Winter beauty at work

In the absence of spring, I find beauty where I can, in dead weeds and ice.

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Global climate change, or just nasty weather?

It has become a fashion in our day, to notice short weather patterns and blame them on Global Climate Change. To be sure, by definition, Global Climate Change is a factor in every meteorological event. But it is specious reasoning to cite, for example, the fact that this winter in Boston was unusually warm, as a trend that we can blame on "global warming." The danger is that there is still a subset of "skeptics" (a strange breed of skeptics who are skeptical of science, which itself is the work of skeptical inquirers) who doubt that Global Climate Change is a reality, and if we take the warm winter as evidence of it, then if next winter is colder than average, that will be taken as evidence to the contrary.

Nonetheless, while I was walking on the snow this morning, I wondered if Global Climate Change was going to result in more ice, less real snow for the future of Boston. We have had two serious storm events this winter, and both of them have left us with this durable ice-foam rather than snow. During the course of each storm, the temperature rose and then dropped, melting and then freezing the accumulated slop into this stuff. You can't really play with it. You can slide around on it a little (it would be good for a light kid in a saucer sled) but you can't make a snowman out of it (the snowman I posted yesterday had to have been hastily erected while the slush was still malleable), you can't make snowballs (but you can hurl icy chunks that would give your target a gash) and walking on it is dangerous--whether you will punch through, slip, safely trod on top of it varies with every step. You could build with it if you were highly motivated and had the proper tools. You could use a steel shovel (not a snow shovel--those things are worse than useless with this material) to chop it into blocks and lift them out, and build yourself an igloo or a heavy wall.

In any case, the stuff is unpleasant, and if you don't shovel it off the sidewalk or out of your parking spot quickly, it will harden into epoxy and make life difficult and hazardous. Is this the substance of future winters? I have three more winters to find out.

Birdsong

Yesterday I had to go to work, to put in my mandatory special event time. Since for some reason there isn't much traffic on Sundays, I got there early. That was good, as it gave me a chance to go for a walk on the snow, and then I came across something pretty cool. In the trees overhead was a mixed flock of blackbirds. After I shot this video, I went to go see what they were. There were 30 or 40 male red-winged blackbirds, and a dozen or so starlings. I thought I heard grackles, but I wasn't certain that I could see them. There could have been other kinds of blackbirds--brewer's, bronzed, or rusty, or maybe some brown-headed cowbirds, but I could only make out the redwings and starlings.

This video is for listening. Close your eyes and enjoy. For the birdos, how many species can you pick out?
The woodpecker was on the other side of me, in the deer enclosure. I never saw it.

3:00 snapshot, #53.

I think the flash ruined this snapshot. There's a nicer, no flash version, ( under the cut. )