Hailstorm and a pheasant in the garden

01 October 2011

It was an ordinary night with people out partying and so on, when it started raining.  OK, it rains a lot here, still normal.  But shortly, it became a huge racket and hailstones the size of marbles were pelting down and the wind was blowing really strongly.

The brief moment I opened the door to take this photo was enough to allow a bunch of rain and hail right into the house.

These were the largest hailstones I've ever seen.

The storm really did a lot of damage around the garden.  there were shredded bits of leaf everywhere, making the lawn look greener than green.  Even my windowsill was covered with shreds of leaves, and it's not directly under a tree.

Here is the mulberry tree with one of the largest brances broken and hanging down to the ground.  It was in full fruit at the time and the cooks use the fruit, so it will be missed. 

Here you can see how the hailstones have just torn through the leaves of this plant, ripping chunks out of the leaves.

This plant's leaves don't have holes in them but instead were sliced into ribbons by the hail.

This poor tree was in full flower - as you can see, most of the flowers are now smashed to the ground and the few that are left are pretty battered.

Here is someone who was happy about it all - this pheasant was having a fine time in the mulberry tree.

It was not easy to get a good shot of the pheasant, so I also took some videos of it.