birds

[Tad Eareckson]

I don't know where you learned to handle snakes like that...

James Island, Charleston, also in the Path of Totality of this one, about five miles from its final exit from the continent and any further hint of land. When I was four/five. Rough Green Snakes, slightly more dangerous than earthworms - but more difficult to catch. Didn't get anything that could do serious damage though until that senior and only year at Norfolk Academy.

Visited a classmate, John Kepchar, at his home in Hertford, North Carolina. Very close to Centerline for the 1970/03/07 not long before. (Odd that I can't recall a single comment about the eclipse from my classmates or anyone else in the area in that year or the next several we were down there.) Also a bit under fifty crow flight miles NW of where I learned to fly.

Perquimans River. Went water skiing (for my first time), then forever upstream. Zillions of Cottonmouths, caught a smallish one which retreated to the base of a Cypress. Kept him for a while at home, handled him freely, released him at First Landing (then Seashore) State Park, Cape Henry. (Regret doing that, I know now to never transplant a reptile.) Found him to be very gentle, well behaved.

...but you sound like you knew what you were doing...

Wasn't much to it - but a lot of herpetologists have sustained a lot of permanent damage after many years of not screwing up. And that intelligence was very much on my mind as I was deciding on a course of action and executing.

...so I'll resist the temptation to label you 'nuts'. =)

Even someone who flies with stronglinks and nonstandard experimental gear with extremely short track records?

I'm glad it worked out for all concerned.

Me too. Also very glad that I encountered no one who indicated a desire for something else.

I'd have been in the "won't get within striking range times twenty" camp...

http://www.kitestrings.org/post1934.html#p1934

Always wanted to comment on / respond to that one - but never got around to it 'cause I knew I'd end up writing a book - the way I'm doing now.

I'd have LOVED to have seen a Canebrake - been on my to-do list for most of my life.

And ya gotta admit that it's pretty nice having something that could kill you so effectively letting you know that you're about to step on it. Those things didn't evolve with humans and that rattle is only a mechanism for avoiding conflict and violence. And even when it comes to a strike a good percentage of the time they don't even inject anything - still just a warning. The more I deal with and study them the more civilized I find them to be.

And it's really sad that that very conflict avoidance/de-escalation mechanism and behavior is so often what results in them getting decapitated by the dominant, more recent flavor of our invasive species.

Much more to come...

[Tad Eareckson]

In any event, it sounds like all of your preparation paid off.

Along with a bit o' luck.

I wasn't nearly as prepared and it didn't go quite so smoothly for me, but it worked out well enough in the end.

The mountains scared the crap outta me. Options of last resort.

...punched in my first choice at Union Pass in Shoshone National Forest.

Spent about an hour and a half on Google Earth trying to understand that turf and road access. Mostly to the south - which I realized after backing out to the big picture of your movements was irrelevant.

Unfortunately, my GPS picked the shortest route to the waypoint, which in this case was far from the easiest.

My Garmin didn't recognize Union Pass Road as a viable option for making a crossing

After a few bone-jarring miles...

Union Pass Road itself doesn't look too bad - as far as I can tell anyway. I get it maxing out a bit over 9700 feet about 3.7 miles off Centerline on the north side.

I just turned around and pulled into a clearing in the trees a short ways down.

I'd love to know the precise coordinates.

That's what I get for relying too much on technology...

Or not enough.

My dad came with me on this trip.

Your dad accompanies you over one and a quarter thousand crow flight miles from the Gulf of Mexico to the top of the continent for a week or so to do a total eclipse. My dad... Not to mention mom...

I had no app to announce phases, but none was necessary. I was transfixed on the sun in the final moments...

So you didn't get the shadow bands either.

It wasn't the sun, but it wasn't the moon; it was like some foreign celestial body hovering in the sky overhead.

I wonder if we'll ever be able to develop or use existing technology in some kind of planetarium environment to really convey the experience artificially. (Or maybe they're already doing some really good stuff.)

Two minutes and twenty seconds does seem like a long time watching a clock, but it was over far too soon.

Yeah, but we knew that was gonna happen. I knew how fast the months, weeks, days, hours were gonna evaporate during the lead-up.

Here are a couple of pics my dad snapped. He's far from a professional but I thought they came out alright.

Fer sure. And it looks like everybody's getting similar corona patterns.

http://c1.staticflickr.com/5/4346/36440688370_dbb5e1f05f_o.png


(Can't imagine they change much in the course of a day or few.)

This was taken not far from my cabin...

I'm pretty sure the one on the near left is the same one I semi-spooked at Gardiner.

Where specifically were you looking for grizzlies?

Nowhere. Peter was talking to Nephew about specific locations while I was occupied getting something organized and I didn't even know they were talking Yellowstone. Then as we headed out and closed towards West Yellowstone seeing all that zero wildlife I was no longer hoping to see Grizzlies. I was hoping to see a Mule Deer, Red Squirrel, or Crow.

...but all I got were some ducks (Ruddy, I believe).

Real good bet.

It was only then that I learned about Harvey (less than a day before landfall).

No radio at Nephew's. So I was listening to a lot of silence while prepping and keyboard pounding and didn't get well tuned into what Harvey was going to do until it was doing it.

Despite going on several day hikes, my best wildlife sightings were just off the road.

You can score an amazing amount of nothing on Christmas Bird Counts on foot. Learned that as a kid.

We encountered a herd of mountain goats on our way in via Beartooth Pass, although there wasn't any place to pull over to observe them.

Got them pretty easily at Logan Pass in Glacier in later summer on my first trip in many years ago. Struck out two Junes ago right after the road had opened and the place was still buried under six feet of snow. Best we could do was a small herd of Bighorns way up the slope at Many Glacier while huntin' Griz.

Then there was the coyote hunting something in a meadow just off the road...

Ground squirrels. Or small children. Hard to tell from just the photo.

We saw a few Ospreys, including this nest in the canyon...

I thought they only nested on channel markers and cell towers.

Got a few of those (I think) swimming up the Belcher River...

Definitely. That distinct white patch on the chin, sharp cutoff of the rusty head color at the neck. Besides, the Red-Breasted is out of range - 'specially pre-migration.

Also near the river were a pair of Gray Jays (again, I think...)

If you think they were they were.

...that were surprisingly curious about us considering this is one of the least visited areas of the park.

Gray Jay written all over them.

Other than that, lots of geese, ravens, pelicans, a couple of grouse, a few Redtails, mule deer, and, of course, the ubiquitous bison.

You're supposed to identify the grouse. Guessing Ruffed, Dusky, maybe Sharp-Tail based on range, likely habitat, the fact that you didn't say Sage.

Waite's iBird Pro. Make sure it's on your phone if it isn't already. Extremely useful in the field and you're gonna have the phone with you at all times anyway.

Now to edit 30 GB worth of video...

Keep us posted.

P.S. Sun's shining again. Harvey remnants made all of yesterday soaking, dark, more depressing than usual.

[Tad Eareckson]

Further thought on the experience at E09...

Point - MDT - Altitude - Azimuth
C1 - 10:14:33.8 - 36.7° - 111.1°
MX - 11:32:45.3 - 48.7° - 131.5°
C4 - 12:56:26.0 - 56.9° - 162.9°

So there's a 2:41:52.2 hour event duration in which the sun climbs 20.2 degrees and, mostly just for laughs, shifts 51.8 degrees towards the south. (Add six hours for UTC.)

Leading up to total we kept adjusting the tripod mounted binocular up and to the right as necessary to stay on the sun. I continued doing so after totality but there came a point at which things started getting ridiculous - the altitude angle was just too freakin' high to continue using the tripod. So I disconnected the binocular and contented myself tilting back in my folding chair and using the binocular handheld and stabilized - which worked fine.

Had we been at Greatest Eclipse, Trigg County, Kentucky however...

2017/08/21
36°57'58.91" N 087°40'12.48" W
36.96636°, -087.67013°
(~0539 foot elevation)
2:40.1 (total solar eclipse)
2:41.2 (lunar limb corrected)
Umbral depth - 100.00%
Umbral depth - 0 m (0 ft)
Path width - 114.6 km (71.2 mi)
Obscuration - 100.00%
Magnitude at maximum - 1.01529
Moon/Sun size ratio - 1.03059
Umbral velocity - 0.648 km/s (1449 mph)
Event (ΔT=68.8 s) - Altitude - Azimuth - P - V - LC
C1 - 16:56:05.1 - 61.8° - 149.0° - 293° - 01.4
C2 - 18:24:11.3 - 64.0° - 197.2° - 114° - 08.7 -2.1 s
MX - 18:25:31.4 - 63.9° - 197.9° - 204° - 11.7
C3 - 18:26:51.4 - 63.8° - 198.6° - 294° - 02.6 -1.0 s
C4 - 19:51:15.3 - 53.6° - 234.0° - 114° - 09.6

That's in WESTERN Kentucky which puts it in the CENTRAL Time Zone BUT Kentucky doesn't observe Daylight Saving Time so the UTC offset is -6 hours - the same as for E09 in SouthEastern Idaho, Mountain Daylight Time, 25°07'10.44" longitude further west.

So let's repeat the E09 extract for easier comparison:

Point - MDT - Altitude - Azimuth
C1 - 10:14:33.8 - 36.7° - 111.1°
MX - 11:32:45.3 - 48.7° - 131.5°
C4 - 12:56:26.0 - 56.9° - 162.9°

and do the same extract and local time conversion for Greatest Eclipse:

Point - CST - Altitude - Azimuth
C1 - 10:56:05.1 - 61.8° - 149.0°
MX - 12:25:31.4 - 63.9° - 197.9°
C4 - 13:51:15.3 - 53.6° - 234.0°

and note that MDT=CST - so everybody's watches are set the same.

So the sun is moving across the sky mostly west and the totality shadow is screaming across the continent mostly east at between 1908 and 1449 mph. So the sun's a lot higher over Western Kentucky at any UTC time point from the morning to a bit after Local Sun Noon than it is In SouthEastern Idaho.

So when Greatest Eclipse, Kentucky catches C1 they're having to tilt their heads 4.9 degrees further back than E09 does for the C4 worst point of the event. And at Max they're cranked back +15.2° further than E09 is for its Max. And remember that I threw in the towel on the tripod - rather belatedly - at or before Greatest Eclipse's low point at C4.

So the point of all this is...

If you want to run a station with something decent through which to look for more than one observer you need to use a tripod. Nephew's had a geared center column. Center columns are frowned upon over the stability issue but you couldn't beat this geared one for accommodating people of varying altitudes. Give the crank a few revolutions and you can quickly go from shortest to tallest and/or vice versa while keeping the sun centered.

If Max is much higher than the 48.7 degrees we had it at E09 you're gonna need a scope:

http://www.bintel.com.au/product/swarovski-ats-65-hd-w25-50x-w/
Swarovski ATS 80 HD with 25-50x Wide-Angle Eyepiece

http://www.bintel.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/50059521044672_2-8.jpg

with an angled eyepiece. (That much or more.)

The highest the sun can get is, of course, ninety degrees / straight freakin' up and that's only possible in the tropics. But Brownsville and Key West can get pretty damn close.

2024/04/08 is gonna Max in Mexico at 69.8 (4:28) then taper down to 23.5 when it kisses terra firma bye-bye at the beach at Newfoundland. (Centerline runs about 180 miles NW of Houston and gets ya over 4:23 of totality. (And it's well before the hurricane season.))

[Zack C]

Found him [Cottonmouth] to be very gentle, well behaved

Amazing. I don't have any experiences with them myself, but everyone I know seems to regard them as highly aggressive.

Union Pass Road itself doesn't look too bad - as far as I can tell anyway.

It isn't, and that's the way I was supposed to go. In fact, when I make my Union Pass waypoint active, my GPS (also Garmin) takes me down Union Pass Road. I believe what happened is I entered my Union Peak waypoint (43.508239, -109.831955) as my destination because it was on the way to Union Pass but a little ways off the main road. I figured I'd check it out on the way and stop there if it looked good or I wasn't making good time due to traffic.

I'd love to know the precise coordinates.

So would I. My GPS no longer has the path I took in its memory so I'm not certain, but my best guess is 43.5033278, -109.7633402. It may have been a little further SW, but I'm pretty sure it was in this area as it was near the 554 junction (I went left/north on the way back at the advice of the fellers from Colorado, who came that way from Union Pass Road). You can find what I think is the complete route I took (from 26) here:
https://goo.gl/maps/T61xb267dXR2
Interestingly, it looks like the road with my stop (600) ends on Google Maps around where I turned around, but my GPS has it continuing on to what Google is calling 5311A.

I'm pretty sure the one on the near left is the same one I semi-spooked at Gardiner.

Seriously? How can you tell? I have a close-up of the same one in my video.

You're supposed to identify the grouse.

I think the one I got footage of is a Dusky:

The other I saw was in a parking lot looking for handouts. I didn't get a picture and I wouldn't trust my memory enough to do an ID, but I suspect Dusky as well.

Waite's iBird Pro. Make sure it's on your phone if it isn't already.

It's not, but I'll check it out, thanks.

Now to edit 30 GB worth of video...

Keep us posted.

The final edit:
http://vimeo.com/233202343


Though I didn't want to mess with pictures during totality, I did leave my camcorder running. My dad lent me a rubber band-secured solar filter I removed shortly after C2. The footage isn't great, but it captured some element of the moment:
http://vimeo.com/233205063

[Tad Eareckson]

...but everyone I know seems to regard them as highly aggressive.

And a single loop of 130 pound Greenspot on a bridle end as the ideal one-size-fits-all aerotow weak link.

To be fair, aggressive should mean charging, not maintaining pre-existing personal space - 'specially when there can be a huge increase in risk in the course of a retreat. And here's what Wikipedia has to say about the issue:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agkistrodon_piscivorus
Agkistrodon piscivorus - Wikipedia

The aggressiveness of these snakes has been greatly exaggerated. In tests designed to measure the various behavioral responses by wild specimens to encounters with people, 23 of 45 (51%) tried to escape, while 28 of 36 (78%) resorted to threat displays and other defensive tactics. Only when they were picked up with a mechanical hand were they likely to bite.

When sufficiently stressed or threatened, this species engages in a characteristic threat display that includes vibrating its tail and throwing its head back with its mouth open to display the startling white interior, often making a loud hiss while the neck and front part of the body are pulled into an S-shaped position.

On that Perquimans River expedition we inadvertently got the boat between a big Cottonmouth and where he wanted to go. He inflated himself and lifted his head high, we excused ourselves and got the fuck outta his way. Everything else just took off.

The guy I kidnapped I handled all the time no problem. But after a bit he started going into a shed cycle. And that fogs the eyes over. And that makes them more paranoid. And in that period when I approached he'd do the threat display - coiled, cotton mouth open, fangs extended. But I'd just move in slowly and make contact gently and smoothly and everything was fine. But it was at that phase that I figured things would be better if he finished the cycle and the rest of his life in the swamp.

I believe what happened is I entered my Union Peak waypoint (43.508239, -109.831955) as my destination because it was on the way to Union Pass but a little ways off the main road.

Less than a mile east of Union Pass Road.

My GPS no longer has the path I took in its memory so I'm not certain, but my best guess is 43.5033278, -109.7633402.

Let's go with it.

43°30'11.98" N 109°45'48.02" W
1377.79 miles
http://c1.staticflickr.com/5/4387/36351652573_53c730231e_o.png

0763.08 miles
http://c1.staticflickr.com/5/4437/36329393664_bb0053017d_o.png

0366.56 miles
http://c1.staticflickr.com/5/4338/36351652383_b5a6fdc6b4_o.png

0202.72 miles
http://c1.staticflickr.com/5/4355/36994344602_79fb9a36e2_o.png

0092.68 miles
http://c1.staticflickr.com/5/4432/36768773140_e832dbc204_o.png

0045.34 miles
http://c1.staticflickr.com/5/4346/36768942050_27f3b23de6_o.png

0022.15 miles
http://c1.staticflickr.com/5/4346/36351652223_36da8faab7_o.png

26457 feet
http://c1.staticflickr.com/5/4359/36994344432_7ac32a469b_o.png

17306 feet
http://c1.staticflickr.com/5/4332/36978097826_6d00d4f0e6_o.png

03281 feet
http://c1.staticflickr.com/5/4389/36994343782_7726e9c606_o.png


6.47 miles ENE of the intersection of Centerline and Union Pass Road and 3.55 miles off Centerline (on the north side).

You can find what I think is the complete route I took (from 26) here:
https://goo.gl/maps/T61xb267dXR2

http://c1.staticflickr.com/5/4395/36975376086_ce1d5302eb_o.png


What amazing tools we have at our disposal at this point in human history.

Seriously?

No. Joke. But that's EXACTLY the layout we had up the road at Gardiner.

I think the one I got footage of is a Dusky:

Concur.

The other I saw was in a parking lot looking for handouts. I didn't get a picture and I wouldn't trust my memory enough to do an ID, but I suspect Dusky as well.

Probably. The Ruffed has a distinct terminal band on the tail.

http://vimeo.com/233202343

Wildlife in chronological order:
- Bighorn
- Ospreys
- Canada Geese (and "ducks")
- Bison
- Elk
- Butterflies:
-- Rocky Mountain Parnassian
-- Milbert's Tortoiseshell
-- Painted Lady
- Redtail
- Coyote
- Common Mergs (females)
- Gray Jay
- Ruddies

The footage isn't great, but it captured some element of the moment:
http://vimeo.com/233205063

Not bad, fun to have something unique, of one's own. But I don't think cameras are capable of capturing and recording all those wavelengths, intensities, fields of view the way the human eye and brain can. I've seen tons or really cool stuff on the screen but nothing like what I/we saw and experienced in those two plus minutes of totality. Pity the human eye and brain so totally suck in the digital recording, playback, printing departments.

I forgot to put the filter back on at C3 (I did stop the camera shortly after this edit ends), but fortunately the camera wasn't damaged.

I've been playing around with binoculars, solar filters, sun, sunspots a lot since the eclipse.

And about half past noon yesterday a young Redtail snatched something off the roof and took it - and a footful of leaf litter - to a limb off the Black Locust out front. I did my best with the Canon 10x42s but he didn't hang around long enough for me to learn much more.

Late in the day the sun was low and blasting underneath the forest canopy and through the back windows. I grabbed the glasses, went out on the back deck, shifted around trying to get a lock. It wasn't until I GOT the lock that it dawned on me that I hadn't put the filters back on. (Brain hasn't been operating very reliably lately. But hopefully that's I mistake I won't repeat anytime soon.)

The corona appears much more exaggerated in the footage than in reality.

Exactly. Find me some footage or a photo in which it doesn't. The real deal is ghostly. And all the assholes in the path who couldn't be bothered to look up for a few seconds remain secure in their delusions that a total is no big fuckin' deal.

So based on your coordinates best guess - which I believe is accurate based upon your account and what I'm seeing:

http://xjubier.free.fr/en/site_pages/solar_eclipses/TSE_2017_GoogleMapFull.html
USA - 2017 August 21 Total Solar Eclipse - Interactive Google Map - Xavier Jubier

Zack C
2017/08/21
43°30'11.99" N 109°45'48.04" W
43.50333°, -109.76334°
(~9500 foot elevation)
2:20.4 (total solar eclipse)
2:20.2 (lunar limb corrected)
Umbral depth - 089.14%
Umbral depth - 5.8 km (3.6 mi)
Path width - 106.9 km (66.4 mi)
Obscuration - 100.00%
Magnitude at maximum - 1.01286
Moon/Sun size ratio - 1.02884
Umbral velocity - 0.809 km/s (1809 mph)
Event (ΔT=68.8s) - Altitude - Azimuth - P - V - LC
C1 - 16:18:00.1 - 39.4° - 114.3° - 287° - 13.0
C2 - 17:36:35.4 - 51.0° - 136.3° - 102° - 07.6 - -0.6 s
MX - 17:37:45.5 - 51.2° - 136.7° - 199° - 04.3
C3 - 17:38:55.8 - 51.3° - 137.1° - 295° - 01.1 - --0.8 s
C4 - 19:02:22.2 - 58.1° - 170.9° - 110° - 08.1

http://xjubier.free.fr/en/site_pages/solar_eclipses/TSE_20170821_pg01.html
United States of America - Total Solar Eclipse of 2017 August 21 - Xavier Jubier
http://xjubier.free.fr/site_movies/TSE_2017_Simulation_1024x768.mp4


Solar Eclipse Maestro (Xavier M. Jubier)
2017/08/21 17:38UT

If you open the two stills image files - Zack's above and mine below:

http://c1.staticflickr.com/5/4359/36843061851_7dba59f971_o.png

in two browser windows you can toggle back and forth and watch the five minute jump - see the totality spot hopping back and forth across the Continental Divide.

Fun facts:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellowstone_Caldera
Yellowstone Caldera - Wikipedia

Volcanism

Volcanism at Yellowstone is relatively recent with calderas that were created during large eruptions that took place 2.1 million, 1.3 million, and 630,000 years ago. The calderas lie over a hotspot where light, hot, molten rock from the mantle rises toward the surface. While the Yellowstone hotspot is now under the Yellowstone Plateau, it previously helped create the eastern Snake River Plain (to the west of Yellowstone) through a series of huge volcanic eruptions. The hotspot appears to move across terrain in the east-northeast direction, but in fact the hotspot is much deeper than terrain and remains stationary while the North American Plate moves west-southwest over it.

Over the past 18 million years or so, this hotspot has generated a succession of violent eruptions and less violent floods of basaltic lava. Together these eruptions have helped create the eastern part of the Snake River Plain from a once-mountainous region. At least a dozen of these eruptions were so massive that they are classified as supereruptions. Volcanic eruptions sometimes empty their stores of magma so swiftly that they cause the overlying land to collapse into the emptied magma chamber, forming a geographic depression called a caldera.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/89/HotspotsSRP_update2013.JPG

Path of the Yellowstone hot spot over the past 16 million years

So that explains all that lovely rather abrupt flatness...

E09 - 03 - 0519.77 miles
http://c1.staticflickr.com/5/4340/36403875630_aa1f3dec28_o.png

01-7108c
http://c1.staticflickr.com/5/4422/36019483243_29a6659003_o.png


in the vicinity of E09 that simplified my life so much before, during, after the event.

P.S. Note (again) the dark lava flow of the Craters of the Moon National Park in the Google Earth shot.
---
Edit - 2017/09/11 15:45:00 UTC

I've amended thiis post with a series of Google Earth zoom-in shots (like what I did for my E09 viewing location) 'cause:

- I think they're interesting

- it's total hell for me to get my head wrapped around that tangle of mountains, ranges, plateaus, watersheds, plains without such a reference (and still plenty confusing enough even with it)

[Zack C]

Wildlife in chronological order:
- Bighorn

Wow, I'm an idiot. This whole time I thought I was looking at a female mule deer (I thought the horns were my eyes playing tricks on me...it was pretty far away). Never even considered bighorns as the image I have in my mind of them is a ram with...big horns. I even thought, 'wow, I didn't know deer could move so deftly on such steep slopes...'. Anyway, there were three of them, all female.

You left out the American White Pelicans between the geese and bison, but I'll cut you slack for IDing the butterflies.

So that explains all that lovely rather abrupt flatness...

Interesting!

[Tad Eareckson]

This whole time I thought I was looking at a female mule deer...

- Doe. A deer. A female deer.
- Trade ya one of your Bighorns for twenty of our Mule Deer. We came up totally empty on the former.

I even thought, 'wow, I didn't know deer could move so deftly on such steep slopes...'.

I believe we got ONE Whitetail for the trips. Think it was after Augusta en route to the cabin before the mountains. Flew across the road left to right ahead of us. Thought it was gonna be just another Mulie but Nephew called it otherwise. Asked him how he made the call.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mule_deer
Mule deer - Wikipedia

Although capable of running, mule deer are often seen stotting (also called pronking), with all four feet coming down together.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d4/Stotting_mule_deer.jpg

And I didn't have to wait long to see and note a textbook example.

Anyway, there were three of them, all female.

- Ewe. A sheep. A female sheep.
- So does that expand your really cool species list by one? Bighorn with Mulie spares so's ya didn't have to subtract correspondingly?

You left out the American White Pelicans...

Damn, thought I'd listed them. Oh well, I doubt anyone confused them with the Geese or Bison ('specially the latter). Think we scored one or two between Augusta and the cabin. No shortage whatsoever though on last summer's trip.

Interesting!

Fer sure. Sure wish I'd had a geology course in college. But I am getting something of a grip on that Yellowstone epicentered tangle. I was just able to smoothly zoom in from high orbit, no cheating, on your eclipse meadow for the first time. I think the same level of understanding would've cost me decades at a minimum minus Google Earth, Wikipedia, other web resources. And if that neck of the woods hadn't been prime viewing real estate for the Path of Totality...

[Tad Eareckson]

There's a not bad King Mountain / Eclipse discussion over at:

http://www.shga.com/forum/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?t=5493
Solar Eclipse Totality or as OP would say, its science ~

which I - unfortunately - didn't discover until a bit ago well after the event. Links to a video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qc7MfcKF1-s


on Gordon Telepun's "Solar Eclipse Timer" app that was being run while we watched at E09. Really gotta admire the geeks who can do stuff like that and make it available.

Shot from Jonathan from his neck of the woods where they maxed at around seventy percent at around 17:21 UTC:



about twelve minutes before we at E09 maxed (although that one's obviously not at seventy max).

Also a nice total shot "from the upper launch at King" a bit "upwind" of us in the following post (on the second page).

[Steve Davy]

Gopher snake rescue today on highway one. I had cars waiting in both directions as I gathered the nerve to pick him up and deliver him to beyond the side of the road. It was good to see that he wasted no time in getting gone in the scrub once set free.

[Tad Eareckson]

Good job.

I first encountered those guys in North Dakota in 1985, next and last in Hell's Canyon on the Snake River, Idaho side in about 1997. All of them have been pretty big, four feet or better I'd guess. They coil up and buzz their tails, like Rat Snakes, but can be scooped up smoothly with little fuss and no biting, like Rat Snakes.

Talked to my sister on 2017/08/23, my last night in Montana after the eclipse. Told me that a very reliable student of hers had reported a big snake rattling its tail at the Phillips Farm Latah County outdoor/environmental ed center on some ground riddled with Pocket GOPHER tunnels.

I went with Gopher Snake 'cause rattlers seem to not be around that neck of the woods. Research afterwards showed Gopher Snakes to be in range but not by much. And just about all the references and photos I found were by Chuck Peterson, her herpetologist advisor for her Wildlife Management master's degree and I guy with whom I'd chased a few local frogs.

Don't know how much you've handled nonpoisonous snakes but if they do bite you it's usually best to just let them bite you. You get some sharp pricks that bleed for a few seconds. Wipe the blood away and it's hard to tell anything happened. But pull away and the reward curved teeth lock in and you're gonna get an unpleasant cut and maybe hurt the snake a bit. A few species and idividuals tend to hold on and sometimes chew (instead of just striking and retreating) so modify your response accordingly.