The photographic opportunities bulged with the addition of a trip to St. Louis along with the monthly trip to Texas…. local walk abouts in our yard and neighborhood…the Lake Springfield boathouse too. They all added up to a lot of zoomed images taken with my bridge camera (Canon Powershot SX70 HS). I enjoyed choosing which ones to include in this month’s post!
The temperature has fluctuated wildly – from the teens to 70s this month. I took walks on two of the sunny days. We’ve had enough rain that the drainage into the ponds had running water on both days, and I stopped on the bridge to take pictures of leaves from last season in the rippling water. Oaks, maples, river birch, and red buds are represented.
There is almost always a pair of mallards about….and lots of robins.
Some branches from a magnolia in a nearby yard are upright in the pond. I wonder how long they will last…..or maybe someone is trying to root them (i.e. start new trees)?
The turtles are more active on warm days. They all appear to be red-eared sliders. Their snouts are usually all that is visible unless they are closer to shore or sunning on some high ground in the pond.
One day I started out in sunshine but there were more clouds than I anticipated. I took some landscape shots….experimenting with backlight and the curving walkway through the trees around our pond.
Some geese were on the walkway (and this time of year I give them space since they might be aggressive) so I went up to the street to complete the loop to my house. I noticed that the stormwater drain is labeled ‘no dumping – drains to river’ with a metal shield; in Maryland the labeling was painted onto the concrete.
The red maples are some of the earliest trees to bloom. The trees along the path don’t have low branches so my pictures of the flowers rely on my camera’s zoom.
Sometimes I photograph something because I didn’t anticipate it…the oak leaf stuck in the chain link of the tennis court is an example.
Another is the mats of algae on lower spillway between the two ponds. They had washed from the upper pond but are doomed to dry out on the spillway if another rain does not come soon. Still – they were ‘emerald isles’ at a time of year where there is still a lot brown in the natural world.
Like all gardens, Brookside Gardens changes quickly…always something different to see. In April, it’s time to be cautious around the Canada Geese. They can be very territorial around their nests. The one I encountered was evidently not nesting but walkers were watching it closely as they made their way past.
I noticed a snoozing Mallard and American Robin in the same area.
Along the mulch (rather than paved) trails seem to be more comfortable for the birds. I heard some noises in the leaf litter under the bushes to the side of the trail and was patient enough to see it was a Wood Thrush….and got some portraits.
Of course, there are a lot of spring flowers and trees. Some of them (like the camellias) suffered some frost damage a few weekends ago (we had a couple of nights when the low got into the 20s). Still – a lot of the plants that bloom this time of year are cold tolerant.
The new leaves are often as interesting as flowers. The shapes and colors are worth noticing!
Tomorrow, I’ll continue the photographic tour of my latest visit to Brookside: deciduous magnolias and tulips.
Continuing the blog post series prompted by COVID-19….
Here are the unique activities for yesterday:
Hearing the phoebe first thing in the morning. I am hearing a phoebe outside my office window every morning as I begin my day. Maybe it’s in the sycamore. Maybe its nest is nearby. I know from the time that the sun has just come up this morning but the clouds are hiding it; it’s too dark too look for the bird and try to get a picture.
Cleaning off the covered deck furniture. With the temperature forecast to get into the 70s in the afternoon, I cleaned off the table and chairs on the covered deck in the morning so I could spend time there in the afternoon. Everything was very dusty since it hadn’t been used over the winter. The furniture is over 20 years old and had been on the covered deck since we got it. It is undercover but ‘outdoors’ and I noticed there are some bubbles in the paint on the metal parts. It probably needs to be sanded down, primed, and repainted…which I am not enthusiastic about attempting.
Walking the neighborhood. The forecast here is for cooler/wetter/windier after today so I wanted to get out and enjoy the sunshine…look around the neighborhood. Things change fast in the spring. Our cherry tree lost most of its petals overnight when thunderstorms rolled through. Most of the petals were on the ground. At another house the driveway was polka dotted with petals.
The azalea still just has buds (and the deer have browsed the bush so there are not very many buds left).
A neighbor has a deciduous magnolia in bloom and it held its flowers in the storm.
There is another tree blooming nearby. A fruit tree?
I recognized the redbud. ‘Cauliflory’ is a recent vocabulary word I learned from a tree tutorial; it means that the flowers are on branches and trunk…not where the leaf buds are…and that is how redbuds bloom!
There were several kinds of maples in various stages of producing seeds.
When I got to the pond, I noticed several flowers nearby (dandelions being everywhere but not always so thick as near the pond).
And then I looked more closely at the water retention pond itself. There were turtles! There were two large ones and one small. They were all Eastern Painted Turtles. The two big ones slipped into the water and then came back. The smaller one didn’t move except for the head and I noticed the scutes looked like they were peeling. Maybe they do that more when the turtle is growing up?
And there were robins just about everywhere.
Enjoying some outdoors-with-the-laptop-time. I tried standing at the table on the deck…that lasted for about 10 minutes…then I spent about an hour in one of the chairs. It was a great way to savor the spring day…listening to the birds (they came to the nearby bird feeder while I was there) and windchimes and breeze through the forest.
Catching up with the Cincinnati Zoo’s Home Safaris:
Links to my previous “filling a day of social distance” posts here.
Continuing the “Through the Window” photos for this month….
The red maple has bloomed and is now full of maturing seeds; from afar it’s gone from red to rust. The birds and squirrels will enjoy the bounty soon…and we’ll have small maple trees to mow this summer.
The tulip poplar is leafing out. Both trees are visible from my office window and will be a big part of the green wall during the summer.
I started emptying the last of the seed from the bird feeder before I refill it….not wanting the seed to get very old before it is eaten. A squirrel is usually the first to find the small pile on the deck bench.
House finches are frequent birds at the feeder, in the trees, and on every part of the house visible from my window.
The Northern Cardinal is almost too heavy for the feeder. The female may be a little lighter because I see her there more than the male. The male likes to clean up the seeds under the feeder.
The Mourning Doves are also frequent visitors under the feeder. They enjoy the bird bath as well.
A Brown-Headed Cowbird and House Sparrow were at the feeder at the same time. I’m glad we don’t have cowbirds around frequently since they would eat up the contents of the feeder very quickly.
I hear the Carolina Wren more frequently than I see it. But I enjoy the way they contort their bodies at the feeder…keep their tail up!
Sightings of American Robins increase in the spring. They are never at the feeder…only occasionally at the bath. They like the trees and the yard.
I finally saw and photographed an Eastern Phoebe this month. They probably are around but stay further into the forest. This one was sitting in our sycamore…almost out of the range of my camera from my office window.
The last day of the Brookside Gardens Wings of Fancy exhibit (Sunday before last) started out with some easy bird sightings. I didn’t have my best camera for getting the action…but I did get some identifying shots. The Red-Bellied Woodpecker really does have a red belly! I heard this bird before I saw it; for some reason it was being very noisy up in the trees along the stream near the conservatory parking lot gate.
There was a scruffy looking Robin. I’m not sure if it was a juvenile or a molting adult. It seemed to be the only bird of the morning that was still.
The Downy Woodpecker was very active…moving about in the trees so quickly I couldn’t tell if it was finding things to eat or not.
All three of the birds were seen in the same area and I heard catbirds and cardinals. It was a good day for birds if you looked quickly. Many of these birds stay around for the winter and will be easier to see after the leaves are off the trees. I continued my walk up to the fragrance garden wondering if there were any hummingbirds left in the salvia garden. I saw one within seconds of arriving…and took a picture. Most of the birds have already left…but this one still seemed to be enjoying the salvia.
And after that…I was ready for the last day with the butterflies.
I probably use the zoom on my camera for most of my pictures. It allows me to frame the picture the way I want and to ‘see’ the environment better than I can with just my eyes. Sometimes I am at the limit of what my camera can do. For example – the tiger swallowtails are particularly numerous in my back yard this summer and I kept seeing then flying under the maple tree where my compost pile is located. I used my camera like binoculars to see that the swallowtails were ‘puddling’ in the compost pile after a rain. They must have been enjoying the nutrient rich water!
There was a smallish robin that fluttered down from the maple and sat in the grass – just looking around for a few minutes before returned to the tree. It didn’t look or find a worm! Probably a fledging.
On the hottest day of the summer (so far), a wasp got a drink from our bird bath. Sometimes I find wasps that have drowned in the bird bath but so far it hasn’t happened this year. Maybe they are getting better as just getting the drink that they need.
Now enjoy the slide show of other zoomed pictures from this month:
Plane tree
Fireworks
Pocket prairie plants
Yellow crowned night heron
Great egret
Female cardinal
Fawn
Goldfinch
The birds seem to be moving faster this month – harder to photograph. There are a lot more robins about. Some seem to be looking around for nesting places and others are just passing through.
Flocks of red-winged blackbirds fly through this time of year too. I took some pictures of a flock of birds high up in the tulip poplar trees behind our house one afternoon and discovered there were two types of birds in the group: red-winged blackbirds (black eyes) and rusty blackbirds with yellow rimmed eyes.
The titmice were too fast for me this month – but I managed to get a picture of a Carolina chickadee.
A mourning dove preened on the deck railing.
The most startling ‘birding through the window’ event of the month was a mourning dove that bashed itself against my office window. It left some small (about 1/4 inch) down feathers behind on the window.
The bird apparently recovered quickly because it managed to fly to a neighbor’s roof – sat for a few minutes (recovering) – and then flew on as if nothing had happened.
There was a similar incident a few years ago with a cardinal. I’m glad it doesn’t happen very often.
It’s great to see birds from my office window – I take a little break to observe while staying warm…and I get other things done between sightings.
Some kinds of birds I see every day.
The Blue Jays generally make a lot of noise, so I notice when they are around. They come for the water in the heated bird bath and then for seed if it’s spilled out from the feeder (the feeder itself does not work for jay-sized birds). Somehow, they always seem to be looking in my direction when I take a picture of them.
The Dark-eyed Juncos are also around every day. They come for the seed and, sometimes, the birdbath.
The Northern Cardinal also is a frequent visitor. We have a resident pair that stays around our area. They made their nest in the bushes in front of our house last season. Sometimes more than the pair are around…but not every day.
Mourning Doves are plentiful. One morning we heard one seemingly very close to our breakfast area door but couldn’t see it. My husband opened the door and it flew from it’s hiding place under the deck railing. These birds are also too big for the feeder, but they enjoy any seed on the ground and the bird bath and just sitting around on the deck railing or the roof of the covered deck.
The Tufted Titmouse makes rapid transits between the feeder or birdbath and the red maple. It must feel safer in the maple. We have at least one pair, and maybe more, that frequent our deck.
The Carolina Chickadees are very similar to the titmice in that they don’t linger on the deck. They prefer to get seed and take it back to the maple.
This year we have more American Gold Finches coming to the feeder. In previous years we’ve had more House Finches but I’ve only seen one this year and I didn’t get a picture.
And there are birds I don’t see as frequently.
One American Robin came to the bird bath – and I got a picture. There will be a lot more of them around soon.
Sometimes we have Northern Flickers visit – usually as a pair. They like the heated bird bath in very cold weather. The area under the pines appears to be a good place for them to find insects.
The Downy Woodpecker returns again and again to some damaged branches not that far from my window. I’ve seen a male and female…only got pictures of the female this month.
European Starlings are not an everyday occurrence in our yard. There must be better food sources for them elsewhere. That’s probably a good thing.
We have a White-Breasted Nuthatch that comes to our feeder occasionally. It moves very quickly and goes back to the forest.
There are birds that I remember seeing but didn’t manage to photograph this month: Red-winged blackbirds, Turkey vultures, Black Vultures, Pileated woodpecker, red-bellied woodpecker, and House sparrow. Overall – not a bad month for birding through window.
After the long field trip to Central Florida, the next day we had a shorter one to hot spots around Titusville. It felt a lot easier getting to a 6:30 AM bus than the 5 AM bus the previous day. The first stop was Hatbill Park…just as the sun was coming up.
The Grackles were the first birds we noticed…because they were noisily welcoming the day.
As the light got better there were other birds to notice: a Little Blue Heron fishing in the shallows.
A Red-shouldered Hawk almost too far away to photograph but showing its very distinctive tail as it flew away.
There was an Eastern Phoebe and
Savannah Sparrow to represent smaller birds.
Some Brown Pelicans flew over the lake.
We headed off to or next stop – a walk back into the woods. There were very large Live Oaks with Spanish moss, resurrection fern, and ghost orchids and
Quite a few American Robins. Some robins stick around in Maryland but some push southward and accumulate in Florida.
There was a Red-Bellied Woodpecker that showed himself at just about every angle. They do have a little red on their bellies!
Florida has red maples just as we do in Maryland although the ones in Florida had formed their samaras months in advance of our trees.
Ball Moss – a relative of Spanish moss (both Bromeliads rather than mosses) – was growing in some of the trees. It looks tidy rather than raggedy like the Spanish Moss.
The Sabal Palmettos had ferns growing in their boots (the stubs of branches along the trunk). One of the other field trip participants identified it as a gold foot fern.
An Eastern Phoebe sat around long enough to be photographed here too.
One stop was a neighborhood pond that has a population of resident Black-Bellied Whistling Ducks. They were noisy. Hopefully they quiet down at dusk.
There were White Ibis in the pond as well. They seemed even more acclimated to people.
The next stop was a neighborhood park where there was a resident pair of Sandhill Cranes.
Then we headed off to Dixie Crossroads (restaurant) for lunch. I took a picture of the mural as I came out of the restaurant – it featured a lot of the birds we had been seeing.
The post tomorrow will be about what we saw after lunch.
Copyright © 2024, Gwen Morrison. All rights reserved.
Celebrating the whole of life....
Thanks for visiting my blog! Enjoy the photo picks from 2023:
Copyright © 2024, Gwen Morrison. All rights reserved.
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