Tuesday - Friday 21/24 January 2014
Decorator’s Weekly
It’s been a week of decorating so far and it’s not finished yet. The weekend should see us completing the job though. I’ve not ventured outside too much this week but we’ve had a bit of a mixed bag. Unusually for this year we had a couple of cold frosty mornings, some sunny periods and some more rain.
We had a quick shopping trip at lunchtime Friday, after all you still need to eat when decorating, and Sue spotted this iris ‘Kathleen Hodgkin’ almost on flower in a sheltered spot in the front garden. I took its photo and thought about a quick blog to say, due to the mild winter so far, how early into flower it was going to be.
Since having had a look at last year’s pictures of ‘Kathleen Hodgkin’ I’m now not sure there’s going to be that much difference in the flowering dates.
I haven’t any pictures of her in bud last year but I doubt it will be 10 days before she’s fully into flower. So perhaps a little earlier than last year but not by much. Strange how the mind can play funny tricks. I didn’t think it would take so long to decorate the lounge and study either!
Saturday and Sunday 25/26 January 2014
RSPB Garden Birdwatch Weekend
It was a pretty wet weekend for the RSPB’s Big Garden Birdwatch with rain on Saturday morning and most of Sunday. Of course as usual the birds did their disappearing act and stayed away. Our usual flocks of house sparrows, starlings and goldfinches didn’t show up.
Even our resident robin wished to remain incognito with his back to the camera and face hidden by a tree branch.
This January has now become the wettest of the five I’ve had my weather station but so far we haven’t had an exceptional amount of rainfall in the month with 68.6mm and well short of our wettest month of June 2012 with 131.5mm of rainfall.
Monday 27 January 2014
Down by the Canal
Monday was better than forecast or we just did well at avoiding any showers that were around.
As we are looking after Tivvy for a couple of days we took her for a walk by the canal (Aire and Calder Navigation) in Woodlesford.
Walking along the canal towpath and it’s hard to image that it’s just a couple of miles away from Leeds City Centre. The canal is used by a small amount of commercial traffic and plenty of leisure craft. This is one of the areas that will be affected by the proposed High Speed Rail link to Leeds.
This area won’t be quite the same with a high speed railway running along the river and canal corridor into Leeds. See HS2 Preferred Route to Leeds. At this point the new line runs between the river and canal through the area to the left of the timber fence.
With the rain we’ve had over the last couple of months the river Aire itself was certainly running fairly full and it’s likely that the weekend rainfall which fell high up in the river’s catchment area has still to arrive and top up the flow. In another life I’ve had a few dealings with bridges over the river Aire and know first hand just what problems high river levels bring.
This family of swans were a bit put out that we hadn’t taken any food along for them. They’re obviously used to been fed by the regular walkers and the owners of the pleasure crafts moored close by.
Tuesday 28 January 2014
Breakfast at Ossett
Tuesday was a miserable day with rain on and off throughout the day.
We did have a surprise in the morning though as we spotted a sparrowhawk sitting in the crab apple tree just finishing off its breakfast. We don’t know who it had for breakfast and perhaps it’s better we don’t.
Once spotted it was a case of grabbing a camera as quickly as possible. The expectation is as soon as the camera is trained on the quarry it will take off. I was first to get my camera to hand but it wouldn’t play ball or rather the last thing it wanted to focus on was the sparrowhawk. The branches nearby came into focus as clear as a bell but no amount of zooming in and out would focus on the bird. Even with the sparrowhawk filling the entire view finder the image remained frustratingly blurry.
Fortunately she (we think it’s a female) wasn’t in a rush to depart on a full stomach and Sue had chance to fire off a few shots as she does, well a barrage of shots in this case. She picked out a few shots for her Wordless Wednesday post here. Amazingly she (the sparrowhawk) seemed to be quite settled and I had time to move windows and try my luck again. This time with more success as my camera suddenly decided to focus on the object in the middle of the screen.
Finally I thought I’d see if I could zoom in a little more. As you can see from the tree branches it was raining and the light wasn’t too good at all so zooming in might result in a rather grainy shot. In the end it didn’t turn out too badly.
With that she decided enough was enough, if we hadn’t got any decent photographs by now we never would have, and off she went. I must admit she did have a very comfortable air about her as she perched in our crab apple tree. I don’t think it’s the first time she’s found a meal in our garden.
Shortly after this episode we suddenly thought about our one legged blackbird “Hoppy”. Had he become an easy meal? The answer was no as a few minutes later he appeared on our bird table and happily began tucking into buggy nibbles.
Wednesday 29 January 2014
Another Rainy Day
We didn’t spot any exciting birds in the garden today as Wednesday turned out to be yet another wet and miserable day. Once again it wasn’t that we had a large amount of rain but it was cold and damp all day. The day’s rainfall amounted to 2.8mm bringing our monthly total to 73.8mm approaching double the long term average rainfall.
So far this month we’ve had measurable rainfall every day apart from the 10th and 17th. The forecast for Thursday is for a cold, dry, and cloudy day so perhaps this might be our third dry day of the year. The forecast for Friday is more rain. Perhaps February might be a bit drier.
Thursday and Friday 30/31 January 2014
A Wet End
Thursday produced only our third dry day of the year but it couldn't last and Friday was a cold, wet and cloudy day with the temperature hovering around the 3°C mark through the morning before becoming a little bit milder in the afternoon as the rain arrived.
Without doubt the weather for January has been dominated by the amount of rainfall. We’ve had about double our anticipated rainfall for the month but others would appear to have had even more.
This is how the final rainfall chart for January finished up with 81.2mm of rainfall. It’s not the wettest month we’ve experienced in the last three years and it’s not that unusual for us to have in excess of 80mm of rainfall in a month.
January has also been a mild month. It’s achieved that by maintaining a very consistent temperature range throughout the month rather than producing any particularly high temperatures.
At 5.6°C it’s a little bit above what might be expected. So far this winter we haven’t had a cold snap but obviously there is still time. Take a glance at the averages temperatures for February and March last year to see how late that cold snap can strike.
Finally considering all our weather arriving with depressions from the Atlantic we’ve done surprising well at avoiding any prolonged gale force winds.
Certainly we’ve had some days with strong to gale force winds but they haven’t battered us for long and as January’s go it’s not been too bad.
The forecast for early February seems to be more of the same. Some drier brighter weather would be good as we head towards the start of the gardening season.