Busy as Bees

Peony Do Tell

Howdy sports fans!  I will tell that it has been spring madness around here for a few weeks now.  Non-stop gardening, interspersed with bird-watching and splashed with actual paid work.  The annual battle of trying to beat back the weeds in the flower beds and get fertilizer and mulch down around things to help them along and keep the weeds from regrowing is an ongoing effort.  Progress has been made with a truckload of compost spread and three truckloads of mulch.  But we've yet to finish the task.  I'm guessing I'm about two-thirds of the way through at this point.  About the time I get done with all the flower beds, it will likely be time to start weeding the ones I did first, again.  Such is the life of a couple of over the top gardeners.

In the veggie patch things are looking stellar.  I just peeked a couple of posts back and the potatoes pictured there are now knee high and the peas are almost to the top of the trellis and flowering.  Greens are lush.  We have been eating obligatory monster piles of salad and skillets full of cooked greens on a daily basis.  Glorious mixes of red and green leaf lettuces, red-stemmed Bordeaux spinach, arugula and cress for the salads.  Kale, beet greens, spinach, chard, mustard and turnip greens in the braising mix.  Love the first fresh greens of spring!

Summer garden is almost in.  I've planted 22 tomato plants, 13 peppers, beans, squash and cucumbers.  Basil and nasturtiums.  I still want to put out some butternut squash, sweet potatoes, more beans, tomatillos and a few more peppers. Also sunflowers and zinnias need sowing.  But I'm getting close.  We've been picking and eating sweet red strawberries this week and asparagus too.

Peony Raspberry Sundae

I've waxed poetic many times before about peonies.  They are just starting to open and the yard is hypnotic with their fragrance and that of the lilac in full bloom.  

Birding during the past two prime weeks for northern migration has been rewarding.  My extreme birding brother Chris has been out each morning and calling me once or twice a day with the bird report.  When I've been lucky enough to get out there with him we have seen some excellent birds.  Most exciting for me are always the warblers and this season was no exception.  I have seen prairie, pine, black-throated blue, yellow-throated, common-yellow throat, chestnut-sided, Canada, parula, black and white, hooded, Kentucky and blue-winged warblers.  Also in the warbler family; Northern and Louisiana water thrushes, ovenbirds, American redstarts and chat.  Veery and Swainson's thrushes have also been in the woods on their way north and the fluting and melodious wood thrush has been calling daily for several weeks.  Back for the season to breed are the scarlet and summer tanagers, indigo bunting, great crested flycatcher, peewee, and red-headed woodpecker.  It's a great time to be a birder.

I've also been working on promoting the new business and finally finished my website and launched it last week.  So hop over and check it out at www.playfulnatureconsulting.com  and if you are on Facebook, please like my page: playful nature consulting.  Thanks!  now I'm off to bed to rest off so I can do some more gardening tomorrow!

Must be March

  Trout lilies are open down along the creek

First Hepatica reveal their hairy buds

Signs of spring are all around; bulbs blooming, buds fattening, birds singing.

High water from heavy rains last week scoured the leaves from the creek trails and left a slake of mud.  Now when I walk I can see the tracks of all those who use these trails; deer, raccoon, human, dog.

I flushed four wood ducks on the creek this morning, they are skittish, hard to sneak up on. They remind me it's time to start taking my binoculars with me when I walk.

 

Spectacular drifts of daffodils in the Tilley's creek bottom. 

Remnants from an old farmstead or washed downstream ages ago

Allergies are killing me, not sure from what but guessing cedars that are orange with pollen from the early warmth.  Yesterday was 78, tomorrow will be 40's with a low of 22, these mercurial shifts are hard on things.

On Monday I worked all day to plant seeds of radish, lettuce, spinach, beets, carrots, kale, choi's, tatsoi, cress, arugula, cilantro.  In a few weeks the salad bowl with be overflowing! At the same time I am harvesting spinach, kale and lettuce planted in the fall still thriving.  Dug a huge bowl of carrots too.

I also set out broccoli and cabbage plants.  Just now I covered the tender little plants with hoops and remay to protect from tonight and tomorrows cold and heavy wind and rain.

In the bedroom grow lights above and warming mats below the flats of tiny tomatoes and yet to emerge peppers.  In the living room more flats of herbs and flowers.  On the kitchen table and scattered in my office, packets of seeds, planting charts, sacks of seed potatoes.

Must be March.

Lately

Snippets of spring appear here and there, a primrose, a crocus, the prunus mume in bloom and smelling like cinnamon.  Then it snows, or it sleets, or the temperature plunges back into the teens.  I have faith that spring will eventually arrive in earnest.  And so I get out there and face a scenario like this one:

 

A bit daunting but I got it done.  240 onion plants are now tucked into those long furrows.  It was timely that the plants arrived on the day we pulled the last of the onions out of storage.  They were looking a little worse for wear, the outside layer mushy, the center sprouting a green tip, but still edible and a good addition to that nights supper.

The days have included many walks along the streams and through the woods, taking in the clear skies and sunlight sparkling on babbling waters.   I love winter walking, no sweat, no bugs.  I vowed at the new year that I would attempt to make a daily pilgrimage to what I call the "Church of the Woods".  I've not been entirely successful but I have managed to get out most days, even if just to make the trek to the mailbox and take in the sky and pastures.  

And for you bird watchers out there.  I did make the trip with brother Chris to see the snowy owls at Ocracoke.   And we did, despite high winds, rain, cold and other impediments, finally get to the island.  And yes, we did get a very nice, if fleeting look at a real, live, big white and brown snowy owl.  Before over eager others scared it to flight.  Darn them.  And a second look, before it was scared again.  Oh well. Everyone wanted to see it. For a full trip report hop on over to Slow Birding for Chris's version and a couple of good photos.  This little Casper above is a stone I found in the Current river last summer that spoke "owl" to me, so I carried it home for the collection.

Here's hoping March will get more hospitable soon.

PS- I just searched for onions on the blog to include a link above and realized I am officially an onion geek, there are about 10 or 12 posts related to onions on this blog!  So I'll spare you. Search for yourself if you are an onion geek too.

Happy New Year

Once again the snow is swirling down, though I don't believe we are going to get much accumulation this time, and that is really fine with me.  The chickadee's and titmice are zooming in and out to the feeders on all sides, punctuated occasionally by a downy or red-bellied woodpecker or now and then a pine or yellow-rumped warbler pops over for a bit of suet.

My sister-in-law inquired why I hadn't been posting to the blog, not much worth saying was my main answer, that and trying to get busy with the tasks of a new year, planning my life and work for the next few months, trying to get my house in order literally and figuratively.  January often finds me with the sensation of having time on my hands but in reality having lots to do, and there is a conflict that can develop in this situation.

But I am trying to get rolling on 2011 and plan so that spring does not sneak up on me as it is want to do and catch me unready for all the chores and projects both home and work related that pop up when the growing season gets underway.

I've also been more than a little preoccupied with creating a new physcial me, not even because of the new year, this actually began after thanksgiving when the excess flesh hanging on me reached a critical mass and I realized something must be done.  So I've been exercising like crazy, starting with weight lifting every morning and then walking or swimming as many days as I can muster which seems to be about 5 per week.  Top that off with a pilates or yoga class a couple of times a week and this woman has been spending 1.5 to 2 hours a day exercising.  Add to that constant monitoring of what's going into the mouth and it starts to feel like a full time job in and of itself!

But progress has been made with the loss of 5.5 pounds and several inches in key areas namely bust, belly and hips, 2 inches gone from each, I'm vanishing as I write and I like it.  Yeah me.  And here we are again with another boring post about my personal life that no one in particular is probably interested in.  Sorry about that, and therefore, as mentioned before- I've not been posting a whole lot lately as I'm very internally focused.  Perhaps the tide will turn, I'm returning to work with my good old writing teacher Carol Henderson this week after a long hiatus, this time in a different group and a different format, perhaps this will get me back onto producing something interesting again.

Until then, stay tuned as my brother would say.  Speaking of which- I must give him a shout having completed his birders big year with a total of 704 species seen in the lower 48 over the course of a grueling 12 months.  Check him out here.  He is one of only about 14 people who have ever seen more than 700 birds in a single year in the US.  You go buddy.

Home Again, Prairie Chickens are now only in my dreams

I made it home in one piece but it’s taken me this many days to get time and energy to do a final post about my big birding adventure out west.

A male Greater Prarie Chicken strutting his stuff

Sunday we woke at 4:30 AM and met our group at 5:15 to head out to the lek in the school bus. We got set up in a trailer there and when everyone was settled and quiet, the flaps on the trailer were lifted and we all sat staring into the cold darkness with great expectation. Within a few minutes we began to hear the sound of the prairie chickens “booming” off on the distance. The sound grew and more and more chickens joined in. As the light grew we could see them moving onto the lek. For the next hour we watched in amazement as over 2 dozen greater prairie chickens danced and fought on the prairie 100 feet outside our trailer. The males have orange egg shaped sacks on the sides of their necks that they puff up and it is these sacks that make the booming, really more like a cooing or hooting sound. As females enter the lek the males get even more excited and begin to issue a crazed sort of cackling sound. They flip up feathers from the sides of their necks over their heads that look like rabbit ears, and then they stomp their feet and bend forward, charging around the lek. It was a truly incredible spectacle and we were all in awe.

Two males bowing towards a female

(Click here to view a good short film that shows the sigths and sounds of the sandhill dancers.)

Just about the time we were all starting to lose sensation in our hands and feet, the females began leaving the lek, our guide closed the doors on the blind and we filed back onto the bus to drive further onto the Kitzmiller ranch where dudes and dudettes were awaiting with our breakfast of pancakes, bacon, eggs, juice and coffee.  Once our stomachs were stuffed and we’d chatted with the other birders about the beauty of the prairie chicken dance, we packed back on the bus and were returned to the motel.

There grandma was setting up for the Sunday afternoon yard sale. I read again the note on the back of the motel door about all of the behavior that was discouraged by residents of the motel including breaking beer bottles and leaving car parts in the parking lot. I’m trying to figure out how sheets and towels get burnt, but I’m not really sure that I want to know. All of this did cause me to wonder just what kind of folks are regulars at the Butte.

We quickly packed up and hit the road, stopping to bird in a couple of spots on our way back to Denver where Chris dropped me at the airport and headed on to retrace our steps and try and pick up those elusive white-tailed ptarmigans, Gunnison’s sage grouses and a pair of owls in the Cache le Poudre canyon.

I was weary when I finally arrived home at 1 AM on Monday morning, relieved to have landed without incident after lots of turbulence on the flight and tornados on the ground here that evening. I slept hard despite the thunderstorms going on outside, glad to be back in my bed with my honey by my side.

From the Prairies to the Rockies

Yesterday was so wild that I didn’t even get around to blogging though you can get the daily update over at my brothers blog “slow birding“. We were up before dawn again and headed back out to the site where we saw the Common Crane on Sunday night. We came to a place where what seemed like 10,000 Sandhill Cranes were resting for the night and watched and waited as the sun rose. Groups of cranes numbering 10 to 20 flew over head, coming from other night time resting locations along the river and heading out for their daytime cornfields. Some landed in the flock we were watching, some took off from the flock while we looked on.

Look closely and you can see hundreds of birds in the air near the horizon

The sound coming from this massive crowd of cranes was phenomenal, a cackling, cooing murmur. Occasionally a pair of birds jumped above the mass, spreading their 8 foot wings into the air, danced with each other, then settled their long legs back to the ground. We watched until the sun was up then headed west along the Platte River into Colorado.

We visited the Pawnee National Grasslands where we drove many miles through scenery like this. I tried to imagine what it must be like to live in a place so barren, so desolate, your nearest neighbor miles away. It was peaceful, and beautiful in its way, but I wouldn’t want to live there.

We were searching for longspurs and did finally find a couple of McCown’s Longspurs that stayed still long enough to get a good look at them. At the end of our time at the prairie Chris spied a bird swooping past, and shouted at the top of his lungs, banging on the dashboard “It’s a Prairie Falcon, it’s a Prairie!” He was hoping all day that we would find one and finally we did. It perched on the top of a transmission line and let us get a nice long look at its pale, understated coloring. Less showy than its cousin the Peregrine, but a lovely bird all the same and yet another to add to my life list for this trip.

We spent the night in Fort Collins Colorado. I looked over the map of the town and discovered a walking trail that I went to and got in a good 40 minute brisk walk along an urban stream where I picked up a kingfisher and two Cooper’s hawks to add to my list and worked out my ya ya’s from another 12 hour day in the car. We had an awesome Indian meal at a place called Star of India where we stuffed ourselves with tandoori, palaak paneer, dal and nan, washed down with a pint of the local brew.  I slept hard.

Today it was out before dawn again to try and beat a snowstorm as we drove over the Rockies today to Steamboat Springs. We had to drive through two 10,000 foot passes and were nervous about the impending weather. No problems driving and we got here about 1:00 PM, but the birding was not so productive in the mountains along the Poudre River because the weather was very lousy, but we did manage to pick up a Gray Crowned Rosy Finch which was not only a life bird for me, but one for Chris which has become a real challenge for him.

Crossing the mountains we found this large herd of antelope at the end of a road near a reservoir where we tried for birds near the town of Walden, but the lake was frozen over and covered with snow so there were no ducks or shorebirds to be had there.  We also saw a small herd of bighorn sheep walking along the road.

After lunch we drove up a valley north of Steamboat in search of more birds and the views were just tremendous.  Snowy mountains, farms scattered through the valley, horses and cows roaming in the pristine white. Black-billed Magpies, a stunning bird with a long tail and distinct black and white markings, were the main bird out braving the cold.

I’m happy to report we are currently chilling in our room here at Steamboat, we’ll actually be staying here two nights and I’m thinking of checking out the pool and hot tub for my R&R. Chris is researching the locations for us to try and find Sage, Sharp-Tailed and Dusky Grouse early tomorrow morning, it’ll be another one out before dawn. Slow birding my ass.

Wild West Bird Show

I'm writing from North Platte Nebraska, home of the Buffalo Bill Ranch.  The birding madness has begun. It’s been a whirlwind since I got up at 4:15 yesterday morning to head for the airport, catch a plane at 6:10 that took me to Dallas where my Toyota Tacoma chariot awaited, my brother Chris as chauffeur.

We drove up into southern Oklahoma in a snow storm to the Hackberry Flats wildlife management area and spent 3 hours cruising around on dykes built between water catchment areas and fields of stubble left from the planting of crops to attract wildlife. The wind was blowing so hard that the snow was going sideways, but the birds were unperturbed and we were birding from the truck so we were totally comfortable. Lots of ducks and sparrows, the highlights of the day were the Lapland Longspur and the American Pipit, both new birds for me. The longspur, which is skittish and hard to find was very cooperative and let us get a good long look..

Driving across the plains in the snow was remarkable, the landscape tranquil, rolling brown hills with little stream valleys filled with cottonwood trees. The fence and hedgerows had snow drifted up against them that looked like fluffy piles of shaving cream, sculpted by the wind. Wind farms ran along the ridge lines, the huge turbines turning slowly but steadily.

At the end of a very long day, in the truck from 8:30 AM until 8:30 PM, minus an hour for an all we could eat catfish dinner, we arrived at the 14,000 acre Spelman ranch in northern Oklahoma. Sue Spelman, a 3rd generation Okie, greeted us and showed us our digs, a funky bunkhouse that was the relocated train depot from the town of Spelman. As soon as we got out of the car I threw on my coat and headed up the red dirt road in the fading twilight, a lucky crescent moon and Orion overhead, I was so glad to be out of the car and walking, breathing the cold night air, smelling skunks or cats or sage brush I’m not sure, but moving on my own steam. When I got back we compared notes and tallied our list before falling into bed. We saw 40 birds for the day. Not bad.

Today we woke early and were back in the truck at 7:15 to drive out to the Lesser Prairie Chicken lek before dawn. We immediately spotted 4 males cruising around their mating ground but we spooked them off when we tried to drive a little closer. After waiting a few minutes they returned and we got pretty good looks at them before they spooked again and did not return.  They did not do their dance for us, we speculated because it was cold, and early in the season and the females have not yet arrived. We are hopeful we will see the mating dance of the Greater Prairie Chickens later this week in Colorado.

On our way back to the ranch for breakfast we spotted a flock of fifty cedar waxwings feeding at the side of the road.
Driving across Kansas today we stopped at every other telephone pole to make a study of the variations of Red Tail Hawks. The Harlans’ which is a dark variation, almost completely dark grayish black with a grayish white tail, and the Kriders, very white, almost no markings whatsoever on the breast, and with a much paler red-tail than on the commonly seen Red-tailed Hawk.  We also saw rough-legged hawks, a new hawk for my life list.

Western Meadowlarks have been plentiful the past two days, if we’ve seen one we’ve seen 500, also kestrel are abundant and the red-tailed hawks are everywhere we turn. The true highlight of today was finding the Common Crane, which isn’t common at all, in fact its from India! It was seen on Friday and posted to the rare bird list, we went searching in the vicinity where it had been seen 2 days ago. We scanned each group of Sandhill Cranes we saw feeding in farm fields north of the Platte River in Nebraska. Literally like looking for a needle in a haystack, we actually found the bird.  It has a darker tail and white and black markings on the neck that differentiate it from the Sandhill Crane which has a red patch on the top of its head.

In the morning we will rise before dawn again and go to the Platte river to see the cranes amassed there and watch them take flight back to their feeding grounds for the day. We’ll then head for Colorado to see what we can see. I’ve got a promise from my bro that we will actually get out of the car tomorrow and do some walking, I cannot bear one more 12 hour day in the car! Despite the long hours, I’m so glad to be here, hanging out with my brother and being crazy obsessed birdwatchers together.

The big year, meets the big night, meets the little sister

I'm heading out before dawn tomorrow, flying to Dallas to meet up with my eldest brother and join him for 9 days of his Big Birding Year.  If you've not checked out his blog Slow Birding, you should, he's doing an amazing year long adventure, traveling the entire country back and forth to see how many birds he can spot in 365 days in the lower 48.  I'm joining him for a section of the trip passing through Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska and Colorado searching for the chickens of the prairie and millions of sandhill cranes.  I plan to blog from the road and it promises to be a wild ride, starting with a snow storm  predicted for tomorrow in the very region we are supposed to be hitting first! 

My vision of the trip has us getting up in the middle of the night to drive to the middle of nowhere to sit in the cold dark waiting for these chickens and grouse to do their strutting mating dances on the lek. 

Hopefully there will be some napping or at least early bedtimes involved.  Stay Tuned!

Home Again

We're back from a two-week trip to Florida. I can understand why people go down there for the winter, it was warm and sunny almost every day we were gone, while I hear it was cold in Carolina. We saw some really beautiful places and some really tacky ones too. Florida is a mix of wild places, old developed places and tourist traps and new developed places that all look the same. If you're driving down a strip in Tampa, or West Palm Beach or Fort Myers or any of the big towns along the Atlantic or the Gulf- they all look pretty much the same. Contemporary Spanish, pink stucco with arches and red tile roof's. One shopping center after another interspersed with new housing developments and gated communities with the landscapes all manicured just "so so" as my grand Mama Lu used to say.

But if you can get past all that there is some spectacular wildlife and wild places still left standing, like the Everglades where we spent a week. We paddled our kayaks through the 10,000 mangrove islands on the gulf side, searching for a sandy beach to pull the boats up onto and take a swim or look for shells or eat our lunches. Sometimes there was no where to get out, sometimes it was very confusing and hard to tell one passage or one mangrove hammock from another.

But we found our way every time and managed to make it back to our little rental house on the canal, despite getting turned around or having to paddle against high winds through choppy water once or twice. One day we had to sit in our boats while the fire department dealt with a big motor boat that had overfilled its gas tanks somehow and I guess was one the verge of explosion. All manner of fishing and pleasure boats were starting to pile up around the marina and we were paddling around for about a half an hour before we convinced the Fire Marshall that as kayakers, we didn't pose a risk of sparking anything and they let us get out.

I've never seen so many birds in my life and can't imagine what it must have been like back in the day. They say there are now only 10% as many birds as there were a century ago! Egrets herons, and ibis were plentiful in every marsh and canal and kingfishers and anhingas perched on every telephone wire. My favorites were the huge snow white pelicans with long yellow bills and orangey-red feet that we saw at the Ding Darling preserve on Sanibel Island. Getting there was running a gauntlet through over-development and beach kitsch. But once in the preserve it was pretty swell and the birds are so used to people they don't fly away.

Another favorite place was the Paynes Prairie Preserve near Gainesville where we stopped on the way home. A prairie that's been restored and has a strange mix of animals, including bison and wild horses. From the prairie flows a river that is home to gators and tons of birds and disappears into a giant hole- the Alachua sink. Kind of like a first magnitude spring in reverse.

We also saw wild pigs and turkeys and sandhill and whooping cranes out there on the prairie. We watched a great blue heron swallow a big rat whole! I would definitely visit that park again and they had a sweet campground too where we spent one very chilly night snuggled deep in our sleeping bags.

All in all it was a stellar trip and I'm glad we went and would visit some of the places again. But best of all about traveling is getting back home to sleep in our own bed where the only sounds are of birds and frogs and the quiet hum of the refrigerator.

This morning I spied a pair of red-shouldered hawks making a nest in a tree down near the pond. I could see them from the bed, out the bedroom window, they'll be obscured when the leaves come out but we'll be able to watch their progress til then.

I planted 200 onion plants today, it's supposed to turn cold and rainy again this weekend so in they went, and the peas, spinach and lettuce I planted before we left have sprouted, spring is coming, despite the cold.

Summer Solstice

Happy Solstice! Its great to have so much light around isn't it? Wake up early and stay up late, at least that seems to be whats been happening around our house. Seems like we are constantly eating dinner at 8:30 or 9 at night, just can't seem to stop and come inside before then.

Ah well. We celebrated today by getting up early and heading out to Jordan Lake for some time in the kayaks, I knew it had been way too long since we had paddled when I had to dust off the boat before I could get in.

It was lovely as always, we saw red-headed woodpeckers, prothonotary warblers, eastern kingbirds, bald eagles, osprey, a yellow-billed cuckoo and cliff swallows under the bridge- though not nearly as many as there were last year. As always dozens of great blue herons fished along the shores and croaked and honked as we scared them up into the air, flapping their wide gray wings to fly off to the next cove.

We saw tracks in the sand on the shore when we stopped to stretch our legs that David was sure were bear, but checking the book when I got home I think they were a big dog or maybe a coyote. We got excited about them anyway. Button Bush; cephalanthus occidentalis, was blooming all along the shore line. It is a small shrub with flowers that are the size of a golf ball, perfectly round and covered with white spiky flowers sticking out. The wildflower books' crazy description is "globose inflorescence...made up of many small flowers with exserted anthers" you can see a picture if you click above, I think they are really cool.

The lake was pretty skanky up towards the Morgan Creek arm as it often is, as soon as we pass back under the bridge it seems to clear up a bit, I guess the Fearrington Road bridge forms a bottle neck through which the waters are slow to pass. After all the horror stories I've heard about the water quality at Jordan Lake I've gotten to where I 'm afraid to go swimming which is too bad- it would have felt petty good about the time we got back to the boat ramp to jump in there, but we didn't.

What a marvelous break we've had from the terrible heat these past few days with cool nights in the 50's and low, low humidity. Summer's coming back now though and I feel that we might have to turn the AC back on. My latest Chapel Hill News column June Comes Blazing In is all about the bad heat we had early in the month and heading to the creek for comfort.

Last week we were in Kentucky up in the coal mining section of the mountains between Harlan and Hazard in a little town called Hindman at the forks of Troublesome Creek. We spent 6 days at the Hindman Settlement Schools'-Appalachian Family Folk Week; singing, dancing and playing traditional Appalachian music with old acquaintances and family and new friends too. It's an action packed week that fills me up with spirit in a way that I can't explain or describe, but the way I feel when I'm there is the closest thing to a religious experience I've probably ever had. It doesn't hurt that my brother Jon and his wife Candy, who are very near and dear to me, are there as well and we get to spend lots of quality time together at meals, walking the steep hillsides that surround the school, on the dance floor and at the after party that happens nightly at the wood shop.

Getting back home was made easier by the break in the hot weather. The garden is perking along despite the hot and dry, been watering the veggies and fruits regularly, the flowers just have to manage. If I'm thinking about it I capture gray water as I'm working in the kitchen and carry that around to things that look particularly parched. There is rain in the forecast for tomorrow so we've got our fingers crossed. I hope we aren't heading for another hot dry summer like what we had last year, it's too depressing to consider.

I've started picking squash and expect cukes and beans in another week or so, chard continues unfazed, dug a few taters the other day but they still need more time I think. The onions are filling out nicely and starting to fall over so we'll be harvesting them soon and I pulled about 50 heads of garlic and have those drying in the shed. I guess I'll braid them and the onions and hang them in the kitchen and hope they keep.

I've still got a ton of leeks in the fridge but planning a leek and carrot soup for this weekend to use a bunch of them up as they are not looking as good as they were three weeks ago when I harvested them! It will be a good thing to cook as I pulled 5 pounds of carrots the other day because they were starting to split under ground from being in too long, so everything needs to be cooked up into something yummy- as usual.

It's a good problem to have-too many veggies-as everyone is complaining about the price of gas and food as a result, I'm glad I planted a big garden this year and we are enjoying the fruits.

Merlin Sighting

We were surprised this week by Merlin, I don't mean the wizard, but the falcon. Yes, that makes the 100th new bird on our list of "backyard" birds. I thought it was a sharp-shinned hawk which are pretty common around here, but after studying the photos and the bird book we realized it was a Merlin. One major distintion is the Sharp-shins have red eyes and the Merlin's eyes are black. Very cool and kind of rare here. It was perched on the fountain just outside the kitchen door so that made it even more fantastic. It was hunting a junco or sparrow that was hiding for its life in the ferns. More than once we've seen a hawk make a strike on a smaller bird visiting our feeders, it's one of the down sides to having feeders, but doesn't make us take them away as we love having the birds here in the yard and its natural for hawks to prey on smaller birds.

On the gardening front, I planted 12 dozen onion plants I mail ordered from Dixon Dale farms, Stockton purple, Candy yellow, and Super Star white. I figure thats 12 onions a month which should be just about right, we eat a lot of onions around here. It looks like nothing but onions out there right now with the leeks, garlic and green onions planted in the fall next to all the new ones. But the peas are sprouting, sugar snap and snow, and I planted radish, spinach, carrots and lettuce that I'm watching for daily.

Bulbs are popping up everywhere, remember the 1,000 that we planted last fall? The squirrels keep digging them up and moving them around, so not only are they coming up where we planted them, but in other spots too- its kind of fun and the beauty of planting so many is you don't get so torqued out by those mischievous squirrel antics as you might if you had only planted 50.

We are working the flower beds, weeding, mulching and moving plants around, spring is so close we can really taste it now, those 60 degree days make us want to get out and dig and those 40 degree rainy ones that follow give us a chance to rest those winter tired and lazy muscles from the day before.

We are contemplating getting a really big cistern to set up behind our garden shed and gravity feed the veggies, I'm going to see how much they cost. Next on the to do list is to get the taters planted, I bought sets for 3 kinds last week and need to get them in the ground this week. The few we planted last year (from some that were sprouting in the kitchen) were so tasty that we vowed to plant MORE this year, enough to store.

Alamos, Mexico

I’m back from an amazing nine day bird watching trip to Arizona and Mexico. We saw over 150 birds over five days of birding and I added 60 new birds to my life list which left my head swimming. Even my brother who has to work hard to find new birds wracked up a couple dozen.


It was not as whirlwind as many birding trips have been though it did require 2 days of travel each way to fly to Tucson and then drive 8 hours south to the town of Alamos, a sweet little colonial town nestled in a valley of the Sierra Madre mountains. It’s very arid and part of Sonora, so cacti and other desert plants and scrubby trees like mesquite and paloverde predominate. Like much of mexicao and Central America, Bougainvillea cascade in sweeps of burgundy, pink and purple over every wall and fence.



Alamos in February has excellent weather. Night’s in the 40’s, warm into 70 to 80 degree days, with low humidity and gentle breezes that are extremely tranquilizing, perfect for shady afternoon siestas after long leisurely lunches at the Café del Sol, owned by the Jen and Dave MacKay-our hosts in Alamos and proprietors of Solipaso and El Pedregal. (Check out their whole trip at http://www.solipaso.com/)



The place where we stayed, El Pedregal, means stony place, but its part of a larger area known as the Chaleton, which is named for the ancient Chalate fig trees whose deep green spreading canopies and buttressed roots are the largest thing growing in the area. The centerpiece of El Pedregal is a large round thatch roofed palapa that is flanked by one such Chalate that happened to be loaded with figs while we were there. They are not tasty for human eaters but flocks of long-tailed magpie jays visited the tree by day and fruit bats by night to munch the small green fruits. I spent one afternoon working on my "fig drop-butterfly" meditation while lying under the palapa, listening to the thump of figs falling to the sandy soil while watching butterflies float through the canopy and across the clear blue sky.

Dave is an expert bird guide and well known after living in Alamos for 13 years and leading bird watching trips all over Sonora and other parts of Mexico. This is an area that seems to specialize in big birds with long tails. The Black-throated Magpie Jay and the Squirrel Cuckoo were two of my favorites, each with tails 12-14 inches long. We also saw Rufous-bellied Chacalacas, noisy turkey-sized birds that jumped around high in the fig trees eating fruit and cackling, their name derived from their raucous call.

Other favorite exotics were the Russet-crowned Mot Mot, green back, reddish head, creamy chest and long blue tail culminating in two feathers with small round paddle like appendages. There were tiny Mexican Parrotlettes, who won the prize for cutest bird, the 5 inch mini-parrots clustered together on sunny bare branches, looked like clumps of bright green leaves from a distance, but on closer inspection were revealed to be birds, preening each other and warming up before flying off into the sunny day.

Jen and Dave were fabulous hosts and treated us swell, touring us to local restaurants for dinner, and also to the plaza on Sunday night to eat tacos de carne asada while the whole town gathered to crown three local teen beauties in one of the many such contests that are held each year. Only 10,000 people live in Alamos, which was founded in the 1600’s when silver was discovered in nearby Aduana. Spaniards enslaved the local Yaqui Indians to work in the silver mines and build the grand colonial houses that still stand in Alamos.

Once the silver mines played out the town began to fall into disrepair, but in the 1900’s it was “discovered” by an American who began to buy property and restore it. There are now about 200 expats who own property in the area, many only visit in winter. The 110 degree, high humidity days of summer are not for the faint of heart. My two favorite stories of expat's are the dentist for the Grateful Dead and Zsa Zsa Gabor’s personal assistant of 20 years. The actor Carroll O’Connor also made Alamos his home along with others who have adopted this quaint Mexican town.

After four days of birding we left Alamos and headed back to the states. We spent a night in Madera Canyon- famous for bird watching- especially hummingbirds in spring. We were there in the off season for one reason only, to find the Crescent-Chested Warbler, a bird rarely seen in the US that had been hanging out in one section of the canyon for the past couple of months. We woke early and climbed up a rocky switch-back trail in the chill air, snow dusting the tops of the mountains on either side of the canyon. We encountered several other birdwatchers, all intent on finding “the bird”.

Few birds were stirring because it was still very cold and I wandered ahead of the group. I caught sight of a small group of Red Crossbills, they look like House Finches with their reddish heads but have these crazy crossed-bills, one of those odd evolutionary adaptations that allow them to pop open pinecones to get to the seed inside. While studying the Crossbills- a new bird for me, I saw something smaller flitting through the branches and called to my brother “Hey- I’ve got something here, small bird, yellow breast, white eyebrow” “That’s IT!” he shouted, “my sisters got the bird.” And everyone clustered around craning their necks to see this tiny warbler, with a small chestnut colored crescent on its yellow chest, bluish gray back and white eyebrow.

He was very cooperative as birders say and hung around so everyone could get a nice long look. Before leaving the warbler, my bro got to talking with another birder who told him that a place about 100 miles from Tucson had lots of owls roosting, including a Long-Eared Owl. This was the last North American owl my brother had yet to see and he had been looking hard for this bird. I knew where we would be heading our final day in Arizona. The rest of the day was anti-climactic, not many birds around and so we drove into Tucson for dinner and a night with an old family friend.

The next morning we dropped our traveling companions at the airport to catch their early flight and zipped out to Whitewater Wash. No sooner were we out of the car than my brother met another birder who knew the area well and walked us directly to the tree where the long-eared owl was resting and pointed it out to us. I don’t think we would have found the bird without help, it was so well camouflaged. A large bird with tall ears, half brownish gray, half white. We agreed he was much grayer than portrayed in any of the books, but perhaps it was the light or winter plumage. The facial discs were yellowish brown, a wide line of white feathers covered the center of its face above the beak and the bird blinked at us from his hiding place in the tree. We also spotted several barn owls roosting deeper in the clump of willows at the end of a large pond.

Thousands of Sandhill Cranes also winter at this location, though most of them were out foraging by the time we arrived, we did get to see a few of them standing and flying in and out. There were lots of ducks and good sparrow watching at this location as well. We walked around and birded from the car a bit and then zipped back to Tucson to catch our mid afternoon flight. It was a dandy trip and I’m glad I got the opportunity to go. Getting to Alamos wasn’t particularly easy, but seeing so many great birds and having Jen and Dave as our hosts made it worthwhile.

Bird Crazy

I'm getting a little bit excited about the fact that I'm heading to Mexico in about 10 days to go birdwatching with my bird crazy oldest brother and friends. Flying to Tucson and then driving south through Sonora to Hermosillo and on to the Sea of Cortez and then up into the Sierra Madres to the town of Alamos. I'll be sure to post after I get back and I know that I am going to see amazing birds I would never see north o' the border.

In preparation I've been updating my life list into a groovy little book I bought specifically for tracking birdwatching forays and its got the life list in the back. I got to thinking about all the birds that I've seen right in my own backyard and decided to share those with my readers so you'll now see a series of lists on the right of my blog page. The first two lists; birds that are here all the time and those that nest in summer, actually all nest in summer, but some are here in winter too. Then there are some that only come in winter and others that only pass through in spring and fall during the migration period.

So all you birdwatchers out there can be jealous of just how birdy my backyard actually is. I count 95 birds seen right here on the property. My life list isn't super long for those who are serious birders out there, I'm up to 330, nothing compared to the bro who is around 650 I think, but he really works at it and if it wasn't for him taking me to far out birding hotspots, my list wouldn't be half as long as it is now. Thanks Bro.

The craziest thing I've ever seen here was a juvenile white ibis that roosted in our yard one night last summer, we were amazed and took a photo of it for proof.

This winter has been different with Pine Siskins more frequent and Red-breasted Nuthatches which we haven't had before but they have apparently irrupted down from the north and are being seen in many parts of the south.

Whats normally here that I am not seeing are Chipping Sparrows and Pine Warblers. If you are a bird watcher in NC, are you seeing those two birds in your birdwatching adventures? Let me know.