Milkweed and New Moon

New moon today and a light, damp snow.

I really like drawing dry milkweed. Each of the pods is a different shape, all lovely neo-Baroque curves. This is a new way of drawing I'm trying- acrylic underneath, oil stick on top, pen and ink. Unfortunately I had to scan it in two pieces and the blend hasn't worked out well. I'll give it another try on a less busy day.

Sumac and perihelion

Moon a waning crescent, 2% of full.
The temperature is dropping, now at -3, after a wet and foggy New Year's day.

After a long hiatus, time to write again. My horizons have expanded, though, now I live near the ocean for part of the year. May (perhaps), June, July and August will find me trying to understand tides, learning about shorebirds, sea grasses, the specific density of salt water and related matters. During those months I live in Maitland, on the Bay of Fundy and I need to know those things. The rest of the year I'll be in Nepean watching the old fields turn to forest. 

Here's the painting I used on our New Year's Greeting. It's sumac, a forest floor piece, from the Piney Woods Trail.


Tomorrow is the perihelion, the point at which the earth is the closest to the sun during the year. Here's what Wikipedia says about that:

An apsis, plural apsides (pronounced /ˈæpsɨdiːz/), is the point of greatest or least distance of a body from one of the foci of its elliptical orbit. In modern celestial mechanics this focus is also the center of attraction, which is usually the center of mass of the system. Historically, in geocentric systems, apsides were measured from the center of the Earth.
The point of closest approach (the point at which two bodies are the closest) is called the periapsis or pericentre, from Greek περὶ, peri, around. The point of farthest excursion is called the apoapsis (ἀπό, apó, "from", which becomes ἀπ-, ap- or ἀφ-, aph- before an unaspirated or aspirated vowel, respectively), apocentre or apapsis (the latter term, although etymologically more correct, is much less used). A straight line drawn through the periapsis and apoapsis is the line of apsides. This is the major axis of the ellipse, the line through the longest part of the ellipse.
Derivative terms are used to identify the body being orbited. The most common are perigee and apogee, referring to orbits around the Earth (Greek γῆ, gê, "earth"), and perihelion and aphelion, referring to orbits around the Sun (Greek ἥλιος, hēlios, "sun").

March 19, 2010

13 degrees at 8 p.m. Partly cloudy.
Sun rises at 7:09 and sets at 7:13.
Wind from the southwest at 22 km/hr.
Moon a waxing crescent at 16 % of full.

And it's way too warm. Spring is about three weeks earlier than usual. Three weeks! Normal temperatures for this date are +4 and -7 but tonight it will be +1. But- how we all enjoy it! Suddenly the birds are back; robins, cardinals, grackles, little nuthatches, the ubiquitous chickadees. Goldfinches, not yet gold, swoop in and hang upside down on the feeder, eating niger seed. Redwings perch on cat-tails calling out for brides. A pair of downy woodpeckers echo each others tappings. A flock of five wild turkeys strutted past for two mornings this week, they look very determined indeed but probably aren't.

Wild turkeys (Meleagris gallopavo) are native to North America, it turns out. And I learn from Wikipedia that, like other gamebirds, they exhibit strong sexual dimorphism. That just means that males are different from females. They are quite a bit larger, for one thing, and their feathers have red, purple, green, copper, bronze, and gold iridescence, while the females are dull brown and grey, poor things. Parasites can dull the colours, though. Turkeys have 5000 to 6000 feathers, apparently, I wonder who counted? They can fly quite well, if not far and are omniverous- nuts, berries and the occasional small reptile. Males can make a drumming sound using air sacks in their chests, females yelp.

Males are polygamous- and this is interesting- they court in pairs or groups with members of the group being close relatives and sharing more than half of their genetic material. (The image was taken from Wikipedia under a Creative Commons license, author is Sasha Kopf)

February 10

Sunrise 7:12 Sunset 5:22 Zero degrees and beautifully sunny. Moon waning crescent, 10% of full. Went for a wonderful snowshoe. I'm trying to suck the juice out of this activity as every day the snow cover diminishes. We've had very little snow this year and though flurries are often forecast they don't seem to happen. There is an old wood- birch, apples, crabapples, ash, maples-past our marsh. It's hard to get to in the summer because a stream must be crossed but it's just a little snowshoe hop right now. I found highbush cranberry growing there which is super exciting news as so far I've only found it in two spots. There is also wild grape and an ancient crabapple that must have been loaded with fruit- only the stems remain.

February 9

Sunrise at 7:14, sunset at 5:21, moon a waning crescent, 17% of full.
Temperature is -8, partly cloudy, bit of a wind.

This particular moon has been glorious throughout its cycle, and I'll be sad to see it go. This is apparently why- the average distance of the Moon is 384,000 km. However, it's an ellipse and the point closest to the Earth is 25,000 km closer than the average. And that's the case this month. So it looks bigger. Also the Earth and the Moon are closest to the Sun in January. So the surface of the Moon receives in January more light than in any other month. The result is one of the brightest Full Moons in years: 30 percent brighter than the dimmest full moon.

This morning I went for a snowshoe to the point and came back along the frozen river. Lots of fishing cabins farther out and lots and lots of fox tracks by the shore. Last year I saw a coyote mooching about out by the fishing cabins, haven't seen one this year. But there are lots of tracks. Met a great big deer this morning in the marsh near the Wild Wood. We usually see deer all the time but they've been elusive recently. I wondered if they might be mating but no, it seems they mate around November in this part of their range and the fawns are born in May.

If they are around I can usually smell them which is not unusual. They have several glands which allow them to deposit scent.Glands between the antlers and the eye are used to deposit scent on branches overhanging scrapes.This from Wikipedia- the tarsal glands are found on the upper inside of the middle joint on each hind leg. Scent is deposited from these glands when deer walk through and rub against vegetation. These scrapes are used by bucks as a sort of "sign-post" by which bucks know which other bucks are in the area, and to let does know that a buck is regularly passing through the area—for breeding purposes. The scent from the metatarsal glands, found on the outside of each hind leg, between the ankle and hooves, may be used as an alarm scent.

Throughout the year deer will rub-urinate, a process during which a deer squats while urinating so that urine will run down the insides of the deer's legs, over the tarsal glands, and onto the hair covering these glands. Bucks rub-urinate more frequently during the breeding season. Secretions from the tarsal gland mix with the urine and bacteria to produce a strong smelling (very!) odor. During the breeding season does release hormones and pheromones that tell bucks that a doe is in heat and able to breed. Bucks also rub trees and shrubs with their antlers and head during the breeding season, possibly transferring scent from the forehead glands to the tree, leaving a scent other deer can detect.

No wonder Rosie-the-dog goes mad with sniffing.

Here's more- sign-post marking (scrapes and rubs) are a very obvious way that white-tailed deer communicate. Although bucks do most of the marking, does visit these locations often. To make a rub, a buck will use its antlers to strip the bark off of small diameter trees, helping to mark his territory and polish his antlers. To mark areas they regularly pass through bucks will make scrapes. Often occurring in patterns known as scrape lines, scrapes are areas where a buck has used its front hooves to expose bare earth. They often rub-urinate into these scrapes, which are often found under twigs that have been marked with scent from the forehead glands.

So that's something to look for!

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January 17

There's a new moon, well, it was new yesterday- a waxing crescent, 4% of full as I write.
The sun will rise at 7:38 and set at 6:49.

The days are getting longer, as they do. That's all very well but the weather is MISERABLE. Damp and grey and the temperature hovers around zero and is apparently going to continue to do so. The snow is melting away.

January 8

The sun rose at 7:42 today and will set at 16:38. The day is a minute longer than yesterday, therefore, which doesn't seem like much to those of us who have lived in the Arctic.

The temperature is -7 at the moment. The moon is a waning crescent at 37% of full. Orion is the constellation at the forefront right now.

There was an interview on CBC this morning about birds and why there are fewer of them around this year. Apparently it has to do with pine trees not producing seeds. Unusually, this year, cycles of a number of species have coincided- ordinarily some species would be producing seeds while others wouldn't. Not this year, it seems. That's a relief, at least it isn't another phenomenon associated with global warming.