Seed Burst Firsts on a Misty Morning

With the start of autumn, we look to seeds and colors... the things that characterize the end of a life cycle, in as much as a cycle has an end.  These are not the first milkweed seeds I've seen bursting open, but they actually are the first ones that aren't right next to the trail, and I'm always suspicious that maintenance mowers and, in the case of milkweed, hands alter the phenophases.  This morning I started to notice milkweed plants off the trail opening their seedpods, though these are early adopters.  Most are still green with potential for later!

The cattails are also starting to release seeds... The eponymous brown fuzzy hotdogs-on-sticks are packed so tightly with so many seeds for so long... and now they are starting to burst and explode! 

The goose in this photo isn't especially phenologically relevant, really... We have geese year-round now.  In the 40's, Also Leopold poetically described the return of the geese in March as one of his tell-tale signs of spring.  Thanks to office parks with aerated ponds that never freeze, geese never leave (at least not a lot of them) so their presence means not a lot... but the mist on the lake is an interesting phenomena that's been happening these mornings as it's been getting chilly at night.  Since it's still been warm during the day, the water and ground are warmer than the night air, causing these misty fog-clouds each morning.  They're quite lovely.

The morning fog really strange... you can see this layer of fog hanging over some parts of the land and not others.  In places it's not as tall as my head so I walk through with my head above clouds and my body in them.  When you move in and out of the misty areas the temperature drops by what feels like 10 degrees, then rises again just as quickly...

My last sighting of the morning -- this pair of sandhill cranes flew almost right over me.  Thanks to their distinctive call, I knew they were around before I saw them, and was able to get totally prepared to take pictures... but still, the ones where they were right overhead turned out totally blurry.  This was the best of the bunch, though it's still not awesome.  You almost can't see enough leg to know they're not geese, but, trust me, they're cranes!

D-Day!

I have been waiting for this day for months!  As I ran through the newly flooded back loop of Rollins Savannah... clad, I might add, in shorts and a tank top... a dragonfly swooped past my head.  YEA!  It wasn't the only thing that the strong wind carried my way... the cloyingly sweet perfume of blooming magnolias.  The aroma of outdoor grilling.  When the mercury first tops 80, everything comes out to play.

Also seen:  trout lilies blooming.  Baby geese (on 4/28).  Pasqueflower blooming.  First prairie smoke blooming.  Dandelions in full bloom.

Today, an Observer

Despite my ramblings last week, when I went this morning to run in the same place, I took my camera. While I know it's not the case, there's a part of me that doesn't think things are quite as valid if I don't have PROOF that they happened. And I had to make a deal with myself... the camera was WOW! moments, not for stopping to take a picture of the wooly bears that are everywhere right now, or a milkweed seed pod whose fluff caught the morning sun in a special way. (You could argue that those are WOW! moments, too, but... you know what I mean.)

Sandhill cranes at the edge of the water. 

Anyhow, I did see sandhill cranes again, but the experience was not quite the same as last week's. I came upon a pair of them at the edge of a pond during a part of my run that was relatively crowded -- me, another runner, and a pair of walkers, all going at different speeds, all converged at this spot at the same time. Whether it was this or something else, the pair of cranes didn't stay long. Shortly after I snapped their photo, they spread their wings and took flight across the small pond and into the field, where they joined 4 other cranes. The six of them, presumably the same six birds from last week, jumped around for a few moments, called their primeval call, but they were far from me this time. Then two took off flying, and I ran on. I got an OK picture. I didn't get a connection, I didn't get to be a crane this week.

Almost more arresting were the geese. This morning was a goose morning. Geese really aren't a phenological harbinger of seasonal change the way they once were. In A Sand County Almanac, Leopold brilliantly described, in 1948, the Return of the Geese as an early sign of spring to which he looked forward every year. Now, geese pretty much stick around year long. It is my understanding that there is a small non-migratory population that sticks around all year, and then a larger migratory group. However, we have summer residents that migrate away, and I suspect we also have winter geese that send their summers way up in Canada and come here for the relief of aerated office park ponds than never freeze. Geese are so common that they've become pests... I wonder how Leopold would feel about the businesses that have sprung up whose sole purpose is to chase the geese away?!?

A flock of Canada Geese heading south.

Still... around this time of year and also in March, there is a whole lot of goose movement. On Friday night, I watched and listened as hundreds of them flew over in several groups, in front of a really spectacular backdrop of sun setting with a unique cloudscape. Unfortunately, I was observing from the parking lot of a Chase, with powerlines and a BOA in the foreground... so not so much a photographic moment. I'm not that good with photoshop. (I don't even have photoshop).

This morning, I saw similar numbers of geese in large groups heading in a generally southerly direction. Their calls are certainly not as eerie and haunting as the crane's, but in the numbers that they were in, it seemed to surround me. So that was kind of neat, too.

Notes to Self.

As of this week, I am still seeing:

• frogs
• monarchs (though not in the great numbers I was a few weeks ago)
• grasshoppers
• milkweed bugs
• garter snakes

Also, notes from the bird world...

• goldfinches are brown (have been...)
• yellow rumped warblers are coming through.
• juncos are here.
• so are sandhill cranes, though I haven't seen or heard them, other people have been reporting it for a few weeks.
• Geese are going crazy. I know that a lot of them stay around all winter, and a lot of the big flocks I've seen have been going north... but the amount of goose activity... the number of times I've had to stop class and just wait because 50-100 noisy geese were flying over in the past week has been quite high. Say what you will, something is going on with the geese right now.

Sometimes, we just need some boring record-keeping notes.

Slushy Snow Walk

In addition to red wing blackbirds descending in droves, here are some of yesterday's discoveries:

Fallen sticks imprinted into the snow, only appearing from the over-head vantage point.

Deer track.

Colorful fungi bands, green moss... you can almost imagine it's not winter.
Someone's a messy eater.
Two someones, actually...
(I even saw a pair of mallards, but they are not pictured here.)
A spot of green grass. Yeah, I know it's last year's green grass. But it's still green.
Geese directly overhead.

The Results

Our search for signs of spring did not, today, yield a red-wing blackbird (although many starlings tried to fool me). But we did find this fellow on the snow. He's curled up there as a result of many kindergarten fingers poking at him (you would, too...) but the caterpillar was definitely alive and moving. I don't know what kind it is or how it spends its winters, but we've optimistically decided it's a sign of spring.

We also saw a V-flock of geese migrating north and robins (which used to be the harbinger of spring but now, well...).

Back in winter world, the melting and refreezing made some really neat ice structures last night.

Daily Updates

Something is eating my nasturtiums. I am not entirely certain what...
but I found this guy on the most eaten of the leaves (shown above). Leafhoppers are vegetarians, so that could be the culprit.

Cinquefoil blooming (unbidden) in my garden.

Water lilies at CBG.

One of many endless varieties of susans/yellow composites that are just starting to bloom.

Rattlesnake master is getting quite tall. This is a fun prairie plant for several reasons. The most obvious to a reader is its name, derived from the rattling noise its seed heads will make in the wind (later in the summer). The most obvious to an observer is its strangely desert-plant-like appearance. With its spiky, almost succulent leaves, it would look more at home among aloes and agaves than big bluestem and blazing star, and yet, here it is.

Goose babies are beginning to look precisely like goose mommies and daddies. (Can you tell which is which? The two in the back, slightly larger, are the adults.)

TGIF

This may not be a phenological event in the strictest sense, but it is definitely a marker of the seasons passing... the CSA started this week.  I picked up the first share yesterday, but had to rush immediately back out after bringing it home.  And so dinner yesterday was radishes, plain.  They had varying degrees of bite and they were fresh and crunchy and welcome.

Today we continued to enjoy the bounty in another near-perfect moment.  After a warm day, the air started to cool and I started a fire.  I baked potatoes in the coals and mixed an herb butter using the CSA's green garlic and chives, as well as rosemary and oregano that we have been cultivating indoors.  And that was dinner (with a cold beverage).  So delicious.  We ate it on the porch with bats fluttering overhead and then I watched the full moon rise -- orange, then yellow, then white -- behind the neighbor's house. 

In other sightings, I saw baby geese today -- which have probably been around for a while... regular readers of this blog know that I am not a bird nerd of very high caliber.  If I notice something bird-oriented on the first day, that's just plain lucky.  I have been noticing a lot of goldfinches all over lately. By no means are these the first ones I've seen, but by gosh they are active.  I have no idea what this means.  Also... My purple milkweed emerged today (or I noticed it today) but no butterfly weed in any location yet.  I hope it's still coming and not dead in all 3 spots in my yard where I've planted it!  

Tomorrow is the plant sale and I get some new shrubs, natives, and veggies and annual flowers that it's just a bit too early to put in the ground.