Birds Fly to the Stars, I Guess

Well, I had hoped to go out and try to find Comet Holmes so I could give you a report. This comet surprised everyone recently by suddenly becoming very bright, bright enough to be seen with the unaided eye. No one knows why this happened, so it's very mysterious.

But my timing is bad, because we have partly or mostly cloudy skies forecast for about the next week. That's November in Wisconsin. Instead, I put up a link in the links section to spaceweather.com. This is a great site that offers information on auroras, meteor showers, eclipses and other interesting astronomical events. They have a sky map that shows where to look for the comet, so you can go find it for yourself if the skies will cooperate. Good luck!

Besides clouds, I've got Canada geese in the sky over my neighborhood. They're hanging out until the ponds and lakes freeze over and they head south. Sometimes they fly at night, moving from one field to another. I hear their honking as they fly overhead.

Many song birds migrate at night, using the cover of dark to avoid predators. I remember when I first learned that fact about the natural world. It made the night seem more interesting. I had just assumed that most birds slept at night, except the noctural ones like owls. I wondered what other phenomena the night was concealing that had escaped my notice.

Of course, some birds are famous for singing at night, like nightingales. That can be either charming if you're out for a night walk or annoying if you're trying to sleep. Someone I know once threw a pot of water at a nightingale that wouldn't shut up. The bird did not appreciate it. It flew out of the tree, found a nearby tree and resumed singing.

Bird activity at night made me think of the Beatles song Blackbird, so enjoy the video. And as for the title of this post, do you remember where it's from? The movie Moonstruck, with Cher and Nicholas Cage, which is a great movie beyond that fact that it's in keeping with the night theme. "Bring me the big knife!" "It's Cosmo's moon!" Time to update the Netflix queue...