Good morning! Where did May go? Still not June despite what I thought yesterday. May had 31 days. Next Sunday is Strawberry Moon 🍓. Mostly sunny and 51 degrees in Delmar, NY. ☀ There is a northwest breeze at 10 mph. 🍃.

Out hiking in the Albany Pine Bush Preserve and surrounding lands today. 🚶 Doing some bird watching 🐦 and plant identification 🌿 with some of my fellow citizen scientists, doing the kind of work that only people not affiliated with the government and governments and corporate grants can do. 💵 It’s not to say government workers are bad people but they have to put food 🍲 on the table like the rest of us. Definitely a beautiful day for sure. 😎 Lots of people in the Pine Bush 🌲👪 which is good for advocacy even if not as good for our research purposes. Not so many Karner Blue today due to the cold weather but lot of pretty blue lupine to look at and a fair number of grasslands birds although mostly common ones.

Today will be mostly sunny 🌞, with a high of 64 degrees at 3pm. 10 degrees below normal, which is similar to a typical day around April 30th. Northwest wind 10 to 15 mph, with gusts as high as 28 mph. A year ago, we had mostly sunny skies. The high last year was 76 degrees. The record high of 92 was set in 2013.

Regardless a beautiful day. 🐸 I might go to Black Creek Marsh later for more wildlife observation although midday 🕛 might not be a very good time a dig might be better to wait for early tomorrow morning or around dusk tonight. I also didn’t pack much of a lunch so that’s a consideration too. 🍔 I probably should have packed a lunch but I stayed up too late last night 🌃 watching the protest, and was groggy 😴 and get a late start.

Solar noon 🌞 is at 12:54 pm with sun having an altitude of 69.4° from the due south horizon (-1.4° vs. 6/21). A six foot person will cast a 2.3 foot shadow today compared to 2.2 feet on the first day of summer. The golden hour 🏅 starts at 7:45 pm with the sun in the west-northwest (295°). 📸 The sunset is in the west-northwest (302°) with the sun dropping below the horizon at 8:27 pm after setting for 3 minutes and 23 seconds with dusk around 9:00 pm, which is 48 seconds later than yesterday. 🌇 At dusk you’ll see the Waxing Gibbous 🌔 Moon in the south (182°) at an altitude of 49° from the horizon, 226,344 miles away. 🚀 The best time to look at the stars is after 9:44 pm. At sunset, look for mostly clear skies 🌄 and temperatures around 56 degrees. There will be a west-northwest breeze at 11 mph. Going to be chilly, if I do decide to go to the Black Creek Marsh, I’ll want long sleeves. 👚 Today will have 15 hours and 5 minutes of daytime, an increase of one minute and 19 seconds over yesterday.

Tonight will be partly cloudy 🌤, with a low of 42 degrees at 5am. 10 degrees below normal, which is similar to a typical night around April 30th. Northwest wind 6 to 11 mph becoming light west after midnight. Going to be a chilly night. In 2019, we had cloudy skies in the evening, which became mostly clear by the early hours of the morning. It got down to 49 degrees. The record low of 35 occurred back in 1945.

Been reading 📖 a book I got out about the practice of welding and metal work. 👷 Welding is very much a skill of practice and I might some day get a welder when I own my own land and have a shop. Welding is a good skill to fix broken farm machinery 🚜 or even fabricate something like a farm trash incinerator that I can use year round safely when I own land. 🔥 I’ve been doing a lot of reading 📚 about things besides politics, history and contemporary events because there is much in the natural and physical world I want to understand better. 🐮 Cows and tractors, birds and bees 🐝 are remarkably important parts of our world and I’m woefully ignorant. 🐛

As previously noted, next Sunday is Strawberry Moon 🍓 when the sun will be setting at 8:31 pm with dusk at 9:05 pm. Close to the latest sunset of the year. On that day in 2019, we had mostly sunny and temperatures between 82 and 53 degrees. Typically, the high temperature is 76 degrees. We hit a record high of 95 back in 1999.