A Different Kind of Mystery

I had a beautiful little sparrow foraging in my yard and I am not positive who it might be.  I was leaning toward it being a female white-crowned sparrow, given its size and head markings, but the streaky breast isn't right for an adult and it was far too early in the season for an immature to be scratching around for goodies. 

I've been consulting all the bird books and online identification guides I can get my hand on and have still not come to a definitive identification. I have considered the possibility that a swamp sparrow strayed a little from the wetlands and landed in my yard to snack for a few days.  
 

I have also considered that it may be a Lincoln's sparrow on its way north to nest. But I can't absolutely convince myself one way or another. The Sibley bird guide does say that they're closely related, so perhaps my inability to decide isn't without cause. 

Any birding experts or enthusiasts out there that can help me pin a name on this little cutie? It's a small bird - I'd say in the 5-6 inch range. 
 

Ducking and Diving

Usually, when I try to catch a picture of a bufflehead duck, I get a ripple of waves. 

Or maybe a disappearing rump as it dives into the lake. (I do love the spray of water droplets, though.)

I got really lucky with this pair, though. They were swimming and diving close to shore and that gave me a chance to focus a little faster than I usually do. 

They are such quick, active ducks that they're almost always underwater by the time I zero in on them. 

Piper was a perfect little sweetheart, sitting patiently while I watched them dipping and diving, as I snapped picture after picture. 

They were a delightful couple and I hope they weren't just passing through. It would be nice to see tiny bufflehead ducklings bobbing along with them. 

There weren't very many good pictures, even after all that, but I was quite happy to get a few passable ones. :)

Breeding Bunny Burrow

There will soon be baby bunnies racing around the neighborhood. 

Piper and I encountered this sweet cottontail gathering dry grasses to line her nest. 

Piper wasn't the only one entranced by her efforts. We watched for a long time and Madame Cottontail finally hopped off into the underbrush to burrow in for the baby bunny birth. 

More Morel Mushroom Madness

The morel mystery had quite a few sharp eyed readers. Nice hunting!

Also, I mentioned a morel print I had made a few years ago and mushroom lovers seemed to want to see it, so I pulled it out and took a picture. 

I apologize that it's not a perfectly squared up picture. I tried to photograph it from straight on, but didn't manage to get it quite right. Anyway, it gives you a pretty good idea. I wanted to have the morels just a little bit hidden the same way they are in the wild, so they're tucked into the leaf duff, grass and twigs. It was a fun and challenging carve. :)

Feeling Fuzzy

Piper takes particular interest in furry friends. She goes on point for rabbits and squirrels and would love to follow them on a merry chase. I walk along beside her as she carefully stalks them, step by cautious step. 

Every now and then, they'll stay still long enough for me to snap a photo before they duck for cover or perch high enough in a tree to foil a curious canine. 

The rabbit looked particularly fuzzy, since it's shedding its winter coat and putting on sleeker wear for the warmer months ahead. Piper also sniffed out a couple of bunny nests lined with shed fur to keep the little buns warm. 

This black squirrel plowed through a spider's web on its dash for safety and got sticky silk and pine needles stuck to its head along the way. The pine needle just above its eye looks like an angry squirrel eyebrow. 

I thought we might have had enough feathers, flowers and fungus for a few days, so it seemed appropriate to give fur a turn. :)

A Minor Mother's Day Mystery - Mapped

Here's the clue from yesterday, if you missed it - or so you don't have to toggle back and forth to check for the mystery's subject(s). 

The subject in question at the moment is close to the middle of the picture. Not quite perfectly centered (there had to be a little photographic balance, after all). And there is more than one, but the others will be frustratingly elusive from this angle. 

Every year, our family would spend Mother's Day weekend wandering around out in the woods looking for treasure. It was a search to rival any Easter egg hunt and we children had as good a chance to make great discoveries as our parents, since our eyes were lower to the ground and provided an excellent vantage point. 

This is the one you should be able to spot in the mystery picture. I tried to get another picture at the same angle, so you can look for shape and shadow. It's the one that put me on alert. 

Once a little lower to the ground (children's eye level) in an effort to gather the first specimen, its friends were easier to locate. 

My brother and I harvested nearly two gallons of black morels in our afternoon of hunting, but a lot of crawling along on hands and knees through brambles was required to accomplish the feat. 

However, there's nothing quite like a pan of fresh morel mushrooms fried in butter for hors d'oeuvres as a reward for the effort. Yum!

I have made morel mushrooms the subject of one of my block prints, and it was fun to try to keep some of the mystery of the hunt in the final image. If anyone's interested, I can post a picture of it. :) 

A Minor Mother's Day Mystery

This little mystery is especially for BetsyLee (which, in itself, might be a dead giveaway). 

As always, you can click on the image to enlarge it. I left it as big as I possibly could. 

This is on my family's property and reminds me of the group outings we would always take on Mother's Day. The reveal will come tomorrow. :)

Happy Mother's Day!

Flowers that Bloom in the Spring - Tra La!

After a long winter of gray skies, snow covering everything and the only color being dark evergreens or the occasional cardinal, it's lovely to see flowers beginning to bloom and trees starting to bud.

There's a spot I always check to see if the snowdrops are blooming yet. They often come up through the snow. This picture was taken a few weeks ago, but I hadn't posted it yet and I love these little harbingers of spring. 

Piper and I discovered these purple crocuses out in the woods and I wondered if there had been an old homestead there at some point, or if a squirrel had maybe dug them up and transported them to their new home. 

Yellow winter aconite is another early bloomer - it may be toxic, but the color is a tonic for the eyes and it can also bloom through the snow. 

I've never seen this flower bloom in the snow but its name still gives away its tendency toward early emergence in spring. It's called Glory of the Snow and it's another little beauty. 

I love walking with Piper every day to see what's new in the world. Baby bunnies, new flowers and buds emerging, birds singing territorial songs and building their nests - every day is an adventure!

Sharp-eyed, Sharp-shinned

This hawk was calling, crying, complaining and otherwise expressing discontent with the world. 

It did, however, perch overhead and allow me to take a few pictures (although the brightness of the sky behind it makes it harder to see detail). 
 

With feather markings obscured, deciding if it was a sharp-shinned or Cooper's hawk was more difficult. Cooper's hawks have a more rounded tail and head, so the squared-off tail and flatter head brings me in on the side of sharp-shinned. 

I could be wrong - identification can be tricky, especially in poor lighting, looking into the sun. In any event, it was pretty special to see it so close and still, even it it was scolding Piper and me.  

Brown is Not Boring

There has been a song sparrow nest at the harbor boat launch for several years. I always look forward to seeing Monsieur Song Sparrow perch in the treetops and sing songs about his territory and the benefits of being his mate. 

His personality is so much bigger than his size and his distinctive song brightens my morning walks, first with Baloo and now with Piper. 

In addition to his fabulous singing voice, he's also quite handsome. His markings and color variations make him nearly irresistible. He's anything but a plain little brown bird. 

Ducking and Diving

Watching all the different birds return to the area is a special treat in the springtime. My brother, sister and I send each other updates on birds we've seen. 

Diving ducks have been active in the harbor Piper and I frequently walk by in the morning. The hooded merganser above brought a tasty tidbit up to the surface. She was really busy and it was hard to get any picture at all. 

The bufflehead above sailed along in the distance, diving and then popping up in a completely different spot. 

I loved getting to see the hooded mergansers together. I was delighted to get a photo with both male and female in the frame. They're beautiful, don't you think? 

Red-breasted mergansers are much less common than the aptly named common merganser, so I was happy to see this fellow out enjoying the early morning calm.  

It's odd. Some mornings, there are ducks, geese and swans everywhere and other mornings the harbor is deserted. I don't know if it has to do with the weather or the food supply or what, but it's always an adventure to see who might be around. 

Field Notes

This post doesn't have much of a theme, except that all the pictures were taken during an early morning walk with Piper through the field Baloo claimed as his own and explored nearly every morning of his life up here - I still think of it as "Baloo's Big Field", though Piper is laying her own claim to it these days.

We heard the clacking of this sandhill crane and it landed across the field from us and went stalking through one of the wet areas looking for breakfast. 

I noticed this pine cone nestled in a bunch of cedar needles and loved the textures and soft colors. The play of light and dark on the bleached cone is an interesting contrast to the rusty needles.

Red-winged blackbirds have been staking out territories. When they sing their songs, they fluff up their feathers and the red and yellow epaulets on their shoulders expand. This fellow's brilliant colors caught the morning sun's rays and shone so brightly that every female must have been impressed. 

 

Okay, so the chickadees may be year-round residents, but their spring songs are always welcome (especially when they push the season a little and remind us in February that spring is coming, in spite of all evidence to the contrary). They're also really cute!

Yes, It's Another Frosty Morning

It was crisp and in the twenties when Piper and I hit the trail yesterday morning. Hoar frost once again coated everything and the rising sun made the field look ethereal.  

I wish the pictures could really capture how the light shines through that crystalline coating, but the camera simply can't do the effect justice (or at least my limited photographic skill can't transfer it to pixels).

This little sapling looked like a natural bonsai tree with diamonds in place of leaves.

Meadowlarks were undaunted by the chill. They balanced on the tips of pines and poplars to sing their beautiful serenades to the sun. 

Well, really to the girls and the other meadowlarks as they staked out their territorial boundaries, but you get the idea. This fellow was so cooperative that I had a chance to take dozens of pictures of him and a couple of them even turned out pretty well, in spite of being a little bit backlit. I liked both of these attitudes and thought they were worth posting, even though they're similar. 

Goose, Goose, Swan!

We had ducks in the last installment, so I thought I would move on to some different shoreline residents for today's post. The larger varieties!

Canada geese have started nesting and there will soon be strings of goslings paddling along after their parents. 

Swans are also sailing along in the shallows and, while I haven't located their nest yet, I am certain they are setting up housekeeping, too. 

This pair didn't seem the least bit concerned by me walking along with Piper and stopping to take pictures. In fact, they both snuggled in for an early morning snooze. (I loved the glass calm water and reflection in this last photo.)

It's a Paradox

 Or, maybe just a pair of ducks. 

The mallards are either nesting, or searching for places to settle in and start their little families. 

I love seeing them shining in the early morning sunlight. The iridescent feathers look almost like polished metal, they're so brilliant. 

These two were snoozing on the shoreline just at dawn as Piper and I walked by. 

Mother Mallard is doing her morning yoga, or ballet exercises. She has excellent balance and perfect form. Such grace and poise!!

Celebrating a Whole Year!

Believe it or not, it's been a year since I brought Piper home to be part of my family. She's a sweet little dog (well, little in comparison to Baloo, anyway) but I will admit that she's an odd one. 

She loves to run full tilt, and occasionally plows right into something. I think she knocked herself silly at some point along the way. (This picture was obviously taken a few weeks ago, with the snow covered ground.)

Like Baloo, she loves to scoop up snow and eat it (and quite frequently grabs a mouthful as she's dashing by at top speed). And mercy! Can she levitate? Yes, she can! She jumps amazingly high straight up from a standing position. It makes me laugh every time. 

She has that one ear that just wants to stand up all on its own, but she looked pretty sitting among the blooming snowdrops this morning. 

Piper loves all the people, but still isn't comfortable around other dogs and she really hates loud noises of any kind. She's quirky, but we're learning how to manage her idiosyncrasies. I'm a bit odd, myself, so I get it. 

On the whole, I think she approves of her new life with me -- at least she looks pretty comfortable most of the time -- as long as there isn't any thunder. :)