A drive in the country

The little guy and I took a drive this afternoon. I had hoped to get Red-winged blackbird pictures. I got several. None of them are what I had in mind but they’ll do.

Agelaius phoeniceus (Red-winged blackbird) See also Red-winged Blackbird on What Bird?

We saw several other birds we weren’t looking for.

A mourning dove:

Here’s a link to a less cropped version of the above photo.

Zenaida macroura (Mourning dove) I love Mourning doves. They remind me of being at my Grandmother’s. See also WhatBird.com

After catching the mourning dove, I missed a Robin bathing and a practical flyby of a heron. DRAT! Maybe next time.

I pulled into the driveway of someone I know and got this one.

Since I can never really tell how good the picture is until I upload it to my laptop, I decided to very carefully try for another angle. This is the best I was able to get from without getting closer and risking scaring it off. I have no idea what kind of bird it is. I’ve never seen one before. If someone else knows or has any idea, please post a comment!

Thank you to Heidi and the Animal Diversity Web Zookeepers for solving the mystery!This little fellow is a Falco sparverius (American kestrel). He seems to be highly adaptable to his surroundings. He lives in areas where there are wide open spaces for hunting that also have high perches. He is the smallest species within the Falco genus with the exception of the Seychelles kestrel. He hunts large insects, rodents and small birds. Let’s see … that’s about all I can remember at the moment but feel free to read more about this interesting bird on BioKIDS - Kids’ Inquiry of Diverse Species page, “(a cooperative project of the UM [Go BLUE!] School of Education and the Animal Diversity Web).” The U.S. Geological Survey’s website also has a page on the American kestrel with photos that are surprisingly as grainy as mine..

In the yard of the person I know, I was surprised to see this pheasant:

Phasianus colchicus (Ring-necked Pheasant) See also USGS website

He wasn’t going to hang around to figure out what I was doing:

A catttail

Typha species. See the okay still looking for something about cattails in Michigan from a Michigan source … Okay, nope. But here’s something helpful.

Well, that’s it for today.

*Edited to add specific info about the subjects in the photos. Also, another helpful link for identifying birds is http://www.whatbird.com/. Thanks for the link, Marie!

The Vernal Equinox

Spring is here!  Yay!!! Whether or not it snows again makes little difference to me.  The days are going to be longer than the nights now!!  Woo hoo!!!

In honor of such a fabulous occasion, here are several links to information about the Vernal Equinox (in the northern hemisphere “when night and day are nearly the same length and Sun crosses the celestial equator (i.e., declination 0) moving northward”).

Vernal Equinox - from Eric Weisstein’s World of Astronomy     The above quote in parentheses is taken from this site.

Rite of Spring  I have wondered how it is decided which Sunday Easter will be on.  Now I know.  This site says that Easter is always on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the Vernal Equinox.  Interesting.

Standing an Egg on End During the Vernal Equinox   I’ve heard since I was a kid that you could do this on this day.  Read more about this myth here.

Genesis 1:14-19

14 And God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark seasons and days and years, 15 and let them be lights in the expanse of the sky to give light on the earth.” And it was so. 16 God made two great lights—the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars. 17 God set them in the expanse of the sky to give light on the earth, 18 to govern the day and the night, and to separate light from darkness. And God saw that it was good. 19 And there was evening, and there was morning—the fourth day.

Genesis 8:22

22 “As long as the earth endures,
seedtime and harvest,
cold and heat,
summer and winter,
day and night
will never cease.”

Cool Outer Space Stuff

I just “StumbledUpon” some cool space photos and sounds this afternoon.

Sights:

The Panther Observatory.  Click “Gallery”.  My faves so far are of the moon.

Hubblesite.org

Cosmotions    Time lapse photography of the sky. Cool if you have broadband and don’t have to wait all day.

A Solar Eclipse  Very interesting!

The Hale-Bopp Comet  - More on Hale-Bopp

Sounds:

Listen to Space Sounds.  Kinda weird but interesting.

 Other stuff:

Anatomy of a Black Hole  This is a cool animation about how black holes form.

Cool Cosmos: The Infrared Universe  A very infrared resource

What’s Up - 365 Days of Skywatching!!

Download the free e-book!

Thanks to Kathleen for sharing this bit of info!

Read Classic Authors’ Works Online

Notice I did not say “Read Authors’ Classic Works Online”. That’s because there are more than classic works found on Literature.org - The Online Literature Library. At least I have never heard of Lucy Maud Montgomerey’s The Golden Road, for example. I’m not exactly literature literate so may that is a classic and I’m just clueless.

There’s also a free Shakespeare site. It’s called No Fear Shakespeare. It has Shakespeare’s original wording and it has a modern English translation. Golly, it’s almost like talking about Bible versions!