It's a bird....

It's a bird....

I have been looking at the sky for all my life... Stargazing, checking the weather to go skydiving or glider flying. I never failed to see the many shapes that clouds come in.
The landscape of Holland is famous for its low hanging clouds as the old Dutch masters have painted so often. Holland is flat, no mountains are available to create the beautifully lens-shaped clouds of the Altucumulus Lenticularis family, like in this picture.
Being close to the Andes mountain range in Argentina as I write this, means that I am in the middle of this great Lenticular cloud factory. As the high winds get their wavy flows over and behind the mountains, the clouds form at the top of each wave. Constant winds cause stationary tops in the waves and therefore also stationary clouds: you will see these clouds for hours at the same position in the sky, only changing in shape or slowly dissolving.
Nature plays wonderful tricks in these shapes. One minute the lens in the picture was just that: a simple lens. The next minute it took the form of a dove. I was so lucky to be there and witness this phenomenon. The snowy peaks of the Andes formed the perfect backdrop for this scene.

Rob