Just a Flicker

Baloo and I spotted this yellow-shafted flicker while out for our morning ramble. 

I have always thought these birds very striking with their spots and bibs and bright feathers under their wings and tails. This fellow is a male. You can tell because he's channeling Hercule Poirot with his dramatic mustaches. Female flickers lack that particular fashion statement, thought they still have the red patch on the back of their heads and the yellow feathers, as well. 

I was trying to get a better picture when he decided to fly off and all I caught was the flickering patch of white feathers on his back that are usually hidden beneath folded wings and the blur of yellow wing feathers as he took to the air. 

Jewels in the Swamp

Also known as spotted touch-me-not, jewelweed is a beautiful gem in wet areas and there's a big patch of it along one of the morning rambles Baloo and I often take.  The bright orange of these delicate flowers in the mass of green foliage is such a lovely contrast. 

It grows about 2-5 feet tall in the same sort of environment as the dreaded stinging nettle and by the time the nettle has grown enough that it can sting the unwary, the jewelweed plants are big enough to soothe the burning sensation. 

The spotted part of the alternate name for this little orchid-like flower (though I just learned it's part of the impatiens family) is pretty clear as to origin, but the touch-me-not part is less obvious. It comes from the tendency of the seed pods to explode when coming in contact with anything. That's a good thing in this case - it means there will be another patch to enjoy next year!

Looking Up

Baloo likes to put his nose to the ground in hopes of finding something interesting (and he often calls my attention to small creatures along the path), while I let my eyes wander higher, where I occasionally find something interesting myself. 

I got to see a great blue heron migrating south along the bay. I tried for a closer picture, but didn't manage to capture one. I still like the bird's silhouette against the clear, blue sky. 

I also enjoy watching the Eastern Kingbirds performing aerial acrobatics to catch flying insects. They perch for a few seconds, spot a tasty morsel and launch after it. I would love to be able to catch one of these in flight - they are amazingly fast and the only way it's likely to happen is by sheer chance!

Finally, from the top of a dead tree, a brown thrasher sang enthusiastic renditions of many different bird songs - a veritable medley of mimicry. 

Sorting...

Guess what I've been working on today? :)

I'll be adding some Speedball cutters to the box I'm sending to Kirbert for modification, too. He'll have quite a few to do, so don't hold your breath for their appearance in the store... 

I Have Often Walked down this Street Before....

While visiting the town of my birth a few weeks ago, we took a quick tour past the old house in the old neighborhood. 

It's hard to believe that five of us squeezed into this little house (we didn't have a garage back then and the front gardens weren't nearly as spectacular, but otherwise it's much as I remember it). We did, however have a magnificent lilac bush in the back yard that had a child-sized opening I often crawled into. It acted as a grand house for tea parties and other creative play.  

The upstairs window that you can see in this picture was at the top of the stairs and my "bedroom" was the hall/landing right there. I remember that the head of my bed was up against the door to the attic - and if you don't think that gave a small child nightmares thinking about what could be hiding in that attic space, you clearly didn't have the fertile imagination I had! 

It was fun to see the old street and we remembered many of the families that had lived along it with us. Also, the park was still there, where there used to be a working May pole and they held various art classes and activities for children during the summer. 

Our house was at the bottom of the hill, sort of in the "hollow" and I loved walking up the hill through the fog on my way to the school bus. It was a magical start to the day. 

The Riddle of the Sphinx

The white-lined sphinx moth is a large-bodied moth that has to flap its wings very fast in order to stay airborne. In fact, this moth and others like it are also known as "hummingbird moths", since they tend to hover and act a lot like a hummingbird in flight (although I've never seen sphinx moths engage in aerobatic jousting matches like the hummingbirds do). 

Baloo and I spotted this fellow while out on our evening walk. It was lapping up water from the grass with its proboscis, so it was occupied enough to allow me to snap a few pictures. I love the way the wings look transparent and blades of grass are visible through them.  

In my research, I learned that the caterpillar stage of this beautiful moth is the dreaded tomato hornworm - the bane of gardeners! So there's the dilemma. Without the tomato hornworm, we wouldn't have these beauties, but the tomato worms are so incredibly destructive it's hard to tolerate them. 

One possible solution to the puzzle suggested by an avid tomato gardener and general nature lover was to move all the tomato hornworms to a single plant and sacrifice it to their voracious appetites and keep all the other plants happy and producing tomatoes. It makes me a little itchy just to think about the poor sacrificial plant. 

My brother once wrote a song about the tomato worm. And yes, I still remember it. Hmmmm.... I'm suddenly struck by an idea for a personal traveler. This requires a little more puzzling of a different sort. :)

Copper Mining

For butterflies, that is. 

This is an American copper butterfly. It's a small fellow, with a wingspan of about an inch - give or take a little, depending on the particular specimen. They fly low to the ground, in contrast to the monarch or painted lady, which often soar pretty high. 

I often see these colorful beauties out in the fields where Baloo and I walk. They're sort of hard to photograph, though, because they don't hold still for very long. By the time I have zoomed in on where they were a second ago, they've moved on. I need to learn to anticipate...

Apparently, they like to eat sheep sorrel when they're in their larval stage. It's abundant around here and it would be a great hiding place for these little guys, because they're a bright green color, too. There should be a large population of American copper caterpillars in my yard, since it has several areas that have been completely overrun by sheep sorrel (and other weeds). I will have to keep my eyes open to see if I can spot one. 

Pointe aux Barques Lighthouse

As part of our tour of the thumb, we stopped at Pointe aux Barques lighthouse, which I learned is one of the ten oldest lighthouses in Michigan. 

Not only that, it's still active today, making it one of the oldest continually working lighthouses on the Great Lakes. Pretty impressive. 

The Pointe aux Barques Lighthouse Society has been doing some amazing restoration work and, if you're in the area and like lighthouses at all, it's well worth the visit. Besides, there's a nice park right on the lake. 

(Did you notice that I managed to capture a seagull in flight when I snapped this photo? I didn't want you to miss that little bit of serendipity.)

Goose Crossingl

Baloo and I had to pause our morning stroll to wait for a gaggle of geese to cross the road.  

They were not the least bit alarmed and waddled to the bay in a very leisurely manner. 

When we finally made it up to the boat launch, there was another gaggle that gawked at us as we made our way to the end of the dock to get Baloo a drink of water. 

Being something of a language geek, I had to look up other options for what one might call a gathering of geese. Though gaggle has been my favorite since childhood (my father had a fabulous book called An Exaltation of Larks by James Lipton that I absolutely loved), I learned a couple new ones that tickled me. My two new favorites being plump and skein. 

Skein is primarily used as a term for a flock in flight formation, and it seems entirely appropriate, as they string themselves out and flow like a skein of yarn being unwound. 

Plump is just humorous, since geese are generally sort of rounded birds, but the term also refers to any group of wild fowl and I wasn't able to easily track down the word's origin in this particular usage. The best guesses seemed to have it being derived from "clump" or "lump".

Aren't you glad you checked the blog today? Trivia simply abounds! :)

Play Misty for Me

 Baloo and I enjoyed walking along the bay one particularly foggy morning. The effect was magical - the opposite shore was completely invisible, shrouded in mist, and the world had a very soft focus. 

These folks were out early to see if they could catch a few fish before the fog burned off. 

A colony of gulls took refuge on one of the docks, napping and preening. 

Boats lined up at the harbor's yacht club mooring looked like ghost vessels. 

And these two deep green pines stood out like brave sentinels watching over the park. 

Linus from the old Peanuts comic strip said that when it was foggy, the clouds were walking. I like the image. 

Painted Lady

The most common species of butterfly in the world, the painted lady sort of looks like a smaller monarch wannabe. I know that there are some butterflies (like the Viceroy) that mimic monarch coloring to fool predators into thinking they're poisonous, but I don't know if the painted lady is one of those tricksters. 

Both the adult and the caterpillar are fond of familiar flowers and weeds. Thistles, daisies, black-eyed Susans and asters are some plants they favor. By the way, the caterpillar of this species is a rather nondescript brownish-black color with a few stripes and tufts on it. Nothing as showy as the monarch or unattractive as the red-spotted purple caterpillars.  

While this might be the world's most common butterfly, I still think it's uncommonly pretty. 

Merganser Mom

This common merganser mom only has one little one to watch over at this point. It sticks pretty close to her and sometimes clambers right up onto her back when it gets alarmed. 

I see the pair nearly every morning as Baloo and I walk up the road beside the bay. I think the duckling is rather a late one. It's going to have to do some fast growing to be ready for migration - right now, its wings are way too short!

Watchful Wabbit

This very clever baby cottontail kept a close eye on Baloo and me as we walked along the trail. 

It didn't really want to give up its prime breakfast buffet, but didn't want to be added to the menu, either. 

It held tight until we got too close for comfort and then it ducked under the grape vine for cover.