Partial Eclipse of the Moon late this Thursday evening, 2026 August 27/28

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Partial Eclipse of the Moon late this Thursday evening, 2026 August 27/28: A field trip for Headwaters Nature

I’m inviting you to join me late this Thursday evening (not Friday evening as I earlier wrote in error) to see the partial eclipse of the Moon as it transits across the sky from low in the South-East and across the South, and into the South-West. My thanks to those who pointed out my silly error about Friday evening … We’ll be going out on Thursday evening.)

The sky is predicted to be clear late on Thursday evening and into Friday morning. It will be about 15ºC at midnight, and dropping slowly. (I hesitate to say this, but there might also be a chance to see the Aurora Borealis that evening.) I will be dressing very warmly in several layers including a windproof outer jacket, and some light gloves and a warm wooly hat. I’ll bring a tripod and my smartphone, and my binoculars. Be aware that lunar eclipses take place over hours, not the brief minutes of a solar eclipse. There’s a slow drama that unfolds as the Moon is swallowed up by darkness. (Note that because this is sunshine being projected onto the Moon, we will not need any form of eye protection, such as we had to wear during the last Eclipse of the Sun several years ago.)

We’ll meet in the parking lot of Zehr’s at 11:30 PM EDT Thursday evening. Once together, we’ll cross Highway 10 at the lights at Fourth Avenue, and walk north along the Lakeside Trail to the north end of the first wooden bridge. That’s where we should have a clear view off to the south-east across Island Lake, when the Moon will be slowly being engulfed by the shadow of the Earth. The greatest part of the eclipse will be at 12:13 AM, with almost all of the Moon being dark and possibly quite reddish. We can stay there watching the Moon and the rest of the night sky as long as we like, though I expect we’ll be getting quite cool since we’re now used to being easily warm most of the time. We’ll walk out and back, covering about 1 kilometre of totally flat well-maintained trails each way.

I encourage you to read the excellent explanation of the event written by Nicole Mortillaro, a frequent presenter on CBC. She has several good diagrams and images https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/partial-lunar-eclipse-9.7314230? cmp=newsletter_CBC%20News%20Morning%20Brief_18067_2186512

Please respond to markwhitcombe34@gmail.com if you are planning on joining this Headwaters Nature field trip.

An iNaturalist training field trip workshop 2026 July 22nd, 7–8:30pm

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I would like to offer another iNaturalist free training workshop on Wednesday, July 22nd, 2026, from 7:00 P.M. to 8:30 P.M. in Orangeville. I will send the specific location as well as a reading list to those who RSVP to me.

  • Bring a camera, any special lenses you have, a tripod if one is required to do careful focusing by your camera and lenses, a notebook, a laptop or tablet or smartphone, and questions. I have several tripods you can borrow. Or just come, although the more you attempt the more I believe you’ll learn.
  • If you do not have an iNaturalist account, I’ll suggest that you set one up ahead of time. They are free, and it takes only a couple of minutes to get your account basically established. Go to https://www.inaturalist.ca/
  • I will send those who RSVP to me a short reading list that might take you half an hour ahead of time.
  • We will go outside to do some observing, and take some photos. I’m a generalist, and so is iNaturalist. So I’m suggesting that you record even a few observations. During that time, I’ll demonstrate some of the specific observations I try to answer for several specimens. (You could also bring some of your recent observations.)
  • We’ll look at ways that we can, within our own limits, improve our observations. This will inevitably involve editing some of our photographic observations, using simple tools such as cropping and lightly touching up exposure, options available in even the simplest photo editing software.
  • We’ll then go through the steps in uploading our observations into your personal iNaturalist account if you have one, or into mine.

RSVP to Mark Whitcombe, markwhitcombe34@gmail.com  
      Mark Whitcombe’s iNaturalist account

Josh Pickering as created two projects for ‘Orangeville’ out of interest and promotion of natural heritage features and species within the town!  He pulled a map file (KML file) from Dufferin County mapping and uploaded the new ‘location’ on iNaturalist  for the Orangeville boundary.  If you are interested in creating additional projects, you can do so more easily because of the new existence of the Town of Orangeville boundary.  For the projects I created, one is the ‘Biodiversity of the Town of Orangeville”, here: https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/biodiversity-of-the-town-of-orangeville  and the other project is the ‘Birds of the Town of Orangeville’, here: https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/birds-of-the-town-of-orangeville

 

Lend An Ear: female bird song

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For anyone interested in learning more about issues of overlooking female bird song, read on!

or here:

From the above Audubon article:

“Lend an Ear 

Thanks to Josh for alerting us to this!

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