Day 291 - Mysteries of Nature

more sick

The big old sycamore tree in next door's garden is in a sorry state at the moment.

Of course, every Autumn it sheds its leaves...and luckily, having fairly large leaves, they tend to fall straight down - into next door's garden, not ours!

However, this year, the leaves all started to die very early, probably back in August...but not all of the leaves died at the same time...it's almost like the tree is moulting, gradually losing all its cover evenly over several weeks or a couple of months.

A popular theory locally is that the infamous drainage contractors dug through some significant roots and have thus damaged the tree.

You can see in this photo the new fence panel covering the gap in the hedge, where they dug through...also of course, where they dug through the incoming electricity supply...

Idiots!

The line of their digging goes within a few feet of the trunk, and a few feet below ground, so it's certain that they would have encountered the root system as they passed...and we know that their standard approach was simply to cut through anything that got in the way...

So it's a feasible theory...

The flaw, I guess, is that you would expect those parts of the tree directly fed by the damaged root system to be showing symptoms - the leaf loss would be patchy, not evenly spread, wouldn't it?

To be honest, I'm not knowledgeable enough on the intricacies of tree biology to know whether that's true or not...

In any case, the tree does seem very poorly, which is a shame as it's one of only two good sized trees directly around our house (both are in next door's garden).

I'll keep my eye on it, and keep you posted.

In other news, whilst wandering around the garden looking for photo-ops, more gulls passed overhead.

this way

I'm curious as to what sort of gull they are, and where they are going...seeing another similar group, flying in a V, and heading in the same direction, strongly implies migration.

Yet they're all heading north-east...aren't they supposed to fly south for the winter (in the Northern Hemisphere, at least)?!

I'm unreasonably intrigued by this behaviour, so if anyone has any ideas, please let me know!

In fact, if anyone can explain tree biology as it pertains to root damage, and the migratory patterns of gulls across middle England, then please do leave a comment!

ta...

:-)

Day 289 - Evening Light

too much?!

I nearly forgot to blog today, amidst a load of other distracting head stuff, so we went for a stroll down the lane looking for photo-ops in the deepening gloom of dusk.

I managed to catch a surprising variety of interesting (albeit only vaguely) shots...but mainly I learned that it's not that easy to get good shots in low light...or maybe it's just not that easy when you don't know what you're doing?!

Another thing I learned is that you really do need to tweak the photo's afterwards...and this in itself is something of a gamble...sometimes it produces great images, other times it just looks over-processed and a bit rubbish. 

The one above is a crop from a much larger photo, but otherwise doesn't have much processing other than a bit of (admittedly aggressive) contrast...I can't decide whether it's too processed (yeah it probably is...), but I quite like the depth.

This one was taken 10 or 15 minutes later, and the evening had clearly settled in a bit more...

cotton candy sky

This one isn't cropped - I decided to stick with the original framing...now I'm looking at it thinking I should have cropped it...doh!

I have tweaked it a little for contrast and colour...although I don't really know how to do that, so it's a general colour tweak to try to bring out the pink, which was quite vibrant in reality.

no eye deer

This one isn't cropped either, but was the naturally nicest of around ten photo's I took of these autumnal colours on a 5m strip of set-aside (or whatever) down the edge of this field...there was a deer of some type hiding in there, possibly a muntjac, but I didn't manage to get a shot of him.

In any case, the image is still tweaked a little for contrast and colour...and the light is so much better than the previous shot...if only I understood why that is!

new-ish moon

As we turned for home, the waxing crescent moon presented a rare opportunity...invariably when I notice an interesting or even simply a clear view of the moon, the camera is nowhere to be conveniently grabbed...but tonight, it was right there in my hands!

I've tweaked this a smidge to try to bring out some of the detail on the surface, and cropped it down too.  I think the out of focus foliage gives the shot some context...especially as the moon wasn't super bright and detailed.

Finally, a flock of seagulls flew overhead...

flying v

...and not the 80's New Wave band, much to my great relief...nobody needs that.

I think conditions were all wrong for a wildlife shot like this, but I took my chances anyway to see what would happen. 

I've cropped this, adjusted the contrast, and sharpened the image a little too.  

Still not a great photo, I grant.

But, it's a new species for the ongoing Bird Species of South Warwickshire Series, which threads its way back through this blog. 

Nice...

B-)

Day 253 - Ancient Oaks

treebeard

We took a trip out to see a load of old trees, and this old man oak was the king of them all...he's said to be over a thousand years old!

He really does have an entish quality to him - I can quite see him plodding across the hillside, if he so chose...

We were in Staffordshire meeting Anna's folks for lunch, and went for a walk across what used to be an old country estate, to take a look at all these old trees.

There were a number of ancient oaks, all with their own individual character...

an old oak

Some of them look in fine fettle, despite clearly being a shadow of their former selves.

another old oak

I wonder what changes they've seen over the centuries.  The M6 motorway is a scant half a mile away across the fields, and I wonder how the constant air and noise pollution has impacted the trees over the last half century. 

yet another old oak

I hope someone studies this, to perhaps shed a little light on the invisible damage we do when we treat the planet as though it's entirely our right to do with it as we will, disregarding the needs and interests of all other species...

sweet chestnut?

Someone could perhaps examine the rings in a dead portion of this beautiful chestnut...I'm sure he would gladly make a small sacrifice for the betterment of everything else...

Back in his glory days he would have looked a bit like this...

horse chestnut

So, a fine collection of grand old trees...

Also of interest, this beautiful damselfly, that I tracked for a while until he landed...I crept up and managed to find him resting on this leaf...didn't quite get him in focus, but hey, he's another good addition to the species collection!

banded demoiselle

Finally, we were by a lock on the Staffordshire and Worcestershire Canal, and Jack here was watching her boat putter into the lock with keen interest.

when the boat comes in

She's a lovely little thing...maybe we'll add someone like her to our pack as the final terrier addition, in a few years time.

I'm really starting to yearn for another dog...I'm not sure we're going to be able to resist much longer now...

Can't wait!

:-)

Day 237 - Vole Hoovers

vacancy

Friday night sure rolls around quickly of late...

This evening we found that they've now finished harvesting the fields around us, which frees up the access to the hole side of Barney the barn owl's tree. 

As you can see, it's a lovely shelter, with a solid platform inside a big old tree.  I've seen three young perched in here in the past, but they haven't nested here this year. 

Bizarrely, the tree is actually still alive, albeit much of it is hollow...

entish

We've had glimpses of Barney in several of these holes, and he seemed to be able to move around fairly freely in there. 

It's a very cool old tree, anyway.

In other news, the Killer Queen is on the rampage at the moment...

ritual sacrifice

I found this vole on the rug in the kitchen when I got home.

Within 5 minutes of opening the front door, Loz came in with a live, squeaking juvenile vole...I chased her out and got her to let it go, but within minutes she was back with another one. 

I shut her in for a bit, which she was really offended about...but later in the evening she was back out, and bringing more struggling young voles back, to the extent that we've had to shut her in again.

At the moment she's prowling the window sill, looking out into the night longingly, and miaowing at me in a frustrated tone. 

I presume the harvest has flushed lots of small animals into the hedgerow, and Loz just wants to go out there and sweep them all up, as I'm sure Barney would be if he were around...he's a vole hoover too. 

I've watched him hunt in the meadow (the next field over), and he was getting a kill every few minutes and brining it back to his young in the tree above...he must have killed a couple of dozen a day, at least. 

Hopefully the tidal wave of death and torture will subside in a day or two...

impressive

Speaking of which, my 'boarding injury is now a large, swollen bruise on my forearm...suffice to say, I wore a short sleeved polo shirt today in order to impress everyone with my war wound. 

I'm sure that will have had the desired effect, won't it?

One of my staff asked me what I done, and when I told him he said (as predicted),

"How old are you?!  There's some kids out the front doing loads of tricks on skateboards and bikes, it's crazy...they're about ten years old...".

So I'm fairly sure he's impressed with my youthful energy and enthusiasm.

I think that was his point anyway...

...yeah, that's probably it...

;-)

Day 231 - Not Superman

it's a plane

Throughout Summer, there's often a little plane that flies back and forth over our house, practising aerobatics...but this is not that plane!

On many a warm, dry afternoon, it can be heard (and seen) doing loop the loops, corkscrews, stalls and who knows what else.  It's mostly centred above the test track up on the ridge above the valley, which used to be a military airbase.   In fact, nuclear bombers were deployed out of this tiny little airport, back in the day. 

Now it's a test track for a prestigious car manufacturer, and sometimes we can hear them squealing around the track too. 

Anyway, when I heard this little plane revving his engines above me whilst out checking Anna's tyres, I dashed to grab the camera to catch a shot of him...and I only just managed it as he headed off into the distance.  I thought he might come back around and show me some tricks...indeed he did turn around, but then disappeared back the way he came, and I realised that it wasn't our Magnificent Man in his Flying Machine.

We do get an eclectic mix of air traffic over our house.  

Starting in order of least interesting, there's a southbound flightpath out of Birmingham Airport that crosses above our house.  We've even seen our house whilst on a flight to Spain, although only the once...I always look, but rarely can identify where I am.  The flight path is high, so we can't hear them from in the house, but on a quiet day outside you can hear planes cruising south, and sometimes at night you can see a line of lights coming from the direction of Birmingham.

Other frequent flyers on warm summer evenings are the hot air balloons - when the weather is right there are often two or three at varying distances across the valley...Bluez found them highly suspicious, and I can kind of see his point - strange bulbous beasts floating slowly across the sky, occasionally roaring and breathing fire.  

I don't quite trust them myself!

Then of course there's the aerobatics plane...he's the most fun!   

When the Grand Prix is at Silverstone, we see a steady stream of helicopters ferrying VIP's there or back again...

Then there's the covert night-time traffic, which is a more regular occurrence than you might imagine.

We must be on some military flight path, which is always the same - North-East to South-West...this route is only ever used at night, and they fly very low indeed - much lower than legal limits. 

The most common aircraft to use this route are Chinook helicopters (or similar, I'm no expert), and they're usually in twos, or sometimes threes. 

Sometimes lumbering bomber planes will rumble past, alarming the animals...and once in a while, jet fighters come through, often in twos or threes, sometimes very fast indeed. 

Finally there are the frequent flyers of the feathered variety...we've had plenty of examples of those in the blog, of course.

Whilst out walking this evening, we spied the buzzard across the field, but by the time the camera was ready he'd landed in the tree...

it might be a bird

I think he's in there somewhere...bonus points to anyone who can spot him!

Right, I'm very, very tired, so I'm off to get my Saturday night on.   Climbing today, and Tai Chi all week have left me weary, and somewhat in need of a shower. 

Rest day tomorrow, I think!

:-)

Day 199 - Big Buggers

big bug

I got an early bonus picture, first thing this morning, when I came across this big fella lurking under my desk...

I can't quite ID him, some kind of Ground Beetle...perhaps Carabus problematicus?  He was certainly a big bugger, maybe an inch for his abdomen and another half an inch for thorax and head.

In the bottom middle of the photo, you can see a coarse black dog hair...I realise it's not brilliant as a scale reference, but it's all I have - I only got a couple of shots before he caught on to me and went running off behind the bin, never to be seen again.  

So far...he's still hiding under there somewhere, with the vole that Loz released under my desk on Sunday...never saw that again, after if went under the desk...that's going to be quite an operation, retrieving the body, if he dies under there somewhere.

Fingers crossed that both of them somehow find an escape route and get back out where they belong.

In the meantime, I'll keep my slippers on - just the other night, Anna was severely mauled by a marauding beetle (not Ringo), which bit her on the foot just because she nearly squished it to death ('scuse the technical jargon...). 

This one's a biggie though, he might have your leg off!

Speaking of biggies, I have it on good authority that "that big black crow thing" (one of the ravens) has been mugging the jackdaws that congregate in our gardens around the bird feeders early each morning. 

They make a lot of noise, apparently, but I sleep like the dead, so even though this is apparently going on 5m from our open bedroom window, I've not heard a thing. 

Still, I'll take the camera upstairs just in case I should happen to waken around dawn...he pins them to the ground and gives them a bit of a beating, so I've been told...

Ok, so it's far from a reliable source, but there would be no reason to just make up a story like that!

I heard the raven cronking in the tree just over the road, earlier this evening...he's got a much deeper cronk than in that recording - I reckon he's a big bugger even amongst his own kind...

Anyway, I thought I might get a better close up:

no big bugger

But I didn't...although I quite like the look of the tree that he's hiding in...it looks resplendent in the evening sunshine.

I didn't spot the raven at all, and Anna said it flew off whilst I was nattering to my neighbour Dave. 

Encouraging that he's around and about though...I'll keep my ears tuned for his distinctive deep rasp, see if I can't catch him bullying the jackdaws...

I do like him, but not if he's going to be mean!

:-/

STOP PRESS

By incredible coincidence, and entirely a propos of the subject of tonight's blog, Anna just called me upstairs to grab a photo of this amazing little (big!) beauty:

the queen hornet

She is a hornet, probably a queen, and was quite simply gigantic.  She does look a little like a male, but much bigger than any hornet I've ever seen...the window frame she's clinging to is around an inch wide...she was probably 1.5 inches in length or more.

Hornets are very docile creatures, so there was nothing to be afraid of.  She'd somehow found her way on to our landing and was stuck on the windowsill.  

After grabbing a few snaps, I ushered her out onto the ivy, where I hope she'll be ok. 

We'll know if she comes in the house anyway - their buzz is so low pitched, they're like a big, slow bomber plane, compared to the zippy little jet fighter planes that are wasps.   It's like a chinook just flew into the bedroom, when they occasionally find their way through an open bedroom window. 

They are several times the size of the common wasp, and they really have a drone to match...as soon as you hear it, you just know it's big.

She has fantastic big brown eyes:

brown eyed girl

What a rare, late treat that was!!

B-)

Day 193 - Herd of Sheep?

in the frame

For a while, I've been meaning to study photography a bit more, learn the next steps, technically, toward competence...but I never have time (because, you know, blogging!), so in the meantime I'm just taking lots of photographs and waiting for the magic, which surely must start happening soon?!

Tonight it was nearly 7pm when I arrived home after working late, then shopping.  Anna is out all evening bat bothering, so we had an early tea, before Anna headed off at 7.30pm, and I took Jazz out for his nightly constitutional. 

Of course, my main priority was to get some sort of photo for the damned blog. 

I've pretty much photographed everything around here now, so I've had to, on occasion, resort to looking for unusual perspectives (which is an interesting proposition in its own right). 

I found this hole in the hedgerow, and realised that if I stood in just the right spot, the hole made a natural frame for the trees in the distance.  I played around with focal length and f-stop for a few minutes, but guess what...the first one I took was the best. 

There's some kind of lesson there, but I'm reluctant to try to unravel it!

one for sorrow

Moving on...I spotted this Magpie way up on top of a large Ash tree down the lane.   It was a long shot, but nicely in sunlight.   I cropped this from a much larger image (the bird was quite a distance away), but I like the framing, and the blurry oak leaves in the foreground. 

I've talked about corvids in the past, and you may remember I'm quite fond of them...it would be nice to get the full collection on my blog, as we have all of them locally...although the jay might be a challenge...

Consider the above image the official start of the Smart Birds series.

lepidoptera magma?

Next up, I spotted this little chap scurrying across the road, and stopped for a brief photography shoot.  I had all the wrong gear of course, so this was taken at full 300mm zoom from about 1.5m away...really not ideal, and I think the lens is actually incapable of focussing that close. 

But what the heck, he's another in my growing collection of animals, which is getting pretty extensive now - I must start to catalogue it all soon!

I've just spent 15 minutes trying to identify him, but can't pin him down...possibly some sort of fritillary, but I'm not at all sure on that.  If anyone out there has the patience and/or expertise to name that species, please leave a comment...

Muchas gracias! 

(nope, there was absolutely no reason for that to be in Spanish...deal with it...)

of course I've herd of sheep

Finally, these lovely, ever-cooperative sheep, always ready to pose interestingly at the slightest provocation...here, they're going for the caught in the spotlight look...

I think they've pulled it off admirably!

Incidentally, I was a'pondering...if a group of sheep is a flock, then why is the person who looks after them a shepherd?  If the herd is the verb, then he's a herder, not a herd.  And if it refers to the fact that he looks after a herd, well he doesn't, it should be flock. 

So why isn't he either a shepherder, or a shepflock?

You see, these things niggle away, pointlessly, at my OCD...

:-/

Day 181 - Friday Night Light

me tree

I think I've spotted a bit of a Friday night trend...my blog posts are a little, shall we say, light...

Not in tone, but in content and quality.  By Friday evening, I'm often tired, especially mentally...my brain can feel so woolly and vacant I find it hard to put a coherent sentence on the digital page.   More often than not, I've had to go food shopping after work, or maybe mowed the lawns...or maybe both...and walked the dog and looked for a photo, of course...

As in the case of this evening, when I've done all of the above, I've sometimes just run out of steam.

It's just as well that very few read Friday nights blog post!

Earlier, whilst mowing the lawns, I realised that I'm in something of a blue funk tonight.   A fog of melancholy seems to be following me round like a little black cloud...I seem to be surrounded by reminders of the fragility of life.

...someone I used to know, my age, died suddenly earlier this week...

...in the six months since my boy Bluez left us, his brother Jazz has aged markedly, and seems increasingly frail...he's had a difficult day today...

...a colleague is anxiously watching over a poorly spouse in Myton Hospice...my thoughts are with her...

...we are a few short weeks away from the tenth anniversary of the time when I stepped out of the world for a while (also at Myton), to walk with my sister Debs to the very edge of this life, to try to see her safely on her way to the next...it was a tragic, profound, wonderful experience, that suddenly seems closer than it has for years...


I've been meaning to get a photo of this tree for a while now, and tonight seemed like the night...

For some reason it reminds me of me...perhaps it's that it's tall and gangly, a bit ragged around the edges, and looks as though it's seen a few things in its time, and is sometimes weary as a result...

The evening was grey and overcast, so the light was poor, but it seemed to suit my mood.

Turning around, I was struck by the rays of pale sunlight filtering through the grey, troubled sky...it felt like a metaphor for something, although I'm not quite sure what...and I'm not trying too hard to work it out, as I'm wary of allowing my sombre vibes to twist more gloom into a brightening scene.

It seems far more likely to mean something spiritual and uplifting, so I will try to get back to it when I'm less tired, and a little less emotionally raw...

Actually no, I'm going to deal with it now...it's just hit me - it's the bright, warm light of the next world, tearing through the veil of this world, to welcome those that we call the departed, but they'll call new arrivals...

It's where I last saw Debs...

:'(

Day 174 - Freedy Neet

big tree

I actually had a photo related to the D-Day Anniversary that's all over everything today (for reasons that aren't clear to me...).

But I couldn't bring myself to post it, knowing full well that I'd struggle to avoid a lengthy diatribe on the senselessness of war, and how hypocritical we are when we claim to be civilised, whilst maintaining large stocks of troops and weapons, used primarily on those our government (or their corporate paymasters) disagree with, whilst also serving as a handy means of diverting large amounts of public money into private coffers...

You see, I'm off down that road already!

Changing the subject...this beautiful big tree looked resplendent in the evening sunshine, tall and majestic.  Even though I didn't have our decent camera, I took a snapshot on my phone, to complement the growing range of trees I've featured.  

I think this one is a Scots Pine, but that's only because Anna said it was...so if I'm wrong, it's her fault, mmkay?

Finally, in an effort to keep today's post short and sweet (I'm tired and I really want to get my freedy neet on), here's a photo of our starters from when we went out for a meal in an Italian restaurant early this evening.

what's in the bowl?

I know Kim was interested in previous food pictures, and I figure she and Roob might enjoy trying to work out what we had...or get frustrated, maybe - doesn't look that obvious to me!

Still, you know, food, or whatever...yay!

:-)

Day 168 - Wild Boar Chase

brown sheep of the family

We went looking for the boar today, with mixed success...

The day was grey and overcast for the most part, despite the optimistic forecast from the BBC...but as the afternoon waned, the sun came out and it warmed up nicely.

We wandered off down the lane, camera in tow, to see what we could see.

Almost immediately, I spied a brown or grey animal sheltering under the hedgerow, in a field full of otherwise bright white sheep. 

Fortunately I had the zoom lens with me, as they were a long way away, two fields over, and my deteriorating eyesight could only make out a blurry shape.

The photo clearly shows it was just a sheep (also, nice bokeh).

(after this photo, the camera decided it had no battery left, so I changed to my phone...when I rechecked upon arriving home, the camera battery was 94% full...doh!!)

Further down the lane and across the fields, we came across another set of tracks, coming from more or less the same place as yesterday, but heading off in a different direction.

There seemed to be two sets of tracks at some points, one set much smaller than the large.

Here are more of the larger footprints;

As you can see, compared to Anna's tanned hand, this is fairly large.

This lighter is 8cm long, and is about the same length as the fore hoof.  The spur indentations are another couple of cm to the right.

We're estimating that this print belongs to a large male.   For reference, a male boar would typically weigh somewhere between 100 and 175kg...I'm less than 90kg, and Anna's around 50kg, so it's two or three times the size of her, and maybe twice the size of me...this thing could be huge!

The track ran out when it reached the road, although we did find a potential day nest in the ditch under the hedgerow...

On the way back I stopped to grab a better snap of one of these beautiful red trees, over next door's gate.

ornamental hawthorne

The whole of the verge is riddled with ants nests and mole tunnels (must try to get a shot of a mole, we have loads in the garden and round about, at the moment), making mowing harder work than usual...and when mowing this morning, I inadvertently chopped the top off a busy ants nest...oops!

I had exposed a lot of eggs, causing quite a stir amongst the ant colony, and was still feeling guilty about it.

no eggscuse

This was the best of a poor bunch of photo's I took with the decent camera just after the offence was committed.

Using the viewfinder would have meant lying with my legs sticking out into the road and my face in uncomfortably close proximity to a seething mass of angry red ants!   So I just guessed, and took a few hopeful shots.

Checking back this afternoon, as we returned from our walk, they'd got most of the eggs back underground...phew!

As we got back into our garden, there was a hen pheasant hanging around, and I got a few poor shots on my phone.  

meep meep

I can't believe I was this close, with the decent camera around my neck, and the zoom lens on, and I used my phone to take the shots, thinking the good one was out of juice...argh!

Oh well, lesson learned!

More on the developing boar incident as we have it...

:-)

Day 162 - Tree Hugger

climb me...

This tree spoke to me today, as I was walking Jazz down the lane...

I've talked, in previous blogs, about how occasionally when I'm at the crag, a climb will call to me.   My eye will be repeatedly drawn to a feature on the rock, maybe a crack or an arête...it will usually be something at the upper limit of my grade range.

Throughout the day, I'll find myself going back and looking at it, pondering, assessing. 
Inevitably, before the day is out I will feel compelled to man up and get on it.

I don't know why this happens, and I don't fully understand the compulsion to do something hard, potentially scary, and possibly dangerous.  But I don't try too hard to resist...and I've never regretted succumbing to the temptation.

Consequently, I now treat this urge as a reminder to myself to Be Alive, to take a risk, to embrace Life.

As I strolled down our lane in the beautiful evening sun a few hours ago, I heard this same calling - only now it's come from an old tree!

I must confess that I am a bit of a tree-hugger.  When Jazz and Bluez were pups, I used to walk them daily in the fields behind where we lived.   There, a majestic old oak stood alone in the middle of an arable field.  I found myself talking to him as we went by each day, and before long, I discovered I couldn't pass without going skin on bark with him.  

To me it seemed that we were communicating through this simple physical contact...

It sounds a bit sad when spoken out loud (or typed), but I felt that he was my friend. 

Soon after that, we moved away and I've not been back since - but clearly he's still there in my consciousness...and perhaps that has something to do with this oak calling me today? 

He's an old oak, handsome and verdant, resplendent in his new coat of fresh foliage.  I see him most days, but he's never caught my eye this way before.  Maybe it's the light, or maybe I'm simply ready for a new challenge...or maybe i just need a new tree-friend?!

In any case, as I approached the tree, I realised that I have to climb him...I don't know why, other than that he's a gorgeous tree, very climbable...and it's on my list of challenges for the year : Climb a Tree!

When I walked underneath him I realised I had marvelled at his brilliant branching before.

a-maze-ing

He's a sturdy old fellow, with this amazing twisted quality...the crux (the hardest part) of the climb will be the start...once up the main trunk to where it all branches out, it looks reasonably easy...although given that it may be as many as 30 years since I last climbed a tree, I'll reserve judgement on that...we'll see!

So I shall therefore be on the lookout for the right time and the right weather, hopefully in the next couple of days, to wander down the lane and get more intimately acquainted with this wise old oak.

I'll need to work out a way of getting some photo's - I want to avoid the "pics or it didn't happen!" charge, of course!

On a related note, on my way back up the lane, I noticed that a large branch has ripped off one of the other old oaks along the lane.

what the...?

This is most curious...it's been blustery, but not that wild, and this branch looks strong and healthy, and 4-6" thick, at the snapping point. 

How on earth has enough energy been applied to this single branch, 4 or 5m above the ground, to snap it clean off?

It's a mystery, and no mistake!

}:-/