Hi all:
There is a brown thrasher at 80 Mines Road in Blockhouse, Lunenburg County. It has been present now for two weeks. The house owner Marilyn Tremere has consented to birders to come to see the bird. It can be observed from the road. It tends in the multiflora across the road from Marilyn's also. There is a feeder by the steps that it comes to, but it spends the bulk of it's time on the ground at the feeders near the road.
James R. Hirtle
LaHave
Hi All,
Scientists have completed the necropsies of the thousands of birds that died
during migration in the US Southwest last August and September. The birds
died of long-term starvation from multiple causes. The adjective "long-term"
is particularly disturbing.
John
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/dec/26/mass-die-off-of-birds-in
-south-western-us-caused-by-starvation-aoe
White Point, Queens Co.. Christmas Bird count. Backyard feeders.
Temp was just below 0 C
Calm and sunny with cloudy periods
Mourning Doves 23
Chickadees 14
Sparrows: White Throated 0
Song 3
American Tree 1
Chipping 0
American Goldfinches 17
Juncos 9
Kinglets 0
Blue Jays 9
Common Grackle 1 American Robin 1
Nuthatches: W.B. 1
R.B. 2
Crows 12
Sharp Shinned Hawk. 1
Cardinal 0
Red-winged Blackbird 1 (F)
Woodpeckers: Downy 2
Hairy 1
Northern Flicker 0
Evening Grosbeaks 20+
Bald Eagle 1
Pretty quiet all in all. Everything is wide open so feeders aren’t that necessary at this time for some of the birds, she says hopefully
"Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul
And sings the tunes without the words
And never stops–at all." (Emily Dickinson)
As well as stopping the use of pesticides, please "leave the leaves", don't remove leafy debris nor deadhead until spring, plant native trees (eg. maple, oak, cherry etc.), and if you have space, leave deadwood where it lies or make brush piles. Just imagine if everyone had changed from having a pretty still life lawn and flower garden, to a dynamic insectary garden what a difference it would have made for these starving birds.
With kindest regards
Mary
I’m pretty sure that Marg intended this for the whole group. The LEDs are a good question.
From: Marg Millard
Sent: Saturday, December 26, 2020 16:00
To: John Kearney <j.f.kearney(a)gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Naturens] Re: Follow up to a September Discussion
I find this topic particularly interesting since I am watching birds eating or trying to eat what I don’t expect. I see many that go after flying insects eat wee bits and pieces from ground level. I saw Tree Swallows feeding and gathering on the ground. I see Starlings and other Black birds flying up to catch butterflies, flying ants and other things I can no longer see.
I fear I may live long enough top see no birds.
About lights. These street lights that are LEDs, has anyone been watching to see do they have an involvement in all this?
Marg in White Point, Queens.
"Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul
And sings the tunes without the words
And never stops–at all." (Emily Dickinson)
Hi all:
After three or four years of missing my personal target of 200 species of birds in the year for NS, I actually made it this year. Bird species number 200 was on the wires this morning in Garden Lots by house 619 and it was a northern mockingbird.
Sincerely,
James R. Hirtle
Hi Dave:
All three redshifts, the Doppler Effect (for a receding object) , gravitational redshift (light moving away from a massive object), and cosmological redshift (expansion of the universe) cause a shift to all wavelengths towards longer wavelengths. In the visual part of the spectrum, red light has a wavelength about twice that of blue light, so as you move toward longer wavelength you move towards the red end (hence the name).
The effect caused by light beings scattered by particles is called extinction. Interstellar extinction as the scattering removes blue light by scattering it in different directions while the reddish light is left effected, so it continues on unimpeded. With less blue light the object looks redder. You can easily see that if you look at the Coalsack Nebula, a gas cloud with a lot of dust in it.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5c/Part_of_the_Coalsack_Ne…
If you zoom in on the centre you can see that all the stars are red, the bue light being scattered away.
Atmospheric extinction is the same process that happens to sunlight that passes through the Earth's atmosphere. As the Sun sets, the light has to pass through more and more of the Earth's atmosphere, removing more and more of the blue light. Again the red light is not affected. We commonly say that the sun "turns red" when, if fact, if gets "less blue" because the amount of red light does not change.
When light scatters off dust it does not became redder. The blue light, which would normally pass over year head during the daytime, gets scattered in all directions, while the red light is unaffected. It is this blue light, scattered towards the ground, that makes the sky blue. Water does the same thing, which is why it looks blue as well. (If you scuba dive, things get redder as you go deeper as the red light is not scattered back as much.
The Pleaides star cluster also shows this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleiades#/media/File:Pleiades_large.jpg
The blue "haze" is blue light, given off by the stars, being scattered back towards is by dust that is still in the area and "behind" the stars, from our point of view.
It is also worth noting that the gravitational redshift is just one of many predictions made by relativity theory which have been tested and verified as our technology improves. The detection of gravity waves, a few years ago, were also a prediction of relativity. (if you do not take relativity into account, a GPS unit will gradually give a bigger and bigger discrepancy between where you are, and where the unit thinks you are. Even if you stay put! The equations for relativity predict that if any small part of the universe starts to collapse, the entire universe will start collapsing. Ditto if it any part of it starts to expand, he whole universe will expand. At the time Einstein published it, there was no evidence for contraction of expansion. As he felt a contraction was more likely to be the case, he added a "fudge factor" in the form of a small outward force to keep it from collapsing. When Hubble showed the expansion was actually happened, Einstein removed the fudge factor, calling its inclusion his greatest mistake.
Pat
On Dec 22, 2020, at 9:46 AM, David Webster wrote:
CAUTION: The Sender of this email is not from within Dalhousie.
Hello Patrick,
Thanks or this explanation. With the conventional focus on red shift I was unaware of the general shift to longer wavelength of all EM radiation. I wonder; could collision with dust and re-emission at a slightly longer wavelength also lead to this general loss of wave energy as transit time increases ?
Dave
On 12/21/2020 9:43 PM, Patrick Kelly wrote:
The only reason that the blue light is scattered more than the red, is because the wavelength of blue light is about the same size of the dust particles. If the wavelength of the light is larger than the size of the particles (e.g. red light, radio waves and infrared radiation) they pass through unaffected. This is also why visible light is scattered by fog particles, but radio waves go right through.
Also, to add one item about the cosmological redshift, caused by the expansion of the universe, is that it shifts the frequencies of ALL electromagnetic radiation towards longer wavelength (red if talking about visible light) from gamma rays, to radio waves and everything in between. It does not affect only the narrow bit of blue light to which the human eye is sensitive.
Pat
On Dec 20, 2020, at 5:29 PM, Larry Bogan wrote:
CAUTION: The Sender of this email is not from within Dalhousie.
David,
The reddening due to light scattering changes the appearance of
spectrum of a distant star or galaxy. The doppler red-shift and
gravitational red-shifts actually shift the wavelength of the light to the
red end of the spectrum. In the case of spectral lines in a spectrum, the
scattering will not change the wavelength of a spectral line but only its
intensity.
Larry
On Sun, 20 Dec 2020 12:53:42 -0400, David Webster <dwebster(a)glinx.com<mailto:dwebster@glinx.com>>
wrote:
Dear All,
While digging through and discarding clutter to expose a coffee
table I came across an August 1977 copy of American Scientist marked
"save"; with reference to light scattering on page 448.
In this article; Michael Jura: Interstellar Clouds and Molecular
Hydrogen pp446-454, Vol 65; much is covered but I will quote only the
paragraph which describes light scattering by copying it verbatim.
"In the interstellar medium, there are small solid particles
("dust") which apparently are well mixed with the gas. Because of the
dust, interstellar clouds preferentially absorb and scatter blue light
(much as the Earth's atmosphere does). Thus light from distant stars,
whose intrinsic colors are known from their spectra, appears reddened.
Since there is more interstellar extinction (absorption plus scattering)
of blue light than of red light and because it is observed that at least
half of all extinction results in scattering of the incident light, it
is possible to show from scattering theory that the grains have typical
sizes on the order of 10^-5 cm. Satellite observations have shown that
there is even more extinction in the ultraviolet than in the visible, so
there may be some grains whose radii are as small as 10^-6 cm."
Apologies in advance for having a crap detector that is perhaps
over sensitive but, as some may remember, I resist belief in the Big
Bang and expanding universe.
I wonder if scattering and reddening of light, as described in this
article, has some bearing on the red shift which has, as I understand
it, led to the Hubble constant and the belief in an expanding universe.
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year
Dave
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-----------
Larry Bogan
Brooklyn Corner, Nova Scotia
larry(a)bogan.ca<mailto:larry@bogan.ca>
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Patrick Kelly
159 Town Road
Falmouth NS B0P 1L0
Canada
(902) 472-2322
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Patrick Kelly
159 Town Road
Falmouth NS B0P 1L0
Canada
(902) 472-2322
Dear all,
   Many decades ago I attempted, using energy content of fat, calculus
to adjust body weight as fat or body tissue was burned and assumptions
such as 1) flight energy used solely to keep airborne with forward
motion being a by product, 2) 100% conversion efficiency of chemical
energy to flight muscles work and 3) no thermal updrafts when flying
over water. And, drawing on memory, long flights over water were high
risk and sometimes involved burning muscle.
   As children one of our amusements on rainy days was to stand in a
doorway and press both hands hard against the door casing. When we
turned sideways both arms would float upwards. This suggests some
elastic memory in muscle tissue.
   In this case you use energy to push against a resistance which does
not move and then, without using further energy, draw on this energy
which is stored somehow in muscle to move arms upward when the
resistance is removed. And this leads me to wonder if this "elastic
memory" may contribute to bird flight.
   In outline it would go something like this. When a wing is pulled
downward, the flight muscles would be under tension. If part of that
tension could remain stored in flight muscle, or even increased, when
the wing was pushed upward by pressure on the lower side then the
metabolic energy needed to power the next down stroke might be decreased
to some extent by this stored tension.
Dave W.
Dear All,
   While digging through and discarding clutter to expose a coffee
table I came across an August 1977 copy of American Scientist marked
"save"; with reference to light scattering on page 448.
   In this article; Michael Jura: Interstellar Clouds and Molecular
Hydrogen pp446-454, Vol 65; much is covered but I will quote only the
paragraph which describes light scattering by copying it verbatim.
   "In the interstellar medium, there are small solid particles
("dust") which apparently are well mixed with the gas. Because of the
dust, interstellar clouds preferentially absorb and scatter blue light
(much as the Earth's atmosphere does). Thus light from distant stars,
whose intrinsic colors are known from their spectra, appears reddened.
Since there is more interstellar extinction (absorption plus scattering)
of blue light than of red light and because it is observed that at least
half of all extinction results in scattering of the incident light, it
is possible to show from scattering theory that the grains have typical
sizes on the order of 10^-5 cm. Satellite observations have shown that
there is even more extinction in the ultraviolet than in the visible, so
there may be some grains whose radii are as small as 10^-6 cm."
   Apologies in advance for having a crap detector that is perhaps
over sensitive but, as some may remember, I resist belief in the Big
Bang and expanding universe.
   I wonder if scattering and reddening of light, as described in this
article, has some bearing on the red shift which has, as I understand
it, led to the Hubble constant and the belief in an expanding universe.
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year
Dave
From listening to online sounds I am pretty sure it is Boreal Owl. Is this something that should be drawn to attention of Crown? This intact old growth forest parcel black spruce, white and red pine CU060405 A is set for comments closing Boxing Day. Look for the purple patches just south of Oxford on the harvesting map https://nsgi.novascotia.ca/hpmv/
Easy to leave a quick comment. Click the envelope icon bottom left. It will prompt you to click the parcel. Then give you a form to comment in. All help to save as many of these endanged ecosystems as possible appreciated. â¤ï¸
With kindest regards
Mary
