The Bulk of Spring: Part 2

To continue the previous post, I'm chronicling more of the amazingly rich goings-on at our house over the past couple of months. I haven't even finished with the birds yet!

Birds, continued
 
Many of the birds we saw in our yard in April and May were birds who were also around during the winter (maybe not necessarily these same individuals, but the same species at least). Familiar as they are, it's still nice to see these birds in the spring as well. For instance, Purple Finches have remained common visitors at our feeders; I've never had the chance to see Purple Finches so frequently before, and I've loved becoming more familiar with these birds (and I'm much more confident in distinguishing them from House Finches now). Here's a male Purple Finch posing nicely on the feeder:

The male American Goldfinches gradually molted into their highlighter-yellow outfits for the summer:

And before the leaves came in was a good time to watch this Downy Woodpecker demonstrating an excellent place to stash seeds from the feeder (many woodpeckers have now used this crevice in this apple tree for this purpose):

It was great to see a couple of familiar birds turn their attention to nesting in the spring, although I'm sorry to say that neither of the following two nesting attempts were successful. A Dark-eyed Junco built a nest right on the slope between the road and our yard; here's a picture of the mother on her nest (incubating eggs) on May 10:

The junco's nest was very well hidden -- I'd never seen a junco nest before, and I never would have seen this one if we hadn't accidentally passed too close and startled the female off of the nest. I hope it wasn't because of our closely-passing scent trails that the nest was raided by a predator sometime in the next week or so; on May 17, I found the nest abandoned and eggshell fragments nearby. Hopefully the juncos have had time to start a fresh nesting attempt in a new location.

Similarly, an American Robin set up a nest in a very neat-looking spot under our solar panels. I very much enjoyed receiving the adult robin's glares when walking along this edge of the meadow (this picture is from May 11):

But this nest, too, was a failure. Just yesterday (June 7), we found a pile of neatly-plucked juvenile robin feathers -- some of the larger feathers were still partially encased in sheathes -- on the ground near the solar panels, and the nest was empty. I'm guessing a hawk saw this nest and helped itself to the contents. Oh sigh. It's a tough world out there!

Wild Turkeys became a fairly common sight in our meadow this spring, and we got to observe lots of interesting behaviors from these big birds. Around dusk on April 30, a male and female turkey wandered into the back of the meadow, and the male proceeded to display his fancy feathers:

The female didn't seem especially impressed, but he kept at it:

While the male turkey was busy trying to impress the female, the female went about her business. She sat in a bare patch in the meadow, fluffed out her feathers, kicked at the dirt, and got a nice thorough dust bath:

It turns out that the bare part of our meadow is the perfect spot for turkey dust baths! Over the next couple of weeks, we saw turkeys bathing in the dirt here several times. I had no idea our property was so well suited as a turkey spa! Here's the bathing spot, a circle of nice, fine, kicked-up dirt:

And here's a video of one of the turkeys bathing away:

Even aside from the courtship displays and dust bathing, I've enjoyed seeing Wild Turkeys close to the house throughout the spring. They're such large birds, with so many subtly different patterns and colors in their outfit:

I like the sweet, closed-eyed look on this lady's face while she scratched herself at the edge of the meadow on May 17:

And when I went outside soon after taking the above picture, she swiftly moved away (looking very sleek in the process):

After this spring, the list of birds I've seen/heard in the yard is up to 86 species. I'm happy with that!

Amphibians and Reptiles

The property continues to be poor in reptiles (no signs of snakes or turtles or anything all spring). But the amphibian populations are strong. The choruses of Spring Peepers and Wood Frogs were especially loud in April, and the Gray Treefrogs and American Toads joined in more heavily in May. Most of this vocal and breeding activity seems to have taken place beyond our property's borders; I had been hopeful that the shallow pond in our woods would be a great place for amphibians to breed, but I only ever heard a few Wood Frogs calling from that area, and I haven't seen any signs of eggs or tadpoles. Even so, I loved hearing these amphibians, and we did get to see the occasional Wood Frogs and Spring Peepers out and about during the day. Several Red Efts (juvenile Red-spotted Newts) also showed up in our yard in May.

Insects and Others

Spring is also the time for the bugs to start coming out. I didn't pay too much attention to insects and arachnids this spring, but I did come across this incredibly ornate beetle in the genus Calligrapha (an appropriate name for this creature, I'd say):

And on one morning in late April, the still-brown meadow was decorated with small spider webs:

Plants

I'm still very much learning what plants grow on this property, and this spring held some nice surprises. At the beginning of May, I discovered a thriving patch of Ramps in our woods, conveniently close to the trail we built. We harvested a few of these leaves, but the vast majority of the patch is still there, and hopefully it will keep growing in future years:

Several patches of Trout Lilies (one of my favorite spring flowers) popped up in the woods as well, but the only flower I found this spring was way on the other side of the property, next to the road:

The woods across the street from our house were practically carpeted with White Trillium (Trillium grandiflorum) in early May; I only found one of these flowers on our property, but what a beautiful flower it was:

Our woods turned out to have thriving populations of Jack-in-the-Pulpit, along with several Dwarf Raspberry (Rubus pubescens) plants:

And Viola pubescens (commonly called Downy Yellow Violet, but our variety doesn't seem particularly downy):

Last fall, we seeded the bare part of our meadow with native grass and wildflower seeds. Some of the seeds we scattered have sprouted this spring; it's difficult to say exactly what all these seedlings are, but I'm learning to recognize some, like this darling little Wild Lupine (Lupinus perennis):



And it's always nice to enjoy the changing hillside views around our house; I think the new spring foliage (on May 16 in this picture) is almost as lovely and colorful as the same hillside in the fall:

I really do feel lucky to be able to live in this place, to be back in our house, and to be able to enjoy and care for this property. It's been almost a whole year since we started settling down here, and so much has happened already! Soon we'll start repeating seasons (starting with summer), and I'm excited to see what happens next.

Two Wonderful April Creatures, And Some Wildflowers

This is my catching-up-with-April post! This month has been so busy that I can't tell whether it's gone by really fast or really slow.... Either way, there have been a lot of good things happening, and in between all the busy-ness, I saw some very cool creatures while wandering outside this month. I can't let May start without sharing some wonderful sights from April!

First: Peepers! I started hearing a few scattered Spring Peepers calling in our neighborhood way back in late February, but these tiny frogs definitely reached their peak activity in April. They called basically all month from the marshy area across the street from our house, and we got pretty good at going out at night and finding the creatures amid their clouds of ear-blasting sound. On April 9th, we first tried looking for the frogs during the afternoon because many of them were already calling, but they were too well hidden in the marshy grass. I found one peeper that jumped out as I walked by, but he wasn't about to call while I watched; still, I got to admire his subtly intricate camouflage:

What a handsome frog, even with his weird baggy throat:

When we returned with flashlights the same night, it took us quite a while to find our first peeper, but we did it. Look, a tiny inflating bubble in the reeds!
 

Sorry, little guy, just one picture with flash, because you're so cool (look at those veins!):
 

We got better at finding peepers every time we went out looking for them: two the next time, then three the time after that. As I'm writing this, only a few peepers are still calling, and I'm so glad I got to see these tiny neighbors up close while they were doing their springtime thing.

Here's my second awesome sight from this month: On the afternoon of April 23, I went for a walk at the Mulholland Wildflower Preserve with friends. It was sunny and warm, and we were admiring the wildflowers and a few birds, when wonder of wonders, a bat flew past over the creek, and even more incredibly, it landed on a tree just ahead of us, right next to the path, at eye level. Oh my goodness, a bat!
 

As best as I can tell, this is a Little Brown Bat. (But I'm happy to be corrected! I haven't had much opportunity to build bat identification skills before now.) This is one of the most common bats in New York, and probably the species we used to get in our family's house every once in a while when I was little. But common or not, I hadn't seen a bat at all in quite a while (even nighttime sightings seem rare now), and this is by far the closest and clearest I've ever seen a bat in the wild. So pardon the small explosion of photos!

The bat took a nice break on the tree (I'm guessing it had been busy hunting over the creek) and it stayed there for a few minutes while we watched. I can't imagine having to maneuver with all those membranes between limbs. There's its tail!
 

Look at that face:
 

The bat even scratched for a bit under its arm with its back claws, so much like a fuzzy little dog:
 

Ah, that looks like a good scratch:
 

Really though, how adorable and beautiful is this creature?
 

The bat took off for another fluttering lap over the creek and came back to land on a different tree for a few seconds (look closely to see a tiny bat tongue!):
 

And then it was off and down the creek and out of sight. What an amazing encounter!

The rest of the walk was filled with lovely ephemeral wildflowers, and I'm so glad I got to be in these woods in early spring. Trout Lilies are some of my favorite first flowers, not only for their yellow lantern-like blooms but also their pretty dappled leaves:
 
 

White Trillium (Trillium grandiflorum) was just starting to bloom:

We were just a bit too early to see Wild Ginger open its blossoms, but I was still happy to see this cute little plant for the first time (at least as far as I can remember):
 

Also new to me (outside of seeing pictures of it) was lovely Sharp-lobed Hepatica (Anemone acutiloba):
 

Spring Beauty flowers with their tiny pink stripes are always a happy sight:
 

And that's April! Today, on the last day of the month, I went for a gray-day walk (not good light, so no pictures) and saw Palm and Yellow Warblers, a female cardinal building her nest, and many Trout Lilies already past their peak. The earliest stages of spring have finished, and now the really intense part of the season begins. Here comes May!

Two Weekends of Wildflowers

Everything's changing so quickly outside now! Last weekend, I went into the woods behind our house to check out the wildflowers, and I was pretty well astonished by the variety of blooming plants I found just in this little sloping area. A bunch of these flowers were ones I'd never encountered before!

The Cutleaf Toothworts (Cardamine concatenata) were fully open:

I seemed to have missed the peak blooms on this Blue Cohosh (Caulophyllum thalictroides), which was holding onto only a few flowers:

Twinleaf (Jeffersonia diphylla) flowers danced on long stems next to the plant's strangely shaped leaves:

Patches of Rue Anemone blooms showed up in pale pink and white:

The pink blooms were very pretty:

But I especially liked the white flowers:
 

It seemed like this Spring Beauty was trying to be extra beautiful with its bonus petals:

I haven't been able to identify this small yellow violet that was blooming by a stream, but it was quite a lovely flower, named or not:
 

Speaking of yellow flowers, after seeing tons of Trout Lily leaves, I was happy to find a few plants in bloom! These are some of my favorite spring plants:

Small beetles (Asclera ruficollis, I believe) were also enjoying the Trout Lily blooms, apparently munching on the pollen:

A few other insects were out and about on this sunny day, including this Green Stink Bug:
 

Although most of the Bloodroot blooms in the woods had faded, this amazing patch lit up a corner of the yard:

When I went out exploring again yesterday, I found almost an entirely new cast of characters. Well, the Trout Lilies and Spring Beauties at least are still going strong; our yard is practically carpeted with Spring Beauty blooms, which is quite a lovely thing to see:
 

Jack-in-the-Pulpit leaves and flowers are starting to pop up all over the woods:
 

Big patches of Virginia Bluebells (Mertensia virginica) are just starting to open their bright blue flowers:

And I'm so, so happy to see Large-flowered Trillium (Trillium grandiflorum) with its billowing blooms. These plants are scattered all through the woods, and one gorgeous patch even came up right next to the house:

Spring is in full swing now, and I'm excited to see what creatures and plants will show up next!