January-April, 2023

Oh look! Somehow it's been another half-a-year since I last posted sightings from around our property on this blog. :) I seem to be falling into a pattern of gathering pictures on my computer for months and then sharing these highlights in bursts -- but ah well, better late than never! It's time to start catching up with 2023!

The first few months of this year were especially busy, and I'm sure I missed a lot of the goings-on in our yard, meadow, and woods (sadly). But even so, I got to see many cool things, and I've had a lot of fun getting to know my brand new camera (thank you, family, for the Christmas gift!). My old, much-loved, 10+ year old DSLR camera simply wasn't working very well anymore, and it was time for an upgrade. So I've been playing around with this new toy, learning some new things, and so enjoying having a fully functional camera again.

In this post, I'll share some highlights from winter and early spring -- January through April -- and then I'll have much more to share from the rest of spring and early summer in later posts. Here we go!

On January 8, I wandered through our meadow and woods, admiring the sunny blue sky and snow-free ground. Most of this year's winter was quite mild; it's strange to see our meadow in January without snow:

In the woods, I was having too much fun taking pictures of the jungle of moss on this fallen log:

I spent some time figuring out how up-close I could get to another patch of moss with my new camera (much closer than my old camera could go!) -- I also love the tiny ice crystals in this next picture, showing that yes, it is really winter:

We did have some snow in January, although not a lot. Here's a crisp wintry view of the hills across the valley from our house on January 16:

This male Downy Woodpecker was in the apple tree outside our window during a light but driving snowfall on January 13, and I can't resist sharing this picture of this cute little bird with his heart-shaped cap:

On February 12, without snow on the ground in which to build their usual network of tunnels, this Meadow Vole was foraging around a wood pile, quite exposed. Be careful, little vole:

Nearby, I was surprised to see a spider out and about in the sunshine, climbing on a peach tree twig (I think this is some sort of Long-jawed Orbweaver, genus Tetragnatha):

There usually isn't anything blooming here in February, but with all the mild weather and lack of snow, our Snowdrops bloomed on February 16, a good three weeks earlier than I'd seen these flowers bloom before, in the six years we've lived in this house.

And although they're not actually flowers, I also loved seeing the little flower-like bracts on the American Witch Hazel shrub in our front yard; the bracts are left over from last year's blossoms, and they'll host the expanding seed pods in the coming months. Here's a picture of these bracts from February 12:

On March 5, I spent some time admiring some of the birds hanging out in our yard. I love how the underside of this Mourning Dove's tail seems to glow:

A male Red-bellied Woodpecker and Pileated Woodpecker sat in the same tree across the meadow from our house for several minutes, preening and apparently keeping watch over the territory (this tree was sooo far away from me -- yay, camera!):

A male House Finch looked handsome in the branches of a fir tree in our yard:

And here's another (or the same?) male Downy Woodpecker in the apple tree again, this time without a window pane between us:

On March 12, a few inches of puffy wet snow made a pretty frame for this American Goldfinch:

And some mammal's tracks led the way through the pristine snow into our woods trail:

Speaking of mammals in the woods, here's a selection of mammal sightings from our trail camera in February and March; the camera was watching a spot just a little further down the path in the picture above. This video includes six brief clips, featuring a Gray Fox carrying an unknown object (something hard? a bone?), our very first Fisher recorded on our property, a Raccoon, an Eastern Cottontail Rabbit, a White-tailed Deer, and a Red Fox with a mouthful of voles:

 

It's so amazing to be able to see these creatures as they passed through our woods!

On March 26, our American Hazelnut shrubs were blossoming, with tiny female flowers:

And dangling male flowers:

That evening, as it was starting to get dark, this fancy male Dark-eyed Junco spent some time displaying right at eye-level in the blooming Silver Maple in front of our house:

What a puffy, handsome fellow!

 

A burst of warm weather in April meant that a lot of the early spring flowers bloomed and faded quickly, and I missed many of them this year. Fortunately, I was at least able to grab a view of these Bloodroot flowers at their very brief peak, since they grow in our front yard (next to emerging Virginia Bluebell buds):

And I was very happy to get to see our one Red Trillium blossoming in the woods on April 19:

April was also the time when our neighborhood birds started building nests and laying eggs. This is the second year in a row when the Eastern Phoebes declined to build a nest in their traditional (and as far as I've seen, always successful) spot over our front door, so I suppose that time has finished. Instead, they nested in our old shed again, where they were parasitized by Brown Cowbirds. The phoebe's April nesting attempt failed -- they actually removed the cowbird egg, but then they didn't continue on with that nest.

In happier April bird-nesting news, this was the first year since we put up bluebird boxes in 2018 that we've actually had an Eastern Bluebird family come and stay! (A pair of bluebirds made a brief attempt in 2019, but they disappeared after they laid one egg.) It's been so wonderful to have bluebirds as a common fixture in our yard this year -- usually they're only infrequent passers-through here. I don't have any pictures of the bluebird family from April, but don't worry, I'll have plenty of pictures of them in the next posts.

On April 19, I was surprised to see a Black-capped Chickadee checking out the nest box containing the fully-constructed bluebird nest (the first egg appeared the very next day):

The chickadee even went inside the box to take a look around, but it left again quickly:

Sorry, chickadee, this spot is taken.

And that's it for 2023 up through April! I've got lots more to share from spring and summer so far this year, so more will be coming later. :)

Red Fox in April Snow, and More Sights from a Very Long Early Spring

I'll get to the fox in the title by the end of this post, but first I'll share some sights from what has felt like an especially long first part of spring. I'm sure some of the reason why early spring has felt so long is the fact that I'm now home all the time, and every day seems like an extension of the last. But spring also started pretty early this year, and it sure is taking its time to progress.

On the night of March 19, a Spring Peeper showed up on our doorstep as if to say "Hello, it's spring now!" and we heard choruses of these little frogs starting up the next night. This was way earlier than last year, when I didn't hear or see any Spring Peepers until April 5. Here's a picture of this year's early spring herald:

Also on March 19, I was surprised to see Ramps pushing up through the leaf litter in our woods, again a good two and a half weeks earlier than last year:

Wood frogs also got an early start this year, gathering in the pool in our woods and making their quacking sounds way back on March 13 (compared to April 6 last year). Here's one of these frogs floating in the pool on March 26, and staying silent as long as I was there:

While some of our plants and amphibians got an early start, the birds arrived back in our yard this year pretty much right on schedule. It's so wonderful to see so many birds again after they've been absent all winter. I was happy to admire this handsome Song Sparrow up close on March 27 as it and a few of its fellows sang from various corners of our property:

On the morning of March 30, I woke up to the wonderful discovery that our pair of Eastern Phoebes had returned -- they seemed confident and comfortable hunting insects from our back deck, so I am assuming that they're the same pair who has nested at our house for years. Welcome back, phoebes! The male spent some time sitting right outside our bedroom window and loudly announcing his presence:

On April 13 -- amid soaking rain and soggy ground -- I watched the female phoebe gather mud and moss from our yard and fly it up to her usual nesting spot above our front door. The weather hasn't been great for nest building since then, and she hasn't made much progress yet, but it's a start:

On March 27, the Silver Maple tree next to our house looked beautiful in full bloom and backlit by the afternoon sun:

And on the same day, I came across a White-tailed Deer who wasn't expecting to see me emerge from the woods:

The deer got some impressive height as it bounded away:

On March 30, a male Wild Turkey displayed for a few foraging females in our meadow:

White-throated Sparrows have been stopping by our yard in recent weeks, and this brightly-costumed individual looked just too perfect in the midst of a forsythia bush with its emerging yellow flowers:

A couple of Yellow-Bellied Sapsuckers have been hanging around the yard as well. Here's the male on a pine tree that bears the marks of many past sapsucker visits:

These birds have made such interesting patterns on this bark, and the resulting textures provide such a wonderful backdrop for the bird himself:

A storm last night brought a few inches of heavy, wet snow. When I woke up this morning, I was surprised, first, by the white stuff covering every surface (this isn't very spring-like!), and then surprised again by the rusty red animal moving through the white meadow. A Red Fox!

We see foxes only rarely during the day (much more frequently at night on the trail camera), and this fox was quite close to the house, so this was an exciting event indeed! What a treat to see this animal so close and just doing its thing. (Please pardon the blurriness of many of these pictures, which I took through windows.)

The fox criss-crossed the meadow and yard, clearly on the hunt:

About half an hour after I first saw the fox, I spotted it again in the meadow, and I witnessed a successful hunt: A precision pounce into a clump of snow-covered grass, and the extraction of a plump vole. Hooray, good job, fox! We have a robust vole population in our yard, if the extensive tunnels throughout the grass (which were exposed when the winter snow melted) is any indication. The fox then moved back through the meadow and yard, stopping at a couple of spots on the way to gather something... which turned out to be more voles that it had caught and cached while I wasn't watching! That's quite a haul!

A quick stop for one more vole buried in the snow:

Got it:

Groceries obtained, the fox headed off our property, presumably to a den of hungry kits somewhere nearby:

Best of luck with your family, fox. Maybe we'll see you around again sometime!

And here we are, still in the early stages of spring. This morning's snow is now entirely melted again. The Bloodroot flowers in our yard are so close to opening, and they've been stalled at the closed-bud stage for days now. We saw a few Spring Peepers and an American Toad out and about on a rainy upper-40s (F) night back on April 7, but we still haven't had the first big amphibian night yet (last year we saw salamanders and more on the night of April 12). It looks like we'll have a stretch of warmer weather coming soon, though, and spring will certainly continue. I'm dreaming of new-green leaves on trees, flowers everywhere, and May birds.... All of that will be here soon enough. :)

Trail Camera at the Frozen Woods Pool

For the past week, my trail camera has been watching a corner of the small pool in our woods. The water was frozen over, and I had noticed some tracks on the ice, so I set up the trail camera there, thinking it was possible that a creature could pass that way again. I didn't actually think the camera would see much of anything, but I figured it was worth a try at least. So I was pretty well surprised when I checked the camera today and found several videos of furry passersby, and quite close up, too. I had no idea the ice on this small pool would make for such a popular pathway!

The video compilation here shows: (1) a cautious Eastern Cottontail Rabbit; (2) a Raccoon reaching into the water -- and is it making sounds? (3) two Raccoons, one after the other; (4) a brief appearance by a sleek Red Fox; and (5) a Gray Fox. Judging from how many times they've shown up on the trail camera in these past couple of months, Gray Foxes seem to be especially frequent visitors in our woods. I'd never seen a Gray Fox at all before moving to this house, and I'm very happy to have these beautiful creatures around.

The ice on the pool is now melted, but I'll leave the camera at this spot for a little while longer to see whether any animals still pass this way. I'm very much enjoying these glimpses of the wildlife in our woods!

Deep Winter

January and February this year have brought a few new discoveries in our yard and woods, but mostly this has been a time of familiar sights amid snowy landscapes and gradually lengthening days. I love being in a place long enough to build a sense of the familiar, to be able to feel that, yes, this is what winter is like here. And then when new creatures show up, or when I see something familiar in a new way, there's a basis for comparison -- it's nice, and quite different from a couple of winters ago when everything in this place was brand new to me.

I finally set up the trail camera that I bought about a year ago, and I've been moving it among a few spots in our woods and at the edge of the meadow. Even in just the past two months, this trail camera has already given us a greatly expanded view of our wildlife neighbors, especially carnivores who I've only rarely glimpsed before now. Here's a collection of some of my favorite videos from the trail camera so far: a young male White-tailed Deer in the snowy woods, a Coyote loping along our woods trail, a Gray Fox moving more cautiously down the same trail, a Gray Fox in the meadow (this spot turned out to be part of a particularly frequent fox trail), and what I'm pretty sure is a Red Fox passing through the meadow carrying a captured meal.

On January 7, a group of Black-capped Chickadees let me stand close by while they foraged in a fallen sumac tree:

I will always take the opportunity to hang out with chickadees. This picture looks like it's sideways, but the chickadee was just working at an angle:

A storm on February 7 left a thick layer of ice on everything. The Silver Maple buds in our front yard turned into glass-like globes:

On February 9, the ice had only just started to melt, and shockingly bright sunlight made all the trees sparkle with multi-colored lights -- I couldn't quite get my camera to capture the effect, but this photo at least gives an idea:

On February 15, an American Goldfinch posed on snow-covered fir branches:

The edge of the meadow hosted an impressive network of rabbit tracks (this is the area where the trail camera saw so many foxes go by -- watch out, bunnies):

And I admired the now mostly ice-free Silver Maple buds against a blue sky:

Another perfectly blue sky on February 22 made a striking backdrop for the bare Virginia-Creeper-covered trees at the edge of the woods:

And the sunlight lit up a few remaining seeds dangling from a nearby Basswood tree:

The more I think about it, I think February may be one of my favorite months, for its combination of snow and lengthening days. I love sunny, crisp, blue-sky February days, with a good blanket of white snow on the ground.... And February holds the first, tiniest hints of spring. In the past few days, cardinals have started singing in our yard, and a pair of bluebirds have stopped by to check out our nest boxes. I'm clearly not the only one starting to think about spring. Winter is long, but spring will come. And in the meantime, there's still the rest of February to enjoy!