I was on a hillwalking trip to Scotland, and we took up position on the Ben Lawers visitor centre road, high above Loch Tay among some felled forest remnants. Of particular interest was a pair of hooded crows. They flew to a perch in a deciduous tree a hundred yars or so away from us, about 15 minutes before the maximum eclipse phase, and stayed perched there, facing the muted sun, for a full half an hour. The eclipse was 96% up there, so the light level was really quite low - but it's a peculiar sort of light too, often described as rather "metallic". We and the hoodies had a good view of the part-clouded sun, which was wire-thin at maximum eclipse. Other than the crows, there was quite a lot of coming and going in the forest below us, though we were rather too high above it to notice sound levels.
A few of us viewed it briefly from our Reddish depot and I commented on how much quieter it suddenly went as regards the birds. Normally it's action stations around the industrial estate, scrubland, and the boggy woodland at the back of the units with Robin, Dunnock, Greenfinch, Goldfinch, Blackbird, Gulls constantly flying over calling, Corvids, Geese etc but one of the only birds to sing was a Robin and the 15 or so Magpies in their usual gathering tree just sat there quiet as Mice! How true this is I can't be 100% but I think there is some truth in it...I'm sure I read a long time ago that the reduction in sunlight from an eclipse creating a dusk / dawn effect will probably favour a lot of predators that can see well in reduced light. This could partially explain why some species quieten down, so as not to draw attention. Although it seems from the reports, a lot didn't quieten down. Cheers Rob
On the local BBC news last night there was a clip of a teacher in a primary school telling the children how the birds would stop singing during the eclipse.
Completely the opposite in my garden - in fact a male Chaffinch (very rarely seen in the garden) flew in and sang most vociferously!
We were very lucky to get good views of the large partial solar eclipse this morning after quite a cloudy start to the day. It was very interesting to observe the birds in the garden as the eclipse progressed. From 9.15, about 15 minutes before maximum coverage, the blackbirds, dunnocks and robins started to sing as they would have done in the evening. Many birds seemed to be heading to their roosts and there was a group of starlings that seemed very unsure about what was going on. Did anyone else observe the birds during the eclipse?
Yes John, I did as well as Steve Burke - see County Garden Birds thread.
We were very lucky to get good views of the large partial solar eclipse this morning after quite a cloudy start to the day. It was very interesting to observe the birds in the garden as the eclipse progressed. From 9.15, about 15 minutes before maximum coverage, the blackbirds, dunnocks and robins started to sing as they would have done in the evening. Many birds seemed to be heading to their roosts and there was a group of starlings that seemed very unsure about what was going on. Did anyone else observe the birds during the eclipse?
