4 March 08
Wolverine Sighted In California
The first confirmed sighting of a wolverine in California in 30 years took place last Thursday. This was recorded by a remote camera array in the Tahoe National Forest; a link to the photo is here.
27 February 08
Encyclopedia of Life Opens Its Pages
Today I went to a presentation about the Encyclopedia of Life, a project to provide a set of web pages for every one of the 1.8 million species on Earth. As it turns out, the first incarnation of the site went live yesterday, and proved to be too popular for the site’s own good, their computers quickly crashing under the load — they got about 19 million hits yesterday!
The site has initially been populated with about 30,000 entries, with 25 of these being selected to serve as exemplars showing what the fully fleshed-out content will look like. They hope to have entries for all the named species within a decade.
On the way down to this presentation in San Francisco, I was able to do some public transport bigbying. From the train I saw a ring-necked pheasant, marbled godwits, willets, and a ruddy turnstone. Best of all was seeing a flock of red-masked parakeets, the birds made famous by the story of the wild parrots of Telegraph Hill.
24 February 08
Duck Days and a Bag of Rice
A postdoc arrived from Spain a fortnight ago. He’s working in Plant Sciences under the direction of a faculty member — Numenius is working on a project concerning climate change and agriculture with her, so he met Fernando.
Fernando’s from Madrid, where I grew up. He’s also a birder; a really, really good birder. But he doesn’t know our birds. There’s something wonderful about having a newcomer enthuse over your robins and white-breasted nuthatches (we all went out on bikes last weekend; today it’s raining hard, time to catch up on laundry).
Apparently in Spain (in Europe? Richard? ) people are now taking bags of rice — large bean bags, in effect — along with them when they’re birding to anchor their spotting scope (and long camera lens) from the car window without having to set up a tripod. Since we got handed bags of sushi rice at the California Duck Days reception on Friday night, I might just cobble this together. Might be useful on the bike, too…
20 February 08
Meeting Around The Moon
I’ve become quite a fan of the Clear Sky Clock. This is a set of weather forecasts for astronomers, telling when the skies will be clear and transparent. Anyway, it correctly predicted we’d have a break from clouds and rain this evening just in time for tonight’s lunar eclipse.
The eclipse had to fit in around Yolo Audubon activities though — tonight was the monthly general meeting, preceded by the dinner for the speaker. I cycled over to the dinner in downtown Davis and while riding eastward saw the moon rising with a bit of shadow nibbled out of it. I got out the binoculars to have a better look, only to discover I had to be standing right in the middle of the road to see the moon. It was a quick look.
The meeting was at 7:30 so I got to see the moon at totality. Not a prolonged look, but at least lunar eclipses are easily seen from the middle of town. After all, we saw the last one while watching quite an historic event.
18 February 08
Great Backyard Bird Count
It’s not too late to participate in the Great Backyard Bird Count! This citizen science project has been happening this weekend and ends Monday February 18. Basically you count all the birds you see at a single location over a period of time of at least 15 minutes and report this online. Between the two of us we did three counts today: one from our backyard, one over by Putah Creek, and one in the Arboretum.
15 February 08
Signs Of Spring
The first almond blossoms on our tree have opened.
13 February 08
Five Owl Night
Yesterday evening following a tip from one of the bird lists we bicycled out to Road 28H several miles northeast of Davis to go look for short-eared owls. The day before about 10 of these owls had been seen flying at dusk low over fields west of their presumed roost site. We arrived well after sunset, and were immediately joined by our fellow Bigbyer Steve, also on bike. We were successful and saw the short-ears, about a half-dozen all told, hunting languidly over the fields.
More owls on the way back — also on Road 28H we spotted one of the resident burrowing owls, and then riding through Davis and campus we heard several barn owls and a great horned owl.
At that point I figured I could make it a five owl evening by hunting down the Owl Nebula (M97) in Ursa Major. It was not a great night for doing this, with a waxing moon in the sky and high thin clouds, but I managed to see the nebula through my 7” Dob. Not a great view of the nebula, but it wasn’t at the threshold of visibility either.
10 February 08
Astronomical Big Year
Having the fun that I am with our Bigby birding year, the idea came to me this morning that maybe I should do an astronomical equivalent. More precisely, I would attempt to see all the 110 Messier objects by the end of the year. The Messier objects are the most famous set of deep-sky objects in astronomy. They were catalogued in 1774 by French comet hunter Charles Messier, who wanted to have a list of fuzzy objects that could possibly be confused with comets.
I’ve never actually seen all these objects; I’ve gotten to about 80 or so back when I was more active in astronomy. Before moving to Davis, we lived halfway up the mountains behind Santa Barbara and had great dark skies there. Living at 45 feet elevation in the middle of the Central Valley there is a lot of light pollution and the skies are much hazier, both of which discourage my astronomizing. The Messier objects however are relatively easy to see, and I think all of them are within reach from our house with my 7” Dob. For now the rules of this venture are the same as for the Bigby — observations only count if I get to the observation site under my own power.
Tonight I got started by looking at Orion, seeing M42, M43, and then M78, followed by the Pleiades (M45), and then the open cluster M41 in Canis Major. A good start.
9 February 08
Better Luck Second Time
Last time we went to Lake Solano we rode into a storm and got wet, frozen, and skunked. Today we tried almost the same route and did a lot better.
Ten new birds for me today, including the gorgeous Barrow’s goldeneye, Western grebe, Bewick’s wren. We heard California quail and Hutton’s vireo; missed pileated woodpecker and osprey along with the “easy” phainopeplas. We never did catch up with a lark sparrow for Numenius.
Our favorite bird of the day: sharp-shinned hawk that flew in at eye-level and stared at us, gorgeous in new moult. We don’t see them often enough.
8 February 08
Clear Night
The weather has been very good this past week, and inspired by seeing an announcement that the campus astronomy club was having a stargazing session tonight, I got out my 7” Dobsonian telescope and had a gander at the sky this evening. Mars is small now as it retreats from its biannual closest approach to the Earth, but was still showing some detail. The Orion Nebula was beautiful as always — one of those objects that is remarkable to see no matter what size of optics you are using.
Coming up at the end of the month (from February 25 to March 8) there is an educational citizen science project called GLOBE at Night that is about light pollution. Basically sometime during this period you estimate the darkness of the sky using a set of star magnitude charts and report that along your exact location. These magnitude values will then get mapped — last year they got data from 60 countries.