Birds in Winter at Russell Creek

February 15th, the coldest day this year, I saw 4 different birds braving the bitter cold during our morning and afternoon walks.

In our morning walking route, I saw dark grey tiny birds, scurry in the snow looking for food. I saw them again on a window sill along my afternoon walking route. This tiny bird is eastern phoebe.

I saw a tiny bird, similar to eastern phoebe in size and shape, on a bird feeder. This bird has dark eye, and its wing has some brown color feathers. This tiny bird turned out to be Dark-eyed Junco.

During our afternoon walk, we were surprised to see a flock of robins on a sidewalk. As we got closer, we saw many more robins in trees in a neighbor's yard. Robins' golden brown breasts were really eye catching in the snowy day. I was surprised because robins are territorial, they won't allow other robins in their territory. Typically I only see a single robin in a yard. 

Upon literature research, this is not an abnormality. It is natural phenomenon according to Cornell University's All About bird website. In winter robins form nomadic flocks, which can consist of hundreds to thousands of birds. Usually these flocks appear where there are plentiful fruits on trees and shrubs, such as crabapples, hawthorns, holly, juniper, and others. 

 I saw another flock of bird in one tree where many robins perched. These birds have crowns, multi-color breasts. Upon examine photos, I also noticed that they have yellow specks at tips of its tail, and red spot on its wing. Using Google lends, I identified them as cedar waxwing. Waxwing are social birds typically form large flocks per all about birds. I only saw waxwing perching solo on a tree until February 15th. 

When the snow started to melt, temperature was not too low by February 19th, many other birds came out from their hiding places, I saw house finch, mocking bird, cardinal, grackles …. It is interesting to note that robins' nomadic flocks broke, and they returned to live solo!

 

Patterns in the Frozen Russell Creek Pond

The formation of patterns is a complex Multiphysics phenomenon.  The main factors that influence the formation in the Russell Creek Pond include: wind, water depth, and under water current - which is induced by the turbine for a water fountain, as well as water flow over spillway. The water freezing physics, of course, plays a role in the pattern formation as well.

At N and W locations of the pond (see map), water is shallow, patterns aligned with pond shoreline, temperature gradient seems to play a role - land cools faster than water. 

The happy face drawn on the W side of the pond was no competition to the beauty of natural patterns.

Russell Creek Pond

freezing up in center region - irregular pattern

Circulating water is hard to freeze

pattern near northeast bank

pattern near the N bank of the pond, 2/15/2021

Pattern at west side of the pond (2/15/2021)

East side was fully frozen and pattern was covered by snow
February 15, 2021 afternoon

Happy face made by people at west (W) end of the pond on  February 19, 2021

2021 Texas Winter Storm: My Statistics

Here is a summary of my statistics per photos taken, small sample analysis, and news report for the 2021 Texas Winter Storm (February 12 - 19, 2021) 

Snow 3 times

first snow Feb 13 night, < 0.1 inch accumulation

 heavy snow Feb 14 night , 3-7 inch

third snow Feb 16 night, 1 ~ 2 inch

Lowest Temperature 2F (Feb 15) 

Temperature started to drop on Chinese New Year's day (Feb 12)    The coldest day had clear sky

Feb 15, 7am, Temperature 2F

People in the street in early Monday (Feb 15) morning: 2

2 pairs of footprints Feb 15 in the street

Exercise: Running: 1; Walking in the house: N

Rolling blackout: 30%

A quick survey from a small sample of people who are spread in North Texas indicated ~ 30% rolling blackout rate. News reported that there were 3 million households that experienced rolling blackout. Texas has 10 million households. So 30% is a very good estimate.

It was those who sulfured hardship were the vocal majority on social media and the focus of the News report. Those who were not affected, kept quiet and count their blessing

Burst pipe: N.  (estimated) less than 10%

There were fewer households that experienced burst pipe incidents than those experienced rolling blackout. I observed 4 possible pipe bursts during our daily walk in the community (which has ~ 500 houses), 2 were confirmed by rushing water or plumber; 2 were possible because homeowners came out to close main valves.  That's less than 1%. News report said thousands of houses had burst pipe. So I estimate that the burst pipe incident should be less than 10%.

water rushing out a neighbor's house! 

Most commonly seen  birds in Russell Creek Park area  - Robins

I typically see no Robins in the winters. But this past week, I saw large flocks of robins at residential area, on a tree, or around the Russel Creek pond. 

Upon literature research, this is not an abnormality. It is natural phenomenon according to Cornell University's All About bird website. In winter robins form nomadic flocks, which can consist of hundreds to thousands of birds. Usually these flocks appear where there are plentiful fruits on trees and shrubs, such as crabapples, hawthorns, holly, juniper, and others. 

American Robins and ? Cardinals

Most Common water fowls  - Mallard and America Coot 

Mallard in the front, Coots in the back

Fluid dynamics phenomena: N

wind tunnel!

recirculation zoon

Eddy on the roof

Wind swept

Most distinguishable  landmarks in our community:1

 Lonestar flag in my front yard

This Texas Life - Texas 2021 Winter Storm

Howling northwest wind

Bitter arctic cold

Pond frozen

Pipe bursting

Inflictions

frozen Russell Creek Pond

Neighbor's burst pipe

Virgin snow covered Texas

Winter wonderland

Lonestar soars in wind

Sunshine breaks through

Beauty

Snow covered street

Soaring Lonestar flag

Braving the cold

Watching Robins in trees

Truck sledding

Take in nature wholehearted

Adaptability

Texans 

… 

Resilience

braving the cold

Robins in the tree

truck sledding 

Help others to Help yourself

Have you experienced this? you are frustrated that a casher at the supermarket is too slow and causes a long wait line, your email to your manager on an urgent matter is not replied, your community park was littered and no one from city to clean it up … The list can go on and on. Those might all be legit and reasonable. 

One can do something to help with the situations.

At supermarket, one could presort the items on convey belt, separate food from detergent, raw meat from cooked food, items to be scanned from items needs to be weighted .. whatever the case might be, you help the cashers save 20 - 30 seconds. 

At work, your email to your supervisor for approval to purchase a headphone for work from home is not replied for many days. Did you just forward the request for purchase ticket to the supervisor with a comment? If you edit the email title with, e.g. "Request for approval: ….", it should help your supervisor get a clear idea what you need without reading your message, and you get a quick response.

A slow response to your community's issues from your local government might be that they did not know you have problems there as fast as you do from their scheduled check. You can help your city government to solve your community service issues by reporting them through city hotline or website. If you do, you should find out that the service will be provided much faster.

These are examples for what I meant - help others to help you. The following are examples of what I did to help others to help me.

Prevention of Damage to Soaker Hoses 

I lay soaker hoses around my house foundation to prevent the foundation from excessive movement. The issue I had was that my mowing contractor would damage the hoses from time to time.

Despite the fact that the contractor would reimburse me for replacing the damaged hose, it was annoying that the hoses were damaged, especially when I did not notice the damage for a while, and thus soaker hoses did not function as intended.

We communicated to the contractor and ask him to be careful....but they continued to damage the hoses. The annoyance and frustration continued.

So I asked myself what I could do to help the contractor from damaging my soaker hoses when he mows my yard for me. So solution is very simple, we raise the soaker hoses off the ground the night before he came to  mow, and put the hoses back on the ground after the mowing. No more damage to my hoses any more! He mows faster as well because of this.

raising hoses help contractor to prevent damaging hoses

Help City Government to Serve Us Better

We need many city services to keep our community safe, functional and beautiful.  When you are worried about burglars, call police about suspicious persons and activities so they can come to take care things for us; when you see potholes in the street, call city so they can send service crews  timely to repair; when a neighbor does not take care their yard, and make the neighborhood look ugly, call the city to enforce city codes …

I enjoy our community park a lot, and early last year, I noticed the significant growth of invasive water grass in the pond of the park. I worried that the invasive grasses would destroy the ecosystem in the pond. I submitted a request to city park services for removal of the  invasive grasses. The city took action in a few weeks, as shown in the above photo, the grasses were withering due to chemical treatment, which might be harmful to water fowls. The invasive grass patch has minimized further since the photo time. I am pleased that the city helped me to keep our park beautiful.

Help others to help yourself ! 

  

Failure Modes of Mission Belt

I got to know the mission belt brand from watching Shark Tank. The belt had a unique design and looked slick. I liked it right away and ordered one shortly afterwards.

From the design, replacing the buckle/pin and holes in the belts, with buckle/ratchet and hard plastic teeth on the belt, I expect that the belt has a very long functional life.

However there is an unexpected failure mode to the release lever, which uses a square cross section to open the ratchet - the locking mechanism. Due to wear to this release feature, lever malfunctions in about 22 months. The following is a gif animation of the failure phenomenon, rotating the level fails to release the ratchet. I will explain how the belt works first, then the failure mechanism.

My first mission belt after 7 and half years

How does Mission Belt Work

The belt has a great design to solve typical belt failure mode - fracture of most commonly used holes for buckle in a traditional belt. The traditional belt could have fracture of the commonly used hole(s) in a matter of a year. One may prolong the usage of the traditional belt by cutting it short at buckle side, and punch new hole as needed. 

a traditional belt - managed to use it for nearly 10 years! it functioned fine but shabby looking

The mission belt solves the  typical belt failure mode in a tradition belt - fracture of most commonly used holes for buckle. Instead of tightening the belt via latch a pin into a hole, high stress concentration at the hole which causes cracking, mission belt used hard plastic teeth to anchor the buckle/ratchet... changed the load for anchoring from nearly point load to line load , which significantly reduce stress concentration... prolong the life of the belt.  One may not see a belt cracking any more. 

Illustration of how mission belt works from MissionBelt.com 

The Failure of Mission Belt

My first mission belt leather never cracked, but I had a different problem, it is with the release lever.

The release mechanism of the lever is realized by rotating the lever. The ridges of square cross section part will have interference with the ratchet on the logo side, lift the ratchet off the belt allowing the  movement of the belt to insert or release.

the release lever

square x-section end will push the ratchet open during rotation

The ridge wears a bit every time one put on or take off the belt. In a little bit less than two years ( ~ 22.5 months), one ridge was rounded, and it can not open the ratchet any more. One may rotate the lever 90 degrees more to use the next ridge to open the ratchet, until all 4 ridges are rounded. Once this happens, one can not release the ratchet using the lever, as the gif animation showed at the beginning of the blog.

When this happens, one can not loosen the belt by rotating the lever... have to use a screwdriver or thin hard object to push the ratchet to loosen the belt!! My first belt buckle failed fully* in 7.5 years.

Another failure mode , which is more cosmetic than functional, is the rusting of the buckle surface.

rusted buckle

I also replaced the leather belt itself once, but I don't remember what caused it. Since Mission Belt sells replacement leather and buckle, that means they do have issues with both,

How to eliminate the failure mode for the release lever?

This failure mode could be resolved by coating the ratchet and the lever, make them more wear resistant, which may not fully eliminate the failure, but substantially increase the lever/ratchet life of proper function.

Another option is to change the cross section of the end of the rod from square to rectangular, make the side pushing the ratchet initially, longer. This could be an easier mechanical solution, but need to change manufacturing process. 

Option 1 is obvious, option 2 may not be obvious but a simple fix! 

* I was thinking to insert a think piece metal or plastic between the lever square end and the ratchet, or wrap a thin piece material around the square end. 

The downsides of covid-19

The frequently mentioned downsides of covid-19 include high death rate of covid-19 compared to influenzas, economical hardship on millions of American workers, especially those in service/hospitality industries, mental health issues.

There are a few major ones I see that are rarely mentioned in the news or in people's conversation.

Fear of covid-19 

Due to mainstream media's relentless report of bad news about covid-19, and barely mention the flip side of the same facts, e.g. death vs. recovery, a good percentage of people have unreasonable fear of covid-19.  This is ok since different people have different level of tolerance of risks. When unreasonable fear gets into policy makings, few officials' fear became hundreds of thousand of people's mandate. 

Many people and many governments take extreme measures in order to have zero risk from covid-19.  Any people with scientific knowledge know, we should control risk, but should not try make it Zero - which is impossible and wasteful. One obvious example: We have had traffic accidents death every day, e.g. 36k people died in 2019, we don't stop driving because of it. 

Fear makes people irrational.

Tons of Bio-trashes and trashes

Because of fear, people not working in medical facilities or near patients have used disposable facemasks, disposable gloves widely, leading to tons of bio trashes without really reducing their chance of getting infected. 

Instead of recycle, reuse, now everything is disposable, and further more many places, including working places, do not allow customers, employees to use the reusable cups, bags …….

It seems nobody talks about the environment protection any more …. 

It is getting better now,  at least many people started to reuse their facemasks, and gloves.

Of course the trash is  more than disposable facemasks or gloves.

The cardboard boxes from online shopping are a big problems as well …. 

Hypocritical politicians 

How many times we have heard that hypocritical politicians imposed restrictions on ordinary people …. no travel, no going to restaurants.... they did exactly what they prohibit others to do? This include Joe Biden, who on one day imposed facemask mandate on federal properties, and appeared with no facemask on federal property the very next day!!!

Pandemic induced health issues

More people gain weight during this pandemic than ever before, due to not enough physical activities and consumption of large amount of junk food

An even more serious issue is loneness, isolation and stress, this is especially true for those who have unreasonable fear of covid-19.

Covid-19 is serious matter, take precautions, follow general guidelines, don't be scared, life goes on.