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Photos for Malibu Lagoon March 22, 2015
Northern Mockingbird, Mimus polyglottos.
Common Yellowthroat, Geothlypis trichas. This bird is a skulker and difficult to see well. Luckily it was so overjoyed with the capture of a spider it came out of the vines to show off.
Song Sparrow, Melospiza melodia. These were everywhere, singing. Spring arrived around dinner time two days ago, and the joint was jumping.
Sometimes we get an Osprey flyover, or maybe a Merlin or a Peregrine. This is FiFi, one of the few remaining B-29 Superfortresses and the only one currently flying. She was built in 1944, never flew in battle, and was retired in 1958. Today she is owned by the Commemorative Air Force and appears at air shows. More at Wikipedia.
Speaking of Spring, here is why they named this cormorant the Double-crested (Phalacrocorax auritus). Those white feathers on the head are only around in breeding season. The nuptial crests keep the other cormorant species from getting rude with Double-crests but one can only wonder what would happen if a Double-crest should meet a Rockhopper Penguin at the wrong time.
Royal Terns, Thalasseus maximus. We had them mixed in with Elegant Terns today which made identification easy. For once.
Bonaparte’s Gulls, Chroicocephalus philadelphia. These are caught half-way between winter and summer plumage when the head is all-black.
Great Blue Heron, Ardea herodias. The water level in the lagoon was exceptionally high, nearly 8 feet, and the long-legged waders found it too deep. This bird was up Malibu Creek and even there it couldn’t find a place to fish. The next breach in the berm may come from hungry herons.
Field Trip Report Malibu Lagoon March 22,2015
Under overcast skies, we birded early in the month (the first of March was a Sunday.) The sand berm had closed at Malibu Lagoon and the small rain events only added inches to the water level, but not enough to punch through to the ocean. The lagoon, at its highest water level since the reconfiguration two years ago, was interesting, but not conducive to shorebird watching. And in fact most of the duck species spotted were in small numbers, possibly because of the water depth. The walk was not without highlights, however. A small family of Surfbirds appeared on the rocks off the Colony—one showed breeding plumage. A number of Elegant Terns showed pinkish breast feathers as well as the growing black crests. There were three Double-Crested Cormorants with bold white eyebrows, on the shore, not far from our position. Not a single Snowy Plover was spotted. No one in the final group remembered previous sightings of an American Robin; it landed on a small island off the Adamson house, not far from the solitary Cattle Egret. Photos from the photo-participants welcome!
Canada Goose 1
Gadwall 1
Mallard 12
Northern Shoveler 2
Bufflehead 2
Red-breasted Merganser 2
Ruddy Duck 30
Red-throated Loon 3
Common Loon 5
Pie-billed Grebe 2
Horned Grebe 1*
Western Grebe 12
Brandt’s Cormorant 4
Double-crested Cormorant 45
Brown Pelican 27
Great Blue Heron 1
Great Egret 10**
Snowy Egret 12
Cattle Egret 1
American Kestrel 1
American Coot 45
Black-bellied Plover 6
Killdeer 3
Spotted Sandpiper 2
Willet 3
Whimbrel 10
Marbled Godwit 8
Ruddy Turnstone 1
Surfbird 4
Bonaparte’s Gull 12
Heerman’s Gull 6
Ring-billed Gull 3
Western Gull 3
Californian Gull 40
Royal Tern 15
Elegant Tern 28
Rock Pigeon 23
Mourning Dove 2
Anna’s Hummingbird 1
Allen’s Hummingbird 6
Black Phoebe 2
American Crow 5
Rough-winged Swallow 4
Barn Swallow 2
Bushtit 14
American Robin 1
Northern Mockingbird 3
European Starling 4
Yellow-rumped Warbler 5
Common Yellowthroat 2
California Towhee 3
Song Sparrow 9
White-crowned Sparrow 10
Western Meadowlark 3
Brown-headed Cowbird 4
House Finch 4
Lesser Goldfinch 1
…56 species….
* Leucitic ** spotted nesting across PCH in ficus
April. It’s that time of year again!
For the Mar Vista gardens tour, of course! This is our area’s garden tour that focuses on rational, reasonable, drought-tolerant garden designs. Some of them are created by well-known landscape designers for clients who don’t have time to get down’n’dirty in the front and back yards. Others are home-designed and maintained displays of California native plants. The varied lot size and locations of the houses on display guarantee that there is something for everyone. Last year, this Audubon chapter’s sponsorship made the Walgrove (School’s) Wildlands one the tour’s highlights. Even though schools are not on this year’s tour, make sure you go by Walgrove’s garden and peek through the fence. It’s in full bloom, for the 9th week! Hooray!
Here is your link with the info to participate in this year’s tour on Saturday April 25th: addresses, links, all sorts of info! see: http://marvistagreengardenshowcase.blogspot.com
(Thanks to Grace M for the reminder!)
Vernal Festivals
The vernal equinox, by any name, has been a major cultural event around the world for millennia. Of course, the farther one lives from the equator, the more noticeable are seasonal variations in daylight and warmth, and the more important these events become. Cultures from around the world – including Japan, China, Iran, Russia, Egypt, Scandinavia, Scotland and throughout the Americas – developed their own festivals celebrating the vernal equinox and the onset of springtime.
The Snake of Sunlight — Main pyramid at Chichen Itza, Yucatan, Mexico
(CostinT from Timeanddate.com)
Easter is the best known vernal festival in the western world.
Goddess of the Dawn to the Greeks was Eos (Aurora to the Romans), born of Titan parents, sister to sun-god Helios (Roman Sol Invictus) and moon-goddess Selene (Roman Luna), and mother of the four winds. The name originates in the ancient Indo-European language, predecessor to nearly all European, Indian and Persian languages, and was Ostara (later Ostern) to the Germans, and Eastre in Old English and Ester in Middle English, from whence we get both East and Easter. The early Christian church was good at co-opting festivals from other religions and peoples. So, the spring festival of Eos (by whatever local name variation) became Easter, re-configured to memorialize the death and resurrection of Jesus. Spring festivals typically mark the end of the wintery season of death and the rebirth into spring, when plants bloom and animals bear their young. The origin of the Easter Egg
Red Easter Eggs symbolize the blood of Jesus (Wikipedia – Easter Egg)
custom is complex: part obvious fertility symbol, part recognition of the end of Christian Lent (during which eggs were forbidden), part early Mesopotamian Christian symbol for the death of Jesus, and part empty-shell symbol of the empty tomb of Jesus. Easter is scheduled for the first Sunday after the first full moon on or after the vernal equinox, a formula which indirectly led to Western Europe’s replacement of the Julian Calendar with the Gregorian calendar in 1752.
Sunspot Cycles
The sunspot cycle is driven by cyclic fluctuations in both polarity and strength of the solar magnetic field. On average, these magnetic poles reverse polarity – north magnetic pole becomes south magnetic pole and vice versa – every 11.1 years, then does it again, for an average total of 22.2 years. The Sunspot minimum period surrounds this polar flip: for example, current Cycle 24 began 1/4/2008 when at solar 30° north a sunspot appeared with polarity magnetically reversed from existing sunspots, the sign of a polar flip. That year was later ‘voted’ the “blankest year of the space age” – 266 days without a single sunspot, exceeding 1954’s 241 spotless days. However, solar minima in the late 19th-early 20th centuries often had 200-300 spotless days per year. Farther back, during the ‘Maunder Minimum’ (cause of Europe’s ‘Little Ice Age”of 1645-1715), only 30 sunspots appeared during one 30-year period. Sunspot maximums occur roughly midway between minimums. Current Cycle 24, expected to end in 2019, experienced a ‘double peak’ of spot maximum – 67 sunspots in Sep. 2012, then dropping, only to again peak at 82 spots in Apr. 2014.
For comparison, the earth’s magnetic field flips – not just slide around, but flips north to south – over a wildly varying cycle ranging from 10,000 to 25 million years. It takes an estimated 5000 years for the magnetic field to wane, flip, and wax, and – we are told – we may be in such a period right now. So keep an eye on your compass – if the needle point suddenly shifts to ‘south,’ or if your car’s GPS system suddenly becomes unreliable, well…don’t say you weren’t warned. And stay out of that ensuing influx of cosmic rays.
List of all 24 Solar Cycles
Just in case you thought you might escape this without seeing a chart, here’s your chart.
| Sunspots – Last 10 cycles | |||||
| Solar | Start at | Spots at | Years of | Date of | Spots at |
| Cycle No. | Minimum | Minimum | Cycle | Maximum | Maximum |
| 15 | Dec 1913 | 1.5 | 10.0 | Aug 1917 | 105.4 |
| 16 | May 1923 | 5.6 | 10.1 | Apr 1928 | 78.1 |
| 17 | Sep 1933 | 3.5 | 10.4 | Apr 1937 | 119.2 |
| 18 | Jan 1944 | 7.7 | 10.2 | May 1947 | 151.8 |
| 19 | Feb 1954 | 3.4 | 10.5 | Mar 1958 | 201.3 |
| 20 | Oct 1964 | 9.6 | 11.7 | Nov 1968 | 110.6 |
| 21 | May 1976 | 12.2 | 10.3 | Dec 1979 | 164.5 |
| 22 | Mar 1986 | 12.3 | 9.7 | Jul 1989 | 158.5 |
| 23 | Jun 1996 | 8.0 | 11.7 | Mar 2000 | 120.8 |
| 24 | Jan 2008 | 1.7 | Apr 2014 | 81.9 | |
| All 24 Cycles | |||||
| 1755-2014 Mean | 5.8 | 11.1 | 114.1 | ||
Coincidentally, a total eclipse of the sun, visible over the north Atlantic Ocean, occurs this vernal equinox, March 20, lasting 2 minutes 47 seconds, with maximum at 9:46:47 Greenwich Mean Time. It begins east of Labrador, passes over the Faeroe Islands, Svalbard, and ends at the north pole, where it may be visible, despite the fact that technically the sun doesn’t do its single, annual rise there for another hour (see prior comment on atmospheric refraction at sun rise/set.)
Total Solar Eclipse in Antarctica (Fred Bruenjes 11/23/03)
http://www.moonglow.net/eclipse/2003nov23/index.html
So make sure you run outside at 3:45 PM on March 20 to witness the vernal equinox, despite the fact that, unlike a full moon, there really isn’t much to look at. By the way – the sun doesn’t rise and set. The earth revolves on its axis. But you knew that. [Chuck Almdale]
Link to Part I – Vernal Equinox March 20, 2015, 3:45 PM, PDT
Vernal Equinox March 20, 2015, 3:45 PM, PDT — Part I
This year we report on that other large object in the sky, known as the sun.
Our Sun – 860,000 miles in diameter, 8 light-minutes away
(Alan Friedman ~ 4/22/14, on NASA site)
The first event is the Vernal Equinox, scheduled in Los Angeles for March 20, 2015 at 3:45 PM PDT. On that day, daylight will last 12 hours, 7 minutes and 37 seconds (12:07:37); nighttime is 11:52:13 long. You will note that these periods of day and night are not equal. Day and night were nearly equal on March 16, with 11:59:05 of daylight.
Definition of the term
Vernal: Of or pertaining to Spring [Latin vernal(is)]
Equinox: When the sun crosses the plane of the earth’s equator [from Latin aequinoctium, the time of equal days and nights].
Equinoctial daytime exceeds nighttime for two reasons
First: Sunrise occurs when the leading (upper) edge of the rising sun first becomes visible above the horizon. Sunset is when the trailing (not the lower) edge drops below the horizon. The width of the sun adds about six minutes of daylight.
Second: Refraction of the sun’s rays by the earth’s atmosphere permits us to see the sun both before it has actually risen and after it has actually set, adding several minutes each to sunrise and sunset. In total, day exceeds night on March 20, 2015 by 15 minutes , 14 seconds.
Seasonal Fluctuation
Because the two equinoxes (vernal and autumnal) mark when the sun crosses the plane of the earth’s equator, these are also the only days of the year when the sun rises exactly in the east and sets exactly in the west. The earth’s axis (and equatorial plane) is tilted 23.4° with respect to the plane of the earth’s orbit around the sun. In the northern summer the earth’s
Northern Summer (famous artist – name withheld by request)
north axial pole tilts towards the sun, the sun’s rays have less insulating atmosphere to filter them, and the northern hemisphere warms up. In the northern winter, the north pole tilts
Northern Winter (same famous artist)
away from the sun whose warming rays now must penetrate more atmosphere, and the northern hemisphere cools down. Seasons are opposite south of the equator. The closer you are to the equator, the more equal are day and night, summer and winter, warmth and cold. The temperature extremes of winter and summer are replaced by rainy and dry seasons.
At equinox: right diagram shows view past top of sun towards earth.
Eastern Sunrise, Western Sunset
Throughout the northern winter and spring, the points of sunrise and sunset move farther and farther north. The extremes are the Winter Solstice (around December 21), when the sun rises and sets farthest to the south, and the Summer Solstice (around June 21) when they are farthest to the north. The equinoxes mark the halfway point, when sunrise and sunset are exactly east and west. Well, not exactly. The sun sets at 270° – exactly west – on March 19 at 7:04 PM PDT, rises at 90° – exactly east – on March 20 at 6:27 AM, and sets March 20, 7:05 PM at 271°, slightly north of exactly west.
So make sure you run outside at 3:45 PM on March 20 to witness the vernal equinox, despite the fact that, unlike a full moon, there really isn’t much to look at. By the way – the sun doesn’t rise and set. The earth revolves on its axis. But you knew that. [Chuck Almdale]
Part II to follow: Vernal Equinox Festivals, Sunspot Cycles and an Eclipse
Interesting Links
Space Weather Radio – Meteor echoes & other live sounds from space
TimeandDate.com – March Equinox
TimeandDate.com – Los Angeles sunrise, sunset & day length for March 2015
InfoPlease – A Tale of Two Easters
TimeandDate.com – Day and Night map for March Equinox 2015
Heliophysics – A Universal Science
Los Angeles Equinoxes and solstices from 2010–2020
SANTA MONICA BAY AUDUBON SOCIETY BLOG 