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ZEISS DTI thermal imaging cameras. For more discoveries at night, and during the day.

Exploding pigeons (1 Viewer)

Binastro

Well-known member
The Canon 8x25 IS user has been going daily to Worcester to watch cricket.
The binocular works fine.
It has been over 30C for 5 days.

Yesterday or the day before when the match was over he went to the station to be told the train was cancelled. He waited, same again next train.
He went to the other Worcester train station to be told they would have to take him by taxi to Oxford.

Eventually 5 weary souls, including two nice ladies, were taken to Oxford in a people carrier.
He got home past midnight, but made new friends.

The trains have been cancelled all over because of the wrong type of heat. Road surfaces melting etc. in Cambridge and elsewhere.

Eventually a railway employee told him a pigeon had exploded and got onto the line, which was why the trains were cancelled.
I kid ye not.
This is so ridiculous, I suppose it is true.

It is now 33C and still rising.
29C in the lounge with air conditioner on all day and 35C in the kitchen.
Sleeping is tough, but eventually exhaustion takes over.

Good I am not in Texas or Las Vegas.

Mind you the Canon 8x25 IS worked fine in Perth Australia last year at over 40C.
The trouble was batteries cost 12 dollars or more there.

P.S.
The people carrier was found to be going the wrong way, by an observant passenger. It was going to Swindon.
The excuse by the driver was that the sat nav had packed up.
Anyone heard of a map?

That is why, besides no trains, they got home after midnight.
 
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The pigeon probably exploded when told of its role in the forthcoming Brexit negotiations.

It has been regularly 30+ in the Languedoc in France this last couple of weeks and hit 36C on one day.

Our Zeisses and Leicas worked fine: we didn't.

Lee
 
It is now 33C and still rising.

Good I am not in Texas or Las Vegas.

I'm in Texas, and you really *should* be here because:

A. It's in the middle of the afternoon and it is 32C.
B. We are well-equipped for this and higher temps.
C. Our birds do not explode.
D. It might be hotter in west Texas, but there is very low humidity.
E. We have very good barbeque, no matter how hot.
F. It's not Phoenix, where it hit about 48.3C yesterday.


Just sayin'.........:t:
 
I'm in Texas, and you really *should* be here because:
........
F. It's not Phoenix, where it hit about 48.3C yesterday.


Just sayin'.........:t:

It indeed did officially reach 119 F (48.3 C) at the airport on Tuesday. Wednesday at the airport was only 117 F. Driving around was hotter with the dark pavement. This is from yesterday (Wednesday) afternoon. Note the 122 F on the upper right part of the radio display.

IMG_20170621_152730165 Resized.jpg

I did not see any exploding pigeons but there were some White Winged Doves wondering about. They come for the summer heat and leaving in the fall when the weather gets nice. What a crazy bird! It is no fun walking around even if there is a breeze because it feels like an oven with the heat radiating of the ground. Most of the smart wildlife has found shade somewhere.

Last Sunday was a cool 112 F and I did check out a pond in the northwest part of the valley that afternoon for about 10 minutes using a Nikon EDG 8x32. There was not much to see but a few Mallards, but the binocular did fine. The light is harsh and the view will not be spectacular whether using a $200 binocular or high end. I suspect the Canon 1042 IS that I normally use at that location in the winter would have done fine, but when it is that hot out, I like to go small and lighter.

Hopefully things will be down to the chilly low 100's come August when some members come out for the Tucson Bird Festival.
 
It was 28C, 82F last night in the bedroom with 49% humidity. I only slept 3 hours because it was too hot.
Today it cooled off. 80F about 65% humidity outside instead of 93F yesterday. There was severe heat haze low down plus awful pollution, which is one reason it feels uncomfortable.
I have acclimatised a bit, but I think it takes 3 weeks, and I am not young.

The hottest I have been in was 112F on holiday.
In Perth Australia it may get up to 118F or so.

It turns out that the 3 smaller taxis from Worcester station one arrived in Oxford before the people carrier from Worcester station two. They met up and got the train from Oxford.
It seems the railway company has a duty to get you home.

The passenger in the people carrier who realised it was going in the wrong direction used her phone to plot the route. She was maybe an Italian in her twenties. The British passengers would have gone to Swindon without her help.

One of the two Canon 8x25 IS binoculars has one of the rubber thin grommets coming away again. The optical window hasn't fallen out. I think the rubber is just too thin to grip properly.
Also one of the strap 'holders' has got lost. Maybe another trip to Canon. If my hands were in better shape I suppose I'd glue the rubber back. The binocular gets quite a bit of use, but is cheapest of the Canon IS range.
The optical performance of both 8x25s is good especially with the IS on.

I am still not sure why the pigeon exploded. Spontaneous combustion maybe.
I hit one in the 1960s travelling at 100 mph in the Austin Mini Cooper S. The closing speed could have been anything from 60mph to 140mph.
It did sort of explode, but the windscreen didn't break. It hit near the top of the screen, I think deflected by the airflow.

A pigeon flew through our window glass when we were on a seaside holiday, but survived. A smaller bird didn't.
 
We've got a few states in the US that are experiencing temps of 130F = 44C. Thankfully, my state isn't one of them.
 
130F is 54.4C.
That is not something I want to experience.

I hope we don't end up with a runaway greenhouse Earth on the way to Venus's maybe 1,000F.
I'll have to look up the temperature.
Raining sulphuric acid and tremendous pressure I think.

We really do need to stop our foolish ways.
 
In the recent weather warning map issued by the UK Met Office they had relocated Swindon north of Gloucester, methinks that this confusion over the location of these towns was clearly the work of some Canon/pigeon hating druid preparing for the Summer Solstice yesterday.

In the meantime during the hottest part of the day a solitary Song Thrush had set up a production line in the shade of my garage smashing the shells off all the juiciest snails it could locate.
Some ancient sage could probably find something wise and meaningful about this.

Today it is cooler and some sanity may return.
 
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Hi Binastro,

Eventually a railway employee told him a pigeon had exploded and got onto the line, which was why the trains were cancelled.
I kid ye not.
This is so ridiculous, I suppose it is true.

When the pigeon bridges the gap between high voltage overhead line and the grounded mast, it's killed by the resulting electric arc. I suppose the effect is a lot like a small explosion, but it's the short circuit that interrupts rail traffic.

When I heard a very alarming "Bang!" one day while waiting at a station, a railroad employee commented that this was nothing to worry about, just an exploding pigeon ... no impact on the time table that day, as far as I could tell.

Regards,

Henning
 
130F is 54.4C.
That is not something I want to experience.

I hope we don't end up with a runaway greenhouse Earth on the way to Venus's maybe 1,000F.
I'll have to look up the temperature.
Raining sulphuric acid and tremendous pressure I think.

We really do need to stop our foolish ways.
They call it Death Valley for a reason. :smoke:

"...ground temperature of 201 °F (93.9 °C) was recorded in Furnace Creek on July 15, 1972"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Furnace_Creek,_California
 
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Thanks for the link.

Quite a few years after volcanic activity our astronomy club members visited La Palma to observe at nearly 8,000 ft near the main observatories.

In the day we went to volcanic locations in hire cars and the ground was still hot. If you put your hand in an opening it was still almost unbearably hot.

Does Death Valley have any underground heat source also?

We can only boast the Walkie Talkie building that fries eggs and melts cars, although they said they have now overcome this heat problem.
 
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