The International Space Station in our Sky

Three nights ago (2009 May 11), I decided to go out to experience a lovely spring night. The stars were out and I could recognize the constellations - Gemini, Leo (with Saturn), Ursa Major and the Big Dipper. I then saw a point of light as bright as Jupiter move steadily across the sky from west to east. Its speed and brightness were steady, and I did not see any other lights near it, which would identify it as an airplane. I watched it cross the southern sky and disappear in the east. The Hubble-saving Shuttle had just launched, and I wonder if it was that. I went back inside and went to Heavens Above, at www.heavens-above.com . (You must use a hyphen. If you use any other punctuation, a space, or nothing, you get a nuisance site of some sort instead.) I found that it was the International Space Station. It is the first time I walked outside without knowing about the next ISS pass and found the station in the sky.

The Nests of Spring

It is spring. Birds are mating and they are coming and going. About a month ago, the dark-eyed juncos (snowbirds) left. The white-throated sparrows (chipmunk birds) actually increased in number, then at the beginning of May, they also disappeared, although I keep seeing singleton stragglers. The yellow-rumped warblers and ruby-crowned kingbirds are also gone.

Other birds have come in from the south. The catbirds are here. They are all over the place. Starlings and cowbirds maraud our lawn. Brown thrashers come by our feeders and stand up high in trees singing their doublet songs. An indigo bunting showed up briefly in our yard. The most prominent summer birds in our lawn are a pair of great crested flycatchers which have set up a nest in our martin house. I put out the hummingbird feeder, and in a few days, a hummingbird appeared. He now is a regular visitor.

I still have yet to see grackles, but I suppose sooner or later they will come.

The Great Backyard Bird Count

Every year at this time comes the Great Backyard Bird Count (GBBC). For four days in February, birders are called upon to go to all sorts of locations and observe the birds. Count them for each day and then submit them to a site http://www.birdsource.org/gbbc/ , with the web site implying that all birds come from it. So I decided to observe and count the birds at my house.

In doing so I have found some unusual things this year. A brown thrasher has shown up at our feeder area, and I thought it did not come until later in the spring. For the first time in years, a mockingbird has shown up at our feeder. We get a few of them here but I have not recorded any at our feeder for the past couple of years. The most unusual birds this year are a song sparrow, which does not normally show up at our feeder, a yellow-rumped warbler, and most of all, a ruby-crowned kinglet. I thought the kinglet at first was a goldfinch, but then when it produced red on its forehead, I looked at the bird books again. We also saw three bluebirds at once.

I have been recording the numbers of the birds, using GBBC rules. Here is a table showing the top ten birds at my house:

SPECIES	AVERAGE
Dark-eyed Junco	6.0
White-Throated Sparrow	3.5
Mourning Dove	3.0
Carolina Chickadee	1.6
Tufted Titmouse	1.3
Northern Cardinal	1.3
American Robin	1.1
Nuthatch	1.1
Blue Jay	1.0
European Starling	1.0

This differs from the GBBC list in that there are fewer cardinals at my house and perhaps more mourning doves. I think over a year that the mourning doves will top the list. Juncos and White-Throated Sparrows are higher but they are winter birds here in Virginia; they vanish in the summer.

So now I have done my part in helping us determine which bird species are common and which are rare.