Visitors 69
Modified 21-Dec-23
Created 25-Feb-19
60 photos
Out early again for the monthly bird transect, I witness the final moments of this year's Hunger Moon as it sets behind some of my favorite oaks. Then sunlight spreads across the land.
Lovely light. A touch of frost. Soggy ground, still, a week or more after the rain -- saturated ground leaves no place for the water to go. Iconic oaks. A few birds, including a classic red-tailed hawk circling overhead. Pedicularis nurturing butterfly larvae. And more. One more record of life in one particular place as the Earth turns and we move into an uncertain future.
Full moons happen about once every month (no accident). North American First People gave each full moon a name. February's was called the Snow Moon, the Hunger Moon, and the Bone Moon by different tribes. Snow: heavy snow. Hunger: hard to hunt in heavy snow. Bone: so you have to chew bones to survive. At Jasper Ridge, we see little snow. There is of course hunger, as species struggle to survive. And some people nearby will go to bed tonight, hungry. I go with Hunger Moon.
It is always wonderful to be at Jasper Ridge in the early morning, experiencing the dawn light. But the hype over the "largest supermoon in 2019" is a bit overdone. "Supermoons" are when the full moon appears larger than average, when the moon is nearer the Earth than average. Supermoons happen about once in 14 lunar months. The diameter of the full moon can appear about 7% larger than average. But every photographer knows they can change the apparent size of the moon by simply changing focal length. If you want to keep the oak tree the same size, just move farther back. And I certainly don't remember how large the full moon appeared last month, or how bright, to be overly impressed by this month's spectacle. All that said, it is nice to see a setting full moon once in a while. (Or you can wait a day, and see the almost-full moon set an hour after sunrise, when the world is brighter.)
