As I selected the images to include in this monthly post, I found more variety than usual. The experimental high key images are quite different than my usual photography – a type of photography I will continue to use in otherwise poor lighting conditions. There was also a lot of snow….in landscapes and as background to the usual birds. I took more pictures of deer in February too. One subject carried over from last month – the skunk cabbage is still blooming at Howard County Conservancy’s Mt Pleasant and it’s the only picture taken away from home! Enjoy the slideshow.
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:
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!
Today our forecast is mostly cloudy…after three days of cloudy skies and snow. The streets are already clear, and the driveway has some clear patches without us ever shoveling. We enjoyed our snow days but are glad to see a bit more sun!
On the first day we had a lot of webinars from the Space Coast Birding and Wildlife which we were watching on the biggest screen in the house (the television) and had a fire going in the fireplace. We had a power failure a little before 8 AM for a few seconds and the cable/internet was out for about an hour afterward. It’s a good thing the first festival session of the day was recorded so we could watch it later!
I tried some snowflake photography twice during the day. I used my phone with a clip-on lens that included a light and a red glass plate to catch the snowflakes. The temperature was about 30 degrees which is on the warm side for good snowflake photography.
The flakes during the first session about 8AM were clumping although there was one that seems to look like a pyramid with a hexagonal base! Even though I had cooled down the plate and lens for over an hour, there was still some melting.
During the second session shortly after noon, it was easier to see individual snowflakes, but they were heavily encrusted with tiny ice spheres.
I tried to capture some scenes from our back and front yard over the course of the day. Our deck and bird feeder still drew the birds even while it was snowing.
I made snow ice cream in the afternoon – after enough snow had accumulated. We ate the whole big bowl!
Overnight there was freezing rain so there was an icy crust on everything the second day.
I cracked the ice of the top of the snow on the deck and made snow ice cream again. It was too icy, but we ate most of it anyway.
It snowed more overnight than we though it would so the third day had snow on top of ice. I worried that it might be too heavy for some of the trees because there was some wind as well….but we didn’t hear or see any breakage. I took pictures of scenes through several windows.
Two of my favorite pictures of the day were taken through the windows on the side of the front door. The vertical ice and snow covered thread in the azalea is an old spider web that’s been there since last fall! The seed pod with a hat of ice and snow is a black-eyed Susan from last summer.
Our plum tree was so full of snow that it obscured the evergreens across the street. The view through the skylights was different too; one had patches of ice partially obscuring the branches of the sycamore in the background.
As always – the view from my office window was the best in the house.
We had some sunny days….and then ice and snow twice during January. One is still happening as I write this post on the last day of the month. The forecast says it will extend into February. The second snow was after some colder days, so it began to stick to the street almost immediately.
The only picture not of my yard was the skunk cabbage at Howard County Conservancy’s Mt. Pleasant.
Enjoy the January 2021 slideshow!
I took fewer pictures in December…and shifted toward macro rather than zoomed. It was an indoor month because of the cold and the activities associated with holidays. Still – there were pictures of birds and snow – sunrise and sunset…the wintery scene. I’m going to bundle up to take more walks even in the January cold!
Another month…a selection of zoomed pictures. The only picture of the group taken a little further afield than we’ve been since the beginning of the pandemic is the rather stern looking Great Blue Heron which was from our field trip to Conowingo Dam. There will be a few more such field trips in November as we build up our confidence to make the treks safely. Enjoy the show!
Continuing the blog post series prompted by COVID-19….
Here are the unique activities for yesterday:
Noticing the big buds on the sycamore. The buds outside on the tree are finally getting big Soon they will have small leaves…and those leaves will continue to grow all summer until some get to be as big as dinner plates.
Witnessing quite a bit of bird drama: Our backyard was an active place yesterday.
Surprise! We have juncos again! There are at least 2 of them around still. In years past, they were gone by now. Maybe the very windy weather has caused them to not make it to their summer nesting areas so they came back to refuel.
A red-bellied woodpecker drives away cowbirds from the bird feeder. The cowbirds generally seem aggressive, but the red-bellied woodpecker made short work of about 6 cowbirds on the deck around the feeder. It flew in the cowbirds scattered
A piliated woodpecker inspects our forest. We see a few every year but they don’t seem to stick around our area of the forest. I saw it fly into the tulip poplar at the edge of the forest. It was hidden by leaves at first then came out and was preening. I looked more rounded than usual with its feathers fluffed out.
A red-bellied woodpecker found edibles in the sycamore. Usually they come to the feeder and ignore the nearby trees. Yesterday there was an exception. There was pecking going on!
Filling the bird bath. The wind and low humidity of the day before had caused it to dry out. I had a little surprise when I went out with the pitcher of water in the morning just after breakfast – there was a thin layer of ice in the bowl! It popped out easily, falling to the ground below the deck - and I filled the bird bath with the water from the pitcher – hurrying back inside to get warm. Yesterday was a low humidity day as well – but not quite as windy.
Enjoying spaghetti sauce tomato soup. I wasn’t hungry enough for pasta so I simply added some celery to the spice tomato meat sauce….added fried onions on top. It was a great light meal.
Links to my previous “filling a day of social distance” posts here.
In the early day of our ‘stay at home as much as possible,’ I cleaned out some boxes that had been in our basement since we moved to the house 25 years ago. One was a box of framed prints and other larger flat things that I’d boxed up after my mother-in-law died 4 years before that. I didn’t remember the mirror at all. It had been protected inside the frame of a larger picture, held in place by padding. There was a bit of tarnish along one side. Perhaps she bought it a few months before she died, and I hadn’t noticed it – I simply put it in the box with other things that it could be packed with. Once found - I hung it in the entry hall of our house.
Now I notice it every time I go downstairs – which I do many times a day on the way from the upstairs bedroom/my office and the kitchen/doors to outside. It’s probably not something I would have purchased but I like it more as the days go by. It’s part of our family history simply because she chose to buy it. And so – the mirror on the wall, hung by another generation as a reminder of the past and reflecting the present. Perhaps it becomes an heirloom in our future.
I’ve learned a lot about the birds coming to our birdfeeder this month when I reviewed the videos from our Reolink Argus 2 camera.
The earliest bird at the feeder is a Carolina Wren that was there before sunrise one morning (that’s why the pictures I clipped from the video are in black and white). The wrens pick through the seeds and scatters seed on the ground a lot; I’m not sure which seeds are preferred. We have at least a pair of wrens…and maybe more.
There always seems to be birds at the feeder in the morning. One snowy morning I caught the sun just as it came over the house to light the trees behind our house; a male Northern Cardinal and female finch were at the feeder. Over an hour later, there was a female cardinal and a Dark-eyed Junco on the feeder…with lots of juncos waiting their turn.
There was a female Red-bellied Woodpecker in the middle of another day….and then a male came and that was enough weight that the feeder closed making it very difficult to for either one to get any seed. The female pecked the feeder (frustrated….maybe angry) and flew away leaving the male. That is the last time I saw the male at the feeder. Maybe he’s found food elsewhere (hope he wasn’t found by a hawk), but we still see the female frequently. Watching the red-bellied woodpeckers, they seem to like the bigger seeds: sunflower seeds and peanuts.
I’ve only seen the Downy Woodpecker once on the video (there could have been some instances where it came to the sides of the video not visible to the camera). Otherwise the birds we see are frequent visitors
On the 8th there was a female Northern Cardinal that spent a long time at the feeder. It was a quiet day for birds otherwise. The first time the bird was at the feeder was for over an hour and the second time it was there about 20 minutes. The bird was looking around rather than eating most of the time. It would get a seed from the feeder and then turn around so that it could look around toward the house or back over the yard. The cardinals seem to like all kinds of seeds in the feeder.
I’m still working on the hierarchy of birds at the feeder. Right now, it seems like the red-bellied woodpeckers are the top bird. Most of the other birds leave when they come. The juncos are the ones that hold back….they are at the bottom of the ‘pecking order.’ Next month I’ll work out some more of the hierarchy.
Last week we got a little bit of snow. It was an easy snow to deal with: less than an inch, pavement warm enough to melt it. There was no delayed opening for schools or cancelled events. It was pretty on the surface of our deck and the grass in the yard. The juncos were out at our feeder and in the snow. I took some pictures of their tracks on the deck floor. Some areas had been so heavily used that the tracks were overlapping – showing the density of bird traffic for the whole morning. The tracks look a lot like the theropod (dinosaur) tracks I used as a Zentangle pattern with the summer campers! The campers were quick to tell me that birds are our ‘living dinosaurs.’
Of course, I made my own print in the snow when I went out to take the photographs.
By the end of the day, all the snow and footprints had melted away. Maybe the next time it snows there will be enough to make snow ice cream.
There has been a lot of bird traffic visible through my office window in November. The Blue Jays are frequent visitors – at the icy bird bath (we’ll put the heated bird bath out soon), in the trees, on the gutter, and in the yard.
Both male and female Northern Cardinals enjoyed the seeds on the deck and from the new feeder.
The Downy Woodpecker pair comes to the feeder and finds seeds between the deck railings and insects(?) in the knots of the deck boards.
The House Finches have returned
As have the Dark-eyed Juncos. It took the juncos a few days to discover the feeder. They were finding enough seeds on the ground underneath it before that.
The Mourning Doves are always around.
The Northern Flickers (yellow shafted) rarely come to the deck but they are around – probably more frequently than I see them. The pictures are not as good because the birds are farther away from my window – usually on a neighbor’s roof or in the red maple. One picture shows the yellow shafts very clearly.
The White-breasted Nuthatch is fun to watch – sorting through the seeds until it gets a sunflower seed. The bird has a unique shape and behavior!
The Tufted Titmice move around a lot but are frequent visitors to the feeder. They always look like their eyes are too big their head.
There are other birds that come to the feeder as well. The chickadees come frequently but are so fast that it’s hard to get a picture of them.
The squirrels stay in the trees most of the time. They come to the deck for water – but are frustrated by our feeder that has turned out to be as ‘squirrel proof’ as advertised.
On very cold days, our heated bird bath is a popular stop for birds of all kinds – usually one at a time – and usually getting a quick drink of water and leaving. Sometimes there are more…and rarely different species at the same time. In the picture below a titmouse is eying a junco that is not on the edge getting a drink. The bird is sitting in the water.
The titmouse left the junco in the water…and the junco proceeded to take a thorough bath! I hadn’t seen a bird bathing in very cold weather before. None of the other birds followed this bird’s lead and I wondered what prompted it to decide that such a cold day was bath day. It remained at the bird bath longer than I thought it would…not one to hurry in the bath!
The juncos were in out backyard and frequent visitors to our feeder and birdbath at the beginning of the month…and then they left for their nesting grounds to north and west. We won’t see them here in Maryland until it gets cold again.
The big story of month for our backyard was more about trees than birds. The red maple bloomed and made seeds. I am watching for when the seeds helicopter away from the parent. Of course, some of our backyard birds (cardinals and goldfinches) were in tree for some of the pictures. They like to snack on the tender seeds.
The tulip poplar leaves are unfurling with the pods from last summer still holding a few seeds.
The sycamore is still looking very much like it has all winter; it is always one of the last to leave out.
The tree I haven’t photographed yet is the black walnut. I noticed last time I walked around that it had some leaves unfurling but it’s location requires that I walk to it rather than trying to photograph it through a window!
I was out and about more during March than earlier in the year so I wasn’t around to see birds through my office window as much. I did catch the birds that seem to always bee around: the blue jays,
The cardinals,
The mourning doves,
The juncos (they’ll be leaving for their nesting grounds in the north soon),
The titmouse, and
The Carolina wren.
There are the ones I see less often – so continue to view them as special:
the pileated woodpecker and
The northern flicker.
There seemed to be more flocks of birds in the yard and around the feeder/bath: cowbirds,
Crows,
Grackles,
Starlings, and
Robins of course (I always associate springtime and flocks of robins coming through…some staying for the season and others continuing northward).
All in all – a good number of birds around in March through high winds and snow….the swings of temperature. It’s been a wild weather month.
This year was by first time to participate in the Great Backyard Bird Count. It started last Friday (see my post from Friday) and ended yesterday…and was a learning experience in several ways.
I was glad I had decided to simply observe from my office window because the weather was not very cooperative. It rained and snowed! There were lots of times I looked out and saw no birds at all. I felt lucky to see 15 species. The pileated woodpecker was not one of them…but the downy woodpecker visited twice.
The juncos and doves were the most frequent visitors.
I didn’t take as many pictures because the light was so poor….but I did capture several ‘personalities: bluebirds (sometimes they look affronted…like they know someone is looking at them).
And a Carolina Wren (it seemed like the bird noticed me through the window and interrupted singing to check…then continued singing).
Continuing from yesterday….
The goldfinches come to our bird bath frequently. They are still drab in their winter plumage. Maybe it is wishful thinking but sometimes think they are looking a little more yellow.
The house finches keep their color even in winter. They seem to like the sycamore and the maple more than the bird bath.
Northern Flickers visit our yard during this time of year. They are hard to see with a back drop of pine needles or fallen leaves….but stand out at the bird bath. The amount of yellow in their wing and tail feathers can be seen sometimes.
The dark-eyed juncos are winter visitors to Maryland…and come in groups to our feeder and bird bather. They explore the gutters too.
The pileated woodpeckers are infrequent visitors to the woods behind our house. If I added a suet feeder maybe they would come….but I’m content to see them in the forest. I got a fleeting glimpse of a red-bellied woodpecker this month as well….but was not fast enough to get a picture.
There is a red-tailed hawk that visits the edge of the forest – watching the open area between the trees and our house. Typically, the small birds leave the vicinity when the hawk is around.
The Titmouse always seems to have bigger eyes than other birds of its size.
We had our first snow of the season on Saturday and I got up early enough yesterday to catch some color from the sunrise.
It was the non-disruptive kind of snow: melted quickly on the streets and sidewalks but stuck to the trees and grass. On our asphalt driveway, there were clumps of snow on Sunday morning and they all were associated with a leaf!
It was very cold on Sunday morning, so I took pictures through my office window of the backyard – the sun making the forest look rosy in the background, the pines and tulip poplars holding clumps of snow, a junco comfortably sitting on the snow-covered deck railing waiting for a turn at the bird feeder.
A few minutes later – I took a few pictures through a picture from another room. The color of the morning light was fading but the pines and forest were still a pleasant scene.
I opened the garage door and leaned out to take a picture of the milkweed that are still standing in our garden. In past years the plants have lost their leaves before the frost but this year the leaves are still there, and their curls catch the snow.
Copyright © 2024, Gwen Morrison. All rights reserved.
Celebrating the whole of life....
Thanks for visiting my blog! Enjoy the photo picks from last month:
Copyright © 2024, Gwen Morrison. All rights reserved.
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