Miscellany
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Coaxing Spring
You can feel the chill in these photos of bluebirds, beaver-ravaged landscapes and ingeniously dammed streams, bare branches waiting for their spring clothing, busy salamanders scooting under and over the dead leaves choking cold pools.
But spring is in the works. The salamanders prove it. But you can feel a certain yearning in the sun and air for late winter to release its grip and let the growing season burst forth.
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Blog business
I wanted to touch base about a change you may have noticed if you’ve subscribed to this blog. Sometime in August, Feedburner, the service that has handled my email subscriptions, ended. I’ve been trying a new service, but I didn’t realize it included ads in the emails. I don’t care for this and plan to switch to a different plugin in the next week or so. The only catch is that I won’t be able to transfer the list of subscribers this time.
If you are an email subscriber and would like to continue, please feel free to re-subscribe! But whether you do or not, I wanted to express how much I’ve appreciated your interest and support. It has meant a lot to me that there are kindred spirits out there interested in what we see around us when we take the time to look. Thanks for reading!
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Wildflowers
We took an afternoon walk yesterday to see how a familiar preserve looked in the sun. Here’s a new flower — with the not-so-catchy name “narrow-leaved blue-eyed grass”:
It’s only about a half an inch across, but it was neat to see a new adornment on the ground. Here’s a closer look:
A veery was singing in the distance, which my daughter tried without success to see. Oven birds, a house wren, robins and cardinals provided musical accompaniment. A few other flowers we saw:
Buttercups (I guess) 
Bluets 
Daisies There were mosses a-plenty…
As well as some favorite spots to think.
A couple of oven birds tried hard to lead us away from what must have been their nest site. It would have been amazing to see an oven bird nest, but we settled for watching the birds for a few minutes, then moving on to give them some peace.
Not only did we observe; we were observed:
On the whole it was a lovely stroll.
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Exhibit
My daughter and I have some art on display at the local library — pastels/paintings of hers, and photos of mine.
It was fun to work together choosing pictures. Hers are of horses; mine are of nature. After we hung them and left, it was a good feeling to know they were bringing some beauty and pleasure to others. It’s neat that the library gives people such an opportunity. -
Window Wonders
Around here, the winter feels long right about now. Really long. It’s been cold enough to keep us inside. The wind chill, combined with having to blaze a trail through the snow if we go on a walk, leaves us with nature study through the window.
Fortunately, the interest isn’t just through the window. Sometimes, the window itself becomes interesting!
My 13-year-old has taken
lots of photos of interesting frost patterns on the windows of our house. I’d like to exhibit some of her work in this post — all of these photos are hers.It’s truly amazing how many patterns — sometimes on the same window — Jack Frost can come up with.
This one looks like a cross section of some layers of soil — with burrowing creatures’ trails in the deepest layer.
One window might be a blank; the next, covered with feathers.
Or water droplets.
Or strange zig-zags, like an etch-a-sketch.
Edges look different than middles.
Some patterns look like deep sea creatures.
Now and then, Jack Frost paints a landscape.
When the sun shines through them, the edges and outlines come alive. The sparkling animation can’t be captured totally in a photo.
We like this single, solitary dancing star.
More textures…
This one reminds us of spring ferns…
This one looks like it’s sculpted into the window glass itself.
Some simply defy description. But the variety is marvelous.
They may be similar, but on closer inspection, no two patterns seem exactly the same.
I’m thankful that our cabin fever days are brightened by these beautiful examples of native crystal creations. And I’m thankful to have a daughter so skilled at capturing them on camera.
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Oblivious
Yesterday, trying to create a new email address, I stumbled upon my gmail account — the one through which Feedburner sends out the emails of posts on this blog. I discovered a number of emails from readers, responding to different posts over the last year. Presumably they were sent by simply hitting “reply” to the blog posts — something I didn’t realize could be done.
It was a great encouragement to me to read these emails. I’m very grateful to the readers who have been so appreciative of my attempts to document my family’s nature sightings! Thank you!
I was also very embarrassed not to have responded to those emails. I haven’t realized my gmail account was accumulating them; the address I check regularly, and which sends me notification when comments are made on the blog, is the one I have listed in my sidebar here.
I’ll be sure to check my gmail account more than once a year in the future! Please accept my apology if you are someone who has sent some kind words my way and received only silence.
Fledgling osprey, Moss Lake — 8/13 -
Backyard Birds of Early Fall
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Incomparable Artist
I have stood in the mist of Iguacu Falls in Brazil as gorgeous tropical butterflies, winged bearers of abstract art, landed on my arms to lap up the moisture. I have crouched beside a bay in Alaska as a pod of feeding beluga whales made shiny crescents of silver in unison against the dark green water. I have sat under a baobab tree in Kenya as giraffes loped effortlessly under sunset clouds and a line of half a million wildebeest marched single file across a plain. Above the Arctic Circle, I have watched a herd of musk oxen gather in a circle like Conestoga wagons to protect the mothers and their young (who in wintertime must adjust to a 130 degree drop in temperature at birth). I have also sat in hot classrooms and listened to theology professors drone on about the defining qualities of the deity — omniscience, omnipresence, omnipotence, etc. Can the One who created this glorious world be reduced to such abstractions? Should we not start with the most obvious fact of existence, that whoever is responsible is a fierce and incomparable artist beside whom all human achievement and creativity dwindle as child’s play? (Philip Yancey, Soul Survivor: How My Faith Survived the Church)
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Bean there, done that
This little rabbit loves to hide out in our beans. They are a perfect cover, and the fence that we erected to keep him and his kin out is in all probability a nice protection against the neighborhood foxes and cats.
As far as I can tell he’s not actually eating beans or bean plants, but rather weeds. We saw him on Sunday for the first time, and I suggested that my daughter catch him in her butterfly net.
We let him go outside the fence, and he hid in a hole in the wall. But he may already be outgrowing that mode of escape.
I need to get some finer mesh fencing for that half of the garden — like what’s around the lower half to keep out the woodchuck I observed lifting cucumber vines in both paws and chomping down with relish. But meantime, this is a cute little garden ornament, and as far as I can tell he’s not doing much if any harm. At least, not yet.
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Back Yard
I love having an active back yard. Our dining room table sits beside a 12-foot window, and without fail a glance out back reveals creaturely activity of some kind: birds, foxes, woodchucks, rabbits, deer. Squirrels power-lounging on bark or stone. Showdowns between red and gray squirrels beneath the bird feeders. Fledglings begging their parents for food.
Last week I brushed the dog, and placed the pile of black and white hair it yielded out at the edge of the back bank. After the chickadees fledged in our nest box, we removed the nest and discovered its top layer was a cozy cushion of dog hair. It’s late for most nesting, but I put the hair out just in case.
10 minutes later I glanced out and saw two crows scolding harshly around the same area. I looked for a hawk, but after watching for awhile it became clear that the crows were scolding the pile of dog hair. They bent their heads and descended ever closer to it for another ten minutes, crying out in their most explosive, grating voices. They must have thought it was a skunk!
Last night I noticed a cardinal trying unsuccessfully to snatch a small moth. It caught and lost it several times before giving up. As the beleaguered moth fluttered away, a phoebe swooped down and nabbed it in one graceful flutter. “Leave it to the professionals,” it seemed to say to the watching cardinal.
This morning as we ate breakfast, my husband and I got a kick out of this rabbit peering over the stone wall between our garden and our neighbor’s driveway.
The funny part was that it appeared to be meditating on the lettuce.
As far as I’m concerned it can have the lettuce. It never tastes good to me, much though I like the idea of it. Maybe the rabbit likes it better.
