February 17, 2021

Through my Office Window – February 2021 (and Niagara Birding)

February 17, 2021/ Gwen Morrison

We’ve had a snowy/icy February so far. There are pines and cedars at the edges of our yard that catch the snow. They are easy to photograph from the warmth of my office. Sometimes I intentionally overexpose the pictures to blur the background further…make the most of the dim light.

Our feeder is popular and often has multiple birds visiting. The pictures below show a Junco - Carolina Wren – female Northern Cardinal and Junco – female Northern Cardinal (tail only) and male House Finch.

The female Red-bellied Woodpecker still comes as well – choosing the peanuts from the mix of seeds.

I also managed some pictures of birds in trees – a Titmouse in the cedar

And the male Northern Cardinal in the red maple.

We’ve also noticed deer coming through our yard. There are seven in the picture below….two groups coming together.

I took several more pictures of the same group at various zoom settings. The portrait with just the head and shoulders shows how thick the winter coat is on the animals.

Over the past weekend, we watched the virtual Birds on the Niagara. All the videos are freely available online now: Feb. 12-13 videos and Feb. 14 videos.

I enjoyed all of them but by favorites were:

J. Drew Lanham (keynote)

Timothe Beatley on Biophilic Cities

Paloma Plant on preventing bird collisions with buildings

Anne McCooey on project to certify the City of Buffalo as NWF Habitat Communities

My husband and I talked about whether we would make the trek to the area in winter sometime post-pandemic….decided we’d go in spring or fall instead – try to see it during migration. Seeing it virtually in winter was good enough for us!

January 19, 2021

Tennessee Sandhill Cranes

January 19, 2021/ Gwen Morrison

The Virtual Celebration of the Cranes hosted by the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency is history…but there are videos available on their Facebook page. My favorite video is the hour-long Coffee with Cranes; it includes the morning activity of the cranes near the confluence of the Tennessee and Hiawassee Rivers and the intermittent commentary about cranes…a wonderful virtual field trip. I appreciated that I was warm inside while watching the birds in the light snow (with the bundled up commentators occasionally chiming in with sandhill crane info). The high point of the video is near the end – a large number of birds were startled from another field and flew into the mowed corn/millet field they were filming in the last 3-4 minutes of the hour!

I am full of plans for next January…attending this festival in-person and making a side trip down to Wheeler National Wildlife Refuge in Alabama (further down the Tennessee River and another location where there are lots of cranes in the winter).

If we wanted a road trip to see cranes earlier in the season – we might visit the Jasper-Pulaski Fish & Wildlife Area in Indiana. The peak number of birds at that location usually occurs in December and the birds migrate further south as it gets colder.

We could do a themed birding travel year around sandhill cranes:

September for Yampa Valley Cranes (Colorado)
November for Bosque del Apache Festival of the Cranes (New Mexico)
December for Jasper-Pulaski Fish & Wildlife Area (Indiana)
January for Hiawassee/Tennessee River confluence and Wheeler National Wildlife Refuge (Tennessee and Alabama)
March for Platte River migrating cranes (Nebraska)

Of course – there are other birds (lots of waterfowl and some raptors) to see along with the cranes at the various locations…and we’d see both western and easter flocks…mostly greater sandhill cranes but some lesser sandhills in the west. There might be some whooping cranes with the sandhills in the east!

Maybe I’ll find other locations to add before we set out – or maybe this turns into a multi-year series of trips. It’s post-COVID travel to look forward to! We know a lot more after all the virtual festivals we’ve enjoyed during our ‘stay at home as much as possible’ time since last March.

November 13, 2020

8 months in COVID-19 Pandemic

November 13, 2020/ Gwen Morrison

It’s a challenge to stay vigilant with masks…handwashing…distancing from other people – but even more important now with the cases spiking all over the country. Maryland is back to numbers we haven’t seen since June and the trend looks like it will go higher. The metrics that were established to open restaurants and bars are now indicating that the capacity needs to be reduced…and the governor did that this week.

My husband and I got our first haircut of the pandemic in mid-October; our logic was to get it before the anticipated increase in cases as people began spending more time indoors….anticipating that our next haircut would be after we are vaccinated. Our timing was good based on what is happening now…just 3 weeks later.

The CSA ended the third week in October. That was my only weekly errand away from the house and it was one I enjoyed. I am considering some kind of outdoor foray that I can do every week --- someplace not far from home…but a change of scenery once a week. The end of the CSA impacts my grocery shopping as well. I’ve already started buying more produce; it will increase as I clear out the veggies I froze over the course of the summer. I’ll still be shopping every other week rather than my pre-pandemic weekly habit; I’ve discovered that every other week works well for me.

After the CSA ended and I didn’t have a dusty gravel road to traverse, I got my car washed (drive thru) --- it’s a joy to have a clean car. It’s good for the winter now. I also bought gas – the first tank since January. So now I am back to charging the car and doing my driving as an EV. It was low risk since everything was self-service and I wore a mask just in case someone else pulled into the slot next to me; and used hand sanitizer after I got gas…and after I put the code in for the car wash. My car is probably set with fuel and maintenance until after the vaccination is available.

I had a porch full of stuff to donate. It feels good to get rid of items we no longer need. We also made a trip to the county landfill for some larger trash items and hazardous waste (large fluorescent bulbs). The charities and county facility are probably at lower capacity but functional at this point. Their processes for protecting their employees and the public are established.

My husband and his doctor have changed his prescriptions from mail delivery to pickup at a local pharmacy based on the challenges with timely delivery from the postal service in our area. I’m not sure if this is related to the pandemic at all…but it is all happening at the same time. There are layers of anxiety that sometimes are separate…but tend to meld together over time, stretching our ability to cope with more and more and more.

We made a field trip to Howard County Conservancy’s Mt Pleasant for birding. It was outdoors, small group, distanced, mostly masked. It was OK…but now that the cases in our state are spiking, we might not do something like that again. We can still go to places like that but just on our own.

There were joys of virtual events over the past month. My favorite was the Hawaii Island Festival of Birds. It was good for the moment…and gave me ideas about the future…things I want to do post-pandemic.

It’s fall. We thought we would take some fall foliage drives but we missed the peak so the main fall activity has been mowing leaves in our yard! Still – the continuity of the natural cycle is something that buoys my spirits.

Right now, I am aware that there are multiple anxieties beyond the pandemic. After 8 months – the pandemic is the one I am coping with the best; I know how to reduce my risk and I have developed habits that are easy to maintain because they incorporate activities in my every day activities that are joyful…it is easily sustainable until the vaccine is available.

My hope for the next few weeks is that several of the other anxieties will reduce dramatically (since I have not discovered good ways to cope with them – who would have guessed that the transition from one US President to the next would be so fraught) and that we’ll be settling in for Thanksgiving and then Christmas with lots of virtual interactions with far flung family and the usual good food/decorations…savoring home and health…looking forward to a post-pandemic sometime in 2021.

October 11, 2020

Conowingo on a Fall Morning – Part 2

October 11, 2020/ Gwen Morrison

Continuing our short field trip/road trip to Conowingo (part 1 post is here)….

Today’s post focuses on the Great Blue Heron that was relatively close to our viewing location (in the lower left of the image below).

It stayed on the same rock for quite some time. I took portrait shots when it moved any part of its body. It is a bird that was born this year…just getting in some adult feathers. I think my favorite of the portraits is the one with beak pointed down…a rather stern-loooking image. Something caught the bird’s attention away from the water at some point and it turned toward the rocky embankment.

It looked around and it became obvious that the bird was going to move.

It didn’t fly….it started walking. Note the big toes as it takes a step (use the arrows to move back and forth between the 2 images).

And then it was off….making it’s way to a new vantage point – where it stayed until we left. It must have gotten a fish earlier because it seemed to be observing the scene rather than actively fishing.

Unique Activities for Yesterday:

Hawai’i Island Festival of the Birds. The festival starts on 10/15 and registration is free (site to register is here). I registered weeks ago but checked to make sure I had all the info I needed to find the festival on the 1st day. The videos are pre-recorded and made available on the day they are listed on the calendar of events. I except to see birds that I have never seen before! When I visited Hawai’i in 2015, I was so overwhelmed by everything else that was new to me that I only noticed a few birds. I’d like to go for the festival some year.

October 06, 2020

Cape May Fall Festival

October 06, 2020/ Gwen Morrison

Friday through Sunday were three intense days of webinars from New Jersey Audubon’s Cape May Bird Observatory (CMBO): the virtual Cape May Fall Festival We enjoyed their virtual festival last spring as well (posts for day 1, day 2); the organization tweaked a few things for this fall one that made it even better; I noticed the roving reporters out in the field and a little bit longer breaks. The days still started at 7 or 8 AM and ended at 5 or 6 (with one evening session after a 2-hour break). I learned to use the breaks to get up and move!

There is a lot of bird monitoring activity (Avalon Seawatch, Cape May Hawkwatch, and Morning Flight Songbirds) in the fall and the CMBO makes it easy to see the results with the buttons for Real-time Counts via Trektellen on their website(near the bottom of the page).

The weather was perfect for a big morning flight of songbirds on Saturday – 27,000 birds in 6 hours! See the Saturday results here – and check out other days going forward. There were huge numbers of warblers. The little bit larger songbirds that we saw (through the great work of the person filming the roving reporters) were Northern Flickers and Blue Jays (3,538 and 1,496 were counted for the morning). The songbirds migrate at night and are funneled down from points north to the Cape May Peninsula where most of them drop down for food and rest before continuing on – most of them working their way back to the north and west around Delaware Bay to then continue their southward migration.

The Hawkwatch also saw a lot of birds on Saturday (results here). These birds migrate during the day. There were 194 Cooper’s Hawks that came through.

The Avalon Seawatch had a bigger day on Sunday with over 1,000 (each) black scoters and double crested cormorants.

There were places featured in the talks and roving reports that we had seen in Spring 2019 (like South Cape May Meadows, Cape May Bird Observation Deck, Higbee Beach Wildlife Management Area, CMBO’s Northwood Center) and then the Edwin B. Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge which was new to us. So many places we would like to be!

There is a also a CMBO Monarch Monitoring Project that tags butterflies! Even though the large winter numbers of Monarchs in Mexico were found in 1975, it was not until 1998 when 7 of Cape May tagged butterflies were found there that the debate of where the east coast Monarchs migrated was finally settled. The results of the monitoring at Cape May are reported in a table on the website.

Virtual sessions are great for classroom type presentations too. At birding festivals, I tend to always opt for the field sessions, so this year of virtual festivals has been great for the classroom-based skill building. I particularly enjoyed learning more about raptor id (in flight), winter seabirds of New Jersey, ravens, other bird observatories (international), international birding tours, and the bird id game done by 3 NJ Audubon’s Young Birder Club members (wow….they have impressive id skills and are good at sharing their knowledge). The Cornell Lab of Ornithology provided the one evening session; I learned about Birds of the World (a new subscription based resource) and more about resources I already know about/use:

One of the sessions brought up the topic of some birds eating Monarch butterflies and seemingly not suffering any effects. My husband and I remembered that we saw that on at a previous birding festival…and I looked back through my blog posts to find out where and when and what kind of bird. It was Couch’s Kingbird on Nov. 11, 2017 and I posted about it on Nov. 27th. It was at a woodlot on South Padre Island, Texas during the Rio Grande Valley Birding Festival. I have two of my pictures from that event below. It’s always great to savor the memories of previous sessions an realize how much we seen/learned over the past few years of birding festivals.

Another prompt to think about personal history that was brought up in one of the sessions: What was your ‘spark’ bird (i.e. the one that got you interested in birds)? I tried to think back to birds that I remember from early in my life. Northern Cardinal is one – definitely. They were around in Wichita Falls, Texas….and stand out in any landscape because of their color. I remember some coloring pages from 1st or 2nd grade of various bird species and learning about Baltimore Orioles…but not seeing one until I was over 60 years old! Why didn’t the curriculum feature birds that we were more likely to see where we lived? I also remember being thrilled to see a Roseate Spoonbill the first time I went to Florida for a space shuttle launch in the 1980s; I’m not sure when I first learned about the bird but it was one that I knew when I first saw it in the field.

Overall – the Cape May Fall Festival was 3 days well spent. My husband also ordered the t-shirt for me since it is red ---- a good color for me. We ware looking forward to future festivals that we can enjoy in the field…but learned a lot and enjoyed this one. Kudos to the CMBO for doing this!

September 30, 2020

Ten Little Celebrations – September 2020

September 30, 2020/ Gwen Morrison

Another month in 2020…celebrating that we’ve stayed healthy (keeping up the mask wearing – distancing – hand washing regime)….and finding plenty of little celebrations during September.

2020 09 IMG_1811 (11).jpg — **Finding Monarch caterpillars.** After not seeing Monarch butterflies or caterpillars much during the summer…there were caterpillars in September. I never did find the chrysalises…but the caterpillars were so big that I hope they made it to butterflies and are now making their way south.

Watching Enola Holmes. My husband and I enjoyed the Enola Holmes movie on Netflix…celebrating having high quality movies available for low-risk viewing (at home).

Grilling again. After months of being out of propane, we finally got a full tank (via Propane Taxi) and celebrated with hamburgers and corn on the cob.

Watching virtual birding festivals. It’s such a treat to see and learn about birds vicariously (next best to being there). In September we enjoyed Yampa Valley (Colorado), Puget Sound (Washington), and Bosque del Apache (New Mexico). We are making plans for post-pandemic but celebrating that we didn’t completely miss September birds outside of our immediate area.

2020 09 IMG_1743 (4).jpg — **Collecting a maple seedling**. I collected a maple seedling for my office window – celebrating the new life (although it came up in a place where there wasn’t room for a tree) and savoring its presence in my office through the fall.

Emptying crispers. I am finally not completely overwhelmed by the CSA share…which is good since the freezer is very full. It’s great to be cooking and celebrating the bounty of things like butternut squash and hot peppers.

**Eating potato soup**. Just as the CSA started providing potatoes…it got cool and potato soup was the perfect meal. I celebrated the great timing.

Getting car maintenance. Both cars got their delayed regular maintenance…in a relatively low risk way. We’re celebrating that it’s done….hoping the vaccine for COVID-19 will be available before maintenance is due again.

Appreciating Project Drawdown. The recent webinar was uplifting….the solutions available to address climate change are cause for optimism and celebration…and then action.

September sunrise. Celebrating a beautiful start to the day…timing is key to see it!

Unique Activities for Yesterday:

Fitbit moved from wrist to ankle. My Fitbit was bothering me on my wrist, so I moved it to my ankle. It doesn’t measure my heart rate as reliably but seems to count the steps about the same. A side benefit - I am enjoying the freedom of being ‘watchless’ again (I also turned off the silent alarm). I seem to be the type person that does too much based on what time it is. When I started my post-career, I stopped wearing a watch for a time and now remember how good it is to be on my internal clock when I don’t have to sync to someone else’s schedule.

Racoon again. Our birdfeeder cam got video of a racoon in the early morning hours of 9/19 (between 2:43 and 2:54 AM). It does reasonably well in low light. The racoon clearly is attracted to the feeder…tries several approaches to get seed…and leaves frustrated. The feeder wins again!

September 14, 2020

6 months in COVID-19 Pandemic

September 14, 2020/ Gwen Morrison

September 12th marked the 6th month since the WHO declared the COVID-19 pandemic. I started a monthly post taking stock of the impact on day to day life back in July (previous posts: July and August). Here’s the one for the 6th month!

There were three activities that were new during this 6th month – things that were critical enough to not put off:

Our clothes dryer broke. Our first reaction was panic…a bit more than we would have during pre-pandemic times. Fortunately, the problem seemed to be something we had experienced before (the heating element) and the manufacturer had a website to make a repair appointment. It was a little frustrating that the repair person came to diagnose the problem but our dryer was old enough that the part had to be ordered…so it took 2 service calls. On the plus side – masks were worn by all….and we didn’t have to buy a new dryer.
I got a flu shot at my grocery store pharmacy. It was not crowded but I was very aware that I felt more stressed than in previous years – hyper aware of where people were around me. It feels strange now to be closer than 6 feet to anyone other than my husband. Everyone was wearing masks which made it a little better; I had to go later than my usual shopping time because the pharmacy opens later than the grocery part of the story. When an effective vaccine is available there will be a time of re-socialization – getting acclimated again to having more people around in closer proximity.
My husband and I both got our cars serviced – something we had been putting off. My husband’s car was the forcing function because a button came off/broke. We didn’t wait at the dealership for the service to complete. That meant that we chose a closer-to-home dealership for his car. For mine – the dealership where we purchased the car 3 years ago was the closest. Overall – it was an OK experience: all the people in the service area were wearing masks and we could (mostly) maintain distance. We brought our own bottle of hand sanitizer and disinfectant wipes --- drove way after the service with the windows down to fully exchange the air in the car.

We’ve started talking about when we might venture out to get haircuts since are looking a bit scraggly (last haircuts were in January). The place we normally go is accepting appointments so maybe we’ll go in the next month.

Virtual Bird Festivals are dominating our webinar experiences. In the past month we’ve enjoyed Yampa Valley (Colorado), Bosque del Apache (New Mexico), and Puget Sound (Washington) videos and webinars. There will be others coming up throughout the fall.

I am prioritizing finding activities that give us joy....to combat the aspects of these pandemic times that are depressing.

Who would have predicted 20 years ago that improving communication (i.e. social media and the internet) would result in such a dramatic increase in anarchy (other names could be conspiracy theories, fictional stories/events presented a fact, encouragement of armed resistance) along with the positives? I would really like it to be easier to find validated/confirmed news stories and a lot less opinion (outright lying).
Growing up in the 1960s at a time when everyone was following public health guidance re the sugar cube polio vaccines….it surprises me now that there are people opposed to wearing masks. I grew up thinking that it was a social responsibility to behave in a way that cared about others: getting vaccines, stopping at stop signs/red lights, requiring people in the car with me to wear seat belts, wearing shoes in eating establishments, etc.
In this 6th month the linkage between climate change and the pandemics became more obvious to me with the fires along the west coast (record breaking hot dry conditions, big electrical storms). In the near term –the evacuations make social distancing a challenge and the smoke impacts lung function in ways that probably will increase the deaths from COVID-19 in some areas. It’s a compounding tragedy. In the longer term – perhaps it increases the overall awareness that more climate actions (moves to reach drawdown and change mitigation) are required for our own health (as well as the health of everything on our planet). The life expectancy for humans may have already peaked.

I still think my husband and I are positioned to weather this pandemic by continuing the vigilance of the last 6 months. We are making carefully planned adjustments but continue to spend most of our time at home until there is a safe and effective vaccine.

Unique Activities for Yesterday:

Gleanings from the Puget Sound Birding Festival. The first day was the most intense with some pre-recorded videos then 4 hours of webinars. I was glad there were 30-minute breaks between the sessions but was exhausted by the end. Here are some links I gleaned from the sessions:

Edmond Marsh
The Great Washington State Birding Trail – Cascade Loop
Yost Park
Sarvey Wildlife Care Center
CORVID Research – Kaeli Swift was the keynote speaker….talking about crows – It includes a handy graphic to distinguish crows and ravens.
Play #CrowOrNo on the CORVID Research Facebook page.
Seattle Audubon
Pilchuck Audubon
Puget Sound Bird Observatory
The Edmonds Christmas Bird Count

Just as with the Yampa Valley virtual festival…..I want to go to this festival one too!!!! Maybe next September – and plan some visits to some of the parks in the Northwest on the same trip!

Mini-clover update. There’s only been one day that we could skip watering because it rained. Otherwise – I’ve turned on the water 1st thing in the morning and my husband goes out an hour later to move the hose to the second location. Teamwork.

Cat at the door. Our cat tends to watch us from the window beside the front door when we are working in the front yard. Sometimes we can tell that he is meowing (yelling) at us.

August 24, 2020

The August Pivot

August 24, 2020/ Gwen Morrison

What a difference a year makes! Last year in August I was finishing up Zentangle sessions and butterfly migration games with Howard County Conservancy summer campers

And ramping up my volunteer shifts with the Brookside Gardens Wings of Fancy butterfly exhibit that would continue into mid-September.

My husband and I made a day trip to the Patuxent Wildlife Refuge where I managed to photograph a cicada in foliage (following its sound).

Somethings were the same: there was the weekly pickup of the CSA share and grocery shopping (although I did it weekly rather than every other week).

Another aspect of the month that is turning out to be similar is the pivotal aspect of the month. For so many years of our lives, we have been so tuned to the school year that it only seems natural that August is a starting point – a change over from relatively free form summer to more structured ‘school.’ Even though we don’t have the forcing function of an actual school – we invent the pivot for ourselves.

Last year we were making plans for the fall and early winter: an astronomy focused camping trip, a birding trip to Smith Island, day trips to Conowingo (for the Bald Eagles), Thanksgiving in Springfield MO, a day trip to the Maryland State House, 3 days Delmarva birding, and the a trip to Texas for a family visit and then the Laredo Birding Festival. All in the September to February period. The travel was interspersed with lots of volunteer gigs.

The pivot is still happening this year but the plans are just for the early fall and are all birding festivals that have gone virtual: Yampa Valley (Colorado) Crane Festival Sept. 3-6, Puget Sound Bird Fest Sept. 12-13, Cape May Fall Festival Oct. 2-4, and Hawaii Island Festival of Birds Oct. 15-19. The two big festivals in November (Rio Grand Valley and Festival of the Cranes) have cancelled this year. I’m looking forward to the virtual festivals in September and October… and on the lookout for opportunities for virtual travel or online classes in November, December, and January.

August 16, 2020

“to be continued” Zentangle® Tiles

August 16, 2020/ Gwen Morrison

My new Zentangle project is a challenge to myself – to stop partway through creating a tile….then wait a few days before finishing. I have created 18 partially completed tiles (see below). I will ‘complete’ them over the next week or so using a different color ink….so I can distinguish the two parts.

I tried for variety in the types of patterns and they are not all ‘half’ done…some are more and some or less. It’s feels good to try something different!

The Zentangle® Method is an easy-to-learn, relaxing, and fun way to create beautiful images by drawing structured patterns. It was created by Rick Roberts and Maria Thomas. "Zentangle" is a registered trademark of Zentangle, Inc. Learn more at zentangle.com.

Unique Activities for Yesterday:

Registering for the (virtual) Hawai'i Island Festival of Birds. I registered for the festival that will be held October 15-19 with virtual explorations and presentations from the Big Island. It’s free! My husband and I weren’t birders when we made our trip to Hawai’i in 2015, so this is an opportunity to learn a little bit about the birds there…and think about another trip to the island…maybe to attend some future year of this festival.

Dryer repair. Our dryer stopped working a week ago. The repair person came and determined the correct part to order. The part should come and the repair completed in another week. We did a load of clothes that we normally hang up to dry; there is no problem with having enough clean clothes. We are starting to use old and guest towels. So we are not desperate….yet – and likely it will be repaired before we have any big inconvenience.

August 08, 2020

Gleanings of the Week Ending August 8, 2020

August 08, 2020/ Gwen Morrison

The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles and websites I found this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article.

Performance of the Year | The Prairie Ecologist – Video of an Eastern Hognose Snake pretending to be dangerous.

Millennia-Old Rock Art in Israel Offers Window into Lost Culture | Smart News | Smithsonian Magazine – Monuments 4,000 years old…dolmens. There are more than 400 in the same area. A survey of them started 2012 after the first rock art engravings were discovered (14 trident-like shapes on the ceiling of a large dolmen).

Backyard Birding in Central India to Beat Lockdown – Backyard birding - something that is happening around the world during the pandemic!

Granite tors evidence of ice-free Alaska - The Field - AGU Blogosphere – Tors mark the Pleistocene pathway that was free of glaciers for plants and animals during the ice age.

Great, Warm Lakes – This is an article from a month ago…I’m just getting around to reading it. The surface temperatures were warmer than usual as of July…in some of the lakes there are areas warmer by more than 4 degrees C (including most of Lake Michigan)!

Restoration of Sicily’s Temple of Zeus Continues - Archaeology Magazine - A 26-foot-tall sculpture of Atlas dated to the 5th century BC…and there might have been as many as 40 such statues.

Winners of International Photo Contest Celebrate the Art of Movement – Capturing a moment…freezing motion.

Blood-thinner with no bleeding side-effects is here – Still work to be done….the current formulation is filtered out by the kidneys very quickly. It has applicability in artificial lungs (used to bridge the time between lung failure and lung transplantation) currently.

Poor Everglades Nesting Season A Result of Climate Change and Untimely Storms – It appears that 2020 isn’t a good year for roseate spoonbills and wood storks in Florida.

This Medieval Potion Kills Stubborn Bacteria – “Bald’s eyesalve” – garlic, onion, wine, cow bile. It appears to be effective at combating antibiotic resistant bacterial strains…biofilms that are particularly challenging to kill…including diabetic foot infections.

Unique Activities for Yesterday:

3 racoons. Our birdfeeder camera made a video of some visitors to our deck just before 2 AM on Wednesday, 8/5: three racoons! They looked smaller than the female that came several times earlier in the summer. Perhaps they were her young….out foraging on their own (maybe she was nearby). They were no more successful than she was getting seed from our squirrel proof birdfeeder! The action started with one up on the deck railing under the feeder and another 2 directly below on the deck floor. The one on the railing comes down almost on top of one that was on the deck floor. The one that was on the deck railing stayed in the video the longest…thoroughly searching under the feeder after going down to the deck floor.

2020 08 IMG_1223 (2).jpg — **Sycamore branch**. Back on August 2nd I posted about a dead branch in our Sycamore tree (picture on the left). My husband discovered the branch on the ground near the base of the tree when he went out to use the weed eater and it took both of us to pulled it to our brush pile at the edge of the forest. It came down without bringing a lot of other branches with it….a little sooner than I expected but probably brought on by the thunderstorms that have been sweeping through the past few days.

Yellow wooly bear. My sister sent me a picture of a caterpillar from her garden in Carrollton, Texas. It appears to be a yellow wooly bear that becomes a Virginian Tiger Moth. Evidently, they are common but neither one of us had seen one before.

May 26, 2020

Yardwork, Bird feeder cam, Phicops Prompt

May 26, 2020/ Gwen Morrison

Continuing the blog post series prompted by COVID-19….

A Zentangle Prompt

Make a tile where PHICOPS is the primary tangle. Feel free to fill out the tile with a tangle of your choice.

Here is a tile I made yesterday based on the prompt: *Make a tile with these three patterns:* *ANTIDOTS*, *ELIROB, and* *BATON*.

Unique activities for yesterday:

Started watching Jason Ward’s Birds of North America videos. This is a follow-up activity from the Cape May Spring Festival. There are 23 episodes on YouTube and I’m going to savor then 3 or 4 at a time rather than all at once. These are the first three:

Mowing grass. My husband and I divided the task this week. I did the sides (hills) and back parts of the yard and he did the front. It was much easier than doing the whole thing like I did previously. We are talking about replacing our gasoline powered lawn mower with an electric one. Neither one of us likes the gas fumes…and the electric mowers on the market seem to be viable at this point.

Downloading the birdfeeder cam. When I was downloading the bird feeder cam videos from the last week or so I discovered that a racoon visited again last Friday night. It was around 2 AM like the 2 other visits. This time the animal climbed up the post leaned out toward the feeder….and then started back down. Maybe it remembered the previous frustrating experience. One thing that was different: the racoon did not head away on the railing toward the stairs. It went toward the covered deck instead…not sure where it went from there. I’m glad I already have all the bags of seed inside the house rather than on the covered deck!

More birds are spending time in the trees than coming to our feeder but there was an incident when both cardinals were near the feeder at the same time. The female was eating, and the male seemed to be the lookout. The female is the more frequent visitor to the feeder overall.

Links to my previous “filling a day of social distance” posts here.

February 19, 2020

Laredo Birding Festival – Day 3

February 19, 2020/ Gwen Morrison

Our next day at the Laredo Birding Festival had us boarding the van at 6:40 AM for the Max Mandel Municipal Golf Course for its stunning views of the Rio Grande River waterfront with over 270 acres of old growth mesquite tree and vast arroyos. We road around in golf carts (part of the adventure) staying out of the way of a morning tournament between two schools. The golf course structures were newish, but the course had been laid out to maintain much of the native vegetation along the river. We were there just after the sun came up. The morning was cold, and strands of moisture rose from the river. We had good river views all through the morning.

My first bird picture for the day was a Pyrrhuloxia. There is just barely enough light to distinguish the coloring…definitely not a cardinal.

As we headed over to where the golf carts were parked, I photographed some mistletoe….I liked its shape and density compared with the branches of the winter tree.

We paired up for the golf carts; I let my husband drive; it was a new experience for both of us since we are not golfers. The Red-billed Pigeon is just barely a US bird….and the golf course is known in the area as a good place to spot them.

The Eurasian Collared Dove was also around. The birds were introduced in the Bahamas in the 1970s…were in Florida by the 1990s…and rapidly colonized most of North America.

We saw Great Kiskadees across the river…and finally saw one on the US side so we could include it in our count of birds seen at the golf course.

The couple in the golf cart in front us spotted some American Pipit foraging in a grassy area. I was glad we were directly behind them and stopped to get some pictures.

The Yellow-fronted Woodpecker is not one that we see in Maryland. We saw several at the golf course and the sunny day made them easy to photograph.

We had lunch and a walk at the 180 Ranch – a little ways from the golf course along the Rio Grande. We did see some cows near a pond we stopped at on our way into the property.

Lunch was at the hunting lodge; they had left some snacks for us; I enjoyed the only banana for the trip (they didn’t have any in the breakfast buffet which is my usual source of fresh fruit when I’m traveling). After the hike, we sat in the shade around the hunting large and observed birds coming to feeder and the brush surrounding a very lush (obviously watered) patch of grass. There were small flocks of Northern Cardinals foraging…similar to what we had seen the previous day.

A Black Vulture posed for a portrait before taking off again to soar. The area also has Turkey Vultures as we do in Maryland.

There were several Pyrrhuloxia around as well. They were more cautious than the Cardinals.

The Green Jays can be raucous. They are a challenge to photograph because their eyes disappear in to the black around their eyes.

The Audubon’s Oriole flew in as our group lounged in our comfortable chairs. Getting a photograph of it was the high point of the day!

February 18, 2020

Laredo Birding Festival Day 2

February 18, 2020/ Gwen Morrison

We were up at 4:30 AM to prepare for our day of birding at the Laredo Birding Festival. After a delicious breakfast buffet we boarded the van shortly after 6:15 AM and headed to the Yugo Ranch - currently owned and operated by 6th generation descendants of Ygnacio Benavides, who live by the same conservationist philosophy as their ancestor – where we would spend the morning and early afternoon. We parked the van near the ranch buildings, and everyone bundled up since it was a cold morning.

2020 02 IMG_3395 (1).jpg — There was a Texas Ebony tree near where we parked. There were a lot of seed pods on the ground around the tree. The birds and other wildlife had already finished off the seeds.

All during the morning we saw Vermilion Flycatchers – the bright red attracting attention.

Crested Caracara flew overhead and there were a pair in a tree just barely within the range of my camera.

When we made a loop back to the ranch buildings, I managed to photograph a wren which was easily identified later from the picture as a Cactus Wren. It seemed to be very interested in the chimney.

We drove out to look at some ponds on the ranch…and spotted a familiar bird: a Killdeer.

There were also Great Kiskadees like we saw several years ago during the Rio Grande Valley Birding Festival.

There were groups of Northern Cardinals…a small flock. In our area of Maryland they are usually only seen in pairs or males contesting turf…the small flock was new to us.

The high point of the morning was a Great Horned Owl. It was surveying the area from a tree growing on an island of the pond. It sometimes looked our way….decided our group was no threat at all.

Looking closely at the picture I took of a cormorant – I realize that it is a Neotropic Cormorant (rather than a Double-crested Cormorant) because the eye is surrounded by feathers rather than a bare patch of skin.

There was an American Wigeon just barely within the range of my camera zoom.

As we headed down the road in our van, there was a Curve-billed Thrasher in the road. I was ideally positioned to take pictures through the windshield of the van!

Also on along the road, a Pyrrhuloxia was spotted. For this picture I had to contort a bit to get the picture through a side window.

We had been seeing Harris’s Hawks and I finally got a picture of two that were near each other on a telephone pole. This species hunts as a team!

The next stop was Ranchito Road Lagoons. The high point of the afternoon happened at this location: American White Pelicans feeding in unison. I had not seen this behavior before. It was like a ballet and they did it for the whole time we were at the location.

A Black-necked Stilt and

Lesser Yellowlegs were feeding in the shallows.

On the way back to hotel we stopped at the Laredo Landfill. It was very windy (dust and some trash flying everywhere) so we didn’t stay long. There were quite a few Cattle Egrets huddled together near the entrance. And lots of Chihuahuan Ravens that were closer to where we stopped. I later wished that I had walked over to get a picture of the Cattle Egrets since we didn’t see them in any other festival location.

What a productive day of birding around Laredo!

February 17, 2020

Laredo Birding Festival – Day 1

February 17, 2020/ Gwen Morrison

My husband and I flew to San Antonio (me from Dallas, he from Baltimore) and drove down to the Laredo Birding Festival from there. We made a rest stop at the Lasalle County Rest Stop (southbound) and

Immediately saw our first stunning bird of the trip: A Greater Roadrunner. It was in the picnic area of the rest stop and then moved out into the parking area. It was a cold day, so the feathers were fluffed making it look plumper than usual.

The rest stop had well maintained plantings – some were blooming in the cold.

2020 02 IMG_7905 (10).jpg — The signage and windmill outside the building started the historical story of the county.

Inside the building were displays about the county: ranching, railroad, mining and farming. On the back of the hanging signs were metal sculptures that I enjoyed.

As I got ready to write this blog post, I checked Google maps for the rest stop and discovered that there is a short hiking trail to the south of the rest stop. I’ll walk around it next time I am make that stop (maybe next year).

We got to Laredo and checked into the La Posada Hotel which would be the hub for departures on the trips for the festival. It’s very close to the Rio Grande….in the older part of Laredo. A hour or so later we walked to the Laredo Center of the Arts for the 2020 Birds of the Brush exhibit – bird themed art from local schools. I liked the paintings on paper shopping bags and birds I recognized. The backgrounds were often what made the work memorable beyond the bird itself.

We made a light supper on the luscious appetizers upstairs…getting a view of exhibit from the glass fronted elevator as we went up from the exhibit floor.

Overall – a great start for the Laredo Birding Festival!

February 13, 2020

Birding at Josey Ranch Lake – Part 2

February 13, 2020/ Gwen Morrison

Continuing my post about my walks around the lake at Josey Ranch (near the public library on Keller Springs in Carrollton Texas)…

There were 6 birds that I only saw on one of the three days.

I saw a pair of Eastern Bluebirds near the library building. They appeared to be investigating possible nesting sites. There were not nesting boxes around….or trees big enough to have cavities for nesting. They were looking at vent openings in the building --- probably not a good site.

As I walked , I saw a bluebird across the lake from the library. It could have been one of the pair….or not.

On the one sunny day, I saw a juvenile Yellow-crowned Night-heron – I didn’t yet have the distinctive face marking but it’s body shape/posture and leg length made this the likely identification (rather than a juvenile Black-crowned Night-heron).

The Pied-billed Grebe is small and dives….but I did get three pictures. There might have been a pair, or the pictures could have been the same bird.

A small group of Ruddy Ducks made a rest stop on the lake. It was a mixed group of males and females.

Other ducks that were only at the lake one of the cloudy days were Ring-necks – yes, the ring is on the bill rather than the neck….the name is misleading.

Finally – I saw one European Starling. The grackles seem so dominate that the starlings stay away! Or something else might be going on…and they aren’t as numerous as they once were.

While I was in the area – I walked through the Pocket Prairie that will be bursting with spring wildflowers…but is now dormant. The dried vegetation was mostly cleared…but the green leaves of perennials were visible…some of the leaves had red highlights!

I also photographed some feathers on the one sunny day. Birds preen to keep their feathers in working order – the barbicels and barbs perfectly aligned. Once the feathers are detached from the bird, the barbicels unzip…clumps of barbs form…the feather begins to degrade.

As usual – I enjoyed the walks at Josey Ranch. There are enough people and birds to make it a little different every day!

February 12, 2020

Birding at Josey Ranch Lake – Part 1

February 12, 2020/ Gwen Morrison

When I was in Carrollton, TX last week, I walked around the lake at Josey Ranch (near the public library on Keller Springs) on three different days. There are quite a few wintering birds there. Today I am posting about the birds I saw all three days.

The Great-tailed Grackles are there year round. There distinctive yellow eyes and the “beak to the sky” male behavior is very distinctive.

The Rock Pigeons are always around too. They’re are so widespread in North America that we forget that they were not native (introduced in the early 1600s). There are many people that bring bread to feed the birds. There was a huge amount of what looked like whole wheat rolls that had been dumped on a slope leading down to the lake – hence cluster of pigeons in one of these pictures…with a coot looking on.

The Mallards are always at the lake as well. The have a hard time eating the big rolls but enjoy the crumbs left by the pigeons.

2020 01 IMG_3116.jpg — There are some resident Mute Swans. I decided to try something a little different when one got out of the water close enough for my zoom lens to allow a picture of the feet. The webbed feet are very large and wrinkled looking….they support a huge bird.

I also managed to get foot pictures of the America Coot. They have lobes on their feet rather than webs…and the color of the feet is green yellow with dark markings! They too are in the lake every time I go.

There is usually a solitary Great Blue Heron at the lake. Maybe it is the same one…or maybe not.

There was a heron that seemed to be confronting a Great Egret one morning.

The egrets are more numerous for some reason. Some of the egrets might migrate north and east to breed. I managed to photography one scratching its face with his foot.

Now for the birds that are only at Josey Ranch for the winter. The small Bufflehead is a diving duck – which makes it much more difficult to photograph. The male has more white…the female has a small white streak below the eye. On sunny days – a sheen of green can be seen on the male’s head. These birds nest in western Canada and Alaska.

The Double-Crested Cormorant also nests further north. There are generally only one or two of these birds at Josey Ranch. They are fish eaters….no interest in bread at all.

And then there are the gulls that are often perched on the dock. Most of them appear to be Ring-Billed Gulls although one appears to be a juvenile Herring Gull (bigger and with a black beak). Both are only around during the winter.

The Lesser Scaup is also around only in winter. They breed further north in the US and Canada.

The Northern Shovelers are around only in the winter. They breed to the north and west into Canada and Alaska. There did not seem to be as many of them this winter. I’ll see If they are more numerous when I go in March.

Last but not least – there were the American Wigeon. Note what a difference the sun makes. The bright green streak on the head only shows up on sunny days!

Tomorrow I’ll continue with the more unusual birds I found at Josey Ranch.

February 11, 2020

Newport Farm Birding

February 11, 2020/ Gwen Morrison

Our last morning of the Winter Delmarva Birding Weekend was at Newport Farm – a privately owned area near Ocean City with lots of conserved and managed wetlands. We gathered outside the gate along the road before carpooling into the farm building area.

In one if the first ponds, we saw Tundra Swans and Brant. Both species breed much furthers north and are only around in winter along the Maryland coast.

Soon after we saw them, the swans took off for their day of foraging elsewhere.

There were American White Pelicans on one of the ponds as well. I managed to catch one of them getting breakfast. This is another bird that is only in the area during the winter.

At the end of a road with water on the sides – a fox looked out over a meadow, then noticed us. It seemed torn about which way to go….started back toward us then ran into the trees before it got close to our group. These pictures were at about the maximum of my camera’s zoom capability!

Two Great Blue Herons were at the edge of one of the ponds. Maybe they have a nest nearby….eggs will be laid soon.

There were lots of plants that still held berries and seeds for wildlife.

The clouds were thick enough that the morning never got very bright.

Maybe the pelicans were enjoying a relaxing morning…not being very active. I photographed a group where only one seemed to be very awake…and keen to swallow breakfast that must have been in his pouch…tilting the head back, the pouch upright.

And that was the last of the 3-day weekend of birding close to the Atlantic coast of Delaware and Maryland.

February 09, 2020

In Delaware Bay – the boat from Lewes

February 09, 2020/ Gwen Morrison

After the very wet and blustery morning, Saturday afternoon was wonderful for the boat from Lewes Fisherman’s Wharf out onto Delaware Bay. There were birds in the waterway between the wharf and the bay: a great blue heron

And buffleheads among them.

My pictures were not fabulous…but good enough for identification. The rocking of the boat makes it more challenging to stay on subjects. And some birds were just a little too far. These birds may be Surf Scoters. They were being identified by our guides.

There were seals swimming in front of the sandy beach of Cape Henlopen. We were hoping to see them on the rocks, but we only saw the mobile bumps in the water.

There were people and gulls on the beach.

The gulls were everywhere….flying up off the breakwater as we passed.

Sometimes they would sit for long enough…and I managed some portraits. My idea was to identify them all….but I’m being lazy and not doing it for this blog post.

My favorite is this one with the open beak individual on the far right – Great Black-Backed Gulls (note the pink legs!).

As we headed back….we went to the lower, enclosed part of the deck to get warm…after a few minutes I noticed a Bald Eagle on a breakwater (no other birds around it). I took a picture through the window since there was no time to run out to the open deck.

Overall – the trip was much more enjoyable than we anticipated from our experience in the morning. Maybe this is one to do again next year….

February 07, 2020

Charles W. Cullen Bridge and Indian River Inlet

February 07, 2020/ Gwen Morrison

Saturday morning of the Winter Delmarva Birding Weekend was wet and windy. We had seen the Charles W. Cullen Bridge in the dark as we headed to our hotel on Friday evening. The sky and the lights on the bridge were dramatic.

The next morning, we were at the bridge again. It was the location of our field trip!

Unfortunately, it was raining and blustery. I discovered that a rain poncho is problematic in windy conditions. I learned to lean against part of the bridge or pavilion structure to hold the poncho down so I could use my binoculars…and take a few pictures (bufflehead in the distance and a gull…the bridge and walk beside the inlet). I was more successful with the binoculars: Razorbills riding the swift moving water (the tide coming in during heavy rain) and a Northern Gannet flying through under the bridge and looping around in the air. The trip ended early because the next part of the trip was planned for open areas (no shelter from the heavy rain and wind).

On Sunday morning, we left our hotel early to get to our field trip by 8….crossing the bridge again. It was dark much like our experience on Friday evening, but the texture of the clouds is more noticeable…and the lights were missing.

October 13, 2019

Trip to Smith Island – Part II

October 13, 2019/ Gwen Morrison

Continuing the post about our trip to Smith Island, MD last weekend….

Brown Pelicans were the big bird show of the trip. I managed to get some birds in flight as herring and mackerel were thrown off the back of the boat and the birds flew in to get the fish before it sank below the water’s surface.

I took a series of pictures of a pelican flying away after getting a fish…and landing on the water…feet spread out.

There was another bird – close to the boat that took off from the water – a strong stroke of its wings as it raised the legs and then the big wings fully extended as it gained altitude over the water.

The pelicans use the man-made structures in or near the water like pilings,

Or partially collapsed buildings,

Or jetties. Other birds like cormorants and gulls also enjoy the same structures. But the pelicans were the numerous and the biggest. There were lots of juveniles…the pelican rookery had a good year.