Nature's Notes

Sky Happenings

April 20, Full Pink Moon. This name came from the herb moss pink, or wild ground phlox, which is one of the earliest widespread flowers of the spring.

During the last week of April, look for Mercury low in the west after sunset.

May 19, Full Flower Moon. In most areas, flowers are abundant everywhere during this time. Thus, the name of this Moon.

June 8, The bright star near the moon is near Saturn.

June 18, Full Strawberry Moon. This name was universal for the full moon this month for every Algonquin tribe.

June 19, Jupiter is very bright, found near the moon around midnight.

June 20, Summer Solstice at 7:59 p.m. EST the sun reaches the point farthest north of the celestial equator, which is roughly the same as the Earth's equator.

Songbirds are returning to our forests from their wintering habitats in the tropics. Many of these little birds fly at night when the temperatures are cooler, avoiding diurnal predators.

Among the nocturnal migrants are warblers: black throated blues from the West Indies, black throated greens from Central America, black & white warblers from Central America south to Columbia, and oven birds from Central America.

Red-eyed vireos and rose breasted grosbeaks come back from Columbia, Peru or interior South America, crossing the Caribbean to south Florida and continuing north to New England.

Also wintering in Central America were the thrushes – some of the wood thrushes return from southern Mexico and some of the hermit thrushes from southern U.S. The veeries spent the winter in Venezuela or Brazil.

Scarlet tanagers come in from the jungles of Columbia, Peru, and Ecuador and Baltimore orioles from Central America.

Some stop just long enough to eat and rest before continuing to northern New England or arctic Canada to make their nests. Sanderlings that winter on the beaches of the Atlantic and Pacific U.S. and in Chile and Argentina, breed on the beaches of the Arctic Ocean.

Great horned owls call at dusk and throughout the cold nights, searching for mates in December.

January is time to find a nest (they don’t usually build a new one) and lay 2-4 eggs before the winter cold is gone. Look for the “white wash” splashes on the trunk of a tree.

They will incubate their eggs through the snows of February, hatching the nestlings one by one in a rickety pile of sticks.

By March the parents will be busy feeding for the helpless, fluffy hatchlings with anything they can catch, mice, voles, even skunks. When the owlets are about 8 weeks old the biggest and strongest, usually the first ones hatched, will walk out of the nest and sit nearby, “ branching” for a few more weeks until they learn to fly. Their parents will continue to bring them food until the end of the summer, and by fall those that survive will be able to hunt for themselves.

Foxes mate in February – March. The gray fox lives in more heavily forested areas and the red fox is found in fields and wooded farmlands

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