Protecting the Shoreline

  With today looking like the last 60 degree day until spring, I figured I'd take Roscoe to the beach and let him take on the waves one last time this season.

  At first he looked a little disappointed that waves were somewhat dampened by an offshore wind.

All leashes shall be dogged

  Soon we found a spot where the breakers were a little more competitive.

    The battle went like this....

Like a shortstop charging a grounder, he faces it head on.

And takes a shot to the chin.

he applies a retaliatory bite on the sea and sand 

As the wave retreats to from where it came... Roscoe does the same.

 We'll call it a draw.

Ludington Harbor Birds 11/16/2015

  Just a few birds at the harbor on a beautiful mid-November day.

White-winged Scoter

Bonaparte's Gull

Common Loon

Wind and Waves

Late Monarch plus birds this week

I was surprised to see a very late Monarch Butterfly this afternoon at Ludington State Park.

  Also at the park today was a small group of Buffleheads

  Earlier in the week out on the south pier of Ludington Harbor I saw this Merlin

This Dunlin

  and this Sanderling

  At Buttersville Park there was a Ruby-Crowned Kinglet

  and a few Tree Sparrows.

   Back at the State Park  I saw this standoffish Red Squirrel

As I watched him on the stage my hands were clenched in fists of rage

Ludington State Park - Northern Lights Again 11/07/2015

Following a heavy overcast day, I wasn't holding out much hope of viewing a potential auroral display in the hours after midnight this morning.  I woke up just as the calendar clicked over to November 7, and saw that according to spaceweather.com the Kp index was up to 5 with a possibility of intensification.  Since the dog hadn't been out since we fell asleep during the second period of the Red Wings game, we stepped outside.  I to check the cloud cover and Roscoe to water the lawn.  

    In the 3 hours that I napped on the couch the skies had just about cleared.  I packed my camera gear into the car and headed toward Ludington State Park.  As I headed up County Rd 116 I noticed glow through the clouds to the north.  I pulled over and took a 10 second exposure with my camera held on the dashboard.  There they were, the elusive glowing green pulses that I hadn't seen since...Wednesday.   

Hand held through the windshield

   I found a suitable spot on Hamlin Lake and set up the rig.

   Once again I created a video from some of the still shots. Here is the youtube link......Northern Lights 11/07/2015

Northern Lights 11/04/2015

 

  Last night I arrived at work 20 minutes early and set up my camera to attempt to capture a Northern Lights display.  What transpired was a modest auroral display that my camera was able catch and I was able to turn into a video that I put on youtube.  Link below....

Northern Lights 11/04/15


   In one of the photos taken before the display began my camera caught a meteor.

    The first time that I saw the Northern Lights was back on November 8, 1991. Over the years I've seen them 8 times from the state of Michigan.

 Here is a list of those dates.
November 8, 1991
November 5-6, 2001
October 29, 2003
November 20, 2003
November 7-8, 2004
November 10, 2004
March 17, 2015
November 4, 2015.

  What jumps out from the list is that 87% of the sightings occurred over 6% of the calendar that spans from October 29 to November 23.  An even tighter window from November 4 to November 10 includes 62% of my observations in a 7 day period.  The Northern Lights are more likely to occur in the spring and fall rather than summer and winter for reasons explained in the link below.
NASA explanation 

What are we looking at again?

 Here is a cropped version of a photo that I took today.  I was kind of surprised that different sections of the image had a passing resemblance to other things. One cropped portion of the photo it looks like a long exposure of a densely packed starfield within the Milky Way. 

  Or it could be a close-up of an amber colored adult beverage being poured into a tall glass, as a different cropped section of the same photo seems to indicate.

  But actually the uncropped photo shows that it's really a five foot wave crashing into the rocks lining the south pier of Ludington Harbor, while being strongly backlit by the early morning sun.