Sunday, June 17, 2007
Just four days from now, on June 21, the summer solstice occurs. On that day, the sun is above the horizon longer than on any other day of the year.
The photo at right is from HPWREN's automatic camera on top of Lyon's Peak, a couple miles almost due south of my house. The camera looks at a 90° swath of the horizon, centered on due north. It was taken just a little while before sunset. You can see that the sun is on the left (which is west), and nearly in view. That means the sun's direction is just a few degrees less than 315°, well north of west and much further north than it normally sets. Each day until June 21 it will set (and rise) a little further north. Between June 21 and December 21 (the winter solstice), it will set (and rise) a little further south each day.
There's your astronomy lesson for the day...
Every summer as the number of flowers decrease, the hummingbirds start drinking more from our feeders. In addition, the number of hummingbirds (and in recent years, orioles) attracted to our feeders increases every year. This year we are seeing much larger numbers of orioles feeding, most especially hooded orioles, but also at least two pairs of Bullock's orioles. The rate of sugar water ("hummer juice") consumption at our feeders is now at about six quarts per day.
For years we've been mixing the hummer juice two quarts at a time, the size being set the by size of the pitcher we made it in. Typically in the summer, we'd have to make two batches a day, as the feeders ran out. That's quite a bit of repetitive work -- so a few days ago I decided to try to make the job easier.
I located the perfect hummer juice container: a five gallon container with a spigot. It's made by Coleman, and is intended to be a water jug for camping. I also located a pet food container with an airtight spin-on lid that's perfect for storing 50 pounds of sugar. Now I'm making five gallons of hummer juice in one batch, enough for several days of happy hummers. An added bonus: it's very convenient to fill the feeders from the Coleman container, using a funnel. But it sure feels like mass production when I make a batch! I start by filling the Coleman container half full of hot tap water. Then I pour five quarts (about 9.5 pounds) of sugar into the hot water, swizzling it with a section of half inch PVC pipe as my swizzle stick. Once I've got the sugar all dissolved, I fill the container the rest of the way with hot water and add about a 3:1 mixture of yellow and red food coloring. The hummers couldn't care any less about the nice orange color that results, but (very subjectively) it does seem to attract the orioles. Then a little more swizzling with my giant swizzle stick and I'm stocked up on hummer juice for days...
A treat for me each summer is the bloom of the monkey flowers. Lawson Valley is home to several species, all blooming for several weeks starting roughly June 1 (later than most spring flowers). The species here range from deep reddish-orange to very pale oranges. On our property, including within our mostly cleared, fenced yard, we have several stands of monkey flowers -- all of them Diplacus puniceus, the Otay Monkey Flower. The photo at right shows one such stand, just uphill and east of our house, right against the fence and (as usual for monkey flowers) right next to a rock outcropping.
Just four days from now, on June 21, the summer solstice occurs. On that day, the sun is above the horizon longer than on any other day of the year.
