Hmm, three war helicopters clattered past today. It was (and still is) very sunny and there’s just a little wind. The 21°C sun on the back felt pleasant. In the forest we encountered two dead mice on the paths, they might have been dropped by birds. https://lyse.isobeef.org/waldspaziergang-2024-04-12/

Just a few minutes into my walk I saw a raven chopping up a slow worm in three parts. :-( I rescued the reptile as best as what you can call rescue in that state. Crazy how the the tail and middle part kept on twisting hard for minutes. I didn’t see where the raven went hiding, so I can only hope it did not reattack after the slow worm went its way and I left the scene.

The small forest pond was covered in pollen, looked like a liming truck went by. And the other one with the duck was really oily. Way more than last time. Didn’t look healthy at all. :-(

This is soooo cool! Matthias on some solar panning camera build and eclipse shenanigans, highly recommended: https://youtu.be/YLDaM0FcXC4

@movq@www.uninformativ.de Being lazy is what I did today. :-)

That’s a bitter, but true résumé. I’m pretty sure that I first heard of the Saharan air layer only a few years ago. I would be very surprised if my knowledge is more than a decade old. This could have been a big enough topic to be covered in geography lessons, but it doesn’t ring a bell. Just like with everything, there is always something “new” to learn.

@movq@www.uninformativ.de I did! :-)

@movq@www.uninformativ.de I didn’t see that reply in your feed. :-)

@movq@www.uninformativ.de You’re right, that was silly. But what do you gonna do? I could have picked bike, well.

At least it’s been a thing since July 1997. :-D I wouldn’t be surprised if this goes on for thousands of years. The German Wikipedia article on that matter doesn’t explicitly say anything about the time scale, but reading it my assertion corroborates. There is a recorded event in the year 1901.

Oh boy, that was fricking hot. I hiked to the dairy farm to get some fresh milk for waffles and was totally soaked when I returned.

Fortunately, the Saharan air layer reduced the direct sunlight. A slightly older man and I talked a bit how weird the sky looked and he asked me whether that has always been like that. He didn’t recall experiencing anything like that in his youth. I really don’t know, but I reckon that this is not a new phenomenon. I also don’t recall seeing that when I was a child, however, I was also not interested in stuff like that back then. Hence, it could be selection bias. But it also might be more frequent with climate change. 02 shows the yellow, hazy sky quite good if I say so myself. It doesn’t compare to last week or whenever that was, though. Last time was much more intense.

Baking waffles in the later evening on the balcony was nice. Temperatures dropped to just 24°C or so. Much more pleasant. The noise level in the neighborhood was also surprisingly low. And no mozzies around, another surprise. Quite the opposite when I was in the forest. Lots of insect clouds that followed me around and tried to bite me.

I witnessed a Eurasian jay land in a tree. On approach it broke off a rotten branch that fell down. The bird luckily selected a different branch to land on. That was crazy.

More pics from the tour: https://lyse.isobeef.org/waldspaziergang-2024-04-08/

@movq@www.uninformativ.de But it’s supposed to rain tomorrow at max 15°C. :-)

@movq@www.uninformativ.de Looks like it. 28°C here, gna.

@prologic Classic move. :-( I think everybody experiences that at least once in their life. Get well!

@sorenpeter@darch.dk Thanks mate! :-)

I’ve been out a few hours again. I came across a dozen or so forest mice. I heard tons of squeaking and saw a lighting fast moving seething mass under leaves and groves. It was impossible to capture anything but I could watch it for two, three minutes. They even seemed to come as close as 20 centimeters judging by the rustle and moving plant leaves. Pretty cool.

But heaps of people had to fire up their noise machines today. That clouded my overall joy in nature. Once a commercial airliner was about to fade away in the distance, the next one already adumbrated itself. Lots of prop planes and even a helicopter. Obnoxious loud super cars and motorcycles with broken off mufflers or I don’t know what. My felt hat amplifies the sound I noted.

Luckily, the sun hid behind the clouds most of the time, so I survived the 25°C. Even hotter tomorrow, yikes!

https://lyse.isobeef.org/waldspaziergang-2024-04-07/

@movq@www.uninformativ.de Thanks mate! I’m glad you like it. :-)

Unfortunately, I think it’s just an illusion that it’s super quiet over here. Mostly boils down to carefully selected recordings, as I want to share the nice stuff. ;-) In reality, you can also hear man-made noises nearly everwhere. Depending on the wind direction, even in the middle of the forest in the middle of the night you can hear the railroad in the valley in the distance or cars and motorcycles on surrounding streets. There are only very, very few spots where there is only the sound of nature.

I tried to record birds singing numerous times, but even if they’re quite loud themselves, there has always been the traffic noise in the background on all tracks, so I scrapped them (I would need a directional microphone). And if there is actually no traffic on the ground, a plane comes by. :-) We’re in the air corridor of Stuttgart Airport, planes are still relatively high, so it could be way worse. But recreational smaller planes also like to cruise around in our area. And those propellors stir up the air quite a lot.

However, the snow really does cut down a lot of the (annoying) audio waves, that’s for sure, no doubt about that. :-)

@movq@www.uninformativ.de Yeah, we thought a couple of times that this loader is about to tip over.

Same here, I’ve seen the needle climb to 27°C. To help cool off, here’s some bonus winter footage I edited today: https://lyse.isobeef.org/waldspaziergang-2024-01-20/waldspaziergang-2024-01-20.mp4 (724.1 MiB)

@movq@www.uninformativ.de If I go far enough there are indeed a few paths I haven’t been on. ;-)

Yeah, that tractor moved up and down a giant manure heap. Although the tires spun a few times, it’s quite amazing how relatively effortless it looked to drive on that pile of shit. That machine leaned quite a bit at a few spots. https://lyse.isobeef.org/waldspaziergang-2024-04-05/traktor-auf-misthaufen.mp4 (114.5 MiB) You might have figured, 11 and 17 show also the same subject from different angles.

We went on a three hours hike on today’s 22°C warm spring day. Luckily, it was cloudy, so the temperature was bearable. Tomorrow and the day after are supposed to be very sunny 25°C days, puh. We explored even a new path I’ve never been on. It was a very enjoyable tour, up and down, up and down, up and down. I feel m feet. https://lyse.isobeef.org/waldspaziergang-2024-04-05/