Bird Dog at Night 3/13/2022

 

   A prediction of a Northern Lights display had me outside last night waiting for a show that never materialized.  Turns out it had already peaked before the Sun went down.  While out I decided to try to do some owling.  I started by imitating a Saw-whet Owl's toot call.  No response.  I had better luck when I tried the Eastern Screech Owl's whinny and monotonic trill.  After a few attempts I heard one...and then a second Screech Owl reply.

  As I listened, I noticed my dog Nico looking up at the closest tree about 10 feet away.  Sure enough with her super night vision she had located the owl who had relocated and was silently checking us out.  With the camera already out, I repositioned to get a better angle at the bird. 

  Not the best shot but the lump on the horizontal branch is the owl.

     Ten years and 5 days ago while attempting another ultimately unsuccessful photo session with the Northern Lights I took the photo below. 

   It's my late dog Roscoe with Canis Major (the Big Dog) in the background sky.

   And last night....

It's almost like history repeating.  What has changed it 10 years?...new dog, I live 200 miles farther north, the dog photo taken with phone instead of camera, the bird on Roscoe's night was a peenting  American Woodcock but best of all I didn't have to drive 70 miles to find a relatively dark sky. 

 
  

Remarkable Day of Home Sequestration 4/3/2020

Winter Wren

   When the month of April started my yardlist for the new house was at 46 species and I had just worked my last day for a while as my worksite went to minimum staffing on a volunteer basis. When the choice came of lead, follow or get out of the way.....I got the hell out of the way.
  On Wednesday April 1st I added an Eastern Phoebe to the yardlist when one perched on the rail of the deck and looked in our living room window.  It was too close to get a photo with the big lens so I had to wait for it to land a little farther away.

  Thursday I added 3 more birds to the list to get it up to an even 50. Including the two birds pictured below plus a few unphotographed Double Crested Cormorants.

Brown Creeper

Female Eastern Bluebird

  That brings us to today, the remarkable day that saw me add 12 birds to the yardlist. It started early when a Red-headed Woodpecker flew by.  Around noon a Yellow-Bellied Sapsucker briefly landed in a nearby tree and it left me one woodpecker(Pileated) short for the day of the set of seven members of the Picidae family that lives or passes through Mason County. Unfortunately I was only able to get shots of a Northern Flicker.

I added two sparrows....Chipping and American Tree.

American Tree Sparrow

   Besides the activity on the ground, a lot was happening overhead.

Sandhill Cranes

One of 35 Turkey Vultures that migrated through today

Northern Harrier

Common Loon

Greater Scaup

   Then a little later in the day three Mallards flew by.

   And 3 or 4 Golden-crowned Kinglets made their debut in my yard.  They brought the yard list species total to 62.

  I had 48 species during the daylight hours then I heard a Killdeer flying over when I went out around 9 pm to check out Venus as it passed through the Pleaides Star Cluster.  It had hazy clouds built up too much for me to get a photo of the planet but the International Space Station was an acceptable consulation prize.  

   Thanks to Matt McConnell for alerting me to the favorable ISS flyover.

Harlequin Duck - Now That's a Yard Bird 12/7/2019

   A crosstown move from a house on a mostly wooded acre to one on a larger lot with an unobstructed view of Lake Michigan, has already yielded a spectacular rarity in the form of an adult male Harlequin Duck.

  It's the first Harlequin Duck that I have found on my own and only the third that I have ever seen.  The other two were at my work a little over a mile up the road.

   Another benefit of the nearly treeless yard on the lake side of the house is that I can finally do some astronomy at home, rather than driving to the local state park.  The photo below shows the nearest spiral arm in our Milky Way Galaxy.  The skyglow on the right side of the frame is from my beloved employer, while the yellowish glow at the bottom of the photo is from my nearest neighbor to the west in WISCONSIN, 65 miles away.

   The next photo shows the constellation Orion rising over my house with the Pleaides star cluster near the top of the image.

Lunar Eclipse 1/20/2019

More info and photos on my other blog

Persied Meteors 8/12/2018

    Clear moonless conditions have been ideal for the annual Persied  meteor shower.

Big Pink Lightbulb sinks into Lake Michigan

   Although 60 meteors per hour are supposed to be visible from an unobstructed location, I barely saw more than 1 per hour in my tiny patch of sky.

  The photo below shows not a meteor but rather a -4 magnitude Iridium Flare caused by the Sun reflecting off of an Iridium Communication satellite's antenna. Explanation of satellite flares here..Satellite_flare

   A couple of weeks ago I acquired a new friend.  She's a self-walking Larbradoodle.  She'll be 4 months old tomorrow and has already hit the 30 lb. milestone. Between the two vet visits she's had, she grew 18% in 17 days.  I like big mutts and I cannot lie.

Total Eclipse 8/21/2017

    Disclaimer : These photos do no justice to the spectacle created by the Moon blotting out the late morning Sun.

  It started innocently enough as a small notch formed on the upper right edge of the Sun.

   The bite got bigger....

....until our local star showed a fat crescent.

   It progress until only a sliver remained

    After the last ray of sun shined through a deep crater on the Moon's rim creating a diamond ring effect(not pictured), the elusive solar corona appeared.  A close look at the photo below reveals a red promenience at the same position that the moon's transit started.

  A longer exposure shows the star Regulus  (circled) to the lower left of the eclipsed Sun.

 

He had to stay home because he couldn't pass the eclipse safety test.

Mackinac Straits Raptor Watch 3/16/2017

  March is the beginning of raptors passing through Michigan from their overwintering sites to their summer breeding grounds. Around the middle of this month eagles and some large hawks make a significant push along their favored routes.  As they pass north through the lower peninsula they are funneled toward the Straits of Mackinac in order to navigate to the UP and points beyond. 

  Today I traveled to the Mackinac Straits Raptor Watch in Mackinaw City in hopes of observing this yearly phenomena. 

Here are some photos taken from the watch location.

   More than 260 Golden Eagles have been counted in the month of March in each of the last two years.

Golden Eagle

   This Bald Eagle was determined to be one of a local pair.

   

Rough-legged Hawk

Red-tailed Hawk

  Finally an update on the planet Venus.  We are just 9 days from Venus moving from the evening sky to the morning sky.  It now displays a 4% illuminated crescent the spans almost on arc minute in diameter (for reference the Moon is 30 arc minutes in diameter).

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