Change of seasons

In about the last ten days or so we've gone from the delights of autumn to the chills of winter. No mucking about this year!

The Crown Range last Sat...


The Sat. prior I was swanning about with my cousin Michael up on the Old Woman Range looking for game. We had a great day out - just a tad muddy underfoot in places and a chill wind...


A little ice rims a puddle in the rocks...


The sky and blue tussock are a great source of pleasure to me...


Wind, water and ice have sculptured this landscape...


We came back empty handed from our scout for deer, but in many ways I don't have the heart to witness a deer dropped by a bullet, despite liking venison occasionally, so it was satisfying to make a few photos as we pottered along...


In the last few weeks I've posted about the world child mortality rate due to poor water, and recently I came across some more news that at least shows an improvement, but we've still a long way to go:

More Children Living Past Their 5th Birthdays Than Expected
Good news this month in the Lancet, which reports that more of the world’s children are surviving the first five years of their lives. After looking at data from the last four decades (1970-2010) in 187 countries, their latest report concludes that global child mortality rates are dropping faster than previously projected. Awesome, right?

But wait. The report also projects that in 2010, 7.7 million children will die before their 5th birthday — that’s two million more than the entire population of Denmark. It’s hard to celebrate the good news when confronted with such an awfully large number — even if the figure has shrunk by 4 million since 1990... more>>