APOD: Birds During a Total Solar Eclipse (2019 Jul 09)

[APOD Robot]

Birds During a Total Solar Eclipse

Explanation: What do birds do during a total solar eclipse? Darkness descends more quickly in a total eclipse than during sunset, but returns just as quickly -- and perhaps unexpectedly to the avians -- just a few minutes later. Stories about the unusual behavior of birds during eclipses have been told for centuries, but bird reactions were recorded and studied systematically by citizen scientists participating in an eBird project during the total solar eclipse that crossed the USA in 2017 August. Although some unusual behaviors were observed, many observers noted birds acting like it was dusk and either landing or flying low to the ground. Radar confirmed a significant decrease in high-flying birds and insects during and just after totality. Conversely, several sightings of normally nocturnal birds were reported. Pictured, a flock of birds in La Serena, Chile flew through the air together during the total solar eclipse that crossed South America last week. The photographer captured the scene in frames from an eclipse video. The next total solar eclipse in 2020 December will also cross South America, while in 2024 April a total solar eclipse will cross North America from Mexico through New England, USA.

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[Boomer12k]

Awesome....they probably had a great view...

:---[===] *

[orin stepanek]

Hey birdies; The moon's too long of a flight; and there's no power lines to rest on along the way!

[Avalon]

Was the sun particularly low in the sky during the eclipse in South America? Otherwise these birds indeed would have been flying upward at an unusual angle.

[neufer]

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Was the sun particularly low in the sky during the eclipse in South America? Otherwise these birds indeed would have been flying upward at an unusual angle.

Yes, low sunset in NW.

[LoneStarG84]

I was at a park in the path of totality during the 2017 eclipse, and all the crickets started chirping like it was twilight. That was an incredible experience, and luckily I won't have to go far for 2024's!

[neufer]

I was at a park in the path of totality during the 2017 eclipse, and all the crickets started chirping like it was twilight. That was an incredible experience, and luckily I won't have to go far for 2024's!

• Was it crickets or frogs?

What Does an Eclipse Sound Like? In 1963, We Found Out
By Marc Devokaitis, August 18, 2017

<<“The shades of night which accompany an eclipse of the sun have always intrigued mankind and caused him to pause, if only for a moment, to contemplate the mystery, the magic, the grandeur, and the extent of the universe of which he is a part.”

That’s the kind of sentiment that is drawing thousands of people to the path of the 2017 eclipse—but the words were written in 1963, by Peter Paul Kellogg, a professor of ornithology and bioacoustics at Cornell. And it’s what drew him to Maine for that year’s total eclipse, at 5:30 p.m. on July 20. Many people had come to Maine to see the eclipse, but Kellogg was there to listen, and to record bird songs.

“The eclipse does not influence many of the factors which affect bird song such as time of year and the physiological condition of the bird,” he wrote in the 1963 issue of The Living Bird. “It is also probable that the sudden interruption of an established diurnal routine is more confusing to some species or individuals than others. All these possibilities for variation in cause and effect…tend to keep the value of any observation a strictly local affair.”

“As the darkness descended, bird song fell off noticeably but some species, according to our recordings, never did stop completely.” he wrote. “The per-chic-o-ree of the Goldfinch was heard clearly in the middle of the totality; the Hermit Thrush and Swainson’s Thrush sang weakly during the darkness; a Veery called.” Despite the short period of darkness—about twice the brightness of a full moon, he wrote—no Eastern Whip-poor-wills took the opportunity to sing. After the light returned, the first call was a spring peeper (frog), and then a White-throated Sparrow, a Hermit Thrush, and a Swainson’s Thrush.>>

[longtry]

This scene reminds me of Monty Oum.

[orin stepanek]

Oh Yes I do remember this one!

[neufer]

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<<The eclipse of Thales was a solar eclipse that was, according to The Histories of Herodotus, accurately predicted by the Greek philosopher Thales of Miletus (c. 624/623 – c. 548/545 BC). If Herodotus's account is accurate, this eclipse is the earliest recorded as being known in advance of its occurrence. Many historians believe that the predicted eclipse was the solar eclipse of 28 May 585 BC. How exactly Thales predicted the eclipse remains uncertain.

According to Herodotus, the appearance of the eclipse was interpreted as an omen, and interrupted a battle in a long-standing war between the Medes and the Lydians. The fighting immediately stopped, and they agreed to a truce. Because astronomers can calculate the dates of historical eclipses, Isaac Asimov described this battle as the earliest historical event whose date is known with precision to the day and described the prediction as "the birth of science".

Thales is recognized for breaking from the use of mythology to explain the world and the universe, and instead explaining natural objects and phenomena by naturalistic theories and hypotheses, in a precursor to modern science. Almost all the other pre-Socratic philosophers followed him in explaining nature as deriving from a unity of everything based on the existence of a single ultimate substance, instead of using mythological explanations.

In mathematics, Thales used geometry to calculate the heights of pyramids and the distance of ships from the shore. He is the first known individual to use deductive reasoning applied to geometry, by deriving four corollaries to Thales' theorem. He is the first known individual to whom a mathematical discovery has been attributed.>>

John Tenniel's illustration from the 1884 edition of Aesop's fables.

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<<The Astrologer who Fell into a Well is a fable based on a Greek anecdote concerning the pre-Socratic philosopher Thales of Miletus. It was one of several ancient jokes that were absorbed into Aesop's Fables and is now numbered 40 in the Perry Index. During the scientific attack on astrology in the 16th–17th centuries, the story again became very popular.

The story of Thales falling into a well while gazing at the stars was originally recorded in Plato's Theaetetus. Other ancient tellings sometimes vary the person or the rescuer but regularly retain the rescuer's scoffing remark that it would be better to keep one's mind on the earth. The Roman poet Ennius summed up the lesson to be learned from the story in the line Quod est ante pedes nemo spectat, caeli scrutantur plagas ("No one regards what is before his feet when searching out the regions of the sky") and was twice quoted by Cicero to this effect.

The anecdote was repeated as an amusing story in the English jest book Merry Tales and Quick Answers (1530). In this the philosopher: fell plumpe into a ditche over the eares. Wherefore an olde woman that he kepte in his house laughed and sayde to him in derision: O Thales, how shuldest thou have knowlege in hevenly thinges above, and knowest nat what is here benethe under thy feet?

Meanwhile, Andrea Alciato was mounting a more serious attack on astrology in his Book of Emblems, the first of many editions of which appeared in 1531. In that first edition there was an illustration of the astrologer, head in air, about to trip over a block on the ground. The accompanying Latin poem referred to the story of Icarus and later editions used instead an illustration of his fall from the sky. However, the emblem is titled "Against Astrologers" and the poem concludes with the warning 'Let the astrologer beware of predicting anything. For the imposter will fall headlong, so long as he flies above the stars.' The English emblem compiler Geoffrey Whitney followed Alciato's lead in including the story and an equally fierce attack in his Choice of Emblemes (1586). At much the same time, John Lyly's play, Gallathea (first performed in 1588) features a sub-plot involving a phony alchemist and a sham astronomer who, in gazing up at the stars, falls backward into a pond.>>