A note on the cicadas. We walked by the one field about a half hour before
the start of the eclipse and it was silent. We were close to there when the
eclipse started and backtracked by the field just after it started (looking
for just the right spot) and heard the cicadas and stopped nearby. We heard
them continually until beginning of totality when they stopped. We were
there until the very end of the eclipse but never heard them again. It
certainly could have been a coincidence but was kind of interesting...
Awesome time!
Tim Rodenkirk
Back in Coos Bay
On Tuesday, August 22, 2017, Joel Geier <joel.geier@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
Hi Don & All,
Our observations were similar here at our place near E.E. Wilson
Wildlife Area.
The most noticeable thing was how vehicle traffic along Hwy 99W ceased
almost completely during the first half of the eclipse, up until about 5
minutes after totality. So it was very quiet in that sense.
We didn't hear any bird song but birds haven't been singing much lately,
even at dawn/dusk. Shortly after the sun re-emerged, a California
Scrub-Jay gave a squawk. But they can do that for any number of reasons.
I think we did hear a Eurasian Collared-Dove at one point, but not much
of anything else.
About 10 minutes before totality we noticed that there were still some
TURKEY VULTURES soaring high in the sky, with no indication of heading
for roost. We wondered how they'd manage, especially as the air was
cooling noticeably by then, and presumably thermals would be weakening.
They drifted off toward the northeast, which is opposite of the
direction that they normally go when heading to roost along the
ridgeline by our place.
Within 12 minutes after totality, while we were having fun looking at
still-very-thin crescents of sunlight where the reemerging sun was
shining through small gaps between the leaves of our birch tree, a lone
Turkey Vulture came flying over, very high in the sky, heading from
north to south. That's a lot quicker than they'd normally come off a
roost at dawn, and regain that much altitude. So my guess is that some
vultures just stayed aloft through the short period of twilight.
About cicadas, I've been hearing them occasionally during late morning
in recent days -- more often in late morning than in early morning or
late evening. So I think that's a normal thing that could be expected at
E.E. Wilson Wildlife Area around 10 AM, without an eclipse.
One fun thing I learned from this event, was that if you have a spotting
scope, you can turn it into a solar projector. For the MidValley Nature
list I'm attaching a photo of the setup that we rigged up, using a sheet
of cardboard and a small piece of white "tagboard."
We were able to see at least six sunspots with this. Two were on the
middle part of the sun so we could watch the moon advance over them in
the early stage of the eclipse. The other four were clustered near the
last part of the sun to be covered. After the moon passed, the sunspots
we could see were in different positions.
You can do this any day of the year that the sun is out -- no eclipse
needed!
Happy observing,
Joel
On Tue, 2017-08-22 at 09:16 -0700, Don Boucher wrote:
Hello,or
Local birders didn't observe any outstanding erratic behavior from birds
other wildlife during the eclipse. In our yard, we could hardly tellheard
anything novel was happening to the birds at all, except it did get quiet
during totality. Many birders noticed an increase of bird sounds before
totality and even more after. We heard a Eurasian Collared Dove sang just
before and after totality and some other birders observed this too. The
snowy tree crickets didn't chirp in our yard but Tim Rodenkirk heard
cicadas and/or crickets at E.E. Wilson Wildlife Area. I didn't see anysunset
reports of bats but there was one report of a Great Horned Owl flyover.
Lately, we've had a flock of about 40 swifts that gather nightly at
to roost nearby. We expected they might do this during the eclipse butthey
didn't.
Our thoughts are that totality was brief (less than two minutes) and the
decreased light before and after wasn't as long as morning or evening
twilight, and perhaps, mimicked the variable sunlight during a partly
cloudy day. Totality almost certainly caught the birds off guard, but by
the time they had a chance to realize anything was wrong, it was over.
Don Boucher
Corvallis
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Joel Geier
Camp Adair area north of Corvallis
