Fen Skies

This morning we went for a walk at Wicken Fen (National Trust). It was cold and very frosty with a bright blue sky. In fact it was a perfect January morning. The picture shows the excellent skies we get in East Anglia.

Wicken Fen is famous for the bittern and its dragonflies. Some years ago I saw a bittern coming in to roost. It is a kind of heron.

The boardwalk was quite icy, so we avoided this where possible

Right shift

In recent times, there seems to have been a swing to the right in the UK and the rest of the world and a sense that our politicians are "out of touch".  The victory of Mr Trump and his "make America great again" speeches are indicative of this. There is a danger that several European nations could move to the right this year.

Here in the UK, we have no effective opposition. The Labour Party opposition is in disarray and faces two difficult by-elections.

This swing to the right may be temporary, but all parties in all nations need to wake up and be aware.

See http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-38704082 .

Weather forecasts - hopeless!

At 0830z the Met Office weather forecast for our village said full sun all morning from 0900z. Very very briefly we saw the sun at 1140z. Really, the weather forecasts are useless.

Amaryllis

Every winter we grow an amaryllis in the lounge. It has really shot up in the last week, with what looks like 2 flowers coming from side shoots, barring any disasters.

Last year we supported it with a cane and elastic band.

At the moment, it is 19cm tall.

Churches Blog Updated

After a long break I have updated our church blog to include Grantchester.

See http://eachurches.blogspot.co.uk/ .

PC and Camera Memory

It is fascinating to see the price of PC and camera memory getting lower and lower and the capacity increasing. Only a few years ago we thought a 1GB SD card was amazing. Now you can get 128GB (at least) on a mini SD card at quite respectable prices.

Ten years from now I expect we will be used to 1-2TB mini SD cards and think how did we manage back in 2017? I recall the hard drive on my first PC was 0.5GB and we thought that was massive.

UPDATE 2035z: You can already buy a 512GB SD card on Amazon. I'd be nervous of an SD card that large. Mind you they probably said that about 0.5GB SD cards just a few years ago.

Blackbirds

Every other Tuesday I have been going in to Cambridge on the service bus to my U3A course on Polar Studies at the Scott Polar Institute. As the speaker today was commanded to go to the Economic Forum in Davos, we had a different speaker at short notice: he was very good.

On the way in, I just relax and count the bird species I see. Usually it is between 8 and 12 different species, although in total I have seen many more.

What struck me today was the vast number of blackbirds. They were everywhere. I am not sure why there seem to be so many: are the marking territory or seeking mates?

See https://www.rspb.org.uk/birds-and-wildlife/bird-and-wildlife-guides/bird-a-z/b/blackbird/. The image on the LHS is on the RSPB site.

There are some waxwings in Cambridge. These birds come from Scandinavia and are quite rare most winters. I have yet to see one. They are often seen eating berries in supermarket car parks.