2 Things @ Once

Cloud Watching Turns Into Lightning Spotting

This evening I got home from dinner with friends early enough to sit out on the back deck and enjoy the clouds at dusk. In the south, huge, puffy, mile-high formations traveled from the west toward the lake. Then, as the sun dropped and the magic hour light faded, a massive cloud in the north began to travel across my field of view, also heading east toward Lake Michigan.

This cloud had a light show going on inside it, with flashes of lightning illuminating first one section of the cloud bank and then another. Occasionally, a bolt of lightening could be seen poking out of the cloudy lantern. This light show continued for about ten minutes as the cloud slowly moved from left to right.

I snapped a bunch of photos with the the iPhone camera (using the zoom to close in on the cloud, so the quality is grainy) and despite the shutter lag, I managed to catch a few snaps of the lightning.

Cloud Races

This weekend, I spent a good amount of time out in the backyard, enjoying the sunshine, warm temps and hours of evening daylight. Today it was fairly windy and all day long I noticed that the lower level of small puffy clouds were tearing through the sky from west to east, while the upper layer of wispy cloud cover seemed not to move. Other than the bombastic thunderstorm that started our day, the storms forecasted never materialized.

Good Morning

Today's Astronomy Picture of the Day is extremely cool. View it as wide as you can.

Geese Rest Stop

NaBloPoMo, Day 23

Lately, I've noticed a lot of geese hanging out in a particular patch of the lake, just bobbing around in the water close to the shore. It's odd to see geese in the water around here. Duck and seagulls, yes. Geese, not so much. They tend to loiter on golf courses and around office park ponds. But these geese bob around in Lake Michigan, (right on the border of Evanston and Chicago, just across Sheridan Road from a graveyard, a popular hangout for geese in the Fall) which makes me think these guys are tourists, passing through on their way south.

I sat for a while on the rocks watching this crowd, a combination of many different flocks; they would all change direction in unison, pointing into the wind. Those closer to the shore had to put more effort into it, as they were continually fighting the surf. Every so often, a group of them would raise off the lake together heading in the southern direction and then bank west, up and over into the graveyard, honking all the while. I was hoping to catch a large group in flight; the best I could do was a small crowd passing by.

Tonight's Amazing Sunset

Rain Over Lake Michigan

This weekend, the cold, rainy weather we've been suffering through (fall, what fall?) finally blew out to sea. Or at least out across Lake Michigan.

On Saturday, it was raining over the lake as blue sky finally appeared for more than sixty seconds.

Pocket Birding

Sunday was absolutely gorgeous. While I was out walking, I heard a birdsong that I often hear in the trees in front of my place, but somehow, I've never been able to identify the bird. While on a walk Sunday, I heard the song again and was trying to spot the two or three birds chirping and flitting around in the trees when I suddenly remembered I had a recording device in my pocket!

I whipped out my iPhone, hit the voice memo recorder, and held it skyward for about thirty seconds. When I played it back, I was stunned at how well the mic had picked up the birdsong from atop a tree twenty feet overhead.

Now, not only can I use my digital camera to "shoot" birds to later identify at home, I can record their song as well.

BTW, unless someone can tell me otherwise, the closest I came to identifying this birdsong (and from the very brief glimpse I got of them) this is a goldfinch.

It's Coming

Monarch Migration

The past few days I've noticed quite a few Monarch butterflies, not bobbing in and out of the garden, but flying higher up in the sky, like they're really going somewhere. It's Monarch migration time and I seem to be catching more migrating butterflies this year than any time I can recall. Out and about this weekend, throughout the day I'd catch orange and black wings floating and flapping ten, twenty feet up in the air. I even saw a handful way out over Lake Michigan yesterday while we were sailing. The Monarch butterfly population has been on the decrease in recent years so I can only hope that my incidental increase in monarch sightings bodes well for their numbers as they head south to Mexico.