Eclipse!
Short day's journey into night and back again
(Listen to the radio version here.)
I’m not much of a sky watcher. I learned to identify the Big Dipper when I was a little girl, and as an adult I learned how to use it to find Polaris, the North Star, but to this day, I don’t recognize other constellations. I’m dyslexic, and I’m not sure if that makes the stars seem more jumbled or if I just haven’t put in the time to learn them properly.
I have seen the Northern Lights on several memorable occasions, almost always inadvertently, when I was actually out there to enjoy woodcocks or, twice, Boreal Owls. I have taken a few photos during lunar eclipses, but only in my yard. Apparently my primary interest in astronomical phenomena involves the time of day when few or no birds are visible, and I don’t make special efforts to see them.
There have been several solar eclipses—total, partial, and annular—during my lifetime, but I can remember only one. It was extremely memorable, and I know exactly where I was—the parking lot of the NorthWoods Wildlife Center in Minocqua, Wisconsin. But I didn’t have a clue about the date until just this moment, when I looked up eclipse tables on the internet and found out that it was an annular eclipse that happened on May 10, 1994.
What I do remember is that I was teaching what was then called an Elderhostel class about birds at a wonderful place called Treehaven in Tomahawk, Wisconsin. My kids were in elementary and middle school, so the week before I’d been scrambling to get ready to be gone for a week, and spring migration was in full swing, making me even more distracted—small wonder I totally spaced on any news of an eclipse. As I recall, some of the Elderhostelers had known about it ahead of time, but no one gave it a thought during our lovely tour of the wildlife center.
The tour had wrapped up and I was pointing out birds and various bird songs in the parking lot as we waited for a couple of stragglers to finish at the gift shop. Suddenly it started growing dark, as if it were clouding up or was close to sunset except that the sky was completely clear and it was during or close to the noon hour. It took a few moments before someone realized this was an eclipse, and it almost instantly popped into my head that I could hold my binoculars at arm’s length from my body, pointed to project it onto the pavement. Both barrels projected it separately, giving us a double eclipse, something I don’t think you could see even on Tatooine unless George Lucas’s creation had two moons as well as two suns.
It was fascinating and eerie both, seeing the projection on the ground as the sky got darker and the birds grew silent. We were transfixed watching the projection go from a thick to a narrow arc and then just the thin circle that defines an annular eclipse. Within a minute or so, it started widening as an arc again. We experienced what felt like dawn at midday as it grew lighter and birds started singing again—a robin and I think a Chipping Sparrow first, and then more and more until, when it was fully light, many more birds were singing than when we’d first stepped out into the parking lot. That sudden “dawn chorus” didn’t last long—robins and other local nesters got back into parental mode, and neotropical migrants got back into their midday mode of resting or pigging out, preparing for a long journey that night. I’m not sure what any of them made of the eclipse, but it was a magical experience that I’ll never forget.
I’ve been aware of the April 8, 2024 total eclipse for months—maybe even a year or two—because I have friends and family members who are going to great lengths to be where it’ll reach totality. Me, I’m staying home. Here in Duluth, the moon is supposed to cover about 76 percent of the sun at the biggest point, which is plenty cool enough to satisfy me. Tragically for people here who are more interested in celestial phenomena than I am, it’s supposed to rain. Winds are supposed to be ENE, which is not ideal for pushing spring migrants my way, but you know what they say—spring migration is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re going to get, but it’s certain to be sweet.
I’ll probably search out NASA live streaming, but I’ll mostly be thinking about the eclipse in terms of hoping that the people I know who have yearned so long and traveled so far to see it get splendid views.
I love that our species is so varied in the things that arouse our passionate interest. But I’m just as glad that the thing that most excites me is something I can see every single day, whatever the weather and wherever I happen to be. As Robert Frost almost said, “Earth’s the right place for birds.”
