Big Lagoon

On Sunday Morning, I wandered on the beach at Big Lagoon, enjoying the warm breeze and totally clear and sunny skies. Sun! Yay! A couple of sailboats were out on the lagoon; goodness, but this is a lovely place:

As far as I can tell, there's pretty much always something blooming in Humboldt County, but even so, it was nice to see the dunes dotted with colorful spring flowers. Beach Morning Glory (Calystegia soldanella) and Beach Evening Primrose (Camissonia cheiranthifolia) spread their blooms out over the sand:
 

The many American Silvertop (Glehnia littoralis) plants looked weirdly flat, like squashed shrubs:
 

The Beach Pea (Lathyrus littoralis) blooms were very pretty indeed, floating over silvery leaves:

And carpets of invasive Ice Plant (Carpobrotus chilensis) were putting on quite a show:
 

I kind of love the colors on this Ice Plant blanket at the base of a cliff:

Several Northern Rough-Winged Swallows were swooping around the cliffs, vying for nesting spots. I love watching swallows in flight, but I was also happy when this one perched briefly so I could take its picture:

Doesn't this look like a nice place to raise a family?

Surf Scoters were foraging near the shore and handling the waves with ease. Watch out, funny duck:

Big waves aren't really a problem, I guess, when you can dive right through them:

Many people come to the beach next to Big Lagoon to look for agates, and indeed I got sucked into picking up and sorting through all sorts of beautiful stones (and this wasn't the first time either!). The closer you look at the ground on this beach, the more stones with gorgeous colors and interesting patterns start to stand out. So many cool rocks! This picture doesn't do them justice:

I even found my first agates on this trip (one is right in the middle of the above picture). They're tiny, but very shiny, and oh so intricate:

What a great -- and relaxing -- morning with beautiful weather and interesting nature on the beach!

Goodbye Ohio, Goodbye Eastern U.S.

Lots of things have happened in the weeks since I last made a post! I finished up my job in Ohio, got an offer for a new job, and then planned and executed a whirlwind move... across the country. I'm currently settling into my strange and exotic new location (more on that later). All throughout these past few hectic weeks, I was wandering around our wonderful Ohio yard and taking pictures of creatures, but I never got a chance to sit down and say a proper goodbye to this amazing place where I've lived for the past 10 months. More than that, I need to say goodbye (at least for now) to the entire northeastern U.S., which has been my home all my life, and to most of the animals and plants (and seasons and environments) that I've become so familiar with over the years.

So here are some of the creatures I met in our Ohio yard in late May and early June. I guess this is a final hurrah for these fields and woods!

Butterflies were becoming more and more common in the past few weeks. Several Red Admirals were chasing each other around, perhaps staking out territories:

In between the chasing, there was a lot of sunning:

Zabulon Skippers were also chasing each other around and posing on leaves:

A pretty Silver-spotted Skipper was feasting on Red Clover nectar:

And a Question Mark Butterfly chose our house as a sunning spot one afternoon:

When it saw me at the window, it closed its wings, hiding all that orange (but showing the two white spots that give this butterfly its name):

A hefty Green Frog sat at the bottom of the creek, watching lots of little fish swim by:

In the woods, a Groundhog helpfully munched on the Garlic Mustard growing on the slope near its burrow:

After a few minutes of munching, it went on to dig up some more food from the forest floor; I guess I've never seen a Groundhog eating in such a squirrel-like way before:

Almost every day, I'd see this tiny Ruby-throated Hummingbird perched at the top of this bare tree. I kept thinking how weird (and awesome) this little creature looked up there, especially next to a more "normal" perched bird like the Brown-headed Cowbird that also often chose this tree as a lookout point:

A couple of Northern Rough-winged Swallows showed up on a power line above our driveway one afternoon; I love those super long feathers under this bird's tail:

Swallows can make such interesting shapes:

I'm already starting to feel a little homesick for eastern environments (especially deciduous woods). Change is exciting but also disorienting. In any case, I can't believe how lucky we were to get to have this as our home for a little while:

 

And now, on to new things. Stay tuned!

Where the Wildflowers Are

Apparently I've been going to the wrong woods for spring wildflowers for years now! Well, "wrong" isn't quite what I mean; I still get to see Trout Lilies and violets and trilliums and other cool things at all my usual haunts. But today I visited the Bent of the River Audubon sanctuary, where I saw tons of wildflowers that are by no means rare in Connecticut but that I've missed entirely until now.

Like, for example, Bloodroot, whose blooms were closed when I first arrived:

But which opened into luminous beacons as the morning progressed:

I think these flowers are even prettier in the shade of the forest floor:

There were Dutchman's Breeches, fancy little flowers dangling over wonderfully frilly leaves:

And carpets of tiny Spring Beauties:

This little flower is definitely worth admiring up close:

I was already familiar with some of the other flowers I saw, but that didn't make them any less awesome. A few Red Trillium plants bore nodding blooms:

I think these are some of our most beautiful wildflowers, and I'm very glad I got to see them again:

I also admired the Trout Lilies, of course, stout dark plants in the sun:

And wispier individuals in the shade:

I don't think I'll ever get tired of seeing these plants:

So yeah, this is a pretty amazing place for wildflowers. And some other early spring sights made this morning's visit even better. A few Northern Rough-winged Swallows are setting up nests in holes in the riverbank:

I had way too much fun watching these birds perform their aerial acrobatics above the river as they jostled for territory:

A couple of Blue-gray Gnatcatchers were foraging at the edge of the woods, and the female got close enough for some pictures:

Pretty bird:

When I caught up with these birds again later, the male was busy putting on a performance. He would fluff up his feathers and stretch his head down:

The female fluttered from branch to branch all around him, and he kept turning to face her. Bird courtship is so strange and interesting:

What do you think, Ms. Gnatcatcher? Is he fluffy enough for you?

In another part of the woods, a few Palm Warblers worked their way through the underbrush:

One of the last creatures to make an appearance during my visit was this large (multi-foot-long) black snake, who wound its way across the path:

At first, I thought this was a Black Rat Snake, but on closer inspection (and after a bit of research) it turned out to be a Northern Black Racer. How cool, a new snake for me! This website gives a good description of the differences between these two species of large black snake; this creatures' smooth scales were the biggest clue about its identity, since Black Rat Snakes have slight ridges on their scales. This snake rattled its tail against the dead leaves to warn me away -- an awesome behavior I'd never seen before -- but my zoom lens let me get a portrait before the snake disappeared into the woods:

With so many awesome plants and animals, I'm hoping to return to the Bent of the River again soon. I'm very curious to see what will show up here in the coming weeks!

West Rock ho! (Part 2: Birds and flowers and such)

Yesterday, Paul and I had an adventure at Lake Wintergreen in West Rock State Park, and I already posted about some of the creatures we saw there. Here's the second part of the account, filled with birds and plants and other fun things!

I almost never get to see Red-winged Blackbirds anymore, since the lakes at the Naugatuck State Forest where I usually hang out don't have much in the way of reeds or cattails or brush on the water's edge where these birds could make their nests. So I was pretty excited to be around them again, with the males calling and flashing their red shoulder patches in all their glory. Even Paul was getting into these bright displays (he usually isn't very interested in birds).

We also found a flock of Northern Rough-Winged Swallows, seven or eight birds, all careening and diving through the air, and sometimes zooming right by our heads. They were taking turns landing on the path, like the bird in this picture, and picking at something brown and apparently delicious there. And no, that isn't a trick of the camera -- their bodies really are that long and stretched-out. This is a new bird for me, and I don't have any experience with swallows at all really, so it was fun to be able to watch these guys at such a close range.

We found several cool wildflowers as well:

This is Fringed Polygala, a wacky-weird flower that I only learned last year, and with such a bizarre shape, I'm a little surprised that I never noticed it before then. The plant in this picture has two flowers, but you can see the shape of a single flower better in this next picture:

I can't help thinking how much this flower looks like a whiskered face with big ears. :)

This is Hairy Solomon's Seal, with its green/yellow flowers dangling below its stem and just starting to open. You can see the tiny hairs on the underside of these leaves in the zoomed-in picture, and this helps distinguish this species from other Solomon's Seal plants that grow in Connecticut.

The Lowbush Blueberry plants are just starting to open their flowers, in preparation for a delicious summer yield. Yum, yum, yum. I actually haven't noticed many wild blueberry bushes in the Naugatuck State Forest yet, and hopefully I won't miss out on this treat by hanging out there this year.

I was excited to find Pink Lady's Slippers sending up their graceful buds. I love these plants -- I just think it's so cool that we have orchids growing wild around us (this lady's slipper is just one among many different species), and it feels like a treat to find them. Hopefully I'll stumble across some of these flowers open before the season is finished, but the buds are beautiful in their own right.

Here's one last picture, a pretty Orange Sulphur butterfly that flew across our path:

All in all, it was a wonderful trip, and I'm glad we got to visit West Rock again. :)