Nature dared not disappoint as southern Illinois experiences its second recent solar eclipse

GOLCONDA, Ill. — A barred owl hooting at 1:42 p.m. Monday made me blurt to Bruce Staggs, “I can’t believe it, that’s a ... barred owl.”

Staggs, a Lewis and Clark Community College student, promptly loosed a decent “Who cooks for you?’ call at War Bluff Valley Wildlife Sanctuary.

The supernatural vibe of the second total solar eclipse to cross southern Illinois in seven years was upon us.

Before it started, Doug Stotz, senior conservation ecologist for the Field Museum, messaged on X, “In terms of the eclipse, birds will often act as if the sun is setting. They may go to roost, nocturnal birds may start to call, things like that.”

Bingo.

At 1:56, Jeff Biggers, author of “Reckoning at Eagle Creek” and other works, said, “If we disappear, know we love you guys.”

Alas, the Rapture took none of us.

The air cooled noticeably as the sun dimmed. A bullfrog rumbled a bass line at 1:58.

At 2, the total eclipse began for three minutes and 20 seconds, according to my Merlin birding app. During totality, a chorus of spring peepers took to the airwaves, seeming louder in the stillness of the rest of the natural world.

Venus flashed to the lower right of the sun during totality.

Merlin only showed a blue jay and white-throated sparrow during totality, and I heard a distant crow.

Afterward, Phil Short, a professor of science at Austin Peay State University in Tennessee, said 15 to 20 blue jays inexplicably loudly clustered around them farther out in the sanctuary during totality, then, afterward, the jays disappeared.

Dale Bowman/Sun-Times

The world literally came to southern Illinois for this eclipse

Just off the gravel Bushwack Road, my wife and I watched from War Bluff, the Illinois Audubon Society’s nearly 500-acre site to preserve an upland forest ecosystem in Pope County.

Among those gathered were Sam Stearns, caretaker and renowned conservation activist; author Biggers; a restoration ecology class from Lewis and Clark; and others from as far as Pittsburgh and Tennessee.

The day was spectacular. Dense early morning fog, so thick it spawned humidity cobwebs in grass, low brush and brambles on my first walks, during which I had blue jay, titmouse, cardinal, eastern towhee, red-winged blackbird, purple finch, robin, eastern wood-pewee and blue-gray gnatcatcher.

When the sun broke through at 10:27 a.m., birds came alive. I heard a woodpecker that I couldn’t identify, then added mourning dove, Carolina chickadee, Carolina wren, white-throated sparrow, ruby-crowned kinglet, song sparrow and white-breasted nuthatch. Where the trail crossed a stream, I added Louisiana waterthrush, northern parula and goldfinch.

This was more than totality. The eclipse had days of impact.

At Cave-in-Rock State Park on Sunday afternoon, out-of-state plates — Kentucky, North Carolina, Georgia, Wisconsin — outnumbered Illinois tags.

Ernst Kastning, 80, rested his legs as he climbed back to the parking lot. The former geology professor at Radford University in Virginia has explored caves for 60 years and mapped Cave-in-Rock.

He was on a mission to photograph the eclipse from the mouth of the cave, something he also did in 2017.

“I might be the only one in the world who has done this from a cave,” said Kastning, who camped there and was going to Virginia via Cave-in-Rock from Florida.

The world came to southern Illinois for another solar eclipse and Illinois’ sites showed off.

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