February Frosts

More sharp frosts in early February with a new record for 2012 of -7C at just before 9.00am on the 3rd. It was so cold Jack had to have his coat on.

Mid January

The road from Jamboree Stone to Keepers Pool

Winter has finally arrived with sharp frosts 3 or 4 mornings in a row. Temperatures were as low as -6C in the car on the way to the park at just after 8 o'clock in the morning. Frost is really photogenic and I ended up taking loads of shots over the past few days.

Jack doesn't mind the cold

Spectacular ice crystals

The New Year

The New Year started with gales all over the country. Fortunately the Midlands wasn't so badly affected as other parts of the UK but there were only a couple of days when there was decent enough light for photography. On the 2nd January the early morning sun lit up the leafless silver birch trees across Longmore valley picking out some nice pink and mauve hues.

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Christmas week

The weather this week has been pretty murky with not much in the way of photo opportunities. Christmas morning was one of the best days with a spectacular sunrise. As I took this picture over Powells pool the church bells were ringing in the distance making it a very atmospheric moment.

The only other morning with decent weather was Tuesday 27th when I managed to get a shot of Jack in a reasonable pose.

The week before Christmas

Two mushrooms/fungi I found in the park this week and I'm fairly confident about their identity. The one above is easy, its "Yellow Brain fungus", but the one on the left was a bit more tricky. I found one that looked like it in my reference books and then checked it on google. I'm pretty sure its "Velvet Shank" which apparently is an edible variety and particularly enjoyed by the Japanese in soups. I will have to become a lot more expert and confident about positive identification before I start to eat anything I find though.

Wednesday (21st December) was the shortest day with the sun rising at 8.15 and setting again at 15.55. However, we had cloud cover all day so didn't get a glimpse of the sun. I did see a predawn glow in the sky on Monday at about 8.10 but it didn't last long.

The best day of the week was Thursday with blues sky and just a bit of high cloud. There was a lot of air traffic that morning as shown by these vapour trails over Rowton Bank.

Sunday stroll

We were a bit late going out this morning, the sun was well up by 9.00 am. There'd been a moderate frost which was still lingering on the grass. Just as we started our walk a great bank of grey cloud rolled in and covered the sun. Although the temperature was still a couple of degrees below freezing we had a sharp rain shower. I managed to take a couple of shots before the sun was completely obscured.

Above:  looking over towards Queens Coppice with Barr Beacon behind.

Below:  a last burst of sunshine under the advancing cloud.

December sunrise

Just starting on the blogger learning curve, thought I would see how this shot I took a couple of days ago of sunrise in Sutton Park would look.