-with-iron-tipped-teeth.html   I would like to encourage them because they eat woodlice - and our garden is overstocked with woodlice.

By the way,  I discovered that shrews are not interested in cheese.  I put a few small bits near the feeder (thinking ”they are sort of mousy things and mice like cheese” and hoping to tempt it out into the open).  The blackbird came back and ate most of the cheese and then the robin finished off the last bits.  But I didn’t even see a whisker of the pigmy shrew.

We were back in Ramsey on Friday and I was tempted by an impulse item - a white cyclamen coum.  I was surprised to see them flowering in spring.  My pink ones flower in autumn.  I haven’t decided where to plant it so it is still sitting in the conservatory.

At 16-41 I took a photo of the last rays of sunlight catching the peak of North Barrule.  The hillside and glen below were already in deep shade.  The days are lengthening noticeably now - an extra couple of minutes at the beginning and end of every day.  The last day of February will see nearly two hours more daylight than the first day.

On Saturday we had one of our rare sunsets reflected on clouds over the glen.

And on Sunday we drove to to the recycling centre at the tip with bottles and some garden refuse and then took some diced bread crusts to the harbour.  They were being recycled as swan food.

There weren’t many swans around.  Just two on the opposite bank of the Sulby.  So we walked up towards the mud banks where some mallard ducks were resting.  But as soon as we threw some bread in the water a mob of herring gulls appeared.  The adults have white bodies with grey backs and black on the tips of their wings.  This mottled juvenile is probably one of last spring's babies.  It takes a couple of years before they lose all the brown markings.  

The gulls appeared to be forming an orderly queue . . .

. . . but every time the bread hit the water or the pavement it was every man for himself and their behaviour degenerated into a very disorderly scrum.  

We heard the noise of powerful beating wings and watched two groups of mute swans flying upstream.

Another group were approaching in a more sedate fashion with a solitary black swan bringing up the rear.

There was also a smaller dark bird which was some distance away and not at all interested in the feeding frenzy.  It turned out to be a diver as it suddenly disappeared under the surface.  I waited for it to reappear.  It was a cormorant.

Before leaving for home, I took a couple of photos of the Ramsey bridges.  First the well-known harbour swing bridge which was completed in 1892.

And, a little further upstream, the Bowring Road stone bridge.  Bowring Road was previously known as the Bayr Geinnagh, the Sandy Road.  I couldn’t find out the date of construction of this bridge but according to a book by W. Walter Gill published in 1929 “In the Isle of Man bridges are a comparatively modern convenience . . .  In 1739 a tax of 1d. per annum was levied on every adult inhabitant for the purpose of building bridges” and one of the new bridges provided for by the Act of 1739 was “ the bridge at the top of Ramsey Harbour”.  So I guess it was built during the second half of the eighteenth century.

PS  There is no point in googling Ramsey bridges - unless you want information about an American academic or other people, or characters in books, with that name!