A partially successful eclipse day…

Don’t look at the sun! 2015 eclipse through a tree – there will be lots of trees in this blog post!

I know it’s all so “yesterday” (or the day before yesterday), but Friday was an eclipse day here in the UK. The solar eclipse wasn’t total here in Cardiff, but we would get something like 85% coverage.

During the last good eclipse here, in August 1999, I watched from the office window, using special viewers, but this time I wanted to do it differently and I had a few plans.

It had been sunny for days, but still the weather forecast was for cloud on the morning of the eclipse. Yet the day dawned with blue skies. The eclipse would start around 8.30am, would be at its peak at 9.30 and over by 10.30.

First I had decided to view it from the bedroom, using an old pair of binoculars (which coincidentally I had just decided I would throw out, but hadn’t yet) and a piece of paper. I had been practising all week at around the right time but I still didn’t achieve the result I wanted on the day.

You can just see the Moon starting to take a nibble out of the Sun – but this was within the first half-hour of the eclipse

I am hoping this proves that “I was there” – I purposely took the image out of focus to show part of the Sun was covered and that it wasn’t just the rim of the binoculars

But I wasn’t going to be getting any images of a crescent Sun, as it was rapidly going out of sight around the edge of the window and anyway I wanted to be in the open air for the maximum of the eclipse – even though I no longer had any special spectacles. I had decided to revisit Llandaff Fields, a 20-minute walk away. I hadn’t been there since December.

Some people (even today) think an eclipse marks “the end of the world”. I couldn’t be holding hands with my husband, who was at work, so second best companion for the end of the world was my beloved hornbeam, the tree I followed in 2014 – and I planned to be standing beneath it around 9.30. Would the birds go quiet? Would the temperature drop? It was only an 85% eclipse, so I doubted it.

Here are the pictures I took – and for once I haven’t automatically corrected them in PhotoShop, as it would have taken away the genuine dimness of the day.

My sweetgum tree (Liquidambar styraciflua) during the eclipse

Thin eclipse sunlight on a neighbour’s ash tree (Fraxinus excelsior)

Amazing! This wood pigeon (Columba palumbus) was already going to sleep as if night were falling!

At the entrance to the fields were some people with a pin-hole camera made from three sides of a shoebox

A council mower man was tootling around between my favourite sycamore (Acer pseudoplatanus) and linden (Tilia cordata) trees

Sycamore during the eclipse

It was March 20 and this marked the Spring equinox as well as the solar eclipse – and a “supermoon”, when our little sister comes closest to Earth. Spring is definitely here.

The sycamore is just coming into leaf

Eclipse shadows on the sycamore

Did you notice that about the eclipse, too? That all the shadows seemed a bit double? Or fuzzy? Or glowing?

The little tree growing in the armpit of the sycamore is still there – I noticed it last year – and I still think it is an elder (Sambucus nigra)

Looking straight at the eclipse – obscured by the sycamore

Shadow of the sycamore

Llandaff Fields had attracted other people hoping to get a good look at the eclipse

The red soil was muddy under foot in the fields, and the grass was covered in sparkling droplets of dew and star-strewn with daisies (Bellis perennis – as its name suggests, “pretty everlasting”).

Can you see the glow of my shadow? But you probably can’t see the sparkling dew on the grass

I was so pleased to see that “my” hornbeam companion from last year’s tree following is still flourishing.

Hello again, old friend – my hornbeam (Carpinus betulus)

Hornbeam catkins in bud – this time last year I thought they were leaves and that the tree was a beech!

It was now the peak of the eclipse and the light was metallic – silvery.

Eclipse light on hornbeam

I love the way the Sun shines on the one bough in the background

Eclipse light on moss at the base of the hornbeam

It was definitely darker now

Most memorable was that suddenly I breathed steam – it’s all true! The temperature dropped just enough to make the difference between a nip in the air and cold. Wow! And my breath was steaming for the remainder of the eclipse, until the sun had regained its warmth.

Horse chestnuts (Aesculus hippocastanum) in the half-light

Also around this time the birds did grow quiet – all except for a lone great tit (Parus major) with its “teacher, teacher” call among the nearby turkey oaks. Oh yes, and the drone of the mower man, not interrupting his work for a silly old eclipse. In his direction it seemed almost misty in the twilight.

The mower man in the gloom – and a black dog running around beneath the sycamore. Can you see the swathes of silvery dew on the grass?

Hornbeam shadow

All week the media have been warning that you MUST not look at the sun without eye protection. I believe this. My father, when a teenager in the 1920s, had been working in a farm field beneath the village woods during an eclipse – and looked. The crescent shape was etched into his retina throughout his life.

But it is so tempting. No wonder many primary school children were kept in class during the event. I gave in to temptation for a fraction of a second and hoped it wouldn’t wreck my camera. See the image at the top of this post. This is an enlargement of part of it…

The silver eclipse light on hornbeam buds – but I can’t get any impression that part of the Sun is covered by the Moon

A nearby maple as the sun begins to recover its strength

Crow in an ash tree

Turkey oak (Quercus cerris)

Sun blocked out by turkey oak

Time to pack up your gear – eclipse almost over now…

It was no ordinary Friday morning, but I still had to go to the bakery for some bread for the weekend – and I was miles away from where I needed to be. So I caught a bus down Cathedral Road and then walked back out of town to the Canton shops. And the eclipse hadn’t done with me yet.

Last of the eclipse reflecting on a window at the former St David’s Hospital, now converted into apartments…

…and that is a most beautiful alder tree (Alnus glutinosa) with last year’s cones and this year’s catkins – I had never noticed it before

I made it to work as the Moon moved away from the Sun and found somebody had brought in eclipse glasses and everyone had taken turns at trying them. So I could have seen that amazing crescent. But on this occasion it was much more fulfilling that I felt the air chill for myself and heard the birds stop singing.

I know it’s ridiculous to say this, when the Moon had absolutely no effect on the Sun itself, but it struck me that the sunshine seemed diminished and watery for the rest of the day and that the Sun didn’t quite recover from being eaten mythically by a dragon (or as they say in Vietnam, a toad) and being regurgitated.

Finally here is the only crescent you will get from me today. Knowing it was going to be a big month for the Moon, I took a picture of it at the beginning of its cycle, just a couple of days past new, through my study window…

Young Moon on February 21 – can you see the ashen light completing its disc?

Thanks for bearing with me! Some proper pictures of the eclipse over Wales can be seen by following the link below…

Solar eclipse over the old Severn Bridge – click on the picture to see more eclipse images on the WalesOnline website

See all my tree posts here…