Month: July 2024

Snakes and Birds

Post author By Doug Backlund
Post date July 16, 2024
2 Comments on Snakes and Birds

I was looking around the area by the camper when I found two Vesper Sparrows obviously agitated about something other than me. I searched the ground near where they seemed to be focusing their attention.

And this is what I found. An Eastern Racer had captured one of their nestlings and was in the process of swallowing it. Although the Latin name for this species is *Coluber constrictor*, Eastern Racers are not a true constrictor, usually swallowing their prey alive. In this case, I think the bird was suffocated first. I watched it for a long time but it finally took the bird into some tall grass where I couldn’t get photos.

One afternoon I found this Rufous Hummingbird at the feeder, two days later it is still here and another one has joined it. I took a hike in Hell Canyon this morning and saw two more! This one is an immature female.

Here’s one of the Rufous Hummingbirds in Hell Canyon, an immature male.

And now a few flowers and butterflies: Richardson’s Geranium, in Hell Canyon.

And another Juniper Hairstreak, also on Dalea.

Astrophotography

Summer Astro

Post author By Doug Backlund
Post date July 16, 2024
1 Comment on Summer Astro

I had a few pretty good nights, I put in some hours, staying up to around 2 AM. That gave me about 3-4 hours of shooting time each night, assuming everything went smoothly. I lost some time the first night because the guide scope had lost focus and it was difficult getting it back in focus.

I spent most of my time on this, the Crescent Nebula. This is the first time I’ve tried it with the IDAS Nebula Booster filter and it sure made a difference. For the first time I can see the bluish light emitted from oxygen around the nebula. Even better, at the bottom, slightly right of center, is the rarely imaged Soap Bubble Nebula. It wasn’t even discovered until 2007, by an amateur astrophotographer. It is a very faint planetary nebula.

Here’s some info on the Crescent Nebula from Wikipedia:

The Crescent Nebula (also known as NGC 6888, Caldwell 27, Sharpless 105) is an emission nebula in the constellation Cygnus, about 5000 light-years away from Earth. It was discovered by William Herschel in 1792. It is formed by the fast stellar wind from the Wolf-Rayet star WR 136 (HD 192163) colliding with and energizing the slower moving wind ejected by the star when it became a red giant around 250,000 to 400,000 years ago. The result of the collision is a shell and two shock waves, one moving outward and one moving inward. The inward moving shock wave heats the stellar wind to X-ray-emitting temperatures.

This is M16, also known as the Eagle Nebula, which harbors the structures known as the ‘Pillars of Creation”, made famous by photos taken from the Hubble Space Telescope in 1995. I’ve done this before but a long time ago, before I had guiding tools and the new filter.

A cropped view with a larger view of the Pillars of Creation. The nebula contains several active star-forming gas and dust regions. The Eagle Nebula lies in the Sagittarius Arm of the Milky Way.

Birding Insects

More Birds

Post author By Doug Backlund
Post date July 7, 2024
1 Comment on More Birds

I’m still here in the Black Hills. It is has been pretty cool and also quite a bit of rain, one afternoon I got hailed on, lots of hail but it was small. I’m up to 332 species of birds for the year. At my campsite, the pine cone crop is nonexistent, but I can drive about 5 miles north and there are lots of cones, and that is where I got my latest species, a Red Crossbill. The weather looks suitable for some astrophotography for the next few nights, so if that works out I will be staying up late.