It is hard for me to imagine but nowadays there are 10 to 12 year old kids, born in the Netherlands, who have never seen frozen lakes and canals. I mean, not frozen enough so people could actually go ice skating.
But winter has returned to Holland this year. A few days ago temperatures dropped to as low as minus 20 (celcius) in some areas. And it doesn't look like temperatures will rise  anytime soon. People are ice skating everywhere.

So at night we take our pet rabbit inside and put her in the coldest room in the house. The rabbit (named after a well known Belgian beer :D) looked so miserable the other day that we felt sorry for her and we decided that during the coldest hours she should be a little warmer.

That this is not unnecessary  was proven to me today when I found a dead bird in the parking lot at work. The beautiful animal seemed to have been frozen to death. As I browsed the internet to determine the species, I learned that it was a greenshank, a wading bird. And I also learned that she shouldn't have been here to begin with. It is a migrating bird and she should have left for Africa weeks or maybe even months ago. For some reason she never did leave and paid for it with her life. It left me feeling sad.

Fog and frost. Image taken by my g/f. Shot with a Sony a200 + kitlens

Frozen to death greenshank. Shot with an HTC Touch diamond mobile phone

Frosty spiderweb. The spider was likely long gone... Shot with a Canon 30d +Sigma 17-70 DC