Welcome back

The song sparrows have returned to Point Pleasant Park. ​This guy was quite co-operative as I snapped shots from about three metres away on April 4, 2013. This isn't unusual - I've found they are content to let you linger close by as they belt out their mating message. He had lots of competition that day as he traded melodies with at least two other males in the vicinity.

 It always lifts the heart to hear the song sparrow's melodic serenade for the first time in the spring. These chubby, dishevelled-looking passerines often return to their northern breeding grounds when there is still snow on the ground, as early as mid-March. 

A few hardier specimens spend the winter in Nova Scotia, as well as Ontario and other parts of southern Canada. But most escape the cold in the southern United States. They can be found as far north as the Aleutian Islands in breeding season. ​

Identification please

The wood chips are flying on a blustery early spring day in Point Pleasant Park.

No the park crews aren't taking down trees in this precious green space in south-end Halifax. The workers are, in fact, hard at it widening drainage ditches along the park roads in preparation for the spring rains.

The only woodworker in sight is of the avian kind. A hairy woodpecker is earning his lunch of insects and other delicacies on a tree trunk in the southern-most tip of the park near the shore. I've watched a lot of woodpeckers at their task over the years and every time, their tenacity and resilience amazes me.

Look close for the darting tongue of this pileated woodpecker on the hunt for a tasty insect in the bark. - john mcphee

Most woodpeckers aren't hardy looking types - the glaring exception being the outrageous pileated woodpecker (above). But what they lack in size and muscle, they more than make up for it in work ethic. This hairy is is aware of me and I'm creeping up pretty close camera in hand, but he continues to hammer away at the bark.

When I posted my shots of this guy on the Nova Scotia Bird Society's Facebook page, I called it a downy woodpecker. BUZZZZZZ. Wrong answer. I was quickly made aware of the error of my ways (most politely) by one of the many experienced birders. The hairy and downy are very similar in plumage with their black and white bodies and red caps. But the hairy is a bit heftier and has a longer beak, which I did know but missed with this specimen.

What's in a name?

Despite the daily and disturbing loss of species - whether naturally occurring or as a result of human activity - the variety of different animals and plants in the natural world is mind-boggling.   And I'd really enjoy being able to quickly ascertain the type and genus of everything I come upon.

But to call me less than visually perceptive would be giving myself credit. Some people can quickly make the connection in their head with plumage patterns, colour and body shape and voila, "That's a northern three-toed woodpecker, not a black-backed woodpecker." I'd be still fumbling through my Petersen guide long after many birders had identified and moved on.

the bark chips fly as this hairy woodpecker looks for lunch in a maple tree at point pleasant park. - john mcphee

 My auditory memory is more reliable. Perhaps because I've got decent musical pitch, I can pin down a bird song fairly quickly, even if it's distant and I only hear it once. But unfortunately most things in nature don't sing - so the tree that hairy woodpecker was exploring was also a mystery to me when I started writing and wanted to add that detail.

Now that's more a matter of being more excited about the bird (or insect or whatever)  and not taking the time to note the context, which is just as important. If I'd stopped, taken a good look at the tree and took some notes and detailed photos, likely I could have pinned it down.

Alas, I had to turn once again to my online support community and as usual, I was impressed by the depth of knowledge among nature lovers in Nova Scotia. Just from a Google map photo, a bird society member was able to talk in detail about the possibilities.

He did immediately identify the general species, which I truly wish was some obscure park variety. Sigh. A maple. Yes, one that has been extensively pruned and the leaves were in curling winter mode but still, a maple! Either sugar or red. 

Now Googling "how to improve your visual observation skills in 10 easy steps"....

Just ducky

“Tufted duck! Tufted duck!”

The urgent call rings out just as our group had crossed a busy road in Eastern Passage, Nova Scotia, planning to warm up with a cuppa at a nearby Tim Horton’s.

We draw some curious looks from the occupants of passing cars, outfitted as we are with binoculars, cameras and spotting scopes.

We dutifully make our way carefully back to the cove shoreline and start scanning  for the unusual specimen. The tufted duck is usually found only  in Europe and Asia but it’s been spotted more frequently in North America (according to my Roger Tory Petersen guide.)

The defining characteristic of this small black and white diving duck is a tuft of feathers that curves downward from its head.

The observer who identified the duck and called us back, Clarence Stevens Jr., tries to narrow down its location among the mass of birds offshore to the rest of the group. An expert birder, he’s the author of the Birding in Metro Halifax.

As for me, I wouldn’t know a tufted duck if it waddled up and introduced itself.  But I try to track it down in my 10 by 50 binoculars and yes, maybe that one has the tell-tale crest. Hmm, then again maybe not....

a pair of american black ducks whiz by hartlen point, nova scotia. - john mcphee

Sewer strolling

I’m taking part in what the Nova Scotia Bird Society calls a “sewer stroll” on a blustery winter day. No, we’re not getting a tour of the municipal sanitation system. The facetious name refers to the fact winter ducks, gulls and alcids (duck-like birds such as razorbills) often congregate near sewer outflows to grab some dinner.

Sewage, it turns out, is quite the delicacy for fish. And they must come close to the surface to nibble away, making them easy pickings for the water birds.

By the end of the morning, we had spotted many of the duck species that frequent Halifax Harbour, including red-breasted mergansers (with their signature punk hairstyle), common eiders, bufflehead, goldeneye and of course, the ubiquitous mallard.

Besides the tufted duck, some of the more unusual finds were dovekies, a cute little diving bird in the alcid family, snow geese, one very rare Ross’s goose and Eurasian wigeon at Sullivan’s Pond

The expedition included several sightings of unusual land birds, such as a lovely northern mockingbird (below) on a lane in Eastern Passage.

A northern mockingbird perches in a backyard in eastern passage, nova scotia. - john mcphee

Just ducky

But it was the incredible variety of sea birds that stuck in my mind after the trip. My exploration of the birding universe has mostly involved land birds, particularly the many varieties of warblers that grace our province from spring to fall.

You can get up close and personal with a warbler, if you’re lucky. Not so with sea birds and maybe that’s part of the attraction - they have an aura of mystery as they live out their lives in the watery offshore world.

That also creates some frustration, obviously, for the folks trying to observe them. But when they venture close enough to shore, ducks make much more co-operative photographic subjects than the flitting behaviour of perching birds on land.

Photography has become a big part of my ventures into the natural world, whether it’s the daytime exploration of the bird world or observing the equally varied sights of the nighttime sky.

When it comes to water bird photography, two words sum up the first priority: big lens. Even when sea birds are helpful enough to come closer to shore, you’ll need magnification to capture any kind of detail.

While today’s image stabilized lenses make it much easier to get a decent hand-held shot, the other crucial tool of the bird photographer is a tripod. I’ve found that images taken on a mounted camera, particularly using a “live view” screen for focusing, are much sharper.

My tripod does the job but I’ve found that my 250mm lens doesn’t quite cut it.  So it’s into the bank account I go for a longer lens, something in the 400mm range.

As if my geek factor wasn’t already apparent, I’ll remove all doubt by saying I’m really excited at the prospect of filling the frame with one bird.

Now to find a map of the local sewers....

Back roads and celestial highways

C’mon now child, we’re gonna go for a ride
Car wheels on a gravel road.
Lucinda Williams

A series of long exposures captures the glow of fireflies on a country road in nova scotia. - john mcphee

One of my favourite sounds is that first crunch of dirt when you move from pavement to a country road.
Dirt roads take you to places where you’re bound to find silence and trees, lakes dotted by pickerel weed, the ghostly path of the Milky Way. 
Nova Scotia has some great dirt roads. They may be paved by now but I remember watching the dust trails behind the car as we drove to our cabin near Gillis Lake in Cape Breton. In my mind, a drive in the car was synonymous with  a stop at one store or another. So my Gillis Lake memories are flavoured by the taste of lime rickey and potato chips. (Total cost: 25 cents).

Back road rambling
When we moved from Cape Breton to the mainland, I was introduced to the hilly north-south roads of the Annapolis Valley. Most of them are paved but there are still a lot of good old gravel roads that take you from the lowlands to the Fundy shore.
Then there are the former logging roads that criss-cross the wilderness of Kejimkujik National Park.
(Let me pause here to express my bitterness that I won’t be able to traverse those Keji roads once the snow flies, thanks to federal budget cuts. There will be no services and no access through the park's main entrance road , effectively turning Keji into a summer only recreation area. And yes, I've let my political representatives know exactly how I feel about that.)
I don't know of any place that rivals P.E.I. when it comes to non-paved vehicular transit.  If you want to move from Point A to Point B on the island, it's hard to avoid those wonderful red-dirt roads.
During a visit this summer, we put our GPS to use and found ourselves passing houses that, until the advent of this handy satellite technology, likely didn't see too much traffic going by.

the summer triangle of vega, deneb and altair straddles the milky way at kejimkujik national park. - john mcphee

Galactic highway
But back to that ghostly path that spans the October sky. There’s dust in the galactic road of the Milky Way, and there’s a lot of gas as well. Throw in the interaction of gamma rays and you get that eerie glow that gives our galaxy its name. 
Under “black” skies, the light of the Milky Way can be so luminous that it casts shadows, which must be a thoroughly surreal experience. But if you're observing any distance from city lights,  you’ll notice a path of darker areas that splits the bright starry path. Called the Great Rift, this ribbon of darkness is made up of dust created during the star formation process. 
Besides light pollution, moonlight is the bane of Milky Way pilgrims. It’s best viewed during the thin crescent and new moon phases. 
 It’s a great time of year to enjoy this celestial spectacle in the evening hours, when the Milky Way arcs overhead from Sagittarius low in the southeast and northwest to Cassiopeia. 

Roadside attractions
In late October, in or around Oct. 21, we have the added bonus of meteors streaking across the galactic vista during the peak of the Orionid shower. 
The Orionids usually don’t escalate into the meteor storms sometimes associated with showers such showers as the Leonid or Perseids.
But the average of 50 to 70 meteors per hour and the bearable night temperatures of late October is well worth putting off your bedtime. 
Time to rub our eyes, pack up the trunk and clean the dust off the windshield. Our road trip ends in the bleary hours of the October dawn, when the brilliant beacon of the winter star Sirius has crested the southern horizon.

Lost among the galaxies

OK, I’M TRYING not to panic but I’m definitely lost.

I’m supposed to be at the spiral galaxy M98, but this really looks more like M87. Or maybe it’s M99.

Don’t you hate it when you’re 50 million light-years from home and you get off at the wrong stop?

When you’re exploring the Virgo galaxy cluster, it’s easy to lose your way. This is my first journey into an incredible conglomeration of galaxies with a larger scope, which can bring out the “faint fuzzies,” each of which represents billions upon billions of stars. Check out the left-centre area near the blue star 6-Coma. Anything that has a horizontal shape or looks like a greyish out of focus star is likely a galaxy.

You can track down the brightest galaxies with good binoculars but in a good-sized telescope (an eight- to 12-inch Dobsonian or Schmidt-Cassegrain), you can tease out hints of structure such as the arms of spiral galaxies, which look so spectacular in long-exposure pho­tographs.

The leo-virgo region contains dozens, up to hundreds, of galaxies visible in a telescope, depending on its size. The brightest galaxies can be found around the star 6-coma. The bright star to the right is denebola in leo. - john mcphee

This huge Virgo cluster of about 2,000 galaxies lies about 50 to 90 mil­lion light-years away. How many you can actually see in a telescope de­pends on light pollution — galaxy hunting requires dark skies away from city lights — and your scope.

For example, in my Dobsonian reflector, which has an eight-inch mirror, I should be able to nab over 20 members of the cluster. That number zooms up to more than 100 if you have a 12-inch telescope, according to Saint Mary’s astronomer David Lane, a fellow member of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada. He also has created a telescope and planetarium software program called Earth-Centred Universe, which can be used to calculate just this sort of thing. (Go to www.nova-astro.com for more information.)

Once you start exploring the clus­ter, you’ll notice most of the galaxies appear as oval blobs of light, like faint comets. These are called elliptical galaxies, which are the most numer­ous and brightest type in the Virgo region. They’re not as interesting visually as spiral galaxies, which boast starry arms curling out from a bright core, but ellipticals are far from boring.

A bright elliptical, M87, lies at the heart of the Virgo cluster, to the west of the star Denebola that marks the tail of Leo, the Lion.  It’s an unimaginably huge city of stars — M87’s mass has been estimated in the range of several trillion times that of our sun. Even at 80 million light-years away, it’s visible in large binoculars and certainly small telescopes.

Besides sheer size and luminosity, M87 is known for the incredible jet of subatomic energy streaming out from the galaxy. The jet originates from a disc of superheated gas around a massive black hole at M87’s centre.

The inserted close-ups show mini-clusters of galaxies in the virgo-Leo region. On the right, the eyes in the “face” are made up of m86 and M84, the nose is the elliptical galaxy NGC4387 and the mouth is the spiral galaxy NGC4388. On the left, the insert shows galaxies around the blue star 6-coma including the spiral M98 . - john mcphee

I’ve found the book Astronomy: The De­finitive Guide very helpful as I make tentative steps into this incredible realm of star cities. The book's “galaxy-hop­ping” chart for the Virgo and Coma clusters is clear and simple, but provides enough detail to make it easier to figure out which fuzzy is which in your eyepiece.

For those who just want a quick look at something beautiful, the most modest binoculars will reveal a rich spattering of stars that make up the dim, tiny constellation Coma Berenic­es. It can be found between Denebola and the bright star Arcturus.

Leo lies on the ecliptic, the path followed by the sun, moon and planets. The outer planets such Saturn and Jupiter are regular visitors to the Lion's den.

Saturn, with its magnificent ring system, is familiar even to those who haven’t actually looked at it through a telescope.

But you really haven’t seen Saturn until you’ve done just that.

There’s a surreal quality to the sight of this strange object floating in your field of view that can’t be duplicated in photos.

As for those famous rings, they can either be really prominent or almost invisible, depending on how the planet is tilted from our perspective on Earth. If you’re observing with a telescope, try to find the tiny speck of Saturn’s brightest moon, Titan, and the many dimmer moons closer to the planet.

Escaping the light

THERE'S no doubt, the farther you are from the city lights, the better your stargazing will be. Light pollution robs us of the subtle beauties to be found in the night sky, whether it's the ribbon of stars and glowing gases of the Milky Way or the faint constellations of spring.

For instance, if you're in the city, you'd be hard-pressed to pick out groups like Virgo, low in the east, or Hydra's sprawling ladder of stars that now stretches from the southeast to the high southwest.

There are plenty of places in my province, Nova Scotia, where you can find dark skies. In fact, some of them rank among the best in Canada. But there's good news for urban observers: light pollution doesn't affect planet observation. The sun does a great job of lighting up these objects for our enjoyment and even small details in planets' atmospheres and surfaces make it through the glare.

Of course, sometimes nearby lights that shine directly into your eyes can make even planet watching difficult. In that case, you have to do some creative positioning to use trees or structures to block these offending photons.

even distinctive constellations like ursa major can be hard to find in light-polluted skies. In dark sky preserves like kejimkujik national park, it’s a cinch to scoop up the big dipper. - john mcphee

I usually drape an old blanket over deck rails or a high deck chair and sit on a lower chair in my attempts to shut out neighbours' porch lights or street illumination.

The most interesting planets to observe in a telescope, I think most observers would agree, would be Saturn and Jupiter.

While you need a telescope to enjoy Saturn's rings and surface features, a good pair of binoculars are enough to keep you coming back to Jupiter night after night. That's because its four brightest moons - Ganymede, Io, Callisto and Europa - are easily visible with just 10x power, although as tiny specks. You can detect changes in their positions over a matter of hours as they orbit around Jupiter.

This moon dance is obvious when you take another look on the following night - the lineup will likely be quite different.

If you're more ambitious and have your eye on objects a lot farther down the cosmic road than our solar system, such as galaxies, you must flee the light and seek out a nice dark spot in the country.

In Nova Scotia, it doesn't take too much of a drive to escape light blight,  even if you live in Halifax or Sydney. But you should get at least an hour's drive away from the city, since it doesn't take much sky glow to wash away detail in deep-sky objects.

Some of the province's dark sky areas are described on cleardarksky.com, a website that mainly focuses on weather and sky conditions for amateur astronomers. I say some because the website gets its light pollution information from the World Atlas of Artificial Night Sky Brightness, which oddly enough doesn't include Cape Breton and other parts of the province.

However, cleardarksky does indicate that areas such as Kejimkujik Natinoal Park in Queens County and the Argyle area near Yarmouth are little affected by light pollution. The Milky Way, the central region of our galaxy best visible in the summer, is so bright in these areas that it can cast shadows.

find a dark sky and point a telescope toward the coma berenices region of the night sky. You’ll find dozens of smudges of light, which are galaxies that contain billions of stars. - john mcphee

If you look at the entire light pollution map of North America, it's clear that this kind of observing is to be treasured.

While the Liscombe Game Sanctuary area on the Eastern Shore is one of those areas left out of the light pollution grading, it's well known among local amateur astronomers as an excellent dark-sky site.

As for Cape Breton, the skies over the East Bay and Bras d'Or area first tweaked my interest in stargazing, way back when. I can remember being more interested in the satellites and airplanes zooming across the sky, but I was also captivated by the glittering blanket of stars over the island hills. 

If you do find yourself a dark, safe place, and you have even a small telescope, you can observe many galaxies in April and May. Hundreds of galaxies are visible with a larger telescope in the Leo-Virgo region.

Two of the brightest in April, M65 and M66, can be found in the isosceles group that makes up the Lion's hindquarters. Find the star at the right bottom corner of the triangle, and look slightly below and to the left for M65 and M66. These two are so close together that they both fit into the viewing field of a small telescope.

It's worth escaping the city lights to marvel at these star cities so many light-years away. ​

Starry, starry night

Starry, starry night, 

Flaming flowers that brightly blaze,

Swirling clouds in violet haze,

Reflect in Vincent's eyes of china blue.

Vincent (Starry, Starry Night) - Don McLean

THE SUBJECT of the painting that inspired this pretty song can be seen in the east in our October skies.

But you may have to look hard for tiny Aries, the constellation that is seen with the crescent moon and Venus in Vincent van Gogh's painting Starry Night.

The Ram's three brightest stars are not that bright - they are arranged in a "broken stick" pattern that would easily escape the eye if the group weren't located in a barren patch of sky.

Van Gogh painted Starry Night in June 1889 at the Saint-Remy asylum, where he had himself committed after the famous breakdown that saw him cut off part of his left ear.

There's a fascinating side-by-side comparison of the painting and the constellation at http://www.vggallery.com/forum/forum_18a.htm.

It's not known why van Gogh chose this obscure constellation for his subject, although the online van Gogh gallery notes that Aries was the painter's astrological sign.

The constellation aries. - john mcphee

Turn a pair of binoculars or a telescope on Aries and the constellation becomes much more interesting. It's small enough that the three brightest stars will fit into the field of a 7 x 35 pair.

There are pleasing sprinklings of fainter stars surrounding the trio, particularly near the easternmost star, which forms a neat little triangle with two fainter stars in binoculars. If you like doubles, aim your telescope just below the westernmost star, the dimmest of the three, and you'll be rewarded with a tight pair of very similar stars.

If city lights make it difficult to find Aries, you'll likely have to seek darker skies to find the other inconspicuous trio in this region, Triangulum. Like Aries, this group will fit into view through wide-field binoculars.

When you try to pick out fainter constellations like these, you're putting a lot of things to the test, such as figuring out the faintest stars you can see in your area (the fancy term being limiting magnitude) and also how 'good' the atmosphere is that night (astronomers call this seeing). It also demonstrates how our eyes adapt to the dark.

The international space station moves through the constellation andromeda. - john mcphee

For instance, on a September night way back when during a break at work, I was  three storeys above the street lights of downtown Halifax. It was a steady, clear night with low humidity - great conditions for stargazing. At first, I could see only the brightest star in Aries, nothing of Triangulum. But 10 minutes later, I could easily see the two brighter stars in Aries, with more difficulty its dimmest star, and all of Triangulum.

When I'm in the country, no dark adaptation is needed on this kind of night. Even faint constellations pop into view away from the scourge of light pollution.

Another thing about spotting fainter constellations - wait until they become higher in the sky, away from horizon glow and the air currents of the lower atmosphere. Spare your neck and do your high-sky gazing in a lounge chair with a blanket and maybe a warmed-up Magic Bag on these cooler nights.

The other faint constellations this month, Andromeda and Pegasus, couldn't be more different than the diminutive Aries and Triangulum. From Andromeda in the northeast to the western-stretching wings of the horse Pegasus, they take up a huge part of the sky.

The big square that makes up the body of the Pegasus starts to push the Summer Triangle off centre stage at the zenith in October. As geometrical contests go, there's none between the blazing trio of the triangle and the shy foursome that make up the Great Square.

- @ Simulation curriculum Corp

But there are treasures hiding in that unassuming eastern sky.

Look above the middle star of the three that stretch out from the Square to find the Andromeda Galaxy, or M31. (Astrophotographer extraordinaire Blair MacDonald of Halifax made this amazing shot).  I can make out M31 in darker suburban skies with the naked eye, and on very good nights, I can spot this patch of fuzzy light in binoculars from Halifax.

It's a wonder to behold in my telescope at home - although if somebody new to astronomy looked in the eyepiece they might wonder what the fuss is about. Well, the thing is, the light from this fuzzy glow first started its journey toward our eyes two million years ago. Andromeda, somewhat bigger but quite similar to our own spiral galaxy, the Milky Way, is the most distant object we can see with the naked eye.

Northern exposure

The big dipper shines through moonlight on a july evening in brackley, PEI. - john mcphee

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness; close bosom–friend of the maturing sun. – John Keats, Ode to Autumn

HERE IN THIS season of changes, the night sky comes upon us ever more quickly and the days of bare–headed stargazing are fading fast.

The transitory nature of things has come close to home this autumn.

An old friend – a burly, blue– and yellow–eyed guy named Phoenix – has departed for the great catnip patch in the sky. Whenever my heart needs some warming up, I'll think of him dozing in a comfy patch of light from his favourite star, head nestled between his big white paws.

And a recent move has changed my astronomical ways. On the bright side (or dark, as it happens), we're temporarily even deeper in the sticks than our previous abode. While our new digs are being built, I'll enjoy probably the least light–polluted skies I've ever had.

The back deck now faces north – not usually a direction coveted by stargazers.

The northern horizon is on the opposite side of the sky from the richer parts of the Milky Way. Besides that, not much changes in this region. Many of the constellations are circumpolar, a fancy way of saying they never completely set.

The six circumpolar constellations slowly wheel around the North Star, Polaris, in a counter–clockwise motion throughout the year.

For example, probably the most famous star group, the Big Dipper, is now very low in the 7 o'clock position, and by next month will be striking about 6 o'clock.

The Big Dipper is part of Ursa Major, the Great Bear. The outside stars of the Big Dipper's bowl point up to Polaris, at the end of the Little Dipper's handle in Ursa Minor.

Keep tracing this imaginary line past Polaris and you'll come to the peak of the house–shaped constellation Cepheus (SEE–fee–us), the King.

If you've found Cepheus, your eye should certainly catch the brighter W–shape of Cassiopeia (kas–ee–oh–PEE–uh), right next door.

Probably the least known member of the circumpolar club is a real mouthful: Camelopardalis (kam–uh–low–PAR–da–lis), the Giraffe.

This is one tough beast to track down.

When I first got into this hobby, I thought I'd found the Giraffe with no problem. I looked up in the northeastern winter sky, saw a curving line of stars that seemed to form a long neck, with two stellar "legs" on either side. Hello, Camelopardalis.

Not so much. I was actually looking at Perseus, the mythological hero equipped with sword and shield.

This glittering constellation is now low in the northeast just after dark.

You can use Perseus to find the real giraffe. Camelopardalis is just to the left of Perseus, a much dimmer version of its wishbone shape.

Another elusive circumpolar beast, the faint and sprawling Draco (DRAY–ko) the Dragon, weaves its tail around the Little Dipper and arches up toward Cepheus. The Dragon's head lies farther west, perilously close to Hercules, the strongman demi–god who killed Draco.