Wildflowers of Forestville

Last week I took advantage of some fairly decent weather and headed down to Forestville State Park to look for spring migrants. Unfortunately the first couple days were chilly and cloudy, so the birds weren't flying around much, but there were still plenty of other things to see including lots of blooming early spring wildflowers. Here's what I was able to photograph on Monday and Tuesday of last week. (be sure to click on any of these photos if you want to see the *larger* version!)

Bloodroot (almost to the end of their bloom season)

Virginia Spring Beauty

Trout Lily

Virginia Bluebells

White Violet

Common Blue Violet

Squirrel Corn (I call it Bleeding Heart)

Marsh Marigold

Hepatica? Blue-Eyed Grass?I can't find any flower like this with 7 petals....if anyone knows what it is, please leave me a comment so I know too. Thanks!

Swamp Buttercup

One of the Anemones (Rue? or Wood?)

Dutchman's Breeches

I'd like to dedicate this post to my Mom who used to love taking us out to the woods when we were kids to search for spring wildflowers. I remember dutifully traipsing along with Mom all those years ago, but luckily some of her enthusiasm stuck with me all those years and now I look forward to searching for spring wildflowers. Unfortunately, Mom is unable to hike over the uneven terrain anymore to enjoy these spring wildflowers. I had some prints made of these pictures and put them into a framed photo collage for her Mother's Day gift, so she can enjoy them every day of the year.

Purple Martin!

I get a lot of birds in my backyard, but no birds get me more excited than Purple Martins! I was buttering my toast this morning and thought I could hear a Purple Martin chirping but dismissed it as a probable House Finch. Then a few seconds later I heard a definitive Purple Martin song. Toast forgotten, I grabbed my binoculars and camera and ran to the deck and there he was! A beautiful male Purple Martin!

Every year I fill my gourds with a nice bedding of white pine needles and hoist the rack in another desperate attempt to attract these beautiful birds to my backyard. They nested here only once about 7 years ago and the eggs weren't viable, so no nesting colony was ever established.

This adult male checked out all the gourds -- probably to see if there were any females hiding inside.

He perched on the top and checked out the decoy, obviously dismissing that guy as no competition!

Mr. Robin wishes he could fly like that!

Nobody here.......

Nobody here either........

After about 5 minutes of flying around and checking out the gourds, this martin flew north, probably in search of a better neighborhood. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that he will find an unattached female martin somewhere and bring her back to my place, since he knows there are plenty of nesting sites available!

Early Morning Life Bird

Last evening my Sissy called me on the phone, all excited because she had this bird in her backyard that she had never seen before. "It has a red head and a greenish body," she said. Jeez, I thought to myself, what in the world could it be? I grabbed my big Sibley Guide to Birds and went through all the possibilities. Finally, the only thing I thought it could be, based on her description, was the Summer Tanager. I found some other photos on-line and had her look on-line too. "Yup, there it is!" she finally said. It's a male Summer Tanager with first spring plumage. Of course, by the time we finally got this all figured out the tanager was gone. But early this morning, when she was getting ready for work, the tanager showed up again, so she called me. I finished hanging my laundry on the line and Mr. Johnson and I piled in the car to drive the 4 miles to my Sissy's back yard. After standing around for about 30 minutes, Mr. Johnson spotted him -- see, up there, in the branches!
Then he flew down to the feeder pole where the oriole's grape jelly was hanging. Wow, isn't he something?

And finally, he flew to the grape jelly dish, in the direct sunlight, and I was able to get this fabulous shot of him. Wow again! What a gorgeous bird! And a new lifebird to check off my list! Thanks Sissy for sharing this great bird with us!

While we were waiting, Mr. Baltimore Oriole flew in to gobble down some grape jelly and show off his gorgeous colors in the sun.

And I got excited all over again when this Orchard Oriole (my first of the year!) also arrived and showed off his acrobatic skills to dine on the grape jelly too.

So far this May, I've gotten 22 new birds added to my list, bringing my total to 120 so far for the year. The best thing is that I've seen most of these birds within 40 miles of home, so even with gas prices close to $4 a gallon, birding close to home has been pretty good this spring.

A Saturday Trip to Necedah NWR

I'm getting way behind in my blogging (again!) so I'm going to try and get caught up in the next few days because my files are full of pictures that need to be shared and I need to do it soon while I still remember all the details.

I took my Sissy over to Wisconsin to visit the Necedah National Wildlife Refuge on the Saturday before Easter (since we were both lucky enough to have that day off). The weather was clear and sunny when we left Rochester, but by the time we got to the refuge the weather had gotten overcast with occasional rain showers (but at least we didn't see any snow flurries!)

Due to the over abundance of rain in recent weeks, most of the roads inside the refuge were closed due to high water, so without a four-wheel drive, we were limited in the areas we were able to visit. Fortunately, we were able to get to the viewing tower at the edge of the Rynearson Pool #1 where we were lucky enough to see WHOOPING CRANES! I had only gotten a brief glimpse of one on a previous visit to NNWR and this was my Sissy's first sighting. What beautiful birds! We actually saw 4 on this day and it was definitely worth getting wet & cold for.

After talking to another guy in the parking lot, he told me how far I'd be able to get with the car before the roads became impassable, so we took off down the road in search of other birds. We hadn't gone far when we spotted this single Sandhill Crane in the water-filled ditch to the right. We had been hearing them since our arrival and my Sissy was thrilled to see one so close.

While we were watching the crane off to the right, we heard more in flight and coming closer to us. On the left side of the road was a larger pond and that's where this pair of Sandhill Cranes was headed. Wow! We were so excited to see them in flight and so close!

They strolled around for a while and finally found this patch of higher, dry ground where they were able to spend some time resting, preening their feathers, and enjoying the few minutes of sunshine on this otherwise dreary day.

I hope all of you get the chance to visit Necedah National Wildlife Refuge some day. Their beautiful new visitor's center is now open and if you check their website, they have lots of great programs open to the public throughout the year. I hope to get another chance to visit later this summer -- I'm sure the water levels will have gone down by then!

Easter Sunday 2011

Hope you all had a very happy Easter Sunday! We drove down to Mom & Dad's and celebrated with the rest of my family. My little nephew Ethan had an excellent Easter egg hunt.

After finishing our meal, stacking the dishes for Mom to fill the dishwasher and packing up some delicious leftovers to bring home, we headed for home with a short detour through rural Fillmore County to see if we could find the White Winged Scoter that had been spotted a week ago. Along the way, we saw this fox running across a field and heading for the road.

After turning the car around so I could take some better photos, the fox had the same idea -- turn around and run!

After turning down another gravel road, we finally spotted the pond where the scoter was supposed to be hanging out at. I first spotted this Lesser Yellowlegs scouting the muddy edge closest to the road.

And there he was! The White Winged Scoter! (click on the photo to enlarge it) The first ever recorded sighting of this bird in Fillmore County.

We first heard about this duck earlier last week when we were out birding and ran into Chris Hockema. Chris told us the duck's plumage was somewhat different than what's usually seen on an adult males scoter, but that the dark head and white eye "comma" were easily seen for a definitive ID. I was really glad this duck was still hanging around and we got a chance to see it. Thanks to John and Chris Hockema for locating the duck and sharing its location with other Minnesota birders.

Birding Close to Home

Mr. Johnson decided we should take advantage of a bit of nice weather today (between snowy and rainy days) and do a little birding close to home (as gas has now gone up to $3.79 here!) Our first stop was the County 9 wetlands, about a mile east of Rochester. As usual the Giant Canada Geese and Coots dominated this large pond, but we also saw some Northern Shovelers, Ring-Necked Ducks, a Bufflehead (lifer!) pair and one Redhead. No shorebirds were seen, but I did spot a Swamp Sparrow flitting around in the tall grasses close to the observation deck where we were standing. I managed to get a couple photos that were good enough to confirm this little bird's identity.
Not a life bird, but it was still neat to spot this early spring arrival and get some good photos.

After a quick lunch at KFC (have you tried any of their $5 lunches? Delicious!!) We headed a few miles west of Rochester to the Kalmar Reservoir. Most of the waterfowl was at the other end of the reservoir, but fortunately one of Rochester's premier birders, Chris Hockema, was also at the reservoir with his spotting scope and he helped us to locate some waterfowl that we hadn't seen yet this year: Eared Grebe and Ruddy Duck. Like the County 9 wetland, Coots were the dominant bird here.

I was amazed to see that many of these coots were spending quite a bit of time on shore poking around in the grass. Not sure what they were foraging for, but it was interesting to see them walking around on land.

As were were pulling out of the reservoir driveway, I saw these 2 handsome fellows hanging out together at the little waterway next to the road. I never thought of Mallards as particularly large ducks, but this guy just dwarfs the Blue-Winged Teal drake. An odd couple for sure, but they certainly posed nicely for my camera, don't you think?

More rain is in the forecast for tonite, tomorrow and maybe a little bit on Saturday, but Sunday is supposed to be sunny before the next round of rainy weather moves in for next week. Hopefully the weather will straighten out soon and we can get started on our next birdquest -- migrating shorebirds.

A Trip to the Alpaca Show

Today Mr. Johnson and I took a trip over to Owatonna to visit the Minnesota Alpaca Expo. I found out about this event months ago on Ravelry and thought it might be fun to check it out. There was no admission fee (how great is that?) We spent a couple of enjoyable hours wandering through the arena and marveling at all the cute faces.

There are 2 different varieties of alpacas. These are the Suri alpacas. They have long shiny locks like very soft, slightly curly hair.

And these are the Huacaya (pronounced Wuh-kai-ya) alpacas. They are fluffy like teddy bears.

They use their ears to express emotion. This one was not happy about me taking its picture and turned its ears way down around behind its head.

There was also judging taking place here.

Another cute Suri face.

This alpaca and its owner were on their way back from the show ring.

Aren't they sweet looking? We were most surprised at the different sounds they make. Mostly a high-pitched humming, but we also heard one making some little rhythmic squeaky noises too.

Here's a Suri and Huacaya together and you can really see the differences in their fleece. (also note their ears......not liking the camera at all!)

And of course, there was yarn! Lots of yarn! This vendor was my first and last stop at the expo. And I bought this skein of beautiful blue yarn from her (400 yards!) You can't believe how soft it is.

I also found this skein of 100% alpaca yarn in a gorgeous apricot color -- 498 yards!

What a fun day. I'm really glad we went and will definitely watch the calendar for next year's dates and the chance to attend again.