PHOTO BY GARRY BRANDENBURG Winter decorations of snow on low hanging fruit gave this bush a nice accent of color. By the time spring arrives, birds will have picked clean any of these fruits to help them survive a long winter season that officially begins Dec. 22. In just one week, on Dec. 21, the Sun reaches its southern-most point and begins its six-month long journey to move ever so slowly and predictably northward. Winter solstice occurs at 10:19 p.m. on Dec. 21.

WINTER is officially one week away. Snow on the ground mid week told us otherwise. Yes it is still very late Fall but if it feels like winter and looks like winter, then you or I are free to call it whatever you want. Be careful the words you use however.

Astronomers like to key in facts that are so predictable with regards to the Earth’s orbital journey around the Sun. Pick any date and 12 months later earth will be back where it started from. The orbit of the earth is not a perfect circle. It has a bit of variation now. It has had larger variations of ellipse in its geologic past. The variation between almost a true circle and its elliptical maximum is a 100,000 year cycle. This is one factor that does not change…. which combined with earth’s axial tilt variations of about 21 degrees to 25 degrees over about 40,000 years and a natural “wobble” of that axis on a 19,000-year time frame, what happens next are purely and totally celestial in nature. What is it? Natural climate changes that ebb and flow, go back and forth, allow glaciers to grow and melt, for oceans to rise and fall in response, for continents to continue to drift across the surface of earth. For tectonic plate movements shifting positions form each other. For any local day-to-day weather anywhere on earth to be hot and dry, hot and wet, cold and wet or cold and dry on long term geological time scales.

Of course, we humans cannot see these things in their short life spans. But the rocks of the earth have a neat trick. They do not lie. Rocks record geologic history in a book as old as the earth. Learning how to interpret the pages of this history book can be a fascinating, long-term journey of scientific inquiry.

DAY LENGTH is getting shorter for us in the northern hemisphere. At the latitude of 42.0626 degrees N, the shortest day lengths will be Dec. 21-24 with nine hours and six minutes. After that, the day length begins to increase slowly. By the end of January 2020, day length will be nine hours and 57 minutes. By March 21, we will have returned to 12 hours of daylight and 12 hours of night. It is a pretty slick system. The earliest sunsets have already happened at 4:38 p.m. on Dec. 8-11. The latest sunrises will take place next month at 7:39 a.m. on Jan. 3-6.

For those folks living in Southern hemisphere locations, they call the season about to embark upon them summer. It makes sense since the southern half of earth is getting more direct and powerful sunlight energy. And for those who are interested, the Sun will be the closest to Earth on Jan. 5 at only….drum roll please…91.4 million miles.

METEOR SHOWERS are going to happen between now and Jan. 4. There are three of them and they go by the names Geminid, Ursid and Quadrantid. Any of these viewings are dependent upon the weather at the time, specifically cloud cover. But to see them, you’ll have to bundle up in warm clothes, mittens and stocking caps to watch the night sky.

Peak showers of Geminids was last night but should have remnant ‘falling star’ sightings even tonight. The second, or Ursids, will peak Dec. 22. However, the really big show of falling meteors will be Jan. 4. Peak rates will have between 60 and 200 visible meteors per hour if ideal conditions allow for clear sky. A peak time on Jan. 4 will be early in the morning at 3 a.m.

DEER HARVEST UPDATES are showing that the first gun season for deer took at least 22,000 animals out the statewide population. At the beginning of gun season one, the count up to that time was about 29,000. As of mid-week the count is now more than 51,000. There was rest time of last Thursday and Friday, a traditional time off of no open deer season. Then yesterday Dec. 14 gun deer season number two began. This time frame runs through Dec. 22 at one half hour after sunset. Deer harvests must be reported by midnight of the day after. Tabulated figures will slowly come in to indicate how gun season two adds to the total. By the time all special zone deer seasons end in January, an expected 100,000 deer will have been taken statewide.

Marshall County deer hunters prior to gun season one accounted for 171. At the end of gun season one, that total had grown to 294. The highest take counties are the usual…Clayton, Appanoose, Guthrie, Allamakee, Dubuque, Jackson, Linn, Warren and Winneshiek. I’ll have a more complete report on deer harvest data in mid January. Stay tuned.

IZAAK WALTON LEAGUE Christmas Tree sales continue this weekend and ending for the year on Dec. 22. Forty dollars gets you any tree of any size. Extra tree branch trimmings are available also at no charge. Use them for decorating outside displays.

TAX SEASON will have to be on the minds of many folks as 2019 comes to a close. This plea is to remind everyone of the “Chickadee Checkoff” option on Iowa tax forms, specifically line 57 of the 1040 form. Use it to make a generous donation from any refund owed to you. The average donation last year was $19.24. Funds raised are used for wildlife diversity programs and monitoring. Thank you for helping.

Quote: “In a moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing. The worst thing you can do is nothing.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

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Garry Brandenburg is a graduate of Iowa State University with BS degree in Fish & Wildlife Biology. He is the retired director of the Marshall County Conservation Board. Contact him at PO Box 96, Albion, IA 50005.