Standing in the Shadow of the Moon
On April 8, 2024, the United States was in the path of totality of a Solar Eclipse. I recorded the flock’s reaction with a time-lapse camera and the eclipse with a Celestron telescope and Canon camera. Due to my location, I am just outside the path of totality; for better observation conditions, I traveled to Cincinnati, Ohio, and recorded the eclipse at the Cincinnati Natural History Museum. While there, I took in the museum’s dinosaur wing and captured some images of the Mesozoic ancestors of my backyard theropods.
While this blog is about raising and caring for backyard chickens, given the notoriety of the celestial event, observing the flock’s reaction to the solar eclipse is fascinating.
Before leaving, I set up a time-lapse camera in the backyard to capture the flock’s behavior as the sun, blocked by the moon, darkened the land below. Like all birds, the behavior of the Klucker Crew is predictable but fascinating to witness, nonetheless.
As I was in two places at once, I will pair my observation and progression of the eclipse with the reactions of the flock for this post. As chickens are diurnal creatures and associate the waning of sunlight with nature’s ques to begin roosting, the flock demonstrated these behaviors only to be caught off guard during midday.
As the first signs of the moon moving in front of the sun began, activity in the backyard was routine. Occupying their time with hunting and pecking, the flock is blissfully unaware that something spectacular is about to unfold above their heads.
As the moon traversed more of the sun’s disk, the land below became transformed by the hint of waning sunlight. At this point in the eclipse process, the anticipative effects became apparent.
Back on the farm, as the sky slowly darkened, the flock noticed the early evening waning sunlight. Continuing to graze without sense of urgency, the flock slowly approached the pen.
As the eclipse approached totality, the landscape was transformed into a mural of twilight. On the ground crescent shaped shadows filtered through the leaves of a tree near my observation location at the Cincinnati Museum Center.
As the sky above the Kuntry Klucker darkened, the solar lights on my grape arbor turned on, and the flock members stranded in the yard found themselves in the panorama of momentary darkness and confused before the sunlight returned as fast as it had receded.
Below are stills from a time-lapse camera in the pen recording the flock’s reaction to the eclipse. The camera shows that it got dark for a few moments, but not long enough for the flock to make their way up the ladder to the coop. Instead, they froze in place as sudden momentary darkness fell, only to be subsumed into increasing daylight.
The flock’s response was dumbfounded confusion as evening came on suddenly, not giving them much time to react. I hoped they would go to roost to have the sunlight return, rendering their efforts mute. Although I did not get the pics I anticipated, I captured some stunning images of the celestial event. Below is a chronological order of the eclipse as the moon traversed the sun.
At the Cincinnati Museum Center, the darkened sun yielded incredible photos of the landscape during the fleeting period of totality, allowing me several seconds of naked-eye observing.
This solar eclipse was an incredible celestial event that I am glad I had a chance to observe. While the flock’s reaction was subdued – due to the diminished totality and location at home – the images I captured in Cincinnati are incredible.
Below is a slideshow of the dinosaurs on display. Noteworthy, and one of the reasons I chose this location is the only mounted Torvosaurus in the world is at the Cincinnati Museum Center.
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Thanks for reading. Till next time, keep on crowing!
~ The Kuntry Klucker Crew ~
The Kuntry Klucker 