Jan 23 2021 - What time do birds get up in the morning?

 

What time do birds get up the morning?  This winter morning the sun is rising and no birds are singing.  But it is bitter cold winter, and birds don't do a lot of singing in January.   I find out that birds generally begin singing 30 – 90 minutes before the sunrise. That's around 4:00am in the spring time.  Different birds will chime in at different times. Blackbirds, robins, and thrushes are among the first to begin singing. Others will soon join them and this chorus will last until the sunrise fades.  Intensity of sunlight makes for earlier wake-up times.  It is winter now, so birds wake up at about 7:00am in winter. They will begin singing their dawn choruses, but not with so large a chorus.  Birds tend to wake up whenever they sense daylight. The time that birds wake up varies a lot among different species and different environments where there is light pollution and changing seasons. Yesterday, it was past 7:30am and there aren't any birds on the feeders out front.  At 7:50am a flock of sparrows come in to the feeder and start their chatter.  But then the sun was shining on the horizon.  Today is an overcast day, so it will be interesting to find out what time they come to the feeder. Yesterday I was alert to the visiting hawk.  I checked that it wasn't out there.  There was one the day before, and Baxter was at the office window staring up at it.  It flew off when it saw me come in  and sit in the chair.  Last year, a hawk was attacking the sparrows in the hedge next door.  It was jumping into the hedge from the ground.  Later that day, I watched Baxter who proceeded to repeat the technique.  Neither were successful - both get my admiration for ingenuity. These pictures are from 2014 - this is Jordan Harbour looking towards the Lake.  It froze over so smoothly that people were playing hockey and ice sailing.  I've not seen this since, although my sister said people were skating on the lagoon pond at Charles Daley Park.  That's just down the road a bit on the Lake side of the highway.

Read more daily posts here: marilyncornwellblog.com Purchase works here: Fine Art America- marilyncornwellart.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

The Beast from the East

The snow storm experienced by Cambridge UK is known as the Beast from the East.  It has hit all of Europe.  It is reported that people were skating on frozen canals in Holland, a rare event.  Should you be so inclined, there is a formal skating tour - The Elstedentocht, 200 kilometres long.  It has two components - a speed skating competition, and a leisure tour, with 16,000 skaters. The potential to skate in Holland is monitored and celebrated.  The temperatures need to drop for only a few days...oops, perhaps for more than a few days.  The headline for today is that two skaters fell through too thin ice on the Prinsengracht in Amsterdam on Thursday.  They survived.   The article closes with "the canals may be thick enough to skate on over the weekend."   They lure of skating in Holland is like our love of hockey in Canada.   We distract you from the return of Winter in the multiple Cambridges.  Today our Niagara landscape is white on white - the result of the overnight snow storm.  Our schools are all closed, and driving will be slippery as the snow was preceded by ice. So instead, we'll look at Longwood's 2017 May Conservatory display. Look at the Hydrangeas filling the frame from top to bottom, and then the Foxglove hybrid, called Digiplex, in the second image.  These are great horticultural accomplishments.

Weather Alert - The Gardiner is a Skating Rink

The Gardiner Expressway is a definitive part of Toronto. It is an elevated highway meant to give cars the dominance in getting to the downtown.  It runs along the Lake, then above the city streets.  To build it,  small communities were demolished.  And it wasn't meant to take our weather conditions, so has deteriorated significantly over the years.  I've walked under the Gardiner, and there are huge chunks of cement on the ground, and great amounts of rust and decay up above.  And it is a true wasteland in the centre of the city - a very moody experience. There has been turmoil over the Gardiner and what to do about its repair and maintenance.  It was a 'gift' from the province - downloaded so that the City is entirely responsible for its maintenance.  There have been repairs and more discussions over the years. There certainly have been times when the Gardiner has been a skating rink with ice, slowing traffic to a crawl. Now the Beltway has opened - and it is a skating rink.  The underside between Strachan and Spading is a public ice skating trail.  It is named after the main supports - bents.  This now is a high-density urban condo area.  The skate trail opened on the weekend with 'ice breaking' a Toronto hybrid of skating, ice dancing and breakdancing, with the Mayor's Skate Party, and with musical acts. There will be weekly DJ skate parties. blogTO covers it here.  Here's the Toronto City Hall downtown model with the Gardiner curving through the shoreline section.

Countdown Starts Again

Christmas Day The Day After.  Now we start another countdown and this one is more like a countdown rather than a countup. As an aside, the Christmas Day clock is now at 364 and ticking away.  So if you loaded it on your smart phone, it can keep you company for another year. We know that today's the day to get our gifts (boxes) from the 'boss".  Too bad the tradition didn't carry through to modern day and there would be a bonus from our corporate employers. Perhaps South Africa understood that this tradition was better left behind.  It renamed Boxing Day to Day of Goodwill in 1994. Other countries call this Second Christmas Day: In some European countries, most notably Germany, Poland, Belgium, the Netherlands and those in Scandinavia, 26 December is celebrated as the Second Christmas Day. What should we do on the Second Christmas Day? "Many people spend the second day of Christmas in much the same way as Christmas Day."  So we'd be having a second or third turkey dinner today. Here are two views of Jordan Harbour from last year.