Partial solar eclipse here, with 99.64% obscuration
Began 1010 hrs, max 1127 hrs, ended 1249 hrs
Going into it,
Temperature dropped 74F to 66F
Gradual but accelerating darkening with shadows from our walnut tree leaves
becoming oddly fascinating (crescent-shaped)
Traffic noise hushed; we’re located between Chinden and State in west Boise,
and to have them go quiet was awesome =)
Bees and other insects departed, crickets chirped
Screech-owl began calling
Feeding frenzy ensued at our humfeeders, with RU gaining better control of
our back yard
Downey Woodpecker began calling, drumming
Passerines like magpies, chickadees, and finches withdrew
Coming out of the eclipse, reverse the above
Experiencing this at home, we enjoyed watching eclipse parties across the
country, with the liveliest maybe at Clemson SC?
We were also glued to the NASA website on our laptops, and texting with
family through the experience.. =)
Whew!
Larry
From: Larry Arnold [mailto:larnold47@cableone.net]
Sent: Monday, August 21, 2017 8:53 AM
To: ible@yahoogroups.com
Subject: humfeeder watch this morning
Birders and Eclipsers,
A few notes from our hood early on:
Screech-owls across the street were chatting 0400-0430 hrs
Our troop of 20-30 Mallards began foraging 0630, and range from
slightly/partially leucistic thru melanistic, i.e., a motley crew
First Black-chinned Hum (BC) showed up at our humfeeders 0639 hrs, followed
shortly by a hatch year (HY) Rufous (RU)
First Black-capped Chickadee 0704 hrs
We spotted a Calliope (CA) 0715 hrs, our first in two weeks, looking most
like a HY male
Red-breasted Nuthatch 0718
House Finch 0730
etc., etc.
I notice RU (when present) leaf-bathing many mornings on large wet leaves of
our grape plant, apparently dampened by one of our sprinklers 3x a week
(Mo,We,Fr)
Haven’t noticed any of our BC etc. doing this, but RU often tries to own
everything in the back yard, including humfeeders (8), salvias (Wendy’s
Wish), and these wet grape leaves along the back fence
Also noticed we still have an adult male BC, but he’s been confined by RU to
a back corner feeder that is not easily defended
Our humfeeders are purposefully scattered so RU can’t own everything. Note
that in areas with many more hums, like AZ, NM, CO, it may or may not make
any difference to scatter the feeders (I’ve been fiddling with this for 25+
yrs) 😉
Our current hum population estimate (back yard only) is 10 BC, 1 RU, 1 CA
As an aside, when I was searching nation-wide for the largest humfeeding
operations (1990s), the toppermost place I found was near Nogales AZ, where
hums peaked (in fall) at 16 gallons of 1:4 sugar-water (SW) daily, and at
night we either removed feeders or covered them to defeat fruit bats from
draining them, because Steve and Ruth Russell, et al., were doing a
quantitative study of SW consumption to better understand energetics, and
they were attempting to get an idea of relative numbers of hums vs.
consumption rates (allowing for SW “thieves” and other variables). Over the
years, loose “conversion factors” have ranged from 400 to 1000 hums per
gallon of SW per day, so we might readily appreciate how many hums they were
feeding at the Nogales location, eh?
Just for fun,
Larry
Awaiting max eclipsage here in west Boise…