I’ve been watching beautiful images on Facebook birding groups of Baltimore orioles arriving from locations all over Michigan. Even my own Facebook memories show orioles at my feeder the first of May last year, and here it is the third and I haven’t seen a glimpse of that brilliant orange in my backyard.
I began to worry that the new house built this past winter on the lot behind us had contaminated our yard in the orioles eyes. It’s certainly changed how I see our back yard.
And then this afternoon, as I walked into the living room I saw that flash of orange and I smiled. He was only there for a moment, my movement into the room scared him away.
You’re that crazy photo-taking lady, aren’t you!
But later in the afternoon as I was sitting in my big chair by the window my husband told me there was an oriole on the shephards hook. As I turned my head the big orange bird flew away.
Still…I had hope.
Tonight as I sat in a chair on the far side of the room, facing the window but too far away to be noticed by a skittish bird, I was thinking about going to the store to pick up some oranges. Though I had grape jelly in the feeder, something large had stolen the oranges last night that I’d put out yesterday.
And suddenly, even as I was encouraging myself to go get the car keys a burst of orange arrived on the feeder. I grabbed my conveniently placed camera, complete with long lens, and began to shoot. And while I was still looking through the viewfinder there were suddenly two.
Hey, what do you think is up there?
They were both very wary and I was glad I was a long way from them. They kept scanning the yard in between sipping grape jelly. They didn’t stay long, but this time I have proof.
It’s hard to enjoy dinner when you have to be on guard.
And then, just after they left, a youngster showed up. He surprised me so much that I didn’t get him in focus. But I’m excite to know that three different orioles visited tonight.
My husband got me a new camera lens for my birthday in April, but we’ve been so busy with our Katie-girl and truck safety stuff that I haven’t had a chance to take it out for a test walk.
Yesterday, even though the weather people said there woud be a 10% chance of rain in the morning, my neighbor and I headed to my favorite park where the herons are nesting in their rookery and little birds are always excited to see us.
One of my favorite places.
Early in the morning the sky was filled with puffy white clouds turning pink as the sun came up. I had high hopes. But shortly the rolling grey clouds moved in from the north, and it began to sprinkle. Still, she was game, and I really wanted to see whether there were baby herons, so we decided to go anyway. We both dressed for a 10% chance of rain.
Along the way, on the 40 minute drive, it began to pour. At worst case, we said, we’d drive by the heron rookery and check it out through the windshield. With the wipers on if need be.
With the new lens I can get this close to a heron’s nest!
But as we pulled into the nature center parking lot the sun began to peep out, making the landscape glow just a little.
Everybody was trying to dry out.
Still, it was windy. And when the sun dropped back behind the clouds it was cold. Cold and windy made the little birds very insistent on our attention and we lingered on the boardwalk that edges the water where the herons live for quite awhile feeding the red winged blackbirds and a drenched, bedraggled woodpecker.
No, I’m not a woodpecker, the lady with the long lens didn’t get a picture of him.
There was no action at the heron condo complex. I actually wondered if they had already hatched their little families and moved on. But there was one heron standing atop a nest, and it’s still early in the season, so mostly I was just confused.
One lone heron stands guard. Turns out that there were other herons there too, sitting low in their nests, out of the wind.
We decided to try walking around the lake, I was hoping to get into the woods and out of the wind. It was really cold. Almost immediately we came upon a Canadian goose couple, one of which stepped into the path and began to hiss at us. Uh oh. I told my neighbor not to get too close, you don’t want to mess with an angry goose. Then I noticed the babies behind them.
Out of focus angry parents, protecting little tennis balls of fluff .
We gave them lots of room as we moved past them, then we watched the babies, from a place far enough away that the parents weren’t threatened. That’s where having a long lens is really helpful.
Hey lady! My siblings are busy messing around in the mud, but I’ll pose for you. Stardom looks good on me!
We didn’t get much further when the wind really picked up and we realized that walking all the way around the lake was going to be pretty miserable. So we turned around and headed back toward the car.
A second family, swimming among the lilly pads, with about a dozen little ones.
The parking lot greeter cranes were delighted we were back so soon. Their business had been a bit slow that morning, what with the weather and all. They were more than happy to get their parking permit payment in the form of a yummy snack.
Hey! Don’t forget to pay your parking fee!
We left damp, chilled and happy. I had the chance to try out the new lens , she got to feed a few birds and one hungry crane couple. We vowed we’d be back soon to monitor those illusive herons.
But we’d pay better attention to the weather report next time.
Sure lady, you go get back in your warm car.We’ll wait here in the wind for someone else to come along and feed us.
I’ve been seeing a couple of bluebirds flitting around, mostly in the neighbor’s front yard. Tonight I saw one in our front yard while I was walking Katie. No camera. Dog.
You know the usual excuses.
But I smiled that I even saw him and Katie and I continued on our walk.
This evening as the sun was going down I noticed this guy sitting in the back yard on the garden fence and I shot through a filthy window while he posed.
Then he hopped up on our rain guage and posed again. Just to be sure I got his good side, I suppose.
I hope she’s catching all this.
He even stared at me for awhile, and didn’t fly off.
You got the shot yet, lady?
In fact, I gave up before he finally flew down into the grass for some tasty morsel. I think I have to figure out how to be outside in the evenings if he’s going to hang around. Images without dirty glass between him and me might be spectacular.
Husband bought me a new camera lens for my birthday. No it’s not my birthday yet, he’s just an early shopper. I have all sorts of ideas about where I should go to try it out, but I’ve been reigning myself in because I had hundreds of images waiting to be processed while I struggled with my editing function.
As the sun came up in the east, the birds began to move.
Or lack thereof.
But now I’m back on a roll and I’ve spent a couple hours (OK more) sorting through the hundreds of images I have of my last trip to the Shiawasee National Wildlife Refuge a couple weeks ago. (I think you’ll enjoy these images more if you’re looking at them on a large screen.)
Looking to the west, with the sun rising behind me, the meadows began to glow. And more birds flew overhead.
You got to see a few of the images, straight out of the camera, in a previous post. And to be honest most of these images didn’t need much editing other than cropping to get closer to the interesting stuff.
The refuge is just over an hour away from me and I like to get there prior to sunrise, because, especially when the birds are migrating, there is so much noise and movement in the early morning moments.
A kingfisher came to sit right above me, surveying the water below.
The first time I visited I was about 30 minutes too late. That morning I could see waves of sandhill cranes flying away while I was driving down the last road, still about half a mile away. This time I got there half an hour before sunrise.
Way cropped and shot in low light, so quite noisy, but look at his colors!He caught breakfast right in front of me.
When I first got out of the car at the parking lot the sky was relatively quiet, and I wondered if I had missed them again. But moments later…well…it was incredible.
Just two of hundreds.
I stood in the parking lot watching wave after wave of noisy sandhill cranes fly by. I began to wonder how so many large birds could be sleeping in the refuge, and where in the world they were all going.
As the sun came up the undersides of the birds, the cranes, geese and ducks began to glow.
Magic.
It was pretty wonderful, and I hadn’t even left the parking lot yet. In fact I thought if that was all I did, stand in a parking lot, watching and listening to these birds, that was enough to make me smile.
Follow the leader.
Finally I made myself move on, though the birds were still flying overhead. And not far down the road I saw this group beginning it’s morning stroll. I loved how the electrical lines and the fur on some of their ears glowed with the early light.
There were about a dozen of them.
The further into the refuge I got the higher the sun rose. My objective was to get to the viewing platform, two miles from the parking lot, sometime before lunch. 🙂 I don’t move along very fast when I have my camera.
Loud singing added to the morning din.
Last fall when I was here the waterways were filled with ducks, but this time the waterways were pretty quiet. Still, the reflections were pretty stunning.
Reflecting as I walked.
And I could hear the cranes out in the open wetlands. So I moved along.
I don’t know what this tree was, but the chickadee was eating parts of the buds.
On the way I met a man coming back who pointed out a tree, surrounded by water, where eight eagles of assorted ages were sunning themselves. If he hadn’t pointed it out I never would have seen it.
A perfect place to enjoy the sun.
It wasn’t on the way to the viewing stand, but it was worth the extra walk to go out on a dike to get the best shot I could. My lens wasn’t long enough to get close, so some of these shots are pretty cropped. But you get the idea.
Such huge birds!
They watched me walk out on that dike across from them, and eventually the two mature adults and a couple of the kids flew off to another tree, further away. A couple of the teenagers weren’t bothered by me and hung out in the tree. You know how teenagers are.
We’re out of here, lady!
After the eagle adventure I made my way back and then on to the viewing platform. From there I could see across the wetland.
Incoming!
There were hundreds of sandhill cranes and ducks and seagulls out there, and wave after wave of them coming in for a landing.
It was pretty noisy.
Move over, I’m coming in!
Again I wasn’t really close enough, nor did I have a big enough long lens (though that would have been pretty heavy to carry all the way back there!) so these are really cropped. But take these images and expand them by 10 and you’ll get the idea what it was like. Everywhere there were cranes.
I saw this flock of male woodducks too.
And on the other side of the dike, in a body of water, were swans.
Swans flying west, cranes flying east.
It was all pretty amazing. I stood there a long time taking picture after picture, all of them, it turns out, pretty much the same, but it felt like I was in a snowglobe with cranes rather than snow filling the air.
I didn’t see any beavers, but obviously they were somewhere around.
I wish you all could come with me when I go back there some day. You never know what you’ll see. It probably won’t be filled with cranes (I don’t think) but there will be something else interesting.
I was lucky enough to get my first covid vaccine yesterday. Health workers at the clinic were congratulating people as they were being injected. The air crackled with optimisim. I felt optimistic too.
Hey everybody, what’s that up there?
But this morning, with a very sore arm and unable to sleep I began to scroll through Facebook. I got tangled up in reading about Georgia’s new voting rules, put into effect by it’s governor yesterday. Feelings of optimisim began to fade.
I know I’m beautiful.
This isn’t going to be a political post, suffice it to say I don’t see how these new rules can be viewed as anything but voter supression. But I know there are others out there with different opinions.
Anyway. I got so depressed scrolling that I finally just up and left the house. I wasn’t sure where I’d go, but I ended up where I usually go when I’m needing some alone outside time.
I really want to come get a treat, but I’m too cool to sit on your hand.
We had torrential rains this morning, but the rain was letting up as I got to Kensington. Because the weather had been so bad there were very few other people there. The wind was brisk, the air heavy with the last of the rain.
It was cold.
I kind of felt like I shouldn’t head out on a hike around the lake. After all, what would I see? But I dug out my hat and gloves and, putting my head down, headed out anyway. Going home didn’t seem a good option.
The titmouse grabs a treat while Mr. ‘too cool to sit on your hand’ watches.
And I’m glad I went for that walk. Pictures here are straight from the camera today, none are edited. They aren’t anything you haven’t seen from me before, but they are a few of my favorites, and the reason I began to smile even in the rain, even with my sore arm.
Well hi there!
Even if the country still seems terribly divided, even if covid is spiking in my state again.
And by the time I left the park four hours later the sun was breaking through the clouds and the sky was blue. I even put my gloves back in my pocket.
Cutest little titmouse ever!
Kensington succeeded at raising my spirits, as it always does. I hope each of you has a place like this to go when you have a bad day. And if you don’t, I hope these images help just a little.
In between the Atlanta mass shooting and the Boulder mass shooting I spent a wonderful day wandering in the woods at the Shiawasee Nature Preserve. I was one of only 3 people out there enjoying the acres and acres of wetlands, old dykes, ponds, trees, and birds.
Lots and lots and lots of birds.
I don’t have editing capabilities right now, so no cropping, no lightening of shadows. No enhancements of any kind. I have so many pretty things to show you from this walk.
Later, I promise.
For now, here’s one image straight from the camera, of a tree and it’s eight eagles of assorted ages.
This is as close as I could get to them. I need a longer lens. Still, when is the last time you saw eight eagles enjoying a morning sunbath?
Me either.
So that walk was my smile of the week. Thank you, Trent, for keeping us grounded in smiles while we navigate these times.
It’s been a crazy winter, right? Some parts of our country have seen snow where no snow is expected. Other parts are flooding, or fighting wildfires. I think we’ll all be glad to say goodbye to this winter, and for me, the first true sign that spring is right around the corner is the sound of the red-winged blackbird.
Hmmmmm…this peanut looks good.
It’s a distinctive cry that I haven’t heard around my house yet this year. Other people, not so far away from me, are hearing them already and have for awhile. My Facebook memories say that it was on this date when I heard them first last year.
I’ll just fluff myself up and let out my best territory protection scream. I’m sure the girls will be flocking to me in no time.
Today it’s too windy to hear much of anything here, but yesterday was a beautiful morning and I headed out to Kensington where I almost always find something beautiful or exciting or just fun.
I’ve picked out the perfect patch of cattails to build our home. Now I just need to find the perfect sweetie.
I found all of that in the massive flocks of red-winged blackbirds all screeching for a mate, while flocking to food, hanging on to swaying cattails, or flying up into trees to sing even louder. Their combined sound was almost overwhelming.
I can’t find the ladies anywhere! And trust me, I’ve looked!
Change Is Hard 