Monday Musings

Last week’s focus was bright sky objects. I’m going to flip the switch to dark sky. Birds have begun their annual southward migration. In fact, we are already in the midst of the Full Fall Migration Period: August 15 — November 30, 2024. During this period,  light pollution is deadly to birds . We can ameliorate the danger by taking several actions. The first is “ Lights Out ” during critical migration periods. BirdCast  is a fascinating website which allows us to see the predicted bird migration over our location. You can type in the local zip code and see live alerts. In addition to looking out into my yard at night, how do I know how dark my personal region is? I’m fortunate to live in a relatively dark(er) sky area near the Blue Ridge Parkway of North Carolina. The red and pink regions are bright skies. According to the world  light pollution map , the eastern half and the Western Coastal areas of the US have the worst light pollution. This blog holds critical informa...

One day last April (April 13th), the ruby-throated hummingbirds and the whip-poor-wills returned. I wondered if it was a coincidence.  On April 15, 2022, they appeared at our Blue Ridge Mountain home: the  hummingbirds  during the day; the  whip-poor-will  that same night. This sparked my curiosity about the two species and bird migration. The Audubon Society has a beautiful website and a great  Twitter page , and both provide an abundance of information on our feathered friends. Last year I found an interesting website:  BirdCast , sponsored by Colorado State University and the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. The site has live  migration tools  that allow you to see how many millions of birds are flying on a particular night. These maps predict nocturnal migration (three hours after local sunset with updates every six hours). You can even look at your  local area  to see if birds will be passing overhead near your city. In ad...