Tag Archives: citizen science

My Eclipse Story

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My eclipse story was almost one of regret. My home in the Bay Area was in a zone of about 70% totality and frequently foggy, so I thought I might miss the total eclipse entirely. I was yearning to see it at our sage-grouse site in Lander, which was just inside the band of total coverage. How magical would it be to be among my favorite Monument Draw rock formations or in the ancient petroglyph site at Castle Gardens when day turns to night?

Thankfully my dad had a plan. When he suggested a trip to South Carolina, I jumped at the opportunity!

We left in the morning the day before. Although it was less than 250 miles from Durham, we were concerned about the possibility of getting stuck in traffic or not being able to find a good viewing location once we got within the path of totality. The extra day also gave us a chance for a more relaxed drive down, allowing us time to explore a long-leaf pine forest in southern North Carolina border. This is a threatened, fire-dependent ecosystem characterized by towering pine trees and limited undergrowth.

Long-leaf Pine forest on state game land near Hoffman, NC

Since we took back roads on the way down, we didn’t hit much traffic before settling in for the night in Camden, South Carolina. Eschewing the “it’s just like Applebees” restaurant next door to the hotel, we found a surprisingly decent Mexican place just north of the Camden downtown. Eclipse morning, the breakfast zone in the Comfort Inn was full of excited groups sharing their viewing plans for the day. Many were headed to the fairgrounds in nearby Columbia, SC.  We checked the weather forecasts for the umpteenth time, decided no place within easy driving distance looked any more or less likely to have clear skies, and set out for on our initial target: Pointsette State Park.  Lynn selected this place since it was

  • a little closer to the center of the path of totality, meaning a longer total eclipse
  • not in/near a large population center, so maybe less crowded than some other places
  • likely to have open areas for picnicking and recreation where we could see the sun overhead without those pesky trees.

I couldn't resist stopping for a photo of this one. Nice driveway!

Our anticipation climbed as we drove south from Camden through small towns and past stately plantation houses. It was a couple of hours before the beginning of the eclipse, but a few people were already set up with tents and umbrellas in clearcuts in the state forest land outside of the park. We were not the first, but certainly not the last people in the park itself. After estimating about where the sun would be in the early afternoon, we found a place in the thin but growing crowd, and then concentrated on not melting in the brutal midday heat and humidity.

 

At one point I escaped to the shade of the woods, and an excited young lady pointed out these orb weaver spiders (probably genus Nephila).  Not much other wildlife with the exception of some butterflies and dragonflies. Other people swam or paddle-boarded in the lake, caught up on their reading in the shade, or played cornhole.

 

We had a typical summer sky- hazy, with scattered clouds. Although the cooling effect of a thunderhead covering the sun was welcome, it made us a little nervous about the eclipse. What if we drove all this way and couldn’t see anything?

A few sunspots visible through the cloudcover

Some time after 1PM, I stepped back to my camera setup and re-centered the sun in the viewfinder. Wait, is that a little nibble! It has begun! My cries of “It’s happening” caused folks to don their solar glasses and peer skyward.

Of course, there is a long way to go between nibble and totality. The day stayed sunny and hot. Many folks returned to their blankets or spots of shade. Others were drawn to the small pinhole images of the eclipse you could see projected on the ground. My dad planned ahead and brought a colander, which was a huge hit!

Eventually somewhere around 75% coverage we started commenting on how the sunlight light was a little dimmer and the temperature was coming down a bit. The passage of time felt a little funny to me, both crawling and racing towards totality. It continued to grow darker and cooler and at last the final sliver of the sun zipped away.

Totality! There was a gasp, then a cheer from the crowd. The sky now looked like dusk, but lighter all around the horizon. It reminded me of late night at Toolik Field Station above the Arctic Circle, where the light lingers and seems to come from everywhere and nowhere at once. A few stars or planets peaked out in the deeply dark blue sky. And the corona! The black disk of the moon was now wreathed in a silvery aura. The strange and sudden darkness, the eerie twilight quality of the light, the beautiful foreign object that replaced the familiar sun… Amazing. Absolutely amazing. It is really challenging to put into words how unreal and joyous this moment was, and in the back of my mind I thought about how utterly unnerving this would feel if one were not expecting it.

We heard a few katydids call. In what seemed like 10 seconds and 10 minutes, the moon finally crossed to the other side and the sun flared back. The light was still quite dim, with the quality of a single bright but distant street light.

The famous "Diamond Ring" effect

The spell broken, people chatted excitedly while packing up, many exchanging contact info to share photos and video of the event. While we did the same, I looked overhead and noticed the sky (still with a partial eclipse) now populated with chimney swifts and barn swallows. I didn’t notice any of these aerial insectivores before the eclipse started, so it could be they were triggered to emerge and start foraging by eclipse conditions. I didn’t keep careful enough notes to add to citizen science projects like the one on iNaturalist, but hopefully other eclipse watchers around the country were able to document potential responses such as this.

I don’t know what the interstates were like, but our plan to use back roads did not work quite as smoothly on the way back. We encountered delays approaching pretty much every small town with either a traffic light or stop sign. After a stop for dinner at an Irish pub in Southern Pines, we made it back to Durham by about 9 o’clock. Thus ended our eclipse adventure, although the memories will be with me for the rest of my life.

If you missed this total eclipse, please make every effort to get to the next one on April 8, 2024. I can’t overstate how special this was, nor how big of a difference even high-90% occlusion is from totality.

I’ve got a few more photos in a public Flickr album here.

Also, I’ve written up some technical discussion on how I took the photos in separate post.

Nature Sounds Society Workshop (Part 1)

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Alan La Pointe recording in Sierra Valley

I’ve spent a decade recording sage-grouse pops and whistles, and yet this weekend I felt like a novice. And that’s a good thing! I had the amazing good fortune to be invited to give a talk at the 2017 Nature Sounds Society Field Recording Workshop. This was one of the first times I’ve gotten to interact with serious nature recordists. I’m talking about people who sweat the details of getting the gear and technique right to capture what it feels like to be somewhere else. I’ll freely admit that I’m much more of a data collector, and it was wonderful to spend time with these folks who seem to bring together the best parts of aesthetics, technology, and love of nature.

The workshop, the 33rd of its kind, was held at the Yuba Pass field campus of San Francisco State University (north of Truckee, California). This is a gorgeous field station nestled among towering pines near a rushing river in the Sierra Nevadas. We slept on surprisingly comfortable cots in large tents on raised platforms. Meals and lectures were held in a 2-story main building where our class would mingle with other station users and staff. We had, in my opinion, a perfect combination of amenities: Hot water– Check. Flush toilets– Check. Cell service– Not Available.

Looking up at the Yuba Pass Field Campus

In the evenings, organizers Dan Dugan and Sharon Perry along with tech consultants Greg Weddig and Steve Sergeant helped us test our recording gear to prepare for the next morning. We were also invited to test out and borrow spare equipment. Mauricio Shrader, a birding-by-ear instructor, provided helpful tutorials, on what to listen for while out in the field.

For me, it was really valuable to hear so many perspectives on nature sound recording. Steve Seargent led a roundtable discussion about how best to set up a relationship with a state or national park and provide valuable services in documenting their soundscapes. Jim Metzner, host of Pulse of the Planet, shared several enchanting clips from his decades of travel and interviews, and gave his perspective on what it meant to capture an audience’s attention and imagination with sound. I spoke about the role of sound in sage-grouse biology and conservation.

As someone who last shopped for audio gear more than a decade ago, the hands on demonstrations were particularly interesting for me. Dan, Greg, and Steve set up a selection of more than a dozen different kinds of microphones, from omni to shotgun to parabolas, along with several stereo rigs. It was so cool to be able to put on headphones and test them all out. Sharon led the apparently famous “Build your own windscreen” workshop too. I’ve now got a shaggy shotgun windscreen that looks like a cross between an opossum and a giant hotdog!

Lupines dot the ground around the field campus buildings

Of course most of the best parts were getting out to some beautiful spots to record. I’ll talk about that in Part 2.

Wyoming Bird Bonanza

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Apart from the habitat and climate, there is another thing that separates birding in Wyoming compared with birding in California, and that is the community of birders out there actually looking at birds. The Bay Area has several Audubon Societies and a balkanization of email lists that distribute bird sighting to their members. In contrast, Wyoming has one email list (with ~250 members) for the entire state! Why does this matter? As citizen science projects such as eBird start to fill in our knowledge of bird distribution and abundance, Wyoming could be left as a blank spot on those maps.

Towards that end, two folks at the University of Wyoming, James Maley and Matt Carling, are again putting out a call for the few of us out there to submit our spring bird sightings to eBird. Hence the Wyoming Bird Bonanza.

One correction to the article I’ve copied below- there is no other registration needed aside from eBird. Matt and James will scour the statewide submissions themselves.

——

This edition of Bird Banter, about the upcoming Wyoming Birding Bonanza, was
published April 7, 2013, in the Wyoming Tribune Eagle. Feel free to disperse
it to anyone interested in participating. Thanks to James Maley,
jmaley1@uwyo.edu, for the information. Contact the author at
bgorges4@msn.com.

Wyoming Birding Bonanza strikes again

By Barb Gorges

Are you ready for the second annual Wyoming Birding Bonanza?
Polish your binoculars because you can be a winner.

The competition was dreamed up last year by James Maley and Matt
Carling, both of the University of Wyoming’s Department of Zoology and
Physiology. James is collections manager of the Museum of Vertebrates and
Matt is an assistant professor.

Their goal is to increase the number of bird observations for Wyoming during
spring migration that are recorded in the eBird.org data base, and to get
birders into the habit of submitting information. The data is used by
scientists.

Last year, the contest ran from mid-April to mid-June but this
year it is being pared back to May 1 – 31, migration peak weeks.

Thanks to sponsors like last year’s, Cheyenne – High Plains,
Laramie and Meadowlark Audubon societies, as well as UW’s Biodiversity
Institute, Audubon Wyoming and eBird, there are prizes. [Author's note: If
you would like to be a sponsor, contact James Maley, jmaley1@uwyo.edu.]

Registered contestants who enter at least 15 checklists will
receive a WBB T-shirt. A checklist is a list of bird species and number of
individuals of each, seen in a particular location during a period of time.
James promises this year’s T-shirt will be a work of art. Everyone who turns
in at least 10 checklists will be entered in a grand prize drawing.

Also, for each Wyoming county, the participant reporting the most species
will win a prize. Last year, I was the Laramie County winner and received
the latest edition of the National Geographic field guide. This year our
county is up for grabs since I’m going to be out less often.

For better odds, try birding Big Horn, Converse and Sublette
counties, where no checklists were turned in last year, James said.

“April, May, and June of 2012 are now the top three months of
all time for number of checklists statewide,” he said. There were 1,282
turned in, compared to 424 for the same months in 2010. A total of 266
species was observed in 2012.

I know I paid closer attention to the birds around me because of
the competition. I found a summer tanager in our backyard May 11, considered
rare for Wyoming.

James passed on a list of other rare bird sightings from 2012:

–1 Glossy Ibis at Meeboer Lake (west of Laramie) on April 17

–1 Lesser Black-backed Gull also at Meeboer Lake on April 17

–1 Black-and-white Warbler at Holliday Park on April 21

–1 Juniper Titmouse at Guernsey State Park on April 22

–1 Long-tailed Jaeger at Hutton Lake NWR on May 3

–1 Northern Cardinal in Laramie on May 4

–5 Short-billed Dowitchers at Hutton on May 5

–1 Snowy Owl at Keyhole State Park on May 15

–1 Blackpoll Warbler at Hereford on May15

–1 Cattle Egret in Rock River on May 17

–1 White-eyed Vireo near Lander on May 28.

So, are you ready to earn that WBB T-shirt? You can do it by
simply counting the birds in your backyard for a few minutes at least 15
different times. Here’s what you need to do.

First, sign up at www.eBird.org, if you haven’t already. It’s
free. Click on the “About eBird” link, and then the “eBird Quick Start
Guide,” the first link on that page.

When setting up your observation locations, select a hotspot marker if there
is one at one of your locations already, such as Wyoming Hereford Ranch or
Lions Park. Otherwise, on the map your personal marker may be hidden
underneath the hotspot’s. You can view your data for a hotspot alone or
collated with everyone else’s. If you have questions about eBird, call me.

Next, sign up for the Wyoming Birding Bonanza at
http://www.uwyo.edu/biodiversity/vertebrate-museum/birding-bonanza/. It’s
also free.

Here are the rules.

Counting:

1. Participants will count only full species as defined by the current
American Birding Association checklist.

2. Birds identified to a taxonomic level above species may be
counted if no other member of the taxonomic level is on the checklist. For
example, duck sp. can be counted if no other ducks are seen.

3. Birds counted must be alive and unrestrained. Sick and
injured birds are countable. Nests and eggs do not count.

4. Electronic devices are allowed, but see ABA’s Code of Ethics for
guidelines.

Time: We will extract final eBird data for the Bonanza on 30 June 2013.

Area: Anywhere in Wyoming.

Conduct:

1. Participants must only count birds unquestionably identified.
If in doubt, leave it out.

2. Know and abide by the rules.

3. Share information with other birders–they’ll thank you.

Good birding to all!

xxx

Great Backard Bird Count this Weekend

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This Stellar's Jay is just one species I might get to see in by backyard this weekend.

I am a regular participant in the Audubon Society’s Christmas Bird Count, which is one probably it’s most well-known and longest running citizen science project (you can read more about this here). Audubon has a number of other citizen science efforts, including one taking place this weekend: the Great Backyard Bird Count. I see the GBBC as something of a cross between the CBC (targeted searching in a limited area during a specified time of the year, repeated year after year) and eBird from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, which is the more flexible bird-sightings platform for reporting (and viewing) bird occurrences from anywhere in the world at any time. So consider keeping track of your bird sightings this weekend, even if it’s just the birds seen at the feeders in your yard or at your neighborhood park, and help put together a robust snapshot of late-winter bird populations.

I’ll also say eBird is a great general tool *for* birding, as it maintains lists for you and allows you to see what species people are finding.