Surprise Backyard Visitor

As I was watching and counting birds for Project FeederWatch last this afternoon, I was really surprised to see this American Robin perched on the edge of the birdbath. Fortunately my camera was close by and I was able to capture this series of photos, because we just don't see too many robins here in Minnesota on November 22nd.

"You know Robin, it's only 30 degrees outside. Even though you're standing on the birdbath heater, I don't think that water is much warmer than 40 degrees!"

A test of the water with wings and tail is the first step toward scooting off that birdbath heater.

Into the bath -- with one foot on the heater for security -- never can be too sure how deep the water is.

Wow, that must feel so good! I love watching robins take a bath -- they're such vigorous splashers. Just look at all that water spraying around!

Now for a few more flutters with wings and tail......

Back up on the heater and the bath is all done. I looked away for just a moment and when I turned to the window again, the robin was gone -- hopefully moving on to warmer regions.

Teach Your Children Well

Some people stop feeding their backyard birds in the summertime, thinking there's more than enough "natural" food sources around for the birds to take advantage of. Not me! I get lots of birds at my feeders during the summer with the added benefit of watching the adult birds teaching their babies where the best places to eat are.

Baby Downy gets a suet treat from his mom.

There's grape jelly in this dish for the orioles. However, I found out this summer that some robins also love grape jelly. This little robin doesn't quite know for sure what to do yet though.

Mourning dove parent teaches "Junior" the best place to find safflower seeds.

All of these photos were taken from the dining room window. Having bird feeders close to the house definitely maximizes your viewing and photo opportunities, plus it's fun to be able to hear them chirping too. I wouldn't have known that baby woodpecker was on the deck except for his loud, insistent chirping for mom to "hurry up with that suet!"

Father's Day 2008

Happy Father's Day to my dad and all the other dads out there! This Father's Day was a perfect, almost-summer day for us here in SE Minnesota. Most of my day was spent outside and in the backyard, the baby robins are fledging. Here's a little one that made it as far as Mr. Johnson's trailer. I love its little downy feather "halo."
As has become our family tradition, Father's Day was celebrated at Forestville State Park near where my parents live in Fillmore County. We didn't know whether we'd be able to have our celebration here this year as there was lots of flooding in the park during this past week. However, the floodwaters have receded and things were looking pretty good. Here's a picture of my brother Dave walking over to look at the river (just past him you can see the far riverbank and a little bit of the river).You can see how the vegetation has been pushed almost flat by the force of the water. As near as we could tell, the water was probably at least 8-10 feet above the normal water level and we could see that there had been probably 2 feet of water in the picnic shelter (which is about 50 yards away from the river).

However, there were still lots of beautiful sights to enjoy and I was able to take plenty of pictures to share with you.

Last year at this picnic shelter, we found a phoebe nest right near the entrance. It was the first thing I looked for again this year and sure enough, she had a nest in almost the same location.It was pretty high, but thanks to my sissy's sturdy cooler, I was able to reach inside and count 5 little eggs.

Here's Mrs. Phoebe perched on the light near her nest.
And Mrs. Phoebe on the nest incubating her eggs. She was very quiet and didn't seem at all alarmed by our presence. I hope she's able to raise her little family without incident.

On the outside of the picnic shelter (right up under the eaves), I found this little brown bat taking a nap. I know a lot of people don't like bats, but isn't this just the cutest little face?

There were so many butterflies out today. I got to see my first Red Spotted Purple! What a gorgeous butterfly! Its colors were so brilliant, I wondered if it was newly hatched from the cocoon.
There were also some Giant Swallowtails flying around. Brother Dave had to tell me what this butterfly was and I managed to "almost" get a decent picture. I can see I still have lots of work to do on my butterfly ID skills.
The Solomon's Seal were blooming all over along one of the trails we explored.
We spotted this sweet little female American Redstart on the old bridge leading to the historic buildings at this park.She wasn't fearful of humans at all and appeared to be concentrating on trying to collect spider webs and little bits of flood debris still hanging on the bridge. Does anyone know if Redstarts use spiderwebs as part of their nests?

Along one of the trails near the river, we also spotted this Ebony Jewelwing (watching me watch her). The white spots in the wing indicate she's a female.
Here's a beautiful little beetle we saw on the sidewalk to the picnic shelter.It looks like the Six-Spotted Tiger Beetle in my Kaufman insect field guide, but I can't see any spots. I think Brother Dave told me the name of this beetle, but as usual, I forgot.

So those are the highlights of my day and once again, I've run out of day before I got everything done. It's going to be a long and busy week at work and I've got to get this post finished up soon and get to bed. Hope you all have a great week and get a chance to enjoy some nature in your backyard and beyond.

It's beginning to look a lot like.......

Easter?!?

The weather guys were only half right and boy, are we thankful for that! We've got about 3-4 inches of heavy, wet snow on the ground but that's nowhere near the 5-10 inches they were predicting when we went to work early this morning. It snowed pretty hard for most of the morning, but by 1:00 it was pretty much done. We had one more burst of snow between 3:00 and 4:00 and then it finally stopped. The roads are wet and sloppy, but no real travel problems. We're not even going to shovel this stuff because temps are probably going to be warm enough tomorrow to melt most everything off.

Here are some pictures of the birds that were in the backyard when we got back from grocery shopping earlier this evening.

A fairly large flock of Red-Winged Blackbirds stopped by. Here are a couple of females and a male picking on some of the bunnies corncobs. I like to see the females; you don't see them very often at the feeders once their nesting territories have been established.

Here's another large group of males enjoying the birdseed in the tray feeder. I'm glad I cleaned all the snow out and refilled these trays when I got home from work.

There were also bunches of robins in the backyard. Last weekend when I saw my first robins, I took the last two buckets of old apples from the basement and dumped them out on the ground. Fortunately, for these robins, they were able to find some of these apples that had been buried under today's snow.

Robins aren't really keen on eating birdseed, but we did have a customer at Wild Birds Unlimited who put out shelled sunflower seeds for his robins and they loved that. Robins also really love mealworms. I think tomorrow morning I'll take one of my tray feeders and put out some treats for the robins to tide them over until the snow has all melted. Then they can go back to digging around in the backyard for their own treats.

Here's a little video of a bunch of robins who were taking advantage of some of the dried-up crabapples still left on my tree from last summer. I still have a couple of highbush cranberries with fruit on the branches, but they must not be as tempting or tasty as crabapples. Maybe the cedar waxwings will like the cranberries when they come back.....

Here's a little treat I picked up for my squirrels at the grocery store.

There was a shopping cart full of clearance priced (99 cents per pound!) Brazil nuts and pecans left over from Christmas (there's 6.4 pounds in these 2 bags). That's a heckuva deal because 2 weeks ago when I bought some of these nuts they were still $3.29 per pound. I just couldn't pass this up and I know my squirrels will be so happy!

(Update: when I was taking some of these pecans out for the squirrels this morning, I decided they were so nice that maybe I'd just better save a few back and make a nice pecan pie for Mr. Johnson.)

Hello Spring!

OK, here it is.....photographic confirmation of the arrival of spring in my backyard:

Yup, my robins are back! (words cannot even describe how happy this makes me)

There were two in my crabapple tree and one even visited the birdbath on the deck. He must have been here last year because he seemed pretty comfortable in these surroundings.

The weatherman is predicting a sunny weekend with highs in the mid-30's for both days. Even the predictions of possible "significant accumulation" of snow for Monday can't diminish my enthusiasm for the next two days of spring-like weather.

Oh yeah, I had a common grackle at my feeders today also. The huge flocks of them drive me nuts in the summer, but the first one is still a welcome sign of spring. I'll keep you posted on the arrival of other spring birds this weekend.....I'm sure there are going to be more!

Signs of Spring

Whew, I'm really having a hard time adjusting to this Daylight Savings Time! How about you? It usually takes me about a month to get back into the normal routine. I'm looking back on my first year of blogging and trying to figure out how I got so many posts done last year. I guess I need to work on my time management skills a little bit.

So anyway, my mom reported in an e-mail late this afternoon that she has bunches of robins at her house. Wow, that's so exciting! Maybe I will see some in my neighborhood soon. In the nature diary that I keep, red-winged blackbirds and common grackles have shown up in my backyard during this time period. I have yet to see any of those birds this year. We've still got about 6 inches of snow on the ground in most places--some places are much deeper while the ground is starting to show in other places.

Here's a nice picture I took this evening a little before 7:00 PM.

There are two special things about this picture: 1) the temperature - still at 40 degrees (down from our high of around 45 this afternoon) and 2) it's still light enough outside to take a picture without using flash or switching to the "night scene" mode on my camera.

It was a beautiful spring-like day today--a day where we only had to wear a "jacket" outside instead of a "coat." You might think that sounds like a goofy definition of a nice day, but here in Minnesota, there's definitely a difference! (and the record cold of last weekend makes us appreciate nice days like this even more)

Here's another little sign of spring in my yard.....my possum is visiting again. Here are a couple pictures I took of her on Sunday afternoon.

And this evening as she was trying to escape from me and my camera.

She had been cleaning up birdseed under this big pine tree and I decided to take some old apples out as a treat for her to munch on. She's still moving pretty darn slow and I watched her climb into the tree as I walked across the yard. I circled the tree looking high into the branches and then finally found her out on the edge of this lowest branch. I think she was pretending not to see me!

I really like her little pink feet and the way her long tail curls around the tree limb. (I don't know for sure that this possum is a female, I'm just saying she is because she's not very big--about the same size as my kitty.)