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© Ben Burns
This past weekend, MassAudubon sponsored its annual Focus on Feeders bird census. My kids and I managed to spot fifteen species of birds over the course of the two days. Most were at our feeders, but a few, like the crows and the red-tailed hawk, just happened to be flying overhead while we were counting. I was thrilled that one of our resident red nuthatches showed up and posed for a photo, and completely stoked that my son Ben was ready with the camera. (If you are into birds, you can compare this red nut to the white-breasted cousin from this recent post.) Here’s our full species list:
American crow
American goldfinch
Black-capped chickadee
Blue jay
Dark-eyed junco
Downy woodpecker
House finch
Mourning dove
Northern cardinal
Red-bellied woodpecker
Red-breasted nuthatch
Tufted titmouse
White-breasted nuthatch
Red-tailed hawk
Don’t worry if you missed the fun; Great Backyard Bird Count is just two weeks away! I’ll be counting with kids from my local elementary school. How about you?
© Gerry Burns
My husband was working quietly at the kitchen table this week when a juvenile sharp-shinned hawk snatched a dark-eyed junco out of mid-air, skidded across the kitchen window, then landed on the ground nearby to eat its catch. By the time I got home an hour later, soft gray feathers still clung to the window glass, and a light snow had settled on the bloody murder scene.
Some days are wilder than others, you know?
© Loree Griffin Burns
I had to pull out my trusty butterfly field guides in order to ID this fellow. See that white marking on the hind wing, the one that looks like a question mark on its side? That was the key.
Happy Wednesday!
© Loree Griffin Burns
I hiked through my local MassAudubon Sanctuary this week and came across this guy snacking in the middle of a trail. I took some pictures, sure he’d take off as soon as he heard the shutter click. When he didn’t, I moved in closer, shooting all the while.
Nibble. Nibble. Nibble.
“Hello?”
Nibble. Nibble. Nibble.
“Are you deaf?”
Nibble. Nibble. Nibble.
What choice was there? I took the long way back to the car.
© Loree Griffin Burns
I’ve been noticing gray-white moths like the one in this photo on the side of my house for weeks now. And I have been meaning to pore over my field guides in search of an ID for just as long. But you know how that goes: so many insects, so little time. What luck, then, that the good people at MassAudubon tweeted this link yesterday. Winter moths. Of course.
Maybe I need to spend more time on Twitter?
© Loree Griffin Burns
This past weekend we set out our bird feeders; I’ve been staring out windows ever since. The usual fellows are visiting: tufted titmice, chickadees, dark-eyed juncos, blue jays, cardinals, mourning doves, downy woodpeckers. And white-breasted nuthatches, like the one in the image above. I’ve always loved the tidy nuthatches, so sharp-looking in their crisp gray and black feathers. But on Saturday, I spotted a pair that didn’t look quite right to me. They were scruffier than usual. Buffier in the breast. Wearing strange eye patches. Wait a second …
RED-breasted nuthatches!
I’ve not seen red-breasted nuts at my home feeders in more than fifteen years of watching. We’ve not added a new-to-us species to our birding journal since this sharp-shinned hawk stopped by last year. And I’ve not felt so grateful for a bird since this little brown creeper cheered up the winter of 2010.
“Those who dwell among the beauties and mysteries of the earth are never alone or weary in life,” Rachel Carson once said. This weekend, her words rang truer than ever.
Happy Wednesday, friends. I hope it’s a wild one.
© Loree Griffin Burns
One of my sons has been learning to bird by ear, and he’s inspired me to try it myself. It’s hard! In fact, I’ve found that the few bird sounds I did recognize by ear have been pushed right out of my brain by the flurry of new calls and songs that I’ve been trying to cram in there. Thankfully, our resident catbird (above) has made it his personal mission, it seems, that I not forget his mew call.
Wanna hear it?
If you press that link, scroll down, hit the play arrow on the audio file labeled “mew call”, and repeat for an hour or two, you’ve got the soundtrack to my Wednesday.
Catchy, no?
© Bob R, Grade 5
This photo arrived by email over the weekend, along with a note from the fifth grader who snapped it. “Today I was working in the yard, and I saw a butterfly,” he said, “so I went to go check it out .. I am pretty sure it is a Spicebush Swallowtail …”
He thought I’d like to see it, and he was right. (Thank you, Bob!) In one of those fun happenings that fuels my school visiting, a teacher at Bob’s school independently sent me photos of a froglet she found in her backyard.
Look closely at the world around you, friends. There is so much to see.
(Read that last sentence every morning and you won’t even need me to come to your school. Although if you’d like me to come to your school, you should check out the School Visits page of my website. I added my first 2012-2013 school year events to the calendar this morning!)
© Loree Griffin Burns
My daughter and I made our first observations for MassAudubon’s Big Barn Study yesterday. We had seen barn swallows around the yard and suspected they were living in our big, old barn. What we didn’t realize was that they were entering the barn through the garage. (These doors are closed much of the day. Should we leave the garage doors open? Will they abandon these nests if we don’t? Will we be allowed in the garage once eggs are laid?) Or that they were building nests in not-so-safe places. (Like on top of a live electrical outlet.) As usual, closer observation has piqued our interest, and we’ve got a lot to look into.
We also learned that barn swallows are very hard to capture on film. We never saw one rest or perch, and trying to follow one in flight was a dizzy-making exercise. Luckily, we saw a lot of other birds while we were observing the swallows … including this yellow-bellied sapsucker. We’d seen the strange holes on this tree (a Japanese mountain ash), but weren’t sure who was responsible. Now we know.
Favorite fact for this bird, mined from iBird Explorer North: A group of sapsuckers are collectively known as a slurp.
Happy Wednesday, friends!
Photos © Loree Griffin Burns
Can you see them up there? They’re nesting in our barn and have been lovely tenants. (I am a bit worried, however, that once the babies come we will have to park our cars somewhere else.)
Anyway, our barn swallows are wishing you a Happy Fourth of July …
© Loree Griffin Burns
… a day filled with friends and family and finery. And a little wild, too.
© Loree Griffin Burns
You know I love the wild in my own backyard … but this summer I had the chance to venture outside of it and explore another wild place: Acadia National Park.
Oh, my. It’s a spectacular place!
On one of my favorite adventures, we found this baby turtle sunning and stretching its legs (if you look closely you can see the stretching) on a pond not far from Eagle Lake on Mount Desert Island. If pictures came with audio, this one would feature the croaking of frogs, the chattering of squirrels, the squawking of crows, and the gentle rain of wind moving through the surrounding forest. Heavenly.
© Gerry Burns
More seaside wildlife this week, direct from our vacation on Mount Desert Island in Maine. This was a decent-sized hermit crab, though you’d never know it because we forgot to put something in the photo for scale. Anyway, he was discovered on the sandbar connecting Bar Harbor and Bar Island, just as the sun was setting on another gorgeous August afternoon.
I hope you had some wild in your Wednesday!
We’re moving. If you have ever moved, you can probably relate to how I’m feeling these days: harried, overwhelmed, excited, and sad. The sad part has to do with saying goodbye to a place that has been Home to my family for a decade. For ten years, we’ve worked the soil here, and trampled the grass and climbed the trees and lived with the wildlife. We know this place in a way that no one else does, and it is very hard to let that go. Those trees up there, for example, are two of a dozen or so shagbark hickories that we have come to know. The new owners will surely love them as much, but when they wonder why the one on the right has no shag at the bottom, who will tell them? Who will describe the little boys who grew up playing under that tree? Little boys who one day ran their chubby hands over those tags and strips of glorious hanging bark and couldn’t help but pull. And pull. And pull. I’m sad that this story will come away with us, and that the lovely, generous, naked-at-the-bottom-shaggy-at-the-top hickory will not.
© Loree Griffin Burns
On Saturday, we central New Englanders saw the first true snowfall of the winter. Where I live, we got about five inches, just enough to strap on snowshoes and head out into the wild. My family and I explored the woods near our new house, tracked a neighbor dog, brushed flakes from hearty mushrooms, and stumbled into an area that had, moments before our arrival, been a resting place for four deer. I took photos of the woods and the tracks and the mushrooms and the deer beds, of course, but none of them pleased me as much as the image above. Is there anything as exciting as the rush into untrodden, new-fallen, long-awaited snow?
Happy Wednesday, friends!
