Saw a wren down the bottom of the garden the other day, the first one for a while, maybe a winter visitor. Don't think I have ever seen one near the house, but given that I see one very often, that may not be significant.
The same day heard a great noise in the sky. Which appeared to be a flock of pigeons and a flock of crows working together to see off a flock of ring necked parakeets, these last making all the noise. Maybe at this time of year grub a bit short, so the large green aliens are not popular with the aboriginals.
On the vegetable front, the jelly lichen has not seen fit to sprout, despite the wet mild weather. One can see that it is there on the crumbly patch of back patio, but it is not doing anything much. For thriving times, see July 15th in the other place.
On the astronomical front, we have had a full moon during the week just past, during which we learned that, unlike the winter sun which rises well to the south of east, the winter moon rises well to the north of east. The night that it was fullest - happening to be awake around 0200 - it must have set off some loonies as the Surrey Police helicopter was swinging around our area for an hour or so. Very bright at that time when house and street lights were mainly off; not light enough to read indoors but it may well have been outdoors - although I was not energetic enough to investigate. In any case, the police helicopter may have mistaken me for one of the loonies, which might have been unfortunate.
But I did get to thinking about eclipses of the moon. First thought was that such things depended on the plane of the moon's orbit around the earth not quite coinciding with the plane of the earth's orbit around the sun, but then decided against. But mental three dimensional geometry not quite up to sorting it out properly at that time of night and I must have fallen back asleep. Maybe one of those astronomical websites offers a nice visualisation.
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