Avian Ecologist

Peak Fall Color Destinations in MN

I’ve been slacking on blogging lately so here’s a quick rundown of the places we’ve been in search of fall colors this month! Temperance River state park Tettegouche state park: shovel point Palisade head Jay Cooke State Park white pine trail (1-4) C.C.C. trail (4 –> 1) Oldenburg overlook picnic trail overlook

Google Earth Image Exporting for Download

We were breaking apart our region of interest to facilitate downloads, but I decided instead to let Google tile the image for me. Some things I noticed: even when providing a region for export, the extent is used as opposed to an actual “clip” of the image. However, when you clip the image earlier in […]

Review: Peterson Field Guides Birding by Ear (Eastern/Central)

The 1st disc starts with a “dawn chorus” that is also a nice little quiz once you work your way through the CD’s! The credits mention that it is taken from an album for which I can’t track down an electronic recording, but it has been generated from more recordings than that, based on a […]

Brightest Ray Aurora I’ve Ever Seen!

A CHHSS produced the brightest ray aurora I’ve ever seen right at nightfall! As soon as it got dark enough (but before total dark), we could start to see the aurora in the northern sky, so we knew it was going to be good. As it got darker, the green light only got brighter! We […]

Exploring Alseth Rd., Stony Point

Like many southern St. Louis Co. roads, it’s lined with reed canary grass which gives way to speckled alder before interfacing with the native habitat, if there is any. In this case, there’s a spruce/tamarack swamp on the west side of the road near the intersection with the scenic byway, with many barren trees.

What I’m Doing in Google Earth Engine

Right now, there’s a data set we want that’s distributed exclusively on Earth Engine. So, to break it into manageable/meaningful chunks for our analysis, we’ve created regions. We basically need to generate the raster (requires a “max” function for the time period of interest) for each year, and then clip the raster to each region […]

Bird Common Names Derived from Indigenous Languages

There are a few bird names that were given by Indigenous cultures of the Americas that have made their way to our current common names. North American dowitcher sora Nahuatl chachalaca quetzal pauraque? South American condor anhinga caracara jacana ani tanager jabiru

Yerkes Observatory Refracting Telescope

Paul & I looked through a bit of history, visiting the 40″ refracting telescope for an observing night. It was something I’d always wanted to do but never made time for when I lived in southern WI. The price to look through the old telescope is a little steep considering it’s an outdated refractor ($100/person); […]

G3 Aurora Near Autumnal Equinox

A coronal hole detected a few days ago showed up big: I’m actually still outside as I type this, in case the aurora decides to act up again! Tonight I saw the brightest sub-storm I’ve seen yet…from my deck! Before 10:30 PM I noticed a sub-storm brewing, which is a big deal if I can […]

Onomatopoeia in American Bird Names

Birds names given by the earliest cultures that encountered them were often imitations of their songs/calls. What may be surprising is how many of those names have stood the test of time! For instance, Native cultures of Central America named the “chachalaca” for its calls. Unsurprisingly though, many of our North American English common names […]