Duck and Cover

 

 

 

"They scattered into the trees, leaving no traces besides the memories of them swooping across the skies moments before"

 

-Field Notes 10/9/13

 

This week I couldn't help but still observe the birds that first appeared to me last week, the Sagebrush Sparrow. When I sat down Saturday night for my daily observation, I saw the tiny birds doing there normal routines. They would crash down from the sky to the dark pavement and scurry around for a few seconds grabbing what twigs meet their standards then would rise back to the trees hidden from sight. Then they disappeared for ten maybe fifteen minutes. Which is where that quote from above comes in. I looked around and found something really interesting, there were two blue birds swirling around the sky. Immediately I thought they were hunting my little friends that I've been observing. "The predators stalked the sky before they dived and made a perfect ten landing on the fence next to me" - Field notes 11/8/14

"One of the Blue Jays on the fence" Picture taken by Aaron Mastin on 11/8/14



 



The Blue Jays stayed for awhile but, when they left the Sparrows came back out and continued their daily routine. So I wondered if the Blue Jays were predators of my Sparrows so I looked it up. On the National Geographic page about Blue Jays it says Blue Jays are not carnivorous. Then goes on to say that Blue Jays will rarely eat meat and will settle for acorns, nuts and seeds. Sometimes they do attack smaller birds but, this is very out of the ordinary (National Geographic). So this leads me to think that they weren't responsible for the disappearance of my friends. Then what was? Maybe it was just an afternoon power nap.

 

The Sagebrush Sparrows came back out to finish their daily chores and right when I was about to call it a night they started dancing in the distance using the sunset as their backdrop. All they looked like were little black dots flying from one end of the sunset to the other, as if it was a race. Here's a picture of it below but, it was hard to catch them flying in picture so I didn't catch them with the sunset.

 "Picture of the sunset that day" Taken by Aaron Mastin on 11/9/14

Works Cited

"Blue Jays, - National Geographic." National Geographic. N.P, 11 Oct. 2013. Web. 11 Nov. 2014.

 

Follow The Heat

"The birds flew around in a pair, in synchronization. Turning, twisting, and spinning there away across the road in a never ending dance" -Field notes 10/30/14

The birds I'm describing here are known as Sagebrush Sparrows. They are a common bird in this part of Nevada that nests here during the summer. Their not huge birds, all the ones I saw were no bigger than my hand. The interesting thing I noticed was I've been seeing these little singers for a couple weeks now but, I have never seen one alone. So I did the next logical thing anyone does when they have a question I Goggled it. What I found was very interesting. The Sagebrush Sparrow is actually a migratory bird that nests in this part of Nevada during the summer where it is a nice hot dry environment that is perfect for laying their eggs according to whatbird.com.

Migration range for the Sagebrush Sparrow 

Then in the winter times when it gets to cold and frosty for the birds they migrate south to the border states and northern Mexico. This isn't what interests me about the birds though.

Well as we all know winter is here in the Sierras, so why am I still seeing these sun loving, beach bum birds who adore soaking up all the heat? Well luckily I found an answer. Sagebrush Sparrows migrate in small groups of  up to 15 birds max but, if any of the birds get left by their flock they wont migrate with anyone else. They'll set up base camp and try to endure the cold harsh winter of the biggest little city in the world. 

These birds aren't just connected to the sun by following its warm rays of light throughout the year, but they are also a overlooked beauty just like the sun is. While I was watching these birds I could see their darker heads pick up twigs along the ground and carry them up, up, up in till they were out of sight. I could also see there skinny little legs run across the pavement as I got closer and closer. These birds are a beauty of their own but, if you look below I can almost guarantee you've seen them before. So next time maybe the extra time to look closer will be worth it!

Dick, Gary. "WhatBird.com." Sagebrush Sparrow. Mitch Waite Group. Web. 2 Nov. 2014.

    

Follow Through

"Its not what you can do for you that's important, but what you can do for others that is " - Field Notes

    I had troubles with my observations this week. When I was sitting down on my patio watching the sun go beyond the reach of my eyes  following its daily ritual I started to become bored and tired. Then the moon was becoming more and more visible. The moon was illuminating as the light faded and darkness swept over the sky starting from the east horizon. It splintered out like a plague racing vs. time. Had one objective, one mission to get rid of the light. The moon got brighter and brighter as this happened. With the sun's light going farther and farther away why did the moon's light get brighter? 

 

 

- A crescent moon take by  Jacob Baker 

The moon's light is brought off of the sun, since the moon orbits Earth the sun light reflects off of the moon in different phases or as we know it from new moon to Full moon. -http://stardate.org/nightsky/moon

The part that started to fascinate me was even though the sun was already far from the horizon that broke off it off from my view it was still showing its self still having a impact. Even though it was gone the "follow through" of its actions was still making a impact by bringing light to the darkness of the night. It made me think of the purpose of parents. Don't ask me why, but that's the first thing that came to mind. I believe parents try to teach us from mistakes they have made so we can move forward and not make the same ones. So my question is if the sun can live on after its gone behind the horizon, do children live out their parents life in a different smaller way?

All About Perception 

The sun is always heating us up, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year or we would be a giant ball of ice instead of  a planet full of arrays of life. One question came to mind though when I was doing my observations, if the sun is always shining its rays of sunshine why is it colder in the winter v.s the summer? At first I thought it was just that the sun was farther away in the winter but, after some research I realized how wrong I was. The actual reason that it's colder in the winter is that the sun is lower in the sky, so its solar heat that stems off of its 10,340 degrees Fahrenheit surface hits us at a different angle. I found this on Space.com  

Picture found at scienceblogs.com

Since the sun hits the planet at a lower angle in the winter we get less solar heat from it. This reminded me of another life lesson( the sun has been showing me these ever since I started looking deeper that just the visual effect of the sun.) In life everyone is going to face a life changing  problem it's as simple as that. In this problem we face you can either look at it from the perspective of June 21 and grow from that problem and bring sunlight and warmth to the situation or you can look at it from December 21 and let it bring you down and become cold and bitter from it. You always have a choice and sometimes the right one is harder to do but, it makes you a better person. 

Mind Opener

 

 

   The sun only has one task as it rises in the morning and that's to travel as far as it can west before it is blocked out by the perfect wall called the horizon. When watching the sunset I often find myself lost in its natural beauty. Trying to find a message it must be striving to give me. The past couple weeks when I have been watching the sunset I haven't noticed anything but what I could see but, two days ago something hit me. Before I tell you this I want you t watch a video I found on YouTube of a sunset that is almost identical to the one I watched two nights ago and think about more than what you just see.

 

 

"Reno Nevada Summer Sunset" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVXo_2xgOYk

   

 

 

   When I watched the sunset the other night it started off just as the others before had. With the array of colors highlighting the blue sky in the background. Then as the sun would fall the rays of purples, reds and oranges would fall with it. Then as the sun was almost gone behind the mountains it hit me, the sun had already rose that day and it couldn't change that. It was already in the past. Five minutes before it was falling behind the mountains couldn't be changed either. All the sun could do was move forward and change what it was about to do. This made me think about life and how no one can go back and change what they have done in the past but no matter what you can choose what you do in the future. I looked it up on the Internet and found a perfect quote for this--

"No one can go back and start a new beginning but anyone can start today and make a new ending" - Maria Robinson.

 This quote is exactly what the sunset showed me that night when it was falling behind the mountains and things were looking down as it got darker and darker. That you can always pop back up and rise again like the sunset getting brighter... and brighter...

 



Overlooked Beauty 

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Aaron's photo 9/31/14

    The Sunset was a very hard thing to choose at first. What could be so amazing about some common colors such as orange, red, or purple? But with my hours upon hours of observation I've learned to love these daily, overlooked works of beauty. "The sun shot through the sky today in an array of colors showing it's common beauty was not to be underestimated. The purple knout lashed across the sky whipping the farthest reaches of it, testing it's limits. The outer limits were covered in these majestic whips of purple but, if you followed its trails closer to there origins you could see a shield of orange that set up a perimeter around the sun. As the sun settled down behind the mountains the barrier of orange was in a rush right behind it and the outlasting reach of the belts of purple was shorter and shorter by the minute. The common beauty disappearing before me, showing me it should never be underestimated again." - Field notes 9/30/14

Aaron's Photo 9/30/14

    I've done some research and found out why these beautiful colors are created only at sunset. Well when the sun is the low in the horizon the sunlight has to travel a farther distance. Meaning it has to travel through more particles in the atmosphere according to Komonews.com. So during the day when the sunlight is appearing to be a white color it's actually a combination of the whole spectrum of the rainbow. Some of these colors scatter easier such as green or blue so that's why we don't see them. Then there's stronger colors with a stronger wavelength(a.k.a they can shine farther) like purple, red and orange are visible since their wave lengths can make it through the air particles. Smoke, pollution and ash can enhance these colors since theirs more particles in the air to scatter away the wave lengths. This is why the sunsets last week were so unusually colorful. 

  The sunset has many unique but common beauty's that I feel are underestimated or are looked at as just problems like the smoke. I wanna expose it's beauty for what it really is and I am going to take that task upon me and expose a unique asset of the sunset every week. 

First Impressions     

 

   I have been observing the commonly seen sunset. The only inconvenience(what I thought at first) was the sun's rays of colorful sunshine were being blocked out by the lingering haze of smoke.



9/15/17 Photo taken by Aaron Mastin 

 

In this picture the sunlight was diluted by a thick layer of smoke that left a bitter taste on my tongue. With the blood orange sun was struggling to pierce through the walls of the impenetrable smoke, the smoke was doing something that makes rare a understatement.   "Air pollution and smoke suppress rainfall, but cause the remaining rain amounts to fall in greater intensities" according to a researcher at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. What happens is that the smoke particles push apart the water drops into smaller, lighter ones. When this happens the water droplets become so light that they stay suspended up in the cloud for longer periods of time. This then causes a heightened intensity of rain fall when they finally become to heavy for the air. A whole bunch of smaller groups of droplets all falling faster than normal for a short amount of time. This combined with the rain clouds above caused a downpour for fifteen minutes that drenched everything around on 9/16/14.

   The sunset wasn't always all dark, gloomy and hidden by the smoke but, was also shining with all it's might, lighting up the valley I call the biggest little city in the world, Home. "The clouds were rolling in wave after wave like a army marching through the streets. There ranks seemed limitless, if you looked up you could see the clouds a solid row stretching from horizon to horizon making up the front line. With the sun setting in its center as a general would sitting back behind his glorious army." - 9/23/14 Field notes.

9/23/14 Photo taken by Aaron Mastin

   The twenty third of September was the first day I had observed the sun without the obscurity of the smoke blocking it out. Since this day the sunset has been a very enjoyable normal. It has been a baby blue sky with thick white clouds that hovered above the horizon. The sun making its normal streamline across the sky as it comes to its daily end of warmth to the west. It struggled to show its powerful rays of light as it feel behind the brown walls of the mountains that surround our valley to the west.  

   One thing I've been wondering is why does the suns rays change colors during the sunset? Also why does the sky turn blue while the suns up when the limitless distance of space up there is a dark black?