great blue heron displaying the intense stare at the beginning of the fishing strike
Haw River
Tagproud
sky halo
I sent this photo to WRAL and Mike Moss of the weather bureau was kind enough to reply with the following explanation of what I photographed at 8:06 AM this morning at the Jordan Lake dam using my iPhone 5S. The photo is not edited in any way.
“Hi Ellen, You captured a nice example of the 22-degree halo, formed by light passing through a layer of millions of tiny hexagonal ice crystals that happen to be both well-formed and more or less randomly oriented. That happens on occasion with sheets of high cirrus clouds like those passing over the area this morning.”
[the small green dot at the top of the halo is from my iPhone]
where begins
spoilers
As I understand it, it was 1948 before man began to use air spoilers on airplane wings. The great egret and all flighted birds, make good use of spoilers as they land. It is not often I get to so easily see the spoilers on the back edges of the wings deployed and the lift spilled so the bird can safely land.






