Doing Spirals

I saw the brown creeper again yesterday, spiraling up the tree from the bottom -- almost didn't see him against the dark bark of the tree. I took these photos just about the same time last year.

Signs of Spring -- and another first

I'm finally beginning to believe that spring really is on the way. There is still plenty of snow on the ground in our area, but winter is slowly fading away. The snow banks along the roads are dirty, the potholes are growing, the mud is overtaking the back roads, and the annual "Frost Heaves" signs are sprouting like weeds.

As the temperatures gradually inch up and the days lengthen, the bird population is changing, too. The flocks of goldfinches are larger, the chickadees are noisier, and the blue jays are back with their bossy voices.

While I've had a few white-breasted nuthatches all winter, I've suddenly been getting a lot of the smaller red-breasted nuthatches. They do a fast grab and run at the sunflower chips, but stay much longer on the suet feeder. As fast as they are, they've been easier to get photos of than the larger white-breasted nuthatch.


This winter I've also added a few "firsts" to my bird life list. About three weeks ago I had a white-winged crossbill under my feeders. Yesterday, I had a LBJ (little brown jobby) with reddish chest up in the tree watching me for quite awhile. But it wasn't the usual house finch or purple finch. First I had a male common redpoll, then later a female staring at me from the branch.



Then, all of a sudden, I had about half a dozen common redpolls under the feeder.So, while winter probably hasn't had its last hurrah, signs of spring are here.

P.S. -- Did you look up last night and see the space station and shuttle overhead? It was a perfectly clear night and amazing to see how fast it seemed to move across the sky.

I wish I had an explanation for this, but I don't . . .

I'm on our deck with the shovel and ice chopper, making lots of racket -- and the nuthatches are at the suet feeder right next to me, chattering away.

But when I'm standing there with my camera, not making a move or a sound -- all the birds disappear. What do they know that I don't?

From Winona to Waukewan

Winona Road is one of New Hampshire's back roads -- a picturesque route between Ashland, Center Harbor and Meredith. This view is from a little bridge over the connection between two lakes, looking at Lake Winona from its southern end.




It was a cold February morning -- the skies were beginning to brighten, but the cold had left a thin layer of frost on all the bare branches along the lakes.







Looking the other direction from the bridge, the water flows out of Lake Winona into what eventually becomes Lake Waukewan.

The cold winter morning did not deter the ducks' bottoms-up routine.

It's been a long time . . .

. . . since I've put anything up (2-1/2 months long)! So to start catching up, I'll post a couple photographs from this last week.

The other day, when I glanced out the window, I saw a goldfinch on the ground -- just one, unlike the flocks of sometimes thirty or forty that I've been seeing lately. But when I took a closer look, I realized it wasn't a goldfinch, although there was a greenish-yellow tint to it. It was actually a little larger and the other markings weren't right.

I went outside to get some photos of it and was surprised that it actually let me get about four feet from it without flying away.




After I pulled out the trusty bird ID guide, I determined it was a female White-Winged Crossbill (Loxia leucoptera). I have seen it a few other days, too, always alone and feeding from the ground. This is one to add to my list.

Nearest Book Meme

"At age thirty-one, he still listed his occupation as 'painter.' "

The Forger's Spell: A True Story of Vermeer, Nazis,and the Greatest Art Hoax of the Twentieth Century, by Edward Dolnick

Think American history, European history, Dutch history, art history . . . This is what I'm reading now (only about 125 pages into it) -- on top of the pile of other books I haven't read yet.



Rules:
* Get the book nearest to you. Right now.
* Go to page 56.
* Find the 5th sentence.
* Write this sentence - either here or on your blog.
* Copy these instructions as commentary of your sentence.
* Don't look for your favorite book or your coolest but really the nearest.

From Stephen's Lighthouse

Plum Island

One cool Sunday afternoon in early October, I got the chance to spend a few hours at the Parker River National Wildlife Refuge on Plum Island, near Newburyport, Massachusetts.

I had just started out walking from the gate house area when I saw a fox -- as I watched for awhile, he pranced and zigzagged through the grass, looking up every so often.




In one of the pools along the road, I saw two juvenile mute swans. They ignored me and everyone else who stopped to take pictures.





The cloudy overcast skies made it difficult to positively identify these birds from their silhouettes.




There are several long, undulating boardwalks that stretch across the dunes area from the road to the beach

and back to the road again.





While there was still a lot of green, fall was beginning to show in the brown and bronze grasses.
There were quite a few other people out, some on bikes, some walking and jogging, others driving slowly along the road in their cars. But at the end of the road, just before I turned back, I saw this image -- a woman just sitting quietly at the end of a boardwalk, enjoying the fresh salt air and the peaceful ocean view.