Birds in big freeze

The big freeze is clearly having an impact on local bird life. One resident writes: "I have just seen a little grebe on the canal happily diving away. As far as I can recall it's the first time i've seen one on the canal locally. It was at about 11.45am (Friday) and was between locks 6 and 7 just above bridge 77."

Another resident has noticed many more species in the garden: "As well as all the normal birds, we are now getting Fieldfare, Redwing, Great Spotted Woodpecker, Nuthatch, Goldfinch and Sparrowhawk.

"The Sparrowhawk flies in, does a tight circuit at speed around the feeder hanging from a tree and then perches on the fence in full view. It takes about 30 minutes after it's flown off before any small birds (aka the prey) return to the garden."

The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds says that the freeze could be the single biggest killer of birds since the Arctic snap of the early 1960s and has asked the public to help feed them.

Mpemba effectTrying to give the birds some water in this extreme cold spell has also raised that old debate about whether hot water freezes faster than cold. This is known as the "Mpemba effect."

The fact that hot water freezes faster than cold has been known for many centuries. The earliest reference to this phenomenon dates back to Aristotle in 300 B.C.

The phenomenon was later discussed in the medieval era, as European physicists struggled to come up with a theory of heat. But by the 20th century the phenomenon was only known as common folklore, until it was reintroduced to the scientific community in 1969 by Mpemba, a Tanzanian high school student.

Since then, numerous experiments have confirmed the existence of the "Mpemba effect", but have not settled on any single explanation.

To conclude this digression into the mysteries of physics, it is not known if Mpemba ever visited Audlem!

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