The maple trees around here are turning colors. They are brilliant reds and oranges and golds this year.
Each year I notice how beautiful they are, each year I think the colors are the prettiest ever.
Just like this year.
But today I also feel tinges of sadness as fall progresses because my little girl, the one who loved fall and who believed the trees turned color just for her isn’t here to enjoy it.
Katie looked so beautiful in fall colors.
She’s everywhere I look.
I swear the birds in my yard are so spoiled.
They wait every morning, growing more impatient every hour I’m late, for their feeders to be filled.
Yes feeders. As in multiple.
They already had an oiler feeder, a thistle feeder, a flat feeder and an oriole and/or hummer feeder, depending on the season.
But I follow a bird photographer who just purchased a new feeder that seemed to be a bird favorite, so I ordered one too.
The birds love it. I don’t know if it’s just because it’s new, or because the bigger birds who can’t fit through my caged feeder have a new source of snacks.
Yesterday it enticed three different types of woodpeckers to spend time near our windows.
I hope you enjoyed seeing them as much as we did!
And go over and read Backyard Bird Nerd’s blog. You’ll love the variety of birds that she attracts to her yard!
I’m looking forward to spending more time with my birds, but I’ll try to get up earlier to get those feeders filled before they go on strike and demand one treat per image taken. It’s possible Katie left them a copy of her contract and I don’t want that kind of thought process to spread.
Hey Katie-girl.
Today marks three months since you went over that bridge alone. I think about you every day. But you know that, don’t you.
This morning I went to your park to take a walk. It’s the first time I’ve been there alone since you left.
You know your daddy and I were at your park just after that day, with your Aunt Beth, and she played the bagpipes for you near the pond.
I haven’t been able to go back since, sweetie, not without you. It hurt so much to be a Katie’s Park today, but I had a mission.
I’ll get to that in a bit.
First of all I parked at the township office instead of where you and I always parked. I didn’t think I was ready for everything to be the same and yet so different. So I parked in a different spot.
That helped me get out of the car.
The park was beautiful, as always. You would have loved it, the air was cool and the sun was just up over the treetops.
But you wouldn’t have loved getting your feet wet. The path was overgrown, here at summer’s end, and the grass was long and heavy with dew.
The good sniffs might have made up for your wet paws though. I imagine you wouldn’t have grumbled too much, you loved walking in your park so much.
I smiled at that thought.
I was pretty proud of myself, that I smiled at all. Because mostly I was crying as I walked along. I imagined you everywhere. All our favorite places.
Your turtle friends were out but I didn’t see much else. That might have been because my eyes were all leaky.
It was even hard for me to tell if stuff was in focus on my camera. Yes, silly, of course I brought the camera. Though it wasn’t as much fun without you.
Anyway, my mission was to hang a memory tag on the remembrance tree. You remember when your Aunt Karen and you and I hung some tags for Reilly and Denny and Norwood, right?
Well, she had a special tag made for you and she gave it to me after you had to go. I haven’t been able to hang it on the tree until today. I put it right next to your handsome fiancé Reilly’s tag.
I know you and Reilly are together now, and you’re both loving the beach and the woods while you wait for your people to arrive. It makes me feel better to know you have so many friends there with you.
Today I hung your tag at your favorite park, sweetie. I just wanted you to know. Miss you baby-girl.
Love, Mama.
Well, of course I know mama! Where do you think I was while you were wandering around and crying all over my park? I was right there beside you. Silly mama, I’m always right there beside you. Thanks for hanging my tag, it’s real pretty. Thank Aunt Karen for getting it for me too, OK?
Love you always, mama. Tell daddy I love him too. Got to go now, Reilly wants to go run on the beach.
-Your angel-girl, Katie.
Hey everybody! Katie here.
So most of you know that I’ve been fighting kidney disease for much of this year. I go to the vet every month and donate my blood so the lady vet can see how I’m doing.
Daddy and mama took me to the vet yesterday, they say I shouldn’t be so scared every time, but they aren’t there in the back room when those vet techs get my blood! I’m starting to feel like a pin cushion, all those needle pricks over the past nine months!
It’s scary back there, I tell you, and I’m so glad when they take me back to my daddy; I’m always ready to go go go back out to the car where mama waits impatiently for me.
But the lady vet and daddy always have to stand around and talk after I give away my blood. They usually look at all the test results, but this time they just talked about my poop!
Geeze! Can’t a princess have a little privacy about anything? Mama and daddy have been taking pictures of my poop for weeks! I guess having soft runny poop is not a good thing. Who knew?
Now I have medicine to help my poops get back to normal. Mama says we’ll see. Literally I guess, right?
And the test results? The ones that will tell us if I’m getting worse? Well, the lady vet sent my blood out to a lab instead of running the tests right there, so we won’t know until sometime next week.
I’ll keep you posted, cause I know you want to know!
Meanwhile, I’m chowing down like the food hog I’ve always been and that makes mama and daddy smile.
I hope you all have a great week, and those of you in the United States enjoy Thanksgiving! Mama and daddy say they are very thankful for me. Well of course they are. And I guess, if I’m honest, I’m very thankful for them too.
And I’m also thankful for each of you, my loyal subjects. Thank you for stopping by and reading about my poop during a holiday week. I should probably talk to mama about being more appropriate, but you know how mama is. No sense of decorum, that woman.
Anyway, these photos were taken the past couple of weeks during all the walks at my parks and around the neighborhood that mama’s been taking me on. She says she knows how much I love the colder weather and she wants me to get out and enjoy as much of it as I can.
Just another thing I’m thankful for, fall in Michigan!
Talk later, your cool air loving, pincushion girl, Katie.
So where did I leave you? Ah yes….at the viewing platform overlooking the wetlands, about two miles from the car.
Since we’ve been lugging the camera backpack filled with lenses and spare batteries all this way, this would be a good time to change to the long lens. Don’t you think? And perhaps take a sip from the water bottle that’s been adding weight to the bag for the long trek out here.
There, that’s better.
So, out here in the open marsh you can here sandhill cranes and Canadian geese as they fly in and out. A few trumpeter swans too. No pelicans this time, and that’s disappointing, but I’m too late in the season for much of a variety.
The other people on the viewing platform have high powered binoculars, and they are watching a northern harrier harrass a young bald eagle. I can’t see any of that of course, but I enjoy listening to them talk about it.
Mostly I watch the geese that were nearest to me and enjoy the sun and the sitting down for a bit.
And then I decide I’ll head back, but take a path I’ve never chosen before, out past the tree where, on a previous visit, I’d seen so many eagles, out along the edge of the wetlands, because you just never know what you’ll find.
And I do find the juvinile eagle, I think, though I can’t get a close enough view of him to be sure. I have a longer lens than I had last year, but he was still a long ways away. For all I know, this is the harrier, rather than the eagle. He (or she) is fun to watch either way, soaring high above the grasses, searching for a meal.
I come across a passel of cranes, standing around out there in a clump. No noise, just hanging out. When they see me noticing them they begin to walk away at a fast clip, so I move on, not wanting to upset them.
And then I begin the long wander back to the car. It is a beautiful day and I’m not at all disappointed that I don’t have anything spectacular to shoot. But wait! There’s an eagle’s nest! Wow, that thing is huge! Now I know which way I’ll walk next spring when there might be some activity there, maybe early in the season before leaves obscure the view.
It’s not far from the tree where I’ve seen eagles, adult and juviniles…and it’s in the direction I always see them flying from out there. Now it all makes sense. I’m excited for next season!
But other than that my walk back is just filled with beautiful fall sights. I am walking on a path less traveled, and mostly not mowed, so I am glad for my waterproof hiking shoes keeping my feet dry.
Even though I am on the lookout for birds of any size, and though I hear a few, I don’t see any. I probably need to sit in one place, as I’ve considered on other visits to this park, and wait for something to come by in stead of tromping noisily through the woods.
But I am hungry, and tired, and still a long way from the car, so I trek on.
The views don’t disappoint. Just about any direction I look there is something pretty.
I can’t stop taking pictures, but that’s no surprise to anyone. Right?
But eventually I put the lens cap back on, resolving to move faster toward the car and the banana waiting for me. I even pass up the opportunity to sit on a bench, because I know I am only half a mile away from the parking lot.
I promise myself I’m not taking any more images. Just going to forge ahead, eyes front, no stopping. Really.
But I can’t ignore the huge ruckus coming up from a field just beyond the trees to my right. When I come to an opening I see what must be the party room for cranes. Because they are dancing up a storm. So I had to take the lens cap back off. You would have too, I’m sure.
And then I hear this little guy, and since he is the only little bird I’ve seen clearly all day, well, the lens cap comes off again.
And then, finally, I make it back to the car. My 4+ mile walk through the woods is over, and I know I wouldn’t be back until spring. Unless I decide a winter hike is in order. I guess I’ll put that idea into the ‘things to ponder’ file drawer and see what the winter weather is like this year.
More likely I’ll be back in the spring, when northern migration is happening and there will be more activity to wittness. I’ll be sure to bring you along whenever I go back. Maybe I’ll even carry a banana with me so I can stay out there longer.
You’ll be responsible for your own snacks. And your waterproof shoes.
Stay tuned.
Do you want to join me on a magical walk? Well, come along! I’ve sorted my more than 800 images down to only a few dozen to represent the wonderful morning I spent at the Shiawasee National Wildlife Refuge this past Monday.
I knew I was late in the migration season. The herons and egrets were long gone. No pelicans to watch. I figured even the sandhill cranes should have moved on by now, though I still see them out at my favorite park. I wasn’t even sure why I was out there when the chances of seeing anything special were so slim.
But since it was one of our last beautiful fall days I thought I’d stand there on the observation deck in the parking lot and wait, just see what the sun would bring.
After a few minutes in the cold silence I went back to the car to get my gloves.
And right about then I heard a sound. I couldn’t quite place it. It sounded like a gentle wave was rising softly against the sand on some distant beach. It got louder. And louder. And then, squinting in the dim light, I saw them. Thousands and thousands of little birds coming across the marsh toward me in the pinking morning sky.
The sound swished and washed and surrounded me for only a moment and then they were gone, disappearing into the light in the east. The experience was so amazing that I thought if I saw nothing else, heard nothing else, I’d still be glad I made the hour plus drive so early in the morning.
And then I heard the cranes. (Click on the link to hear them, in fact listen to them while you read this, it will feel more like you’re really there!) It started with just a couple of those distinctive cries coming from somewhere far away. And then the sound grew.
I saw the first three cranes flying out for breakfast. And then a few more. And more. And then more and more and more and more.
I don’t know how long I stood there, alone in an empty parking lot, fingers no longer cold, grinning like crazy trying to get the shot, the feeling, of what it was like to have so much craziness just above my head in the pink sky.
And then there was a different sound, lower, almost hidden under the screeching of the crane voices. What could that be? I lowered the camera and searched for the source.
Trumpeter swans! Just a couple of them, making a more gutteral sound, announcing their presence. As if to say, notice us! We’re here too!
Then my attention was back on the waves of cranes still coming toward me. Wave after wave of them.
Even with all the activity I began to wonder…how many images of flying cranes does a person need? Well, just one more.
Well, I thought to myself, I could stand out here all day, but there’s more to explore. Best to get moving.
There aren’t many days left for wandering these trails before the winter sets in. In fact, there are some weeks where hiking is prohibited as the preserve allows hunting to manage the deer population. I’ve never been here this late in the season and I was startled to see the hunting blinds places strategically along the trail.
I understand the need, but I wished the couple of white-tailed deer I glimpsed good luck next week when the hunters will be back on the job.
The trail here is on top of a series of dykes, most of the time there’s water on both sides. When I’m here earlier in the season the water is filled with migrating ducks, but in November their safe places are filled with fallen leaves instead.
Almost as pretty, though less exciting for sure.
Along the way, while trying to get a shot of trees in early light, I stepped on something soft that exploded around my knees in a foggy mist.
That was cool, but it reminded me to watch more carefully where I was going. And to listen better too, as this early morning walker startled me with her quiet approach.
We smiled hello to each other and she briskly moved on past. I stayed to get this shot:
And then I heard that distinctive low sound overhead again. I pointed the camera up and waited.
Once they did their fly over I tried to pick up my pace. I was still a distance away from the turn around point, a viewing platform out in an open wetland. By now I knew there were other people already there, the woman, her lovely husband with the English accent who followed her and another birder I’d met earlier in my walk. All three of them had passed me as I lolly-gagged along, taking photos.
There’s all sorts of reasons you’d enjoy your time here, birding and photography are just a couple. It would be worth the walk just to see such beautiful places. But since you can’t all get there, I thought I’d share a few of them with you.
I have more, but this seems long enough. Do you wonder what I saw when I got out to that viewing platform? There’s always something to see out there.
I’ll share the rest with you in the next post. Katie demands attention now. And you know how she is.
Best to get to getting, she says.
So I will.
The United States opened it’s borders today to all Canadians, even those with nonessential business. We’ve missed our neighbors and encourage them to come on over!
There are rules, of course. Everyone coming across the border has to be fully vaccinated. And to get back into their country they’ll need a recent negative covid test.
Change is still hard.
Change Is Hard 