yuletide weather

Here's a kind of cute entry in a blog on weather underground, a worldwide summary of tomorrow's weather with particular emphasis on whether snow-covered rooftops will make things easy for the reindeer. flying reindeer forecast

A week or so ago things were topsy-turvy; it was 28° here and 58° in Lincoln. This early morning however it is 31° here and 7° there.

I am sitting in front of the remains of my evening's fire, which is pretty much gone, so I will soon head for bed.

Eddie and I worked at the Ridge today, and cleaned almost all the windows, which made a HUGE difference. I have been putting out sunflower seed for about three days now, and there are many birds in evidence. Eddie was pretty impressed by four male cardinals at once in the back yard. I told him that's why it's called Red-bird Ridge, a name he had never really paid attention to before. People have become so used to meaningless street-names and subdivision names, that it doesn't even occur to them to look for real meaning in a placename any more.

Benthic update

Haven't been keeping records too well, but I can add in 4-1/2 hours of ID time this morning, and 5 hours collecting last Tuesday. Gay St. last week was very disappointing, though there was plenty of water. But Jackson, oh my! Blackflies, dragonflies, dayflies, damselflies, flatworms, scuds -- I didn't even finish sorting, much less ID everything this morning. There were 308 blackfly larvae.

The last two days were balmy. A cold front arrived last night. THe temp was 65 at midnight and going down steadily since then. It's forty now and predicted in the 20s tonight.