Full Cold Moon and Tonight's Sunset

Tonight's full "Cold Moon" is also the only "Super Moon" of the year and the last full moon of 2017.

Snowy Owl

A young (most likely female) Snowy Owl perched on and hunting from driftwood on the beach during the early hours of the day.  

Waxing Gibbous

91% of December's full "Cold Moon" is visible this evening.

Glaucous Gull

The Glaucous Gull is a large gull of the far north which breeds in the high Arctic and heads south for the winter.  This handsome juvenile was seen this morning on a Lake Erie beach in western New York.

Red-breasted Merganser

Horned Grebe

Snowy Owl

Hermit Thrush

Red-shouldered Hawk

Brown-headed Nuthatch

A Brown-headed Nuthatch in Mecklenburg County North Carolina.

Northern Mockingbird

Yearling

Dunlin

Sabine's Gull

A Sabine's Gull near the base of the American Falls at Niagara.  These arctic gulls breed in Alaska and Nunavut and head out to open tropical waters on the ocean for the winter.  It's always a thrill to see one of these striking gulls show up on the Great Lakes during migration.

Snow Buntings

Lake Erie Sunset

Full Beaver Moonrise

Merry Samhain!

Juvenile Bald Eagle

Eastern Red Fox

Ruby-crowned Kinglets

Brown Creepers

Cold Front

Cold front moving in before sunset.

Winter Wrens

Eastern Comma Butterfly

Common Raven

Least Bittern

Northern Wheatear

We had a very rare visitor in our backyard today in Forestville, New York (Town of Sheridan).  The Northern Wheatear breeds in the high Arctic and migrates to Africa for the winter season.  This beauty was apparently thrown off course by recent tropical storms in the Atlantic Ocean and made a pit stop to feast on grasshoppers right outside my kitchen window! I'm still in awe of how the bird found the birder late in the day on this magical autumnal equinox.

Merry Mabon!

"Long light has lingered here, Earth still is warm,

Deepening shadows lost by the dawn.

Long darkness rising here, though heat lingers on,

Twist of the Equinox – Mabon has come!

Dead leaves fall silently, drift on the air,

Trees standing, slumbering – dry, cracked and bare.

Time passes quietly, echoing past:

Earth calls the winter in. Mabon at last!"

~ from a poem by Leanne Daharja

“O now is the time of the Harvest,
As we draw near to the years end.
Now is the time of Mabon
Autumn is the time to descend.

Old Woman waits patiently for us
At the threshold of the labyrinth within
She offers her hand that we may understand
The treasures that await at journey’s end.

O Great Mother has given of Her body,
We give thanks for Her fruit and Her grain
We then clear the fields so that next harvest’s yields
Will be full and abundant again.

Old Woman leads us through the darkness
Our most ancient and trusted of friends
She carries the light of spiritual insight
And leads us to our wisdom once again.

And as we journey through the darkness
And as we continue to descend
We learn to let go of what obscures our soul
And re-discover our true being in the end.”

~ Lisa Thiel

Last Day of Summer

Yellow-bellied Flycatcher

Late Summer Sunset

Sanderlings