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I woke up Friday morning pretty early to go birding with a group I’m in. When I opened the garage door to leave I discovered there was snow on the ground and flurries still swirling.
I was heading about an hour northeast from home so, I checked my email to make sure they hadn’t canceled the outing…they hadn’t so off I went.
It wasn’t snowing when I arrived at the meeting spot but, while birding the snow started to fall pretty heavy. It wasn’t in the weather forecast the day before! It was still a good morning of birding. We saw 22 species of birds. One White-crown Sparrow favored us with a nice look perched on snowy grass.
By the time we left it had quit snowing so my drive home was easy, and while the snow was sticking to the ground where I was birding it hadn’t had home. The upcoming 10 day forecast looks like we’re snow free.
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It’s been awhile since I shared any birds so I’m going to share several I saw while in Florida this past September. It was a fantastic trip. I saw 21 new to me birds aka “Lifers”. I won’t share all of them in this post. 😊
Aren’t they great? I’m still excited to have seen them.
How’d you all do with the time change for those of you in states and places that end Daylight Savings Time? How many clocks did you have to reset? We have 8 clocks we needed to change including the thermostat and our cars. I’ve been waking up earlier than normal so back to my natural rhythm at last!
Later that evening I saw the Northern Lights for the first time ever. That post is here. It was glorious.
Friday morning I birded with my usual birding group and we had a great morning seeing 40 species of birds. Along with the birds I noticed some spooky Zombie Pirates lurking by the pond. Here’s one.
Saturday morning I was up early and met up with two girl friends to do my first Big Day. It’s a 24 hour global birding marathon put on by Cornell Lab of Ornithology. We didn’t sign up as team or register our day but we, birded from 8AM until after 4PM. I saw 45 species. It was pretty fun day. We posted our sightings on ebird.org so they’ll have our record for their counts and information. Unfortunately, the next afternoon I got sick, and shortly afterwards I was hearing from my companions from the day before that they where also sick. We think the deli we stopped at to have lunch is where we picked up food poisoning. I brought home half my sandwich which I shared with He-Man and yep, he got it too. UGH.
Monday still weak, and very tired I was determined to locate and see Comet C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan-ATLAS) but, I wasn’t in shape to drive anywhere so I just stepped out on my back patio and photographed it there. It’s so cool and it has a great long tail!
What a week! What a month it’s been so far! The Aurora, and the Comet really made my month. Everything else has been icing on the cake.
My tummy is still sketchy, but I’m on the mend and so are He-Man and my friends. I plan to be out photographing Halloween things, birding, and maybe the Comet with a better composition soon. I hope your week is going well. Oh, and watch out for the Zombies and Ghoulies! 👻
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With the all the intense Solar activity in the way of flares, and CME’s there have been Auroras are as low as Northern Nevada! I got an alert telling me the aurora was in my town and the KP rating was 8. Nine is the highest rating so I looked out the back door and I could see it so, I grabbed my camera, tripod, and cellphone, slipped into my shoes without tightening up my laces and dashed out the door. I didn’t grab a jacket, or my headlamp I was so excited. Here’s one of the many images I made.
I’ve wanted to see the northern lights since I first learned about them as a kid. I always thought I’d have to travel way up north in the winter to have the best chance of seeing them.
Why is it pink? What causes the colors? I had to look it up because the Northern Lights (aurora borealis), here have been bright pink with some blues and purples, and very little green.
They are created when energized particles from the sun slam into Earth’s upper atmosphere at speeds up to 45 million mph (72 million kph). Our planets magnetic field protects us from the onslaught.
Earth’s magnetic field redirects those particles towards the poles transforming that energy into the dazzling display we call the Northern Lights or in the Southern Hemisphere the Southern Lights (aurora australis).
Most Northern Lights are green but when there’s been intense solar activity the color can be red, pink, blue, or purple.
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After several hours of birding my birding partner and I were hungry so went looking for a place fairly close by to have some lunch. We found Quaker Steak & Lube.
This is the only one in FL going by their website. We both had salads and I failed to take a photo of either of them. It was just a Caesar Salad w/grilled chicken. Instead of croutons they served it with Cheese Curds. Now, I thought that sounded gross and would probably just pick them out, but after trying one I gobbled them up! They were warm and slightly gooy and tender on the inside yummy. Mary had the Biker Chick salad. It sounded delicious too, but it was on the sweet side and I was hot and wasn’t in the mood for sweet.
The inside of the restaurant is car themed. Each wing of the interior has a small sports racing car hanging from the ceiling, and lots of car memorabilia like a dividing wall full of MAC tools for fixing cars. I went back a second time for that salad and this time He-Man was with me he said he has some of those tools. Who knew?!
Anyway, I did get photos of the exterior and the doors.
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