Our Frozen Ponds


Frozen
Regular fans of my blog will realize I did say it does get cold up here. Yesterday I was out shooting images after the snowstorm, and since it was a casual walk I had my iPhone 8 plus along, not really serious shooting. The temperature was -5° C, but with the wind, which was clipping along at over 30 knots, the “feel like” temperature, the wind chill, was actually more like -30° C. My iPhone died in seconds, even though it had almost 50% charge. I went back up to the house and got my Nikon d850, and it worked just fine. The advantages of a much, much bigger battery!
During the storm, I went down and got the image for this week, our ponds, Sandyland Ponds, here in Port Maitland. The ponds are now almost completely frozen over thanks to the low temperatures recently, with the only opening being where the brook comes into the ponds to the north of our house. No waterfowl remain in our pond right now, although the bald eagle has been around and had a look. The sharp shinned hawk is also buzzing about and looking for mice, and our resident Northern harrier, who should be much further south has stayed on as well.
The pond itself is fun to watch in a snowstorm, the quietly drifting snow coming down and covering the frozen surface of the ice. The snow makes wonderful patterns on the smoothness, and gets piled into little drifts by the wind. During the storm it wasn’t actually that windy, a rare thing for around here. Today, though, the wind is howling and even the smaller birds at our feeder are hunkering in the shrubs, not braving the open.
Tomorrow will bring a change – it’s supposed to go to +12° C and rain. Such is life in the banana belt. Our bananas are okay one day, and quite frozen the next. Maybe on the weekend we’ll have to have a frozen banana daquiri to honour the weather gods. Or a whisky to keep warm. One never knows!