Doppler radar also showed birds leaving the sky.
The following radar loop, from South Carolina, shows aerial animals (certainly some insects and birds, although we have not yet tried to characterize what is flying) getting lower to the ground as the eclipse progressed, being lowest in the minutes after totality, and then taking to the air again as the eclipse ended.
We’ve highlighted the descent of animals by manually drawing a white circle in each frame to show the extent of aerial fauna—note how the circle shrinks in size as totality approaches and then enlarges afterwards.
Nocturnal migrants prepared to begin their journey. Here’s an example from Steven Kahl in Idaho.
“Three Yellow Warblers and a Wilson’s Warbler popped out of lush green undergrowth into top of dead tree, flitted for a few seconds giving nocturnal flight calls. Acted as though they were about to take off for night migration. Flew off toward a different treed area.”
Andrew Farnsworth reported an intriguing Baltimore Oriole response in New Jersey.
Coolest of all behaviors. I watched this bird from the boardwalk slowly work its way from mid story in a small relatively open ornamental to the top of the tree, and after about 3-5 minutes atop the tree, the bird took flight and flew straight SE over the road and toward the ocean. I ran to the beach to watch the bird, and I saw it fly basically out of sight over the ocean, clearly showing what looked like nocturnal migratory behavior of over water migration! The bird did not climb terribly fast, maintaining an even gain in altitude. I watched the bird circle back, and though it did not return to the same perch from which it originated, it did return to a patch of trees somewhere to my south and then out of sight.
The Life Responds project from Cal Academy of Sciences and iNaturalist received 2,741 observations from 636 people covering 425 species. The most observed species were domestic dog (201), red junglefowl AKA chicken (106), domestic cat (74), honey bee (63), and human (37 reports from people who couldn’t think of anything more interesting to watch during an eclipse than other humans — major imaginative fail IMO). Horses, crows, yellow garden spider, Canada goose, pond slider turtle, donkey, bat, hummingbird, and red wolf were among the 425 species observed.
All 7 red wolf observations were from a refuge in Washington state (not wild free wolves) with notes like “Graham is still sleeping” or “Hyde and Haywood were being extremely active. Running around the exhibit chasing one another, play fighting, and generally just moving more.” Unnamed red non-native fire ants slowed down in some locales ( “Oh Billy the Red Fire Ant took a nap,” said no one ever.)
I was curious about flowers that close at night like hibiscus. Of 15 hibiscus observations, only one photograph shows flowers partially closing. Can’t fool a hibiscus with 100 seconds of darkness midday in Kentucky! Of ten observations of common morning glory (another flower that closes at night) only one in Pioneer Oregon reported flowers starting to close but they opened up again immediately without fully closing.
The outstanding floral star of the eclipse seems to be okra, not, in my opinion, a food star so perhaps this was okra’s one chance at fame. Alternately, okra is easily tricked by darkness at noon in Columbia Missouri.
Look through the species thumbnails and reports for the gems, like the fireflies that came out during the eclipse in Nashville. I haven’t read all the observation reports yet and many reports seem boring (butterflies flitting about; pig still eating as usual), but part of science is documenting the “nothing happened” response. What treasures can you find to share?