I was at Kensington wandering around looking for birds while this photographer was stationed in one spot watching one subject. I’m a bit envious of his equipment, but I think I had more fun.
Thanks, Cee for hosting these black and white challenges!
I’ve heard the herons are back out at Kensington, I’ve even seen pictures on Michigan birding Facebook groups of them flying around repairing and remodeling their nests in preparation for this year’s branchers. (Did you know baby herons were called branchers? Me either, I had to look it up!)
This morning, feeling restless, I decided to go out to see even though it was spitting snow and ice cold rain. But the forecast says it’s only going to get worse around here in the next week so I decided to just go this morning.
I arrived at the nature center around 7:45, it was dark and dreary and there were no other cars, unusual in my experience. Apparently most photographers knew better than to even try. I worried that there wasn’t enough light for my long lens.
As I was standing on the boardwalk, struggling to capture the comings and goings at the heron rookery, I heard a very loud cry right next to my right elbow.
This guy was demanding breakfast. It kind of felt like I was still at home with a certain short fuzzy little girl. I stopped what I was doing and offered him a couple peanuts from my pocket. He eagerly jumped into my hand and scarfed them up.
I had been wondering, on my drive to the park, whether the female blackbirds had arrived. And yes they have. At least one has. And she was disgruntled to be out there in the snow, so I gave her a few peanuts too.
I took a few more shots of the herons, vowing to come back some sunny morning, then headed into the woods. I was looking for skunk cabbage, a sure sign that it’s spring around here, even though it’s still snowing.
And of course I’d be visiting with my favorite little birds. I’ll share those with you in the next post.
Ah yes. I went out to Kensington nearly a week ago to see if there were red-winged blackbirds singing there. I had one lone male visiting my feeder at home, but I hadn’t heard the early blackbird chorus that announces spring every year here in Southeast Michigan.
But I got distracted, first by the turkeys and then by the redheaded woodpecker. Still….were there red-winged blackbirds here in Michigan, aside from the lonely guy at my feeder?
I could hear a few, down another icy trail, and I hoped I didn’t have to go too far to gather proof. They were mostly far away, hiding in the cattails. They weren’t making much noise, and seemed a bit shy, or maybe they were just shell-shocked by the freezing temperatures and snow.
One was walking up the path ahead of me. I thought maybe if I put some peanuts and oilers out I could coax him up into a more photogenic location.
The longer I stood there the more blackbirds I saw, though none were brave enough to come get the treats I put out.
Eventually they came closer, and ate some treats that I tossed near them. They even sang a little, but I know that later in the season they’ll be much happier to see me, once they figure out that the people visiting generally have food for them.
So yes, spring has officially sprung in Southeast Michigan. The red-winged blackbirds are here, let the snow begin to melt!
My purpose, this past Monday, in going out to my favorite park was to see if the red-winged blackbird was back here in southeastern Michigan. I had one visiting my backyard feeder, but I hadn’t heard him or any others singing, my true harbinger of spring.
I knew if they were anywhere, they’d be at Kensington which has large marshy areas and more importantly, people with food for the birds.
When I arrived I drove past the heron rookery in case the eagle happened to be there, and since he (or she?) was not, I didn’t bother to walk over there after I parked. Instead I considered which trail might be most effective for finding the blackbirds.
And then I remembered that I have been seeing beautiful images of the illusive (to me anyway) red headed woodpecker taken at this park. And I knew, from those pictures, what area of the trail system he had usually been seen.
So I decided to go check that out before more people showed up. I had only seen one other car in the lot, and I didn’t want a lot of people clomping around scaring off my birds! And speaking of clomping, I was wearing my Yax grippers, and let me tell you, wearing those on ice makes it impossible to sneak up on anything!
I arrived at the location I thought I’d find the red headed and there wasn’t a bird to be seen. Nothing. Not a sparrow or a mourning dove. Not a starling or a cardinal. No hawk, no crow. No bird sounds. I stood there a long time. Then I sighed and walked off down the trail, head down, dragging my heavy camera in defeat.
And then I heard the little squeak of a nuthatch. He was poking his head up over a slightly hollow stump. Someone had left some millet in the stump and he was poking around eating what he could find
He was adorable. And then there was a second set of squeaking, and I saw a second nuthatch on a nearby tree. Beautiful.
I walked over to their stump and put a few peanuts in there, as sort of a reward for posing so nice for me, and then I backed up and waited. Soon enough they were both running around on their stump, and my camera was following them.
And then I heard a bigger squawk. OMG, look what came in for a peanut!
Well, look at both of them, the red headed and a male downy woodpecker, tucked in lower on the right side of the stump. I could hardly breath as I was shooting.
And even when the red headed flew up into the tree he didn’t go far.
He kept posing for me, up and over branches, in and out of the sun. My arms ached from holding the big heavy lens up toward the sky.
But I couldn’t stop smiling.
I clicked away until I finally gave up. He wasn’t moving, and I had no idea if I had anything worthwhile.
Still smiling, I walked away. After all, I had to go find my blackbirds!
A couple weeks back Debbie, of ND Domer’s Mom said, in a comment on my post about snowy owls or barns, that she wouldn’t mind seeing a turkey, and I assured her I’d run across a turkey sooner or later.
Well, yesterday turned out to be the day.
And in the early morning light they were beautiful.
In a weird sort of way.
And though they were not the reason I was in their park, they turned out to be a feature of the icy walk.
Why was I there? Well, I was trying to confirm whether red winged blackbirds were indeed back, that my loan male visiting my deck wasn’t an anomaly.
What did I find?
Guess you’ll have to wait and see.
It’s possible that spring is closer than the snow on the ground foreshadows.
This little goldfinch was on my railing a couple days ago, sporting his fresh yellow feather patch. You might even think he was showing off.
And coincidently I sent this little goldfinch to a friend that same day.
Maybe it doesn’t mean anything, but I like to think spring is here. Of course I think that every year about now.
But then on the 25th this guy showed up. I was so shocked I couldn’t focus the camera.
Ah huh. This year, for sure, spring is here early.
Yep. No question about it.
Sunday morning, in preparation for the Super Bowl, I left home with my camera.
OK. So maybe it didn’t have anything to do with the Super Bowl, maybe it was just me wanting to get out of the house for a little bit. With a camera and nowhere specific to go.
A friend had told me about a snowy owl that she’s seen a few times over near Katie’s vet. Lots of open fields and telephone poles out that way so I figured maybe I would finally see a snowy owl if I headed in that direction.
So I did.
And I might have seen one. Something kind of large flew directly over the car, while I was still on the freeway. I only caught a glimpse of the underside, the same color as the light grey sky, it blended into the nothingness above me and then disappeared. It might have been a hawk. But it felt more round than a hawk in flight would be.
Anyway, when I got to the town nearest the vet I entered a pretty heavy snow squall. It was hard to see anything, and I was trying to figure out if I should just turn around and go home. How in the world would I see a white owl in a blizzard?
I crept along, passed Katie’s vet and turned south on the next big road, looking for the small rural road she said the owl had been seen on. It seemed sort of far, and figuring I had missed it, I stopped looking at the street signs just about the time I passed the road.
Darn it all.
So I drove on to the next road and a place to turn around. But what was that over there? A very nice barn? Well, might be I should just go over there first and then go back and find that owl road.
And up there at the next, quite far away, corner, well that looks like a good barn too. And wait, over there, I need to see what’s over there for sure. Good thing the snow let up.
And that’s how it went. On my way back to the road that might or might not have an owl I kept finding more barns. And the snow came and went.
Sometimes on the left would be sunshine and blue sky while on the right a blizzard raged.
I eventually did wander down the road I had originally intended to explore. Never did see an owl of any color. Saw a couple turkeys cross the road, but they didn’t want their pictures taken.
And then I turned a corner and saw the sweetest little barn with a dormer. Something niggled at me and then I remembered. I’d been by this exact barn about a month ago. I had no idea where I was by then, but I knew if I was repeating barns it was time to head for home.
I have to say this adventure was mostly a barn hunt on which I might have seen a snowy owl float overhead for a moment. In fact I think I’ll just say that’s what it was.
Yep. I saw a snowy owl on Sunday, and I got home in time to watch the game too.
Win/win
Those of you living in warmer climates would probably like to see more snow photos, right? Since my retirement I can attest to the fact that snow is better viewed from behind windows than windshields.
Similarly I bet snow is better viewed from a beach in, say, Alabama, than from the deck of a home here in Michigan. And since I didn’t want you to miss the exquisit beautify of life here after a snowstorm, I figured I better get to it and post a few more before springs drops on us.
Because this is the time of year that I am fooled, every single year, into believing that spring is right around the corner. Even when I look outside and there’s nothing but snow as far as my eye can see.
We have had sunshine the past two days, which in itself fools a person into thinking winter is almost over. After weeks and weeks of grey skies I felt like I needed to take the camera and go somewhere, anywhere, just to get outside.
But I needed to feed Katie her lunch and then take her outside before I left her for a few hours. And of course on our walk I saw this.
And of course then I had to hurry her back to the house, grab the camera and go back to the robin tree (which is actually a dead tree covered in bittersweet vine) which was shining in early afternoon light.
And by the time I got done taking those it was getting sort of late to go on any big adventure, so I settled in to process the robin images, and that ended up being my big photo shoot for the day.
Next week I have meetings and appointments almost every day. And of course who knows if we’ll have sun again any time soon. It’s hard to say if I’ll have another opportunity in the near future to run away for a few hours with the camera.
But since I know it will be spring soon I’m not too worried.
Yep. Next week or the week after I’m sure I’ll be seeing little green nubs pushing up in my gardens. Though at the moment I can’t actually see my gardens since they’re buried under the snow.
But it won’t be long. I just know it.
