Early May at the Marsh

I visited the Arcata Marsh last Saturday (May 7) and again on Monday, curious to see how the place is changing as spring progresses. I am sorely missing my familiar eastern spring migration, and I haven't found anything so dramatic here, but there is certainly seasonal change. And there were plenty of May-ish things to see at the marsh!

Big purple lupine blooms (I'm not entirely sure of the species) filled big patches of field near the paths:

On Sunday, I saw a Green Heron keeping watch over a rather precarious-looking nest:

And I watched an adult Orange-crowned Warbler gathering caterpillars and other goodies:

While its frumpy fledgling waited in the bushes (look at that stump of a tail!):

Monday afternoon was sunny and warm, and a Red Admiral was out and about:

These two dragonflies were gearing up to produce the next generation; they flew around a lot while interlocked like this, which strikes me as quite a feat:

Dozens of Cliff Swallows were swarming around and under the eaves of a building near the bay. This must be a good nesting place! I love watching swallows in any situation, but it was especially cool to see all these birds in one place, and to watch the patterns of their shadows on the bright wall:

Here's a video of the Cliff Swallows swooping and swarming:



Great Egrets adorned rocks in the bay:

In a nearby pool, an Eared Grebe hunted over (I think) an eelgrass bed:

I've only seen Eared Grebes before in their plainer winter costumes, and I'm really liking this individual's fancy bronze face-tufts:

The coolest part, though, was seeing what the grebe brought up from underwater. I'm not sure what this little morsel is, but it looks soft and shiny:

At one point the grebe brought up a pipefish, a fish in the same family as seahorses, and certainly not a creature I've ever seen in the wild before:

I think I can see the seahorse resemblance from this angle:

The pipefish was quite a big catch for a little grebe, and it took some struggling, but the grebe finally worked the pipefish down, head first and tail waving:

Toward the end of the afternoon, I watched a male Allen's Hummingbird doing his absolute best to impress a female. Here's the male (I'm identifying him as an Allen's Hummingbird because of the green feathers on his back, although it's not impossible that he's actually a similar looking Rufous Hummingbird, since those birds are also in this area now):

And here's the discerning female:

The male would alternate between perching, feeding, and performing aerial acrobatics that involved swoops and dives and whistles of air through his feathers. At one point I watched him dance back and forth in the air right in front of the female's face, dazzling her with his fancy feathers and fancy moves. (I really should have thought to take a video.) All of this took place in the middle of a huge and blooming blackberry patch; the plentiful flowers clearly made this an attractive spot for the hummingbird pair:

Here's the male again:

I only got to see the full effect of his costume a few times, but those moments made quite an impression!

While I was watching the hummingbirds, a male Common Yellowthroat popped out for what is surely the closest and clearest view I've had of these usually secretive birds:

I'm sure it wasn't a coincidence that I was standing in a blind at the time. What a gorgeous creature!

Nests, courtship, flowers, babies.... That sounds like May to me!
 

Birds, Brown Plants... Beaver!

Spoiler alert: There's a Beaver at the end of this post. I know, I'm excited, too! But I have lots of other things to share from today's awesome woods walk, and I feel like I need to save the best for last. So don't worry, we'll get there! (Or, skip to the end if you want instant Beaver gratification.)

I spent a good chunk of this afternoon wandering through the fields and woods of a nearby park, enjoying the bright sunlight that made the day feel almost warm. This time of year most of the field's plants are dead and brown, but there are still cool things to see, like these fantastically puffy milkweed seedheads:

And there were lots of different birds out today taking advantage of the field's bounty, including several sparrows. A big Fox Sparrow popped up briefly from foraging on the ground -- these birds are not extremely uncommon in Connecticut, but this is only the second time I've seen one here, and I just love this one's rich red "beard":

Dark-eyed Juncos were everywhere, handsome little puffballs on bare branches:

And a single warbler was flitting around, fairy-like, among the goldenrod stems. This rather nondescript little fellow is (I'm 99% sure) an Orange-crowned Warbler, quite rare for this area (or at least, there are hardly any recent eBird reports of this bird around here). In any case, I was happy to get to meet this very active, very plain bird:

As the sun was going down and I was leaving the park, I walked past a small pond and stopped to admire the amazing ice patterns forming on the water's surface (seriously, how does this happen?):

And then when I turned around, this stump jumped out at me (well, not literally, but you know what I mean):

Huh, now that looks suspicious! Somebody definitely worked hard to bring this tree down, and recently, too:

I've seen years-old beaver-chewed stumps in other woods around here, but never anything as bright and fresh at this. And now that I'd been confronted by this stump, I took another look at the pond... and saw the many chewed branches along the water's edge (making a very pretty pattern, actually):

And is that a pile of sticks -- maybe even a growing lodge -- on that island in the middle of the pond?

I'm sure I've seen beavers before, but it's been many, many years, and I've never seen one in Connecticut. So just in case, I decided to wait and see if the creature who cut the branches was actually hanging around and might make an appearance. And sure enough, after just a few minutes, I heard the sounds of splashing and ice cracking, and then a beaver's nose and ears surfaced:

And there's a beaver tail!

The beaver played coy for a bit, swimming around under the ice. Soon, though, it swam over to the shore, and after some more ice cracking (to make a hole, I suppose), it grabbed a nice thick branch and brought it back to the island, emerging entirely from the water. There you are, Mr. (or Mrs.) Beaver!

The beaver was really into chewing its stick, and didn't seem to mind that I was sitting right there taking pictures:

So exciting! Beavers are basically awesome, and I really hope this one gets to stay in this pond -- I know beavers and humans can clash over property and tree use, and the beaver population is growing (after actually having been extirpated from Connecticut in the mid-1800s... how crazy is that?), but this pond is in a state park, so.... Fingers crossed! If this beaver doesn't mind living in a place where people visit and travel, surely we can spare some of the trees that make this part of the park pretty, right? I guess we'll see.

Right now, anyway, there's a very happy beaver here with lots of sticks to eat. I couldn't resist recording a quick video of the beaver in action -- if you turn up the volume and listen really closely, you can even hear some chewing:

What an awesome day. :D