View allAll Photos Tagged 20February2015
HAPPY NEW YEAR, everyone!
Sunday, 2 January 2022: 1°C, windchill -4°C at 3:00 pm. A sudden change in temperature, following brutally cold weather that reached a windchill of -38°C. A very welcome, but going to be very short-lived, change.
This was such a special sighting, and each photo I took showed a different expression. Sorry you see him/her more often than you want, lol.
Our weather at the moment is still really cold. Not the kind of weather that makes me want to go out anywhere, so I will be patient. Though I have had my car back for three/four days now, I have still not been out, but that's OK. I know I will have to remove the snow off my car, and the thought of that always makes me want to stay home.
As I have been doing for weeks now, here are a few more photos from my archives. I will add the description that I wrote under a different, previously posted photo taken on the same outing.
"In the afternoon of 20 February 2015, there were just a couple of friends down in the park and, happy to say, they had already found this tiny, popcan-sized owl. This was its perch during the time I was there, giving some nice out in the open views, but all rather similar. It's such a beautiful owl. This is the female - the male is smaller, has a more rusty colour especially around the neck, and he has a thicker, white eyebrow line. In the end, it went to sleep. This was roughly a week before I saw it (and its mate) for the last time that season. People who have been seeing it in the months since then must be keeping very quiet about it. No reports, no photos posted anywhere."
"The Northern Pygmy-Owl may be tiny, but it’s a ferocious hunter with a taste for songbirds. These owls are mostly dark brown and white, with long tails, smoothly rounded heads, and piercing yellow eyes. They hunt during the day by sitting quietly and surprising their prey. As a defensive measure, songbirds often gather to mob sitting owls until they fly away. Mobbing songbirds can help you find these unobtrusive owls, as can listening for their call, a high-pitched series of toots." From AllAboutBirds.
Please don't use this image on websites, blogs or other media without my explicit permission. © All rights reserved
A few more odds and ends from my archives. I am adding the description that I wrote under a different image taken on the same outing. Still not getting out, so no new photos.
This little owl is only the size of a person's fist or a pop-can!
"In the afternoon of 20 February 2015, there were just a couple of friends down in the park and, happy to say, they had already found this tiny, popcan-sized owl. This was its perch during the time I was there, giving some nice out in the open views, but all very similar. It's such a beautiful owl. This is the female - the male is smaller, has a more rusty colour especially around the neck, and he has a thicker, white eyebrow line. In the end, it went to sleep.
"The Northern Pygmy-Owl may be tiny, but it’s a ferocious hunter with a taste for songbirds. These owls are mostly dark brown and white, with long tails, smoothly rounded heads, and piercing yellow eyes. They hunt during the day by sitting quietly and surprising their prey. As a defensive measure, songbirds often gather to mob sitting owls until they fly away. Mobbing songbirds can help you find these unobtrusive owls, as can listening for their call, a high-pitched series of toots." From AllAboutBirds.
In Canada, this weekend is a long weekend. According to the federal government, May 24 was first declared a holiday by the legislature of the Province of Canada in 1845 to celebrate Queen Victoria's birthday. However, in 1952, Parliament declared that Victoria Day would be celebrated on the Monday before May 24 every year. As a result of this convention, the long weekend sometimes falls well before May 24. This year, for example, May 24 falls on a Sunday, but due to the parliamentary decree, the long weekend will run from May 16 to May 18. The May 24 weekend is thought to be the unofficial start to summer. Many people go away for the long weekend, so the roads will be really packed. After two days of dreary, overcast skies and some rain, and rain forecast for today, it’s too bad the long weekend wasn’t last weekend. Drive carefully if you will be out on the roads!
I had planned to go on a half-day birding trip this morning. Woke up at 5:00 am (after an hour and a half's sleep), hoping that maybe the forecast had changed. Instead, it's raining and looks most unpleasant out there. I really don't feel like walking in this, and not be able to take any photos, so decided I would post my "daily three" to Flickr and then go back to bed. Hope I don't miss any really special sightings : (
It's back to the tiny Northern Pygmy-owl today. I had this 'telemacro' photo already edited, so only needed to edit the other two photos late last night. It was taken on 20 February 2015, roughly a week before I saw it (and its mate) for the last time. People who have been seeing it in the months since then must be keeping very quiet about it. No reports, no photos posted anywhere. Gotta love the 48x zoom on my point-and-shoot : ) Focal Length (35mm format) - 1200 mm.
In the afternoon of 20 February 2015, there were just a couple of friends down in the park and, happy to say, they had already found this tiny, popcan-sized owl. This was its perch during the time I was there, giving some nice out in the open views, but all very similar. It's such a beautiful owl. This is the female, all puffed up to keep warm on a cold winter's day - the male is smaller, has a more rusty colour especially around the neck, and he has a thicker, white eyebrow line.
"Northern Pygmy Owls are 'sit and wait' predators, that hunt mainly by vision, diving down onto prey on the ground and driving the talons into the prey's throat. They will also attack birds in shrubs, crashing into the hapless victims. Most prey is carried off in the feet to feeding sites. Birds are usually plucked before being consumed. They often eat only the brains of birds and the soft abdomen of insects. One of these little owls can carry prey weighing up to 3 times its own weight.
The Northern Pygmy Owl feeds on a wide range of small prey including small mammals, birds, and reptiles and amphibians. Voles make up the bulk of their diet, with birds comprising most of the rest (mainly songbirds, but as large as a California Quail). Other small mammals include shrews, mice, chipmunks, bats, moles, young rabbits, and weasels. Insects may be very important when they are most abundant. Other prey taken are toads, frogs and small lizards and snakes.
During winter, surplus prey is cached in a cavity, often in large quantities. Summer caches are usually much smaller.
Pellets are very small, averaging about 3cm long. They are formed only occasionally as these owls don't consume large amounts of fur, feathers, or bone. The pellets tend to fall apart shortly after ejection." From OwlPages.
www.owlpages.com/owls.php?genus=Glaucidium&species=ca...
Looks like we are in for a big snow storm! Yuck. Update - no snow fell, at least in my part of the city, but we did get ice pellets.
A few more odds and ends from my archives. I am adding the description that I wrote under a different image taken on the same outing. So far, two weeks without my car. Still more weeks to follow.
"In the afternoon of 20 February 2015, there were just a couple of friends down in the park and, happy to say, they had already found this tiny, popcan-sized owl. This was its perch during the time I was there, giving some nice out in the open views, but all very similar. It's such a beautiful owl. This is the female - the male is smaller, has a more rusty colour especially around the neck, and he has a thicker, white eyebrow line. In the end, it went to sleep.
"The Northern Pygmy-Owl may be tiny, but it’s a ferocious hunter with a taste for songbirds. These owls are mostly dark brown and white, with long tails, smoothly rounded heads, and piercing yellow eyes. They hunt during the day by sitting quietly and surprising their prey. As a defensive measure, songbirds often gather to mob sitting owls until they fly away. Mobbing songbirds can help you find these unobtrusive owls, as can listening for their call, a high-pitched series of toots." From AllAboutBirds.
Please don't use this image on websites, blogs or other media without my explicit permission. © All rights reserved
Edited Landsat 8 image of the Elephant Foot Glacier in Greenland.
Original caption: Pour batter onto a griddle and watch the mixture spread out into a round-shaped pancake. The movement is similar to the flow of piedmont glaciers, which form when ice spills from a steep valley onto a relatively flat plain. These glaciers are known for their nearly symmetric, fan-shaped lobes.
The shape of Greenland’s Elephant Foot Glacier, for example, is so distinct that it stands out dramatically from its surroundings when viewed from space. The Operational Land Imager (OLI) on Landsat 8 acquired this image of the glacier on June 21, 2014.
“Elephant Foot is an excellent example of a piedmont glacier,” said NASA scientist Tom Neumann. “In fact, it is often used as the example of a piedmont glacier because it is so symmetric.”
Located in northeastern Greenland on the Kronprins Christian Land peninsula, the glacier is not connected to Greenland’s main ice sheet. Rather, it’s part of a network of glaciers and ice caps that pepper the periphery of the island. Research has shown that as a whole, these outlying glaciers and ice caps account for 5 to 7 percent of Greenland’s total ice coverage, but they are responsible for 20 percent of its contribution to sea level rise.
Elephant Foot Glacier is just one of the beautiful scenes contained within an image swath acquired from across the Arctic by Landsat 8. To interactively explore the entire swath and to view more image highlights, read the full story here.
References and Related Reading
Bolch, T. et al. (2013, March 13) Mass loss of Greenland’s glaciers and ice caps 2003-2008 revealed from ICESat laser altimetry data. Geophysical Research Letters, 40, 875-881.
Livescience (2013, March 19) Greenland’s Isolated Glaciers Melting Quickly. Accessed February 19, 2015.
NASA Earth Observatory (2014, February 16) Landsat Goes Over the Top: A Long View of the Arctic.
National Snow and Ice Data Center (2014) Glacier Types: Piedmont. Accessed February 19, 2015.
NASA Earth Observatory image by Jesse Allen, using Landsat data from the U.S. Geological Survey. Caption by Kathryn Hansen.
Instrument(s):
Landsat 8 - OLI
Source page: earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=85303
UK Trade and Investment (UKTI) participated as the country partner at the Kolkata TiECon 2015 held in Kolkata, 20 February 2015. Alpesh Patel, Dealmaker, UK Trade and Investment (UKTI) lighted the inaugural lamp. Follow us on Twitter@UKinIndia
UK Trade and Investment (UKTI) participated as the country partner at the Kolkata TiECon 2015 held in Kolkata, 20 February 2015. In this picture, representatives from Oury Clark speaking to an event delegate. Follow us on Twitter@UKinIndia
Video (Flickr didn't like the animated GIFs I tried to upload for some unexplained reason) created from Cassini images showing a star being occulted by one of Saturn's rings.
Video (Flickr didn't like the animated GIFs I tried to upload for some unexplained reason) created from Cassini images showing a star being occulted by one of Saturn's rings. Fast version.
Panorama of MODIS Terra images (250m/pixel) showing East Asia on 21 February 2015 in an arc from southern Japan to north of the Kamchatka Peninsula and showing to active volcanoes emitting a volcanic plume (one in Kyushu and one on the Kamchatka Peninsula).
DBS 92041 'Vaughan Williams' is seen leading the 4M25 Mossend Euroterminal - Daventry INT RFT Recep RFD. Seen at Red Bank on the West Coast Main Line running 11 minutes early.
Panorama of MODIS Aqua images (250m/pixel) showing East Asia on 21 February 2015 in an arc from southern Japan to north of the Kamchatka Peninsula and showing to active volcanoes emitting a volcanic plume (one in Kyushu and one on the Kamchatka Peninsula). This Aqua image shows a better volcanic plume from Sakurajima than the Terra image does.
Panorama of MODIS Terra images (250m/pixel) showing East Asia on 21 February 2015 in an arc from southern Japan to north of the Kamchatka Peninsula and showing to active volcanoes emitting a volcanic plume (one in Kyushu and one on the Kamchatka Peninsula). I annotated the volcanic plumes in the image - the one near the top is easy to spot but the one in Japan is a bit more difficult - look at the lower-right corner.
First attempt at creating a panorama of East Asia from MODIS images. While not what I expected, it is still interesting, in a warped kind of way.
I ran one of the kaleidoscopic images I've posted through a commercial program that makes interesting changes to images and this is the result.
I ran one of the kaleidoscopic images I've posted through a commercial program that makes interesting changes to images and this is the result.
UK Trade and Investment (UKTI) participated as the country partner at the Kolkata TiECon 2015 held in Kolkata, 20 February 2015. In this picture- Andrew Oury, Partner, Oury Clark addresses the audience. Follow us on Twitter@UKinIndia
Edited Suomi NPP image of Japan from Honshu down. Note the thick volcanic plume from Sakurajima in Kyushu.
UK Trade and Investment (UKTI) participated as the country partner at the Kolkata TiECon 2015 held in Kolkata, 20 February 2015. Alpesh Patel - Dealmaker, UKTI in conversation with Stephen Brice- Deputy Head of Mission, British Deputy High Commission Kolkata. Follow us on Twitter@UKinIndia
I ran one of the kaleidoscopic images I've posted through a commercial program that makes interesting changes to images and this is the result.
UK Trade and Investment (UKTI) participated as the country partner at the Kolkata TiECon 2015 held in Kolkata, 20 February 2015. In this picture, event delegates at the UK Trade and Investment (UKTI) stand. Follow us on Twitter@UKinIndia
I ran one of the kaleidoscopic images I've posted through a commercial program that makes interesting changes to images and this is the result.
UK Trade and Investment (UKTI) participated as the country partner at the Kolkata TiECon 2015 held in Kolkata, 20 February 2015. In this picture- Ashi Patel, Partner, Oury Clark addresses the audience. Follow us on Twitter@UKinIndia
Panorama of colorized images from Opportunity of the slope down to the floor of Endeavour Crater and the plains next to it. RGB images created from bands 2, 5, and 7. The colors make it almost look as if there's a pretty blue lagoon in the crater.
UK Trade and Investment (UKTI) participated as the country partner at the Kolkata TiECon 2015 held in Kolkata, 20 February 2015. In this picture-Alpesh Patel, Dealmaker, UK Trade and Investment (UKTI) addresses the audience. Follow us on Twitter@UKinIndia
I ran one of the kaleidoscopic images I've posted through a commercial program that makes interesting changes to images and this is the result.
UK Trade and Investment (UKTI) participated as the country partner at the Kolkata TiECon 2015 held in Kolkata, 20 February 2015. Alpesh Patel, Dealmaker, UK Trade and Investment (UKTI) in conversation with an event delegate. Follow us on Twitter@UKinIndia
UK Trade and Investment (UKTI) participated as the country partner at the Kolkata TiECon 2015 held in Kolkata, 20 February 2015. In this picture-Sandip Chaudhuri, Trade & Investment Adviser, UK Trade and Investment (UKTI) in conversation with an event delegate. Follow us on Twitter@UKinIndia
I ran one of the kaleidoscopic images I've posted through a commercial program that makes interesting changes to images and this is the result.
Varun Dhawan and Jaey Gajera at the Teaser Launch of Indian action-thriller film बदलाPUR. The film is scheduled for release on 20 February 2015.
#Badlapur #IndianActionFilm #SriramRaghavan #DineshVijan #SunilLulla #VarunDhawan #NawazuddinSiddiqui #HumaQureshi #YamiGautam #RadhikaApte #SachinJigar #JaeyGajera #AnilMehta #MaddockFilms #20February2015 #India #Hindi #Bollywood #ErosInternational
UK Trade and Investment (UKTI) participated as the country partner at the Kolkata TiECon 2015 held in Kolkata, 20 February 2015. In this picture- Alpesh Patel, Dealmaker, UK Trade and Investment (UKTI) interact with the audience. Follow us on Twitter@UKinIndia
Close-up picture of cat fur from one of the brushes we use to keep our cats relatively clean (and to keep fur from getting into everything). The gaps in the fur are where the metal bristles are on the brush.
I ran one of the kaleidoscopic images I've posted through a commercial program that makes interesting changes to images and this is the result.
I ran one of the kaleidoscopic images I've posted through a commercial program that makes interesting changes to images and this is the result.
Diagram of a head with phrenology symbols on it, as a vector. I liked the picture but phrenology itself is utter bilge.
I think the image is from the late 1800s.
Image source: Public Domain Review
Varun Dhawan and Jaey Gajera at the Teaser Launch of Indian action-thriller film बदलाPUR. The film is scheduled for release on 20 February 2015.
#Badlapur #IndianActionFilm #SriramRaghavan #DineshVijan #SunilLulla #VarunDhawan #NawazuddinSiddiqui #HumaQureshi #YamiGautam #RadhikaApte #SachinJigar #JaeyGajera #AnilMehta #MaddockFilms #20February2015 #India #Hindi #Bollywood #ErosInternational
Diagram of a head with phrenology symbols on it, as a vector. I liked the picture but phrenology itself is utter bilge.
I think the image is from the late 1800s.
Image source: Public Domain Review
Kaleidoscopic version of a wallpaper I made last year with the Japanese word 武士道. 武士道 is bushido in case you're curious.
I ran one of the kaleidoscopic images I've posted through a commercial program that makes interesting changes to images and this is the result.
I ran one of the kaleidoscopic images I've posted through a commercial program that makes interesting changes to images and this is the result.