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Homemade Nature-Loving Gifts
We had a great Christmas this year, and one of the highpoints for me was the number of handmade gifts given. My brother made a number of beautiful wood gifts, and I gave calendars made using my nature photos. But the coolest gifts of all were made by my 11-year-old.
We had made a collage of her artwork while I was working on the calendars so that we could frame it and put it in the hall. Here it is.
Disaster struck as we were hanging it, and the frame broke. But here is my younger daughter’s collage framed. Older Daughter’s will look like this as soon as we replace the frame.
I love the cardinals passing a sunflower seed in Younger Daughter’s collage! Her osprey is really good too.
But back to the subject of Christmas gifts. Older Daughter has done some drawing of birds with her grandfather, so we made a mug that featured her collage as a present. It turned out spectacular, with the colors showing vividly against the mug’s black background. He loved it.
She also surprised my husband and me with framed drawings of our favorite birds. His is a peregrine falcon:
Mine (currently) is the red-breasted nuthatch.
Last but not least, she created a nature newsletter to pass out to our extended family. We made some and mailed them to grandparents last year, but it’s been awhile. This was her idea, and she did all the writing. I helped her a bit with Publisher and supplied some pics, but it really represents her creative effort.
We’re proud of her, of course! And as both mom and teacher, I’m amazed at the way our emphasis on nature study starting last year has opened up such a deep response in both girls. When she wanted to create something personally meaningful as a gift for loved ones, Older Daughter’s thoughts went reflexively to the natural world. One of my hopes for her is that she’ll never lose that sense of wonder. -
Plain Brown Packages
The girls and I took a walk at the local pond where we saw the redtail a month or so ago. He flew by a short distance from us but didn’t put on a show like he did last time. But it was fun to see (and hear) a flock of tree sparrows peeping as they fed in the bushes accompanied by goldfinches, cardinals and white-throated sparrows. The bushes were full of rustlings and twitterings, and the white-throated sparrows were in top form flipping over leaves on the forest floor.
Sparrows are thought of as plain birds, but seen up close they never fail to win my admiration. These tree sparrows have such a beautiful combination of browns and golds. They seem like flying chipmunks. I never noticed the yellow on the lower part of their beaks before.
There was a song sparrow too, in the same place I’ve seen her before.
Not far away was some fresh beaver work. Younger Daughter was convinced we’d startled the beaver because the tree “had spit on it.” 🙂
There are two large beaver lodges on the pond, as well as a number of muskrat homes. This lodge seemed to be where the numerous saplings and bush stems the beavers has nipped off were being taken.
It was cold, but we enjoyed seeing these reminders of creatures busy about the work of survival. It almost seemed like they enjoyed seeing us too. We certainly gave the birds something to gossip about.
“Dotty the Tree Sparrow spends the winter here. He left for his home in the Far North about the time you took it into your head to wake up.”
“Why do you call him Dotty?” asked Johnny Chuck.
“Because he has a little round black dot right in the middle of his breast,” replied Peter. “I don’t know why they call him Tree Sparrow; he doesn’t spend his time in the trees the way Chippy does, but I see him much oftener in low bushes or on the ground. I think Chippy has much more right to the name of Tree Sparrow than Dotty has. Now I think of it, I’ve heard Dotty called the Winter Chippy.”
“Gracious, what a mix-up!” exclaimed Johnny Chuck. “With Chippy being called a Tree Sparrow and a Tree Sparrow called Chippy, I should think folks would get all tangled up.”
“Perhaps they would,” replied Peter, “if both were here at the same time, but Chippy comes just as Dotty goes, and Dotty comes as Chippy goes. That’s a pretty good arrangement, especially as they look very much alike, excepting that Dotty is quite a little bigger than Chippy and always has that black dot, which Chippy does not have. Goodness gracious, it is time I was back in the dear Old Briar-patch! Good-by, Johnny Chuck.”
(Thornton W. Burgess, Burgess Bird Book, chapter 4)
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Chill Beauty
When I got up yesterday morning and peered out the window, the air was thick with moisture. As day dawned, it became apparent that the moisture had sugar-coated the world.
We haven’t taken many walks lately. We’ve been lying low through deer season, but with sun in the forecast and such a beautiful start to the day, we decided to ditch our usual routine and head out for a walk.
We didn’t even get to the preserve before this caught our attention. Jack Frost had exposed the hidden snares of spiders. This red light is the final stop for flies!
I snapped my photo as the light turned green, giving Older Daughter a laugh. “That was fun for those truckers,” she said, “seeing a woman take out a foot-long camera to take a picture of a green light!”
At the preserve we enjoyed the frosty setting, though we didn’t see many birds. Chickadees were calling everywhere, but they stayed up high in the treetops.
Fresh beaver work! Whoever is responsible was snug inside the lodge, though.
When we got to the boardwalk, I took pictures of a sparrow in its ice palace.
Meanwhile, Older Daughter took pictures of me. I like this one with its waterfall of light — a cold sun baptism.
My daughters picked up various ice samples and then, when the chunks were large enough, exulted in the joy of smashing them.
Then they played in the creek for awhile on our way back out. My toes and fingers were cold, but the girls can play in water in any wind or weather. Older Daughter had a balsa boat she’d made, and Younger Daughter heaved all that was heavable to make splashes for the dog.A Cooper’s hawk flew strongly over our heads as we walked back to the car. I dislike the way Cooper’s hawks eat songbirds, but I admire their strength and speed in the air. I have to respect a creature willing to work so hard for its sustenance, and they are beautiful to look at.
It was a glorious morning.
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Killer Athlete
We have two Cooper’s hawks that pass through occasionally. The one pictured here is, I believe, immature. But the other is an adult, complete with the red flush on its breast, a bluish back, and red eyes.I’ve come to recognize them even in silhouette by the way they perch high up, near the trunks of trees, and also by the way they flick their tails — as though they’re forever dusting.
A few times I’ve walked out to scare them away. I know they need to eat, but I can’t sit by and watch them take our songbirds. I haven’t seen them get one yet this year, but I’ve seen the pursuit.
This morning, though, my songbird altruism backfired — enough to make me reconsider my interference. I saw the magnificent adult land in a tree, and I walked out. My dog ran ahead of me and startled a whole flock of mourning doves out of the brush below where the Cooper was perched. He took off like a shot after them. Last I saw, he had selected one and was bearing down in the distance. I never saw the outcome.
The hawk’s athleticism is so impressive to me! — his quick response, his acceleration and speed, his lightning-fast maneuvers in flight. Amazing…
I won’t be meddling again, though. The doves had been well hidden until I blundered into their life-and-death game of hide-and-seek.
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Raptor Jackpot
On our way to visit family for Thanksgiving dinner yesterday, we counted 26 red-tailed hawks in the treetops along the highway. It had to be a record. There was also one dead one beside the road. 🙁
We began the day with a visit from this one to our back yard, raising the tally to 27. I am always impressed by the patience of hawks — though I realize they have no other choice but to wait and watch for their breakfast (with discreet breaks for personal grooming).
We passed a reservoir on our hour-long ride, and I noticed some dark shapes on a limb. A stop to investigate revealed that they were juvenile eagles, and as we watched, another came in for a landing.
There are actually five eagles in the tree: 4 brown juveniles, and a single mature adult half hidden in the center of the tree. It was an amazing sight!
The young retain their dull coloration for several years. It’s interesting how ragged they look, for such regal birds.
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Companionship
I thought hawks and pigeons had a warier relationship than this!
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Misty Morning
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Lab Mascot
This was an appropriate sight in the parking lot at Cornell Lab of Ornithology.
I learned from a person at the lab that this hawk, which we’ve seen before around Sapsucker Woods, was rehabilitated and released nearby, and he’s just stayed around. People don’t rattle him. It made me wonder if the hawk we saw yesterday might have been a rehabilitated hawk as well. That would help to explain his lack of fear around people.
I notice that when hawks launch, they always go down before they go up. Food for thought.
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Amazing
The girls and I watched this hawk hunting for awhile at Brick Pond today. He saw us too. (From here on out I’m calling it “he,” because “it” seems not quite right…)
Older Daughter showed great patience. She wanted to see him take off, or pounce on something. Eventually her patience paid off; he crossed the water and we lost sight of him — till he flew into a tree on our side, about five feet from us.
He sat there through a battery change in my camera, and my daughters’ whispered exultation. Then he pounced on a mouse right in front of us, and took it to a tree next to our car. It was as if he wanted his activities documented.
He polished off the mouse in about 3 minutes. I thought of the line from The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe: “There’s nothing better than fish that were alive a half hour ago, and came out of the pan half a minute ago.” But in this case, it’s “There’s nothing better than a mouse that was alive a minute ago, and is now in my crop.”
Then he wiped his beak and jumped handily to a post-meal perch.
It was unusual… I remember watching a documentary about Pale Male, and how close people would come to the Central Park hawks — and how foolish that was. But in any case we weren’t harmed; he came to us, rather than vice versa. And there were no visible injuries, and no problems with his hunting ability — that’s for sure.
We left him looking regal in the waning sunlight.
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Peter, Peter, Pumpkin-Eater…
…was a squirrel.
