Tree Tuesday

This lonely Norway Spruce lives on top of Falufajallet Mountain in Sweden and is estimated to be about 9, 550 years old making it the worlds oldest tree. According to Atlas Obscura,

Located in Fulufjallet National Park, Old Tjikko began growing in this harsh tundra shortly after the glaciers receded from Scandinavia at the close of the last ice age. To put that into perspective, this lowly shrub was growing as humans learned to plow fields, domesticate the cat, and—2,000 years after it first took root—our ancestors begin learning to smelt copper.

Old Tjikko is part of a clonal organism and its age was determined by carbon dating of its roots. There’s a small path that leads to the tree and park rangers give free guided tours. It’s preferred that visitors not go unaccompanied. I’d say that people shouldn’t be allowed to visit at all except I’d like to go myself.

I may need to start a new bucket list just for the trees that I’d like to visit.

Season of the Ice Sculpture

Just checking in, with some lovely photos from the old military fort on the west coast:

Foto: Māris Ankevics

Winter is in full swing here, with the right proper terrible weather we should be having this time of year. I’m thoroughly enjoying it (this is my season), although I’m enjoying the accompanying flu season far less.

Foto: Māris Ankevics

I hope everyone is staying warm and safe and healthy! I have a feeling we still have some… interesting… weather ahead of us.

 

Jack’s Walk

Sand and snow, ©voyager, all rights reserved

Our area is due to have a snowstorm later this afternoon with 10 – 15 cm of snow expected along with high winds. Right at the moment, though, it’s just bloody cold. This morning it was -13º C, but with the wind chill it felt like -24ºC so Jack and I didn’t stay out long. This photo was taken at the lake and for a moment I imagined we were on an ocean beach watching the surf come swirling in.

Get Ready to Rumble

From Avalus, some action photos and a bit of humour to get the week started.

Hey folks, I just found this gem from 2017.

*read in a actionfilmtrailervoice*
Butterfly and Bumblebee Actionsequence! Rumble around a thristleflower!
Airing next Spring in a Field near You (again)!

©Avalus, all rights reserved

©Avalus, all rights reserved

©Avalus, all rights reserved

Thanks, Avalus. That was fun.

Identifying birds by sound…

… is like dancing architecture. Or something. Yesterday I managed to go for a walk, the first one this week. As I was standing in a clearing I heard a strange bird call, getting louder, coming towards me. Since it flew against a light sky all I could see was the silhouette: Small head, size a bit bigger than a jay, slender. Relatively small wings. And I had its call. If human voices are unsuitable for reproducing bird songs, human letters are so bad it doesn’t even make sense to get started. The best description I could give is ” sounds like your V-belt needs replacement” and if you put that into google you get 1.000.000 hits for V-belts.

I finally found a site with bird sounds that allowed you to browse by families and going from the size and shape I could finally identify it as a green woodpecker.

green woodpecker

Maybe it was even this fellow?

I also found out that the mysterious bird I’ve heard so often but never have seen is a black woodpecker.

Surrounded by Rocks: An Exploration Series, Chapter 10

It’s time for the next chapter in Nightjar’s series.

Chapter 10 – West Hill: A Tiny World, Part 1

I often amaze myself with the amount of time spent and number of photos taken without looking past a square meter of space. A love for macro photography tends to do that to people, I guess. Coming down the West Hill I noticed a patch of moss and lichen. It was a small patch, but with so many things going on. Enough to fill the last two chapters of this series. First, I was fascinated by tiny lichen.

©Nightjar, all rights reserved

[Read more…]

Jack’s Walk

Yesterday I posted a photo of some animal tracks I’d found in the snow that I thought might have been made by beavers. Well, they weren’t. Chigau sensibly suggested I google images of beaver tracks in the snow and I found lots of photos and none of them look anything like what I found. The photo below is one of the best images that I found and I’m sharing it in case anyone else wants to stalk beavers in the winter. They have 4 toes on their front feet and 5 toes on their back feet and the tracks are big, about 15 – 18 cm.

Well, now I know what to look for. Lofty and rq were both correct that the tracks I posted yesterday were made by rabbits. Here are a few more tracks from the same area. I think they’re also made by rabbits.

x marks the spot, ©voyager, all rights reserved

Jack’s Walk

Unidentified Tracks by the River, ©voyager, all rights reserved

What is that strange wide arc? ©voyager, all rights reserved

Thankfully, yesterday’s rain storm didn’t turn into an ice storm so all my beloved trees are safe. It did, however, get cold again overnight so there’s a fair bit of ice on the ground making walking a bit treacherous. Jack and I decided that the sidewalks were too slippery so instead we went out to the river to look for beavers again. I’m pretty sure I know where their lodge is now, but I couldn’t get too near it today because of slippery and unstable ice. We found quite a few tracks going to and from the river in the area where I suspect they live, including this set that had a strange wide arc in one place that I thought cold have been made by a beaver tail. I’m no expert on tracks and marks left in the snow, but maybe someone reading this is. Are these beaver tracks?

Surrounded by Rocks: An Exploration Series, Chapter 9

Nightjar has more rocks for us in the next chapter of her series.

Chapter 9 – West Hill: Quartz

There are quartzites and quartz veins on this hill, but this path isn’t the best to see quartz veins. Still it is easy to find bits of quartz here and there. Quartz hunting is always fun (although if you are like me it tends to mysteriously fill pockets).

©Nightjar, all rights reserved

[Read more…]

Jack’s Walk

It seems that the normal weather for the month of March has arrived early in Southwestern Ontario. Overnight our temps climbed from -10ºC to +4ºC  and with the warming came lots and lots of rain. Overnight it was freezing rain, but by morning it was just a steady, cold downpour. All our snow is melting into compacted sheets of ice and the rain is just laying on top making everything slick and slippery. At least the ice isn’t coating the trees, for now anyway. The temp is expected to drop below freezing by early evening and we can only hope that the rain will stop before then. It grieves me to see the big, mature trees heavy with ice and the saplings and dainty birches bending like contortionists desperate to save limb and life.

After a careful assessment, Jack and I decided that the back yard was as far as we would venture today. Even explorers and voyageurs need a day off now and then. So, sorry, no photo for today. Just kidding…here’s a fascinating tree I found at our local park last week. It’s dying, maybe already dead, but it’s decay is beautiful. I apologize for the bad light, but it was a gloomy January day. I wanted to take an initial photo with the intention to return and perhaps make a study of it. You can click for full-size to see some of the patterns on the bleached and barkless areas. The next photo is a piece of fallen bark that lay at the base of the tree. I moved it to a rock to take the photo.

©voyager, all rights reserved

©voyager, all rights reserved

What Lunar Eclipse?

For a bunch of fanatics with cameras, I feel like we’ve really dropped the ball on this one.

To partially remedy the situation, here’s my favourite photo as posted by the CBC:

An aircraft passes the full moon as the lunar eclipse begins in Frankfurt. (Michael Probst/Associated Press)

 

(Turaidas Roze was a big thing in the ’80s and ’90s, with the lead singer becoming a very prominent figure in music circles even unto this day. This one’s called Dedication to Midnight, and is a break-up song – the chorus: Don’t come with me, I will go on alone; Who will accompany me? The Moon and the Big Dipper.)