I forgot to publish the rest of my pictures. So today small tortoiseshell.
© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
I had to take a day off of work because I have (again) sprained my fingers when working on my current project. So I decided that not working one-two days is better than pushing through the pain and risk even longer and worse effects.
If I get the project to work, I will make a post about it, but so far it is only frustration and failures. So I have also decided to go for a walk whilst I think about things and how to solve the problems that I have encountered. I did not take my camera with me, but I snapped a few pictures with my phone and here they are.
© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
This year’s wet and cold summer was very good for one thing – grass. The meadows surrounding our town have been mown for third time. This time they did not dry hay, for that the weather is not sufficiently warm and dry anymore, even on a sunny day. So they have wrapped the still-wet grass in these huge plastic-covered bales where it will ferment a bit before being fed to livestock in the winter. This has become quite popular in last years and some years they do not harvest dry hay at all. This year they did, two harvests of hay and one of this fermented plastic-wrapped thingy.
© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
I live in a very windy area, which has downsides. The wide-spread meadows surrounding my house sitting near the top of a hill mean that in winter, my house is fully exposed to frequent western winds, which significantly affects my heating bill. One upside is that this area is suitable for windmills, so there are several on the opposite side of the town. Here you can see one of those windmills, standing still because there was no wind today evening. It is quite far away. In fact, the whole town is between me and that windmill, only you cannot see it because 90% of the town is in a valley, with a few dozen houses scattered around it in meadows.
This peculiar layout of a town is not a result of deliberate planning, it is an accident of history. The town was a fairly big industrial center in its peak time pre-WW2, with over 15.000 inhabitants. A lot of the land that is pastures/meadows today was inhabited in those times (although it was still a bit scattered, essentially town surrounded by homesteads, each with a garden and a few patches of field). But after WW2 the original German inhabitants were deported and the communist regime had no interest to really resettle an area this close to the German border, so only a few thousand people came in, from other parts of former Czechoslovakia. Including my family which originates from the Giant Mountains.
In the cadaster maps, there are still patches of land that are marked as “building plot” or “pathway plot” that are a part of a continuous meadow today. In fact, my garden consists of two garden plots and a pathway that does not exist for over fifty years now. Because after not repopulating the area, the communist regime had most of the empty buildings demolished and the gardens and pathways were usually plowed into the fields whenever possible. In some areas, there remains a testament to these former pathways, like three huge sycamores behind my house, which are all that remain from an alleyway. Thus my house, originally one in a reasonably long street became one of two stranded in the middle of a meadow, completely exposed to west winds. My father tells me that even the path leading to our house was almost plowed over, he intervened with the tractor driver and had to talk some common sense into him so he leaves at least one path to each of the still inhabited houses.
© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
My attempts at snapping a shot of kestrel hovering above the grass bales were unsuccessful, who would have thought that tiny camera lens with no zoom won’t be suitable for bird watching. But I did snap a picture of an airplane leaving behind it the poisonous track of mind-controlling chemicals, a chemtrail!!11!. Ever since I was a kid I have been somewhat fascinated by these. I do, in fact, remember asking my father what they are as a kid on an evening similar to this one. He gave me a reasonably good explanation given that there was no internet back then and that he has no higher education.
Last year I made a tool to pick up walnuts, but I had no opportunity to really use it. Just when the tree was in full bloom, late frost came and destroyed everything. Well, at least the tree got some rest and it is not like we are wanting walnuts – we still did not eat all we had.
And this year’s humid and cold-ish summer seemed to agree with the tree mightily. You can try and count the nuts in this picture but it would not be easy for they are difficult to spot and there are many, many, many.
© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
And this picture was taken after we already have several kilos of shelled and peeled fresh walnuts in the freezer, several kilos drying in their shells for long-term storage, and giving several hundred grams of low-quality ones to birds in the feeder each day. Which I suspect that a squirrel takest, for I doubt tits make them disappear this quickly.
So these last few days I go twice a day with the ladle and pick the nuts. The first that fall still have some green stuff on them (as seen in the picture) and are usually of lower quality.
© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
The tool works like a charm. No aching back and legs, no effort. I can easily scoop any nuts that fall in the nettle patch, or in the raspberries, or on the tarpaulin covering pool at the end of the sewage cleaning facility. After I pick them, my father cleans them, and in the evening when watching TV he and my mother crack and sort and peel them.
Yesterday most of these mixed-quality nuts were already down and what is falling now are mostly those where the husk cracks on the tree so the nut falls first and the husk eventually follows, so no additional cleaning is necessary. From experience, these are usually of a higher quality and when dried and stored properly, they last for years in their shells. However, I am a bit at a loss as to what to do with them. I no longer have colleagues to whom I could try and sell the excess, and it seems I will have more than enough to satisfy the whole family’s needs for years. Like I said, we still haven’t eaten all we had from two years ago.
I wish potatoes grew this way.
Guest post by Ice Swimmer.
These pictures are from the wetland in Harakka. The summer has been dry and the wetland wasn’t as wet as I had seen it before. Still, it looked quite lush.
© Ice Swimmer, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
© Ice Swimmer, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
© Ice Swimmer, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
© Ice Swimmer, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
I have not made a knife for several months now, but that does not mean I was not working on knives. Below the fold is most of what I have done and also a bit about what I intend to do with it in the future.
BTW, I would appreciate it if you let me know something about your favorite knife if you have one. Almost everyone has, even when they are not “into” knives in particular.
These three pictures (two behind the fold) feature, apart from gudgeons, a small turbot. See if you can spot the turbot in the first picture.
Spot the turbot! © Ice Swimmer, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
This series is nearing slowly its end. Had I had time and strength to post more often, it would probably be already over – the sunflowers are now mostly dead, at least most of the main blossoms are. All that remains are some smaller secondary blossoms that might or might not go to seed, depending on how soon/late the frost comes.
Anyhoo, today two pictures of butterflies who both buggered off before I could take a second picture closer-up, and neither of them obliged to open their wings so I get a good view, let alone a shot off, their upper side.
© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
I do at least know that this one is a member of the family Satyridae, very probably meadow brown Maniola jurtina, which is a very common species around here. I ain’t no butterflyist, but I do think I got the species correctly.
© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
This little bugger is also common here, common brimstone Gonepteryx rhamni. It is one of the first butterflies that show up after winter, sometimes even when there is still snow to be found on the north side of buildings and in the forests.
Although when I say these two species are common, it only means that they are still here in numbers big enough to see them. They are rare compared to what used to be here when I was a kid.
Guest posts by Ice Swimmer
There is a brackish water fish exhibit on the island Harakka. The fishes, caught from the Gulf of Finland, spend their summer in aquariums and they are released back to the sea in the Autumn. In the Baltic Sea, both freshwater tolerant of some salinity and marine tolerant of low salinity species live next to each other.
The fish pictured here are less typical or well-known in Finnish waters.
In the first picture, a tench can be seen. In Fínnish, it’s called suutari, which means cobbler or shoemaker (but the name may have nothing to do with making shoes, the fish is called sutare in Swedish and shoemaker is skomakare in Swedish). The tenches were rather inactive in the aquarium. The tench is freshwater fish.
A Lazy Tench © Ice Swimmer, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
There are some pipefishes in the Baltic Sea. The pipefishes are relatives of sea horses. This broadnosed pipefish is one of them. The broadnosed pipefish is called särmäneula (edge needle, neula = needle) in Finnish. The “edges” are lengthwise bony plates under the skin, which make fish look “edgy” according to Finnish Wikipedia. Broadnosed pipefish is a marine species that’s tolerant of brackish water.
Broadnosed Pipefish © Ice Swimmer, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
In the third picture, we see a round goby. It is an invasive species from the Black Sea Area.
The Round Goby © Ice Swimmer, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
In the second aquarium post, we shall be playing a game inspired by “Spot the lizard!”.
This is not a common sight. A single male roe deer, grazing near-ish our house in the middle of the day. He seemed quite unperturbed by a few cars passing the road about 100 m from him. And he was so focused on munching grass that he barely ever raised his head above his shoulders, so I mostly got pictures of his ass.
© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
I do not know the species here and I dare not to identify it. But I do not remember seeing bumblebees with this color regularly here, whereas this year they are almost the only ones I see.
© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
This is very probably the same individual, it is not like these spiders are very common here. This time she has build a web near the front door to our house and she was there for two days. She has caught one caterpillar but nothing else, so after two days she packed up her ropes and went somewhere else. But on the second day, she was on the web with her back towards the wall and her belly towards me, so I could take a picture. See below the fold.
I had the species identification confirmed by an actual spider scientist.
This one is very green and very hairy. I do love the metallic sheen. It would be lovely if that kind of color could be replicated on a real metal surface, especially if that surface were steel. But it can’t.
© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
Guest posts by Ice Swimmer
It was a hot afternoon just after Midsummer. I went to downtown Helsinki to take some photos.
In the first photo, you can see a jackdaw walking at the Market Square tram stop. I took the picture while waiting for the tram.
A jackdaw walks by © Ice Swimmer, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
The second photo is an “aerial photo” of a family of mute swans, two adults,
and five little cygnets. I’m on the shore end of the pier, from which the boat to Harakka picks up passengers.
I think the leftmost cygnet has some Cladophora around the base of the neck, at least I’m hoping it’s that and not plastic (I noticed the green stuff when looking at the edited photo). The green algae, which has a Finnish name ahdinparta, beard (parta) of the old Finnish god of the sea Ahti, is rather ubiquitous in shallow waters here and there’s a lot of it on the underwater stones in the picture.
Swan family dinner. © Ice Swimmer, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
I took the boat to Harakka. The digitalis was in bloom and there were wild strawberries. It could be that when the Imperial Russian army was using the island before Finnish independence, they planted strawberries and other berries, as I’ve heard stories that it was their way to prevent the soldiers in fortress islands from having scurvy.
Digitalis and strategical strawberries. © Ice Swimmer, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
This red-leaved rose was growing in a forested area on Harakka. I like how simple and unpretentious it looks.
Red-leaved rose with green leaves. © Ice Swimmer, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
Most of Harakka is ruled by dinosaurs in the summer. This gull seemed to be above any ergonomic considerations.
Common gull forming an animal puddle. © Ice Swimmer, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
My visit to Harakka was cut a bit short by the low battery charge level of my phone. I had neglected to take an emergency charger (“sähköpossu”/”electricity piggybank” as I like to call them) with me.
Having come back to the mainland from Harakka, I saw these crows on a sign (warning about the underwater cable AFAIR) on the pier. They were “singing”. There’s a Finnish saying “Äänellään se variskin laulaa.”, which could be translated as: “Even the crow will sing with its own voice.”
Crows singing with their own voices. © Ice Swimmer, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
I did take more than these pictures on Harakka and there could be material for further posts.