Birds Photographed Through a Window – December 2016

December has been a good month for bird observation through my office window. Our bird bath is particularly popular with blue jays. Note the change from the blue-green bowl early in the month to the heated bowl. I’m not sure whether the blue jays are the most frequent visitors, but they are certainly the noisiest.

Both the male and female cardinal stop by almost every day. They make small noises so I usually notice then too.

The mourning doves are quiet…but they are big enough to catch my eye as they swoop down to the deck railing.

All the other birds hide when the red-tailed hawk flies in to perch in the trees at the forest’s edge behind out house. I like to see raptors, but am glad they are not watching my deck all the time!

A white breasted nuthatch visited the bird feeder and did the usual upside down acrobatics to pick out individual seeds.

I saw the Northern Flicker (yellow shafted) – just as I did in November; the bird likes the maple. The yellow on the wing and underneath the tail was clearer in the photograph this month.

The juncos can be aggressive and chase off some of the other birds. The winter here…a long way from where they have their young in the arctic. I wonder what will happen to their numbers as the arctic warms. They are high energy birds all winter long in Maryland.

There are some birds that I see less often (because of the swarms of juncos). I saw a sleepy looking male goldfinch in winter plumage.

A titmouse got a quick sip at the bird bath before a junco flew in.

The Carolina wren is still around to but tends to stay clear when the juncos are around. The bird is not a noisy in the winter as when defending territory in the spring and summer.

I’m enjoying the birds of winter!

Ten days of Little Celebrations – November 2016

So many little celebrations – it was hard to choose just 10!

There is always a lot of good food in November:

Thanksgiving was celebrated with our tradition of brisket cooked in the crock pot…but I enjoyed two new sides even more: a slaw made with Napa Cabbage, beet noodles and crystalized ginger (homemade cranberry relish and olive oil dressing) and butternut squash mousse (following the recipe for pumpkin mousse found here – sort of…I substituted unsweetened coconut for the banana).

Graham crackers have become my ‘comfort food’ for my afternoon snack or in the evening. I like the ‘originals’ the best and celebrate that they are still available!

Pomegranates are in season. They are so beautiful and their season meshes very well with Thanksgiving and Christmas. They have become part of my tradition in those big celebrations.

Being home again after travelling was worth celebrating too:

A red-tailed hawk visited our backyard after we returned from New Mexico and I managed to get a picture when the bird sat for a bit in our tulip poplar tree. I celebrated my new camera’s ability to get the picture…and that the bird was around. But I don’t want it to stay around all the time because I like the little birds that come to the bird bath and the feeder!

The Modern World, Part Two is the Coursera course I am viewing this month. I’d taken Part I way back in 2013! I celebrated when I found this one in the Coursera catalog because I’ve always thought my basic knowledge of history since 1900s was patchy.

The trip to New Mexico had so many celebrations…but I managed to pick just 5:

Birds that I had not seen (or maybe had not noticed) before worth celebration: Grebes and Brewers Blackbirds and Pyrrhuloxia to name a few. I should count each new (to me) bird is a little celebration all by itself!

Sandhill Cranes silhouetted by the sunrise…the image, the luck to catch it, just being at Bosque del Apache.

Wild Turkeys in action. Turkey being stately is one think…turkey running down the road to catch up with their cohort…I celebrated their quick analysis of their situation and seeing them move in hurry!

Macro Photography of Cactus. I haven’t gotten around to posting the pictures yet…but I celebrated how well my camera worked in the small botanical garden at Bosque del Apache.

Petroglyph National Monument. I had read a book before I left for New Mexico about petroglyphs in the southwest and celebrated being the place (near Albuquerque) to see some. They’ll be a topic of an upcoming post as well.

Birds at Belmont with Pre-schoolers

Last week I spent a day volunteering at Belmont for a pre-school field trip. I led an activity about birds – with the children sitting on a blanket and looking out over the meadow. There were 5 groups in all: 3 in the morning and 2 in the afternoon. We talked about birds using pictures of birds on a felt board and feathers (I whooshed a turkey feather through the air and they were surprised at the noise it made!) – but the real show was behind me at the bird feeders and the meadow and a high snag in a tree a little further away.

At the feeders: one group saw a nuthatch, several groups saw the grackle,

And all of them saw red-winged blackbirds.

There were some ‘mystery’ birds at the feeder as well and birds we could hear but not see. But that just made it fun to listen and see how many birds we could hear.

In the meadow, the mourning doves looked for food among the grasses dried from last year and the newly emerging plants. The red tailed hawk was in a high snag across the meadow for all the morning sessions! The afternoon sessions got a fleeting look at the red trailed hawk flying across the meadow and into the woods where we were hiking.

Toward the end of each session we listened to recorded birds sounds. The preschoolers were very tickled to discover that the recorded sound for ‘red-winged blackbird’ matched what they had been hearing all morning!