tigertoy

Today I went over to the marshes at Kennekuk.  Rain had been forecast, but only a few scattered drops materialized.  There was no ice at all on the marshes, and only a little left on the sheltered west side of Lake Mingo when I climbed up the dam to have a look.  There were bluebirds and a few sparrows, robins singing, and a chorus of frogs.  I stopped at the shelter at the first marsh pond to write for a while.  The geese were very noisy, but I did see a couple of mallards, a pair of wood ducks, and as the sun started to set, a small herd of deer came out and a couple of muskrats swam across the pond several times.  There was a spider spidering about the picnic table.  I saw a phoebe.  Just as I was leaving, I thought I heard a nighthawk, but I couldn't see it, though I heard the call a couple more times as I looked around for it.  It certainly seems too early for a nighthawk.

It's supposed to get colder and wetter for the next couple of days, but they aren't predicting temps below 40.  By next week, at this rate, there will be green growing things.

Spring is starting to make it feel like life might be worth the trouble of living again.

I will just briefly note that I went to Kickapoo for a while today.  It was solidly above freezing this afternoon, for the first time in 2010, and the white stuff is starting to retreat.  The mostly-frozen river was quite pretty.  I walked a little way out onto a frozen pond, but I decided that I wasn't absolutely sure how thick the ice is and there wasn't any real payoff to go with the small but not quite zero risk.  As I walked along the ridge in the middle of Emerald Pond, I realized that the big bird soaring overhead was an eagle.  I think he was the only bird I actually saw.

Spring is really coming.  Lots of birds about even though I didn't get out for my morning walk until well after 9.  I think I heard a meadowlark.  I think I heard a Carolina wren.  I was surrounded by a flock of house finches for a while.  I saw one phoebe by the bridge.  There were two yesterday and one was singing.  Best of all, there was a lovely mourning cloak butterfly.  I haven't seen any flowers; I don't know what he'll find to eat.  But the first butterfly has been seen!

I finally got my butt off the chair around 4.  I decided to head over to the marsh area at Kennekuk with my flowers-n-bugs lens.  It was sunny, warm but not hot, generally a good time to go.  The first marsh is as low as I think I've ever seen it.  Very little bird life, by numbers or species, though quite a lot by total weight because the geese were having a convention at that first pond -- there were over 100 in that small area.  One mystery bird on the beaver pond; looking at the book, I guess it was a juvenile green heron (that somebody decided is supposed to be called a green-backed heron this week, but I don't see the point).  It was the size and configuration of a green heron but with a lot of white underneath, quite unlike an adult and even more than the book shows on a juvenile.  But since it seems unlikely that I've discovered a new species, that's probably what it was.  I took a lot of shots of flowers, with some efforts at composing artful shots, mostly just trying to capture the beauty of very small things, with little success; I need to both carry the tripod (which I sometimes do) and force myself to stop and use it (which I almost never do even when I carry the thing).  The depth of focus is just too damn short.  Butterflies seemed few until I got past the martin house, where there was a patch of flowers they liked.  I took a bunch of shots of closeups of butterflies which should be great.  I did not walk very far, but for some reason I felt tired and ready to go home anyway.

I had the bleahs today and the fact that it was cold, grey, and looked like the threatened scattered showers were likely to start up as soon as I stuck my head out of the house kept me inside longer than I should have been, but I eventually got out.  It was late enough that I wasn't sure I'd have enough daylight to make it all the way around Lake Mingo, so I went to the marshes instead.  It didn't rain, and it was pleasant as I went along the trail through the woods, but I was just kind of drifting until I got back to the marshes and spent about 20 minutes slowly making my way between the two marshes where the beaver dam is.  I went slowly because I was so enchanted by the kingbirds who were willing to tolerate my being pretty close to them and especially the swallows.  There were at least 4 kingbirds and maybe as many as 6, and they seemed almost to be acting like a flock rather than pairing off.  And there were a bunch of swallows.  A couple of tree, one barn, and the rest plain brown which a look in the birdbook tells me must be rough-wings.  Amazing acrobatic flying; I would have enjoyed lingering longer, but I was starting to need to pee, so I went back to the car.

At this point, I considered that I still had more than an hour of daylight (and the clouds were breaking up, and I was feeling better), so I drove to another bit of the park that I thought I hadn't been to before, the Raccoon Run Trail.  When I got there I realized I had in fact been there before but it was still a pleasant area.  I spent a few minutes watching a fish in the little dammed up ravine there called Adrian's Pond.  I don't know anything about identifying fish, but this one was unusual for casual just-looking-in-the-water fishing in that he was, I'd say, just over a foot long, actually big enough to be legal to catch.  I also had a red-headed woodpecker on that bit of trail.  It happened to bubble up in my memory that in the silly kid's game Careers, there's a square you can land on that says "spot Yellow Bellied Sapsucker, 4 Happiness" -- but the red-head is the species that gives me the most happiness points.

I returned to my car and decided I still had enough daylight left that instead of going home I would go to Heron Park.  The sun had actually come out enough that I needed sunglasses.  There, in addition to a couple of herons and many redwings, I spotted a chimney swift, a coot, 4 goslings, and a little rail.  Rails being a type of bird that one doesn't actually see even though they may be around, I have no experience identifying them.  It seemed more grey than brown.  Looking at the bird book, I think it was more likely a sora than a Virginia.  I also heard a strange call that I'm sure would clearly identify the caller.

It was forecast to be nasty hot today, so I decided to try to get over to Kennekuk as early as I could, and park in a different spot so I'd hit the sunniest and most boring part of the loop around the lake before it got too hot.  Unfortunately, by the time I actually got there, it was about 9:30, and it was already pretty warm.  But I still wanted to walk, so off I went.  Perhaps it's a state-dependent thing, but that first part of the loop often seemed unfamiliar, because although I've walked it several times in the last couple of months, it's been late in the afternoon when I'm tired, rather than in the morning when I'm fresh.

Presumably because of the heat, the ~7.5 miles took a lot out of me.  I drank most of a quart of water and 20 oz. of Gatorade, which wasn't enough.  But why my feet were sorer by the end of the loop than they've been in months I don't really understand.

The main thing I saw and enjoyed today was butterflies.  Probably there weren't really more butterflies than on a normal summer day, but I was noticing them more because I'm thinking that it's October (despite feeling like late July); frost and the end of the butterfly season aren't far away.  There were several anglewings with their orange colors glowing, a mourning cloak that toyed with me for minutes as I tried to get close enough for a decent picture, a truly tiny species, about 1 cm. (including wings), and a species that's quite common in the meadows at Kennekuk, but don't believe I see often anywhere else, which has three sets of spots on its wings that look like eyes.  The last butterfly is strikingly beautiful, but (like many butterflies) not very cooperative about being photographed.

Birds seemed more in evidence than a few weeks ago.  There were a lot of warblers hopping around, but the few that let me see anything that I could use as identifying marks all seemed to be yellow-rumped.  Or at least they had yellow patches on their rumps.  There was either one flock of a couple thousand grackles that followed me around, or several such flocks.  The geese are forming flocks too.  The great blue heron with the exceptionally loud squawk put in a couple more appearances.  I saw what I think was a cormorant flying over the lake.

Just a quick note here, mainly as a reminder to myself of the importance of getting my ass out of the house and into the woods for when I lapse into a rut of sitting around feeling blah.

I got over to Kennekuk this afternoon.  It was a beautiful day, sunny and about 55°F, a bit on the windy side.  The unseasonable cold snap has done in the insect life (I saw one tiny nondescript beige moth and no other insects at all).  There were a lot of warblers around; the only ones I could even guess at the species of appeared to be yellow-rumped but I suppose there were other species.  Also golden-crowned kinglets, goldfinches, a kingfisher, wood ducks and a small flock of yellowlegs in the artifical marsh, vulture (I believe both species), a bluebird, and some hawks overhead -- one of which appeared to have jesses (!), though he was high enough that I wasn't terribly sure even looking through the 300 mm lens.  I particularly enjoyed the sunlight in the seed heads of the 12' high grass -- truly magical light.  Once I actually got into the real woods, the peace of being out in the natural world become euphoric.  It just felt so darn *good* to be out there, I hated for my walk to be over.  But I'd wasted too much of the day before I started; I needed to get home, make dinner, and get ready for EFRC tomorrow.

I took pictures, and I meant to at least get them onto the computer, but I took my pill at 8:30, and it decided to make me very sleepy today, so I'm off to bed where I belong