Sun halo

All three photos posted this morning were taken yesterday, 25 May 2015, when my daughter and I spent the day driving a large area NW of Calgary - a round trip of 340 km. The perfect way to celebrate my birthday : ) Most of the roads were roads that I had driven before, but I had never driven to Big Hill Springs Provincial Park.

I had really, really hoped to find a Great Gray Owl, as my daughter has never seen one in the wild. No luck yesterday, even though I knew a few areas to check. In fact, we saw so few birds of any kind! I'm always thankful that we both enjoy taking photos of all sorts of things, including barns.

Our little adventure started off in hopes of seeing a Red Fox family (out of luck), then driving the Grand Valley Rd and area. We stopped at Wynchell Lake, where my daughter spotted a Great Blue Heron and a very distant Kingfisher perched on a piece of driftwood. Also some kind of shorebird. She has great eyes for spotting things!

From there, we travelled eastwards and eventually reached Big Hill Springs Provincial Park. I had been hoping that there might at least be some wildflowers in bloom, but Dandelions were all we saw all day! Plenty of green foliage everywhere, but no flowers. Since yesterday, Alberta is under a province-wide fire ban thanks to the lack of rain. Everywhere is bone dry, which I would imagine is affecting the growth of plants. After I had dropped my daughter off at home, I did get some rain on my drive home - there were even snowflakes mixed in with the rain.

Another thing I saw on my drive home, while stopped at a traffic light, were four Jack Rabbits that had fun chasing each other round the base of a huge Spruce tree near the edge of the road and then they all ran across the road in single file between my car and the car in front. They were so, so cute : )

"There’s an old weather saying: ring around the moon means rain soon. There’s truth to this saying, because high cirrus clouds often come before a storm. Halos are a sign of high thin cirrus clouds drifting 20,000 feet or more above our heads.

These clouds contain millions of tiny ice crystals. The halos you see are caused by both refraction, or splitting of light, and also by reflection, or glints of light from these ice crystals. The crystals have to be oriented and positioned just so with respect to your eye, in order for the halo to appear.

That’s why, like rainbows, halos around the sun – or moon – are personal. Everyone sees their own particular halo, made by their own particular ice crystals, which are different from the ice crystals making the halo of the person standing next to you." From earthsky.org.

earthsky.org/space/what-makes-a-halo-around-the-moon#see

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo_%28optical_phenomenon%29