Monday 13 April 2009

Lovely weather for frogs

The weather was fine throughout the holiday weekend, for us in the blessed east of Kent at least (and apologies to those who were not so fortunate).

Various habitats were visited, and spring was bursting in all of them.The first bluebells are bringing a new tone to the woodlands.....
...butterflies like this peacock, and an orange tip and a holly blue in the garden, are warming in the sun...
...various kinds of catkins are showering their pollen, like this creeping willow....
....birds are arriving all the time and singing....

....in competition with marsh frogs in the reedbeds.



I must acknowledge a great respect for weather forecasters (and not just Kaddy) who with the increased precision of hourly forecasts for small areas of the country, generally get it about right, westerlies excepted perhaps.

It irritates me, however, that so many people seem to think that it is 'always raining' or that we have a bad climate - it's not, the sun shines for far longer than it rains, and the number of times that we as individuals actually get inconvenienced and wet is very small.

A quick bit of research shows that we in the south-east get about 600mm of rain each year, similar to Paris and rather less than Rome. Manchester gets an average of about 900mm. For further comparison, New York and Sydney both get about double this amount.

This message brought to you by the East Kent Tourist Board.

10 comments:

East Kent Kingfishers said...

Hello,

enjoy reading your blog. I spoke to you briefly yesterday at Grove when you were looking for the ring ouzel; I hate to say this but it reappeared a short time after you left.

Best wishes,
Rob

Kingsdowner said...

Thanks Rob, that's really good to know :-(

It was a good morning otherwise, and plenty of people to meet. Hope we run into each other again sometime.

Warren Baker said...

Bloody kaddy!!! They are all the same steve, all t**s and legs. I don't care what it does weather- wise, I just want to know when! :-)

Mary said...

Love the frog and other spring shots! Nice willow photos! OK...you convinced me to come to Kent for the sunshine! I could use some right now....we are having plenty of April showers and cooler temps here right now :-)

NW Nature Nut said...

how do i apply for citizenship?

Greenie said...

Steve ,
From the look of that weather map , there must be a lot of righteous people living along that coastline , it was horrible here .
Nice one with the Holly Blue .
Take no notice of Warren , he's probably misplaced the tablets again .

Kingsdowner said...

Warren, you're banned for speaking ill of Kaddy!
Mind you, I might change my tune if we are rained on for the next few weekends.

Mary and Michele, with Sterling so weak against the dollar and euro, we're hoping that our economy will be helped by the arrival of visitors from overseas, so you're all welcome!

abbey meadows said...

Lovely spring shots. Spring is about a month behind...it's still freezing up here.

Warren Baker said...

Hey steve, have you seen the weather presenter nazneen ghaffir ?
Much nicer than Kaddy!!!!!!!!

Kingsdowner said...

Now Warren, you're going to get me into trouble.
Judgement of Soloman......
they are both talented intelligent forecasters who generally get the predictions right, and communicate well with the viewers.
And both quite attractive, I suppose :-)