(he/she never did get a turn)
bluebird bath at high noon
(he/she never did get a turn)
Tag: sparrow
(he/she never did get a turn)
bluebirds and friends
Visitors to our deck and birdfeeder are fun to watch, and sometimes, even hold still long enough for getting some pictures through the sliding glass doors. The birds have already eaten one seed cylinder and we decided to move a new one a little closer to the deck and birdbath. So far the squirrels have not been able to get to it.
We have a large red mulberry tree which has been tagged for removal. 🙁 I think the birds will miss its branches, where they perch waiting for their turn at the feeder. From the nuts and blossoms deposited on our deck, from way up high, I know we also have a sweet gum tree and a tulip tree, but they don’t have nice eye-level branches.
Blue has always been my favorite color, and I love the blue and brown color combination found on bluebirds. Up north, I got my fix of blue from the blue jays who came for peanuts along with the squirrels on our balcony. Down south here I rarely see a blue jay. But the lovely bluebirds are everywhere!
summer in the light
As we walked along the Streamside Trail, our Merlin Bird ID app indicated that we were hearing a phoebe singing. I was delighted to finally spot the little sweetheart and get a couple of pictures before he flew away to the next tree.
After walking that trail we went through a back gate into the botanical garden to see what signs of spring we could find there.
An American hazelnut shrub (close-up above) was flowering. The dangling yellow catkins are male and the tiny magenta flowers are female, but the shrub does not self-pollinate. We’ll have to come back in the fall to see if there will be any hazelnuts on this one.
A walk through the Mountain Habitat provided glimpses of a few spring ephemerals just getting started…
It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold — when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade.
~ Charles Dickens
(Great Expectations)
We stopped by the bird blind at the Children’s Wonder Garden but the feeders were empty. However, scratching around on the ground with the squirrels, through a pile of discarded sunflower seed hulls, I spotted a couple of song sparrows!
They weren’t singing and they were hard to catch, but I was happy to capture with the camera my first song sparrow in North Carolina!
ragged-edged beech leaves
Stop and listen to the ragged-edged beech leaves, pale specters of the winter forest. They are chattering ghosts, clattering amid the bare branches of the other hardwoods. Wan light pours through their evanescence and burnishes them to gleaming. Deep in the gray, sleeping forest, whole beech trees flare up into whispering creatures made of trembling gold.
~ Margaret Renkl
(The Comfort of Crows: A Backyard Year)
A week ago I made a quick trip to the botanical garden to take a final picture for my four seasons photo hunt, and added it the post, which had become an eight season collection. It was a chilly, gray day but I was tempted to linger and see what other kinds of pictures could be taken in the very dim light of midwinter. One beech tree was full of marcescent leaves. A single leaf was dangling from another one.
Finally, I got pictures of one of the white-throated sparrows foraging under the bird feeders, where there is a little less brush for them to hide under. There is stark beauty to be found in the winter garden, when seedheads are left naturally for the birds to eat.
It still amazes me how pansies are winter flowers down south here! Imagine – pansies outside in December! Even though the temperature was in the low 50s that day, it felt cold and raw to me, in spite of my extra sweater, winter jacket, hat and gloves. I could have used my thermal underware but I didn’t think it would feel that cold out there.
One of the many things I do miss about being a young person is what was my tolerance for the cold. I used to love winter, being a January baby, and have many more fond childhood memories of playing outside in that season than in the others. (No bugs!) My sister and I spent countless hours ice skating in the frozen swamp in the woods behind our house. It was fun gliding across the (sometimes lumpy) icy hollows between the hummocks. A challenging obstacle course. And not a pansy in sight until April!
anticipation
The folks at the botanical garden are very excited because one of the American Columbos they planted 19 years ago is looking like it might flower this year! This flowering stalk (above), also known as yellow gentian, is about 2 feet tall and it could grow to between 3 and 8 feet tall.
After spending 19 years in our Mountain Habitat as an unassuming rosette of leaves near the ground, one of our American columbos is about to put out a spectacular flowering stalk for the first and only time. Then, after reproducing, it will die.
~ NC Botanical Garden Facebook page
apparently this one not going to be flowering this year
We also enjoyed the presence of other plants and trees, already blooming…
A nice, quiet and cloudy late morning in the garden. We were a couple of hours later than usual and there seemed to be fewer birds out and about.
hunting for cinnamon fern
North Carolina Botanical Garden
It was spring vacation week so we had a chance to take Katherine with us on one of our walks at the botanical garden. Like her grandmother, she was enchanted by the rose arbor. And we finally saw tadpoles in the frog pond!
And of course we saw lots of flowers…
Katherine knows a lot about cinnamon ferns and she located some starting to come up in the Mountain Habitat (above). And then, in the Coastal Plain Habitat (below) she spotted some more that were taller and starting to unfurl. My granddaughter informed me that, among other things, cinnamon fern is the oldest species of fern on earth. (70 million years!)
(photo by Tim)
Of course there were some birds to enjoy and a couple even paused for a photo or two…
he was feeding her but I couldn’t capture it!
What a blessing it was to share a beautiful day with our granddaughter, to share our interests with her and to have her share hers with us.
the intelligence of a place
North Carolina Botanical Garden
It’s always a pleasure to be greeted by the roses dangling from their arbor each time we visit the botanical garden. It never gets old! Like sunrises and sunsets, I suppose. A steady presence. But we were on a new mission this day to locate a Virginia dwarf trillium, another tiny ephemeral we heard was blooming. Along the way we saw…
This (below) was the only undamaged dwarf trillium we could find, surrounded by other kinds of plants. We had torrential rains for a couple of days and I think they did a number on the tiny trilliums. But I’m grateful we got a chance to see this one. It is much smaller than all the other regular size trilliums we’ve been seeing this spring.
Only by living for many moons in one region, my peripheral senses tracking seasonal changes in the local plants while the scents of the soil steadily seep in through my pores — only over time can the intelligence of a place lay claim upon my person. Slowly, as the seasonal round repeats itself again and again, the lilt and melody of the local songbirds becomes an expectation within my ears, and so the mind I’ve carried within me settles into the wider mind that enfolds me.
~ David Abram
(Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology)
what a mess he made discarding the “helicopters”
(thanks to Eliza for the identification)
As we were making our way back to the parking lot this giant bee (above) was hovering over the walkway, blocking our path. Well, if it was just going to stay there I might as well get a picture of it. I don’t know if these creatures are unique to this area but sometimes they hover outside our windows and crash into them repeatedly. It sounds like someone is throwing pebbles at the window.
So we’ve lived here for ten moons I think, not very many so far, but our senses are slowly getting familiar with the seasonal changes.
early spring in the arboretum
Coker Arboretum, Chapel Hill, North Carolina
This post is my contribution to Karma’s Signs of Spring Photo Hunt. I don’t have a prime lens, but the photos, except for the birds, were taken at about the same focal length with my zoom lens. (There was a lot of squatting involved to get the pictures.) Visit Karma’s post here if you’d like to participate.
It was spring break at UNC and we learned that we could easily find a parking space on campus when the students are out of town. And that meant we could finally visit the lovely Coker Arboretum, 5 wooded acres in the middle of a college campus. I came home with more than 300 photographs! What follows is a small sample of the birds and blooms we saw. Some of the plants were from other parts of the world.
I was especially attracted to the tiny South American spring starflowers which carpeted some of the garden plots. Something about those little purple lines on the petals. And the European spring snowflakes captivated me. They were a little bigger than our snowdrops. When I got home I learned they were native to southern Europe, all the way east to Ukraine, so I wondered if any of my ancestors had them in their gardens to welcome spring over there.
a day to remember
Please bear with me as I post more photo memories to take with me when we move! Harkness Memorial State Park is one of my favorite places, year-round for the waterbirds and in the summer for the flower gardens. On this walk we were immediately greeted by a sweetly singing song sparrow, who flew from branch to branch, teasing me. But I did get a few pictures of him!
(thanks to Donna for the identification)
American Black Duck Anas rubripes: Common coastal migrant and wintering species. In summer, an uncommon breeding species in freshwater and brackish habitats, especially coastal marshes; inland nesting occurs in freshwater marshes, densely forested swamps, and beaver ponds, mainly in central and western Connecticut.
~ Frank Gallo
(Birding in Connecticut)
The American Black Duck hides in plain sight in shallow wetlands of eastern North America. They often flock with the ubiquitous Mallard, where they look quite similar to female Mallards. But take a second look through a group of brown ducks to notice the dark chocolate-brown flanks, pale grayish face, and olive-yellow bill of an American Black Duck. Numbers of this shy but common duck declined sharply in the mid-twentieth century. Hunting restrictions have helped to stabilize their numbers, although habitat loss remains a problem.
~ All About Birds webpage
but it took me a long time to locate it!
Today was a beautiful, calm, spring day. No wind! A woman was there trying to fly a kite, which is possible there more often than not, but she had to give up. The temperature was 52°F (11°C) so I had my first walk of the year with no thermal leggings, wearing my spring hoodie. 🙂 I am going to miss living by the sea very much.