The day · London, Ontario
Golden hour · 18 min left
Sun 2.2° up, in the west · Great Lakes & St. Lawrence Lowlands
The kind of day it is
High overcast
A lid of cloud over everything. Light is flat and diffuse, shadows are gone, and the whole day behaves like an extended dawn — fish roam shallow, and greens that would bolt in sun hold on.
The whole day is usable. This is the day to cover water and to transplant.
The day, phase by phase
Happening now · 18:36–19:36
1h long
Golden hour
Where the sun is this minute. Its highest today: 49.8°.
The sun drops back through the low angles and the long atmospheric path returns, warming the colour of everything. Shadows stretch to many times the height of what casts them.
Where the light lands · Great Lakes & St. Lawrence Lowlands
The light goes long and warm across the water and the whole basin turns amber. Every east-facing bluff lights up while the water goes dark.
Up close
Mayflies come off the surface in their millions on a June evening. It is the shortest adult life in fresh water — a day at most, no mouth, one purpose.
The whole landscape
Walleye lift off the breaks all across the basin at the same relative moment: not a clock time, but a light level. Sunset moves an hour and a half between Quebec City and Thunder Bay and the fish move with it.
In the water now
Walleyebest now
Up on the shoals and weed edges in two to four metres, hunting into the shallows as the light goes.
Smallmouth bassbest now
Rock points and current seams; up on top at first and last light, and willing to chase a surface lure then.
Muskellungebest now
Moving along weed edges and over deep points, often following without taking. The last hour of light is the famous one.
Rainbow troutbest now
Working the seams and feeding lanes where current delivers food, rising freely to a hatch.
Flat light spreads fish out and holds them shallow through the middle of the day.
In the garden now
Out earlier and later than any other bee — a bumble bee can shiver its flight muscles warm and fly at 5 °C, in drizzle, in wind.
Feeding hardest in the first and last hour — it burns through the night's reserves by dawn and must refuel before dark.
Motionless on a flower head or stem, waiting. A mantis hunts by sight and needs the light.
Sitting head-down at the hub of the web. Many rebuild the whole orb at dawn, eating the old silk.
The kindest day for transplanting there is, and the safest for sowing.
Sitting this one out
Honey bee · Hoverfly · Monarch butterfly · Swallowtail butterflies · Lady beetle · Green lacewing
The full guide
Everything for London this week in one place.
Great Lakes & St. Lawrence Lowlands
The region this day belongs to, and what lives in it.
The almanac
The year's arc: day length, the moon and the water behind the air.
The week ahead for London
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