BirdCast

There are many websites for people to submit sightings of different migrating birds and monarch butterflies as they travel across North America, but BirdCast uses weather radar to produce live bird migration maps for the continental United States, as well as nightly forecasts.

*The map for the entire United States at 11:30 pm Atlantic Time May 23, 2024*.

I’m watching the live data for Washington County, Maine, and at 11:45 pm when I’m writing this, BirdCast estimates there are over 430,000 birds in flight over that one county right now heading north east in the direction of PEI. The dashboard estimates average flight speed, altitude and even provides estimates of which species are most likely to be on the move tonight, many of them tiny summer visitors who nest near our house like the Common Yellowthroat, Ovenbird, Northern Parula and and Blackburnian Warbler.

I have spent a lot of time wondering what the landscape around me looked like before European invasion, how it would have felt to wander through the ancient forest that was felled to build sailing ships and fine furniture. Until someone invents a virtual reality program to allow me to walk through an approximation of what had been here, the next best thing is to stand outside with my eyes closed each morning at this time of year during the dawn chorus and listen as each newly-returned little songbird offers up its timeless song, creating an ancient aural landscape. My heart is beating as fast as their little wings right now in anticipation of their arrival.

Celestial Awe

A total solar eclipse last month and a spectacular aurora borealis show on the night of May 10th have both luckily occurred during that sweet spot on PEI when the snow has disappeared but the biting insects haven’t yet emerged, when being outside is a pleasure.

I have seen the aurora on the northern horizon before, but between 11pm and midnight they danced and flickered dimly overhead and all around, something I’ve never experienced. We don’t live in a completely dark-sky environment, as there are a few yard and street lights dotted around, and the glow from the lights in the town of Alberton to the north can sometimes be detected, but it’s pretty close, and I got some nice photos.

It was only 4C on Friday night and I hadn’t dressed appropriately for the cold, damp weather, but I stretched out on the grass anyway to watch the show. Last night I was better prepared for another cool night, donning long underwear, heavy sweater, gloves, hat, winter boots and splash pants.

Alas, the northern lights stayed undetectable except in long exposure photos, just a glow on the horizon. So my careful preparation wouldn’t totally have been in vain, I recruited Steven to join me in a gimmicky shot to commemorate our month of celestial awe, but now looking at it, I think it also captured how we have moved through our life together over these past 25 years: arm in arm, heads up, finding each other in an infinite and beautiful universe, walking through the darkness toward the light.

Behind The Scenes at Eurovision 2024

It’s the Eurovision final tomorrow, one of my favourite days of the year! I was #teamspain up until the last act of the second semi-final last night and now I’m also #teamnetherlands. I’m not sure I’ve ever been able to pick a Eurovision winner, being incurably North American, but I love the energy of the performers, the cheesy jokes, and the slick television production. Here’s a look behind the well-oiled machine that has been built in Malmö over the past few weeks. What they pull off so seamlessly is nothing short of miraculous. Douze points!

Silence

The audio that accompanies this article in The Guardian broke my heart, and I’m still thinking about it, especially when I hear a new seasonal visitor has returned to nest in the forest near our house. I’m not sure why we humans are continuing to ignore warnings that we have very little time to change how we live to ensure future generations of humans and other species can have a livable planet.

I think part of the problem is that the people who wield the most power in the world live in large cities. Some of them possibly have country homes as well, but they do not have a healthy relationship with nature and therefore don’t care about it beyond what it can give them; they try to control it, bend it to their will, extract from the natural world things that will make them more and more money. It is difficult to care about what you can’t see.

When I lived for a brief time in London in the mid-80s, I knew a young woman who had just moved to the UK from the Cayman Islands. Maria and I both shared much of the excitement and challenges of coming from a small place and living in a massive city, but she had a physical challenge I didn’t have: she was often uncomfortable because she had never worn shoes for any long period of time. She grew up walking on bare feet in sand, not because they were poor, because they weren’t, but because they didn’t need shoes. She found the cobbles and pavement of London hard and noisy, wearing shoes and socks constricting.

She said couldn’t get the sense of the land, couldn’t feel a part of the place without her feet in the sand, in the soil. She was homesick in part because she missed her family, but just as much because of the loss of a connection to the land and the freedom of living so closely with the natural world. To be honest, I didn’t know what she was talking about. Who wanted to live in a backwards rural setting any more? I certainly didn’t. Give me history and theatre and art and Oxford Street and pubs and life!

I lost touch with Maria, but I would bet she returned to her home, and so did I.

I hear a robin.

Rosa

This beautiful vignette from Peter’s Italian travels sees him momentarily propelled back in time to the backlot at Cinecitta in 1962 and onto the set of a Sophia Loren/Marcello Mastroianni classic, and I’m swooning at the thought of it.

What if we had all agreed to use the internet only to share the beauty we had seen through our days, like digital Damiels and Cassiels?

Lone

I was weeding a flower bed a few minutes ago, taking advantage of these sweet long evenings before the biting insects emerge. I would be outside all day long at this time of year if I could, but usually I have to steal a few minutes here and there.

A small flock of Canada geese flew down the river towards Yeo’s Bridge, probably aiming for the fresh-water pond just beyond. They were very low and close enough to me that I could hear their whistling wings. A few minutes later, I heard and saw another goose up the river, wheeling around in an unusual way. Then, as I was fully occupied with destroying some particularly stubborn weeds, a loud call came suddenly from the river just in front of me.

There was the lone goose, bobbing along in the water in the direction as the small flock had gone, calling over and over, the same call as when they are flying overhead, which I always imagine to be “here we are, stay together, don’t straggle, we can do it!”

But this was sadder, one insistent voice and no response. It cried, for that’s how it sounded to me, for at least five minutes, swimming further away. A mourning dove in the woods kept it company, coo wooo wooo wooo, you’re not alone.

And then it stopped. I will imagine it heard its friends and flew to join them in the pond.

Why is this man smiling?

Dear government comms people,

When official photos are taken, make sure they take two: one happy and one solemn.

Or maybe just buy a couple of ads a year without someone’s mug on it? Trust me, we won’t notice the lack of smiling politicians as much as we will take note of ghoulish grinning.

Sincerely,

Those of us still reading newspapers

Can you handle this brush?

My attempts to find a reasonably-priced wooden scrub brush with a handle to use outside to clean garden buckets, tools and feed and water dishes for the hens have never been successful. There are tons of plastic ones, but the bristles start falling out after just a few uses and the plastic breaks down over time.

A couple of years ago I found a small wooden brush, much like the scrub brushes my mother used to use to clean floors, but this one had a hole for a handle. The bristles seem to be non-plastic, probably from hogs, probably from China. Not ideal, no doubt a by-product of industrial farming, but better than plastic, I guess?

The brush worked okay, but was a bit too big and unwieldy for smaller items and, as I’m often cleaning things in sub-zero temperatures, not having a handle meant wet, cold hands.

Yesterday I looked at the brush and thought I might be able cut it in two and add a handle to each half, thereby creating a more nimble tool and getting two brushes out of one: one for garden things and one for hen things. So that’s what I did.

*Cut the end of the handle at a bit of an angle for easier scrubbing.*

I pulled a wooden rake handle from my bucket of “pointy things used in the garden” (rebar, many old broom and rake handles, a couple of pieces from an old TV antenna) and cut one end so it would sit flat against the top of the brush. I screwed the handle on, cut it to the length I needed, and that was it, quick and easy. I added a hole at the end to attach some twine to hang it up and I’m all ready for more comfortable scrubbing.

The handle turned out to be made from a beautiful and extremely hard red wood. I’ve no idea what kind it is, and possibly it, too, is from China. It was a surprising pleasure to drill into it, pushing hard against the firm tight grain, and watch red curls come out in the drill bit. It is satisfying to know I am reusing this piece of wood after the rake head it once held fell apart, ensuring the tree that stretched and grew towards the light, sheltered birds, animals, insects and bacteria, brushed against its neighbour, felt the rain and watched the moon and sun dance across the sky, did not fall in vain.

Food/Not Food

If you are unsure if something is a food, a good test is to put it outside and see what happens (most memorably done by Spy magazine in 1989 when they put a Twinkie cake on a NYC window ledge for four days and not even the pigeons went near it!).

I found three stale rice cakes in the back of a cupboard this morning and tossed them onto the lawn, confident some creature would eat them. The crows arrived quickly, took a few bites and passed, as did their bluejay cousins. A red squirrel triumphantly grabbed one, probably excited by how large and relatively light it was, scurried up a pine tree, took a nibble and dropped it to the ground.

I gathered up the rice cakes and presented them to the hens, who have pecked at them with little enthusiasm for four hours. They will probably finish them, but it will take a while. Their diet includes grit and small stones, so they are used to eating things without obvious (to us) nutritional value.

Not food.

“*Why did you give us styrofoam? We’ll eat it, of course, but…styrofoam?”*

Another Planet

In the end, it went by so quickly. We went outside just before 3:30pm as the moon started to move in front of the sun. By 4:30 the sun was almost hidden, the temperature had dropped a few degrees, the light was odd, the birds were quiet, the wind had died down.

Then gulp, the moon ate the sun, we took off our eclipse viewing glasses, and we were on another planet, a twilight planet where a ring glowed in the sky. I had anticipated our hens would head for their coop as it darkened, which is what they do every evening, needing to get up high on a roost as their eyesight is poor in dim light. Instead they kept pecking until it was too late, and they gathered together, confused, huddled next to a shrub. They heard their automatic chicken door shut, and knew something was up. It all happened so fast.

I was anticipating pitch black, but instead the horizon glowed, there was blue sky. It felt as almost like sunrise, except we were facing west. We could see a planet, maybe Jupiter, just below the sun. The sky that had been cloudlessly clear all afternoon had wispy clouds, but that just added to the magic. We had nearly three minutes of totality, but it felt like a second.

Then the light roared back in a whoosh, the strange shadows returning, our glasses back on to see the rest of the show. I stayed outside for another hour, watching the moon move away, the hens back to their scratch scratch pick pick dance. Then I had supper, the winds picked up, the birds started to fly around again, the sun shone brightly.

thelmaphillips.ca

Always looking for connections