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

Great Backyard Bird Count Weekend

    The Great Backyard Bird Count organized by Cornell University took place this weekend February 15-18.  The idea is pretty simple, just stand in the place where you live and count all the birds you see in your yard and report the totals at http://www.birdsource.org/gbbc/   .

Highlight of GBBC yard count  Chipping Sparrow

Leucistic Black-capped Chickadee

Red-breasted Nuthatch

Now face North

  The GBBC is not just confined to your residence.  You can also stand in the place where you work and count the birds there while you think about the place you live.  

 Horned Grebe-Highlight of Erie bird count

Wood Ducks

Peregrine Falcon

'Blonde' Mallard hen with more conventionally plumaged Mallards

Mostly Scaups but not always

Male Redhead(top), Male Canvasback(bottom)



There is more than a cloud in this photo

It's Jupiter in broad daylight  (3 pm Sunday afternoon)

Lawn Lion

Soft kitty

Warm kitty

Little ball of fur

Happy kitty

Sleepy kitty



Purr, purr, purr

This week at Lake Erie



     During the past week I spent a few hours over several days on the western shore of Lake Erie looking for birds to photograph.  Last Saturday, October 27,  I went to the Lake Erie Metropark Hawkwatch to look for some of rarer late season migrants (Golden Eagle, Rough-Legged Hawk, Northern Goshawk).  Well I didn't see any of those but this Bald Eagle provided a nice photo-op.  Favorable weather conditions coming the next few days (Sat Nov.3- Mon Nov.5)  should bring some of the aforementioned rarities. 

Adult Bald Eagle  at Hawk Watch

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      Hurricane Sandy that ravaged the East Coast earlier this week also brought a chance of ocean-going birds to the Great Lakes region, so I walked the shoreline in Erie, MI after work  a couple of mornings this week.  I didn't see anything too unusual but here are some photos that I was able to capture.

Greater Black-backed Gull (world's largest gull)

Lesser Black-backed Gull (which breeds on the Atlantic coast of Europe)

Forster's Tern (left), Bonaparte's Gull (right)

Young Herring Gull

Forster's Tern

On my Thursday morning stroll, I saw something out in the lake, among the birds, swimming toward shore.

What's that floating in the water?  Not Neptune's only daughter.

    It was a swimming weasel. More precisely a mink.....coming from where?  Who knows?  But it was motoring as if it was a triathalon participant. Not breaking stride as it completed it's swim and hit the beach running.

Mink after a morning swim

   With such short legs the bicycle portion of the triathalon was out of the question,  also the running was limited to a just a few strides before the weasel went........

.... airborne?

Yes.....airborne.
   Such a beautiful creature, it took all my inner strength not to club it to death with a piece of driftwood and skin it to make a winter hat.

Black Hole Sun

    Back on May 10, 1994,  an annular eclipse (moon passes directly in front of the sun but is too far away in its orbit to totally cover the sun) was visible from my house in southeast Michigan.  I took the day off of work and had a little eclipse party with family and neighbors on my driveway.  We viewed the eclipse through my new Celestron C-8 fitted with a solar filter, and handheld mylar sun viewers (purchased from Jerry Sadowski at City Camera)  held directly in front of the eyes.    In astronomy there is a term  saros defined as is a period of 223 synodic months(time between full moons) approximately 6585.3213 days, or nearly 18 years 11 days (10 days if there are 5 leap years in the 18 year period). One saros after an eclipse, the Sun, Earth and Moon return to approximately the same relative geometry, and a nearly identical eclipse will occur.   Since a saros is not a whole number of days, the eclipse conditions occur roughly 120 degrees westward on the Earth's globe the next time around.  This past Sunday May 20, 2012 one saros later the Sun, Moon and Earth aligned once again.

   Although she was present for the driveway eclipse, my daughter Hannah claims to not remember it.  The fact that she was two at the time may have something to do with it.   So I packed up the same telescope and mylar viewers and invited her to follow me into the desert of Arizona for a birding trip and on the way home catch the eclipse in Santa Fe, NM. One more time around might do it.
    Here is the progression of the event.
  1) First contact- when the moon starts to cover the sun.

  
   2) Second contact- when the moon's trailing edge reaches the sun's disk.

 3) Maximum Annularity-  when the moon's center is as close as it will get to the sun's center.

4) Third contact- when the moon's leading edge reaches the edge of solar disk ending the annularity.

   5) Fourth contact- when the partial eclipse ends as the moon exits the solar disk. This was not visible because it occurred after sunset.

  

  An interesting effect of the sun not being it's  normal shape is that shadows take on an unusual appearance.  Hannah photographed the shadow of a tree and a multitude of images of the crescent sun are projected through small gaps between the leaves.

Here is a poor quality video thrown together from still shots.