History Repeats Itself

Last week began with a warm and beautiful Monday, followed by a cold and gloomy Tuesday.  This week has started identically... we broke 80 degrees on Monday, which was sunny and breezy and lovely.  Last night, a front came through -- it started with brief but violent storms -- the photo below is hail on my deck.  It only fell for about 5-10 minutes, but it was a loud and violent 10 minutes.  Overnight, the temperatures fell, and today we're looking at a high temperature about 30 degrees below yesterday's.  And it's not raining, but it's not dry, either... it'd be a good day to stay at home with a book or a puzzle, but that's not an option...

 Here are some other updates from the past 24 hours:

Leaf-out photos... above, basswood/linden/however you prefer to refer to Tilia species.  Below, silver maple, which is not only leafing out, but getting the famous samara "helicopter" seeds. 

Look at this fascinating fellow.  At one point in my walk yesterday, I brushed many of theses mayflies off my shirt.  They must have had an emergence in that area.

OK, I know this isn't the best photo, probably not even worth showing, but... look how YELLOW that goldfinch is in the center.  They just make me happy. 

And in the flower world... the first lilacs are starting to open...

...those redbuds have started to open...

...tomorrow I think we'll be showing crabapples opening, they're so so close!

Updates

After days of wind and chill, cloud and drizzle, today is a beautiful, sunny (and, I should add, windless) fall day.

Today is one of those days when, as you walk , swarms of grasshoppers jump out of the way, a constant wave of motion preceding you by a foot or two... 

Also still around: dragonflies (though green darners aren't so common anymore, mostly the red ones), butterflies (not monarchs, but sulphurs and whites), bees and wasps.

In the bird world, there are grebes on the lake (above, tiny) and goldfinches are officially brown, not gold.  This happened a few days ago but today I was watching a few eat seeds.  (No photo, though, they don't sit still!)

The prairie is looking autumnal, with lovely colors in the grasses.  The only flowers left in full bloom out there are the asters... New England a vibrant purple, and also the little weedy white ones. 

Bluestem shows its true colors... red.  (This is little bluestem.  Big bluestem is purpler, but neither is blue!

 In the tree world, sugar maples are turning... I'd estimate about 30% of them have gone orange.  The rest are still thinking about it.  Red maples look like this:

More Data...

Alder Catkins

Alder catkins have swollen and are giving off lots of pollen -- I touched them and my fingers came away with a fine green-yellow powder all over them.  

Silver maples are in full flower right now.  

Goldfinches have turned gold again.  (These birds don't leave -- but since they turn brown, no one notices them in the winter...)

Silver maple flowers

Ick.

The nice weather lasted... 1 day!  Yesterday was rainy -- a cold front coming through, and by evening the rain was really sleet.  This morning dawned COLD.  And muddy.  

Still, spring is marching on.  Goldfinches are gold, and daffodils are blooming.  Some shrubs -- black currants, lilacs -- are starting top leaf out, so that we can see a springy green haze in some places when we look across lawns and fields.  Catkins are finally fluffy on willows, aspen, and other trees...  

My Magical Morning

Saturday evening, rain came through at the head of a cool front.  It brought near-perfect weather for Sunday and today, with my sunrise run taking place in actual coolth.  Those conditions created a magical morning.

I entered the Savanna through a mowed trail that comes off of a residential area, so I came not into an area crowded with signs and wide trails, but rather right into the quiet savanna itself.  It was a heavenly pastorale, with the reaching crowns of oak trees growing not from meadows, but directly from clouds.  Their swirls formed gently-rolling white hills.  You could almost hear the Beethoven playing.  And it was pretty neat to run through thick clouds.

Looking closer at the prairie through which I passed, every leaf tip and flower petal, every seed head and stem was heavy with pregnant dew drops, the pre-evaporated fog.  When the sun's horizontal rays shone through them, they sparkled with such intensity I almost had to proceed with my eyes closed.  When, mercifully, I passed through the long shadows of hedgerows and tree groves, I saw that dewdrops weren't the only adornment of the plants.  Spiders had fastened webs to nearly every available specimen, a testament to how many invisible creatures share the space with us.  Made visible by the water, there were large droopy orbs that bridged two plants together.  There were tiny perfect circles -- in one single Queen Anne's Lace plant, I counted four individual webs, each the size of quarters, nestled into Vs in the plant's stem.  There were low-down messy webs, the type that make you think of that you-tube video about spiders on drugs.  (Funny, irreverent, recommended.) Everywhere I looked, silken strands connected pieces of the prairie.

I had to stop and take in the wetland area.  It is a pool dotted with snags -- probably trees that weren't adapted to the wet conditions that came on suddenly when drain tiles were removed.  This morning, they, too, arose out of mist.  Skeleton tombstones in a graveyard of trees, like a scene from a horror movie.  A heron perched on a branch, his neck curled and shoulders hunched... a grey, grumpy old man admonishing the passers-by with his glare.  And to remind me that I wasn't about to hear the sound of chainsaws or banjos,  a wood duck glided through the water, diminutive and graceful.

In some ways, I think it's a shame that I wasn't carrying my camera, haven't been into picture-taking much at all lately.  But in other ways, I'm glad.  I'd have taken a picture and been done with it.  This way, I spent miles working out wording, trying to determine how I'd describe the indescribable.  Although I've forgotten some of my well-worded phrases by the time I've finally gotten to the typing, I think it's still a good mental exercise, probably better than taking a picture.  And if I've failed to capture the moment?  Well, it was my moment, anyhow... I have the pictures in my head.  

Now...
In other bird phenology news... I noticed several goldfinches today that are looking slightly less... gold.  Some still seem bright, but others? Not so much.  Is it really time for winter plumage already?

Earth Week Begins in Cold

"Behold! It is the spring-tide of the year.

Over and past is winter's gloomy reign."

These words are sung as part of our Seder, but this year, they seem, somehow... inaccurate. We awoke this morning to 2-3 inches of wet snow which even now isn't completely melted. It isn't uncommon for a spring snow to cover our daffodils... just the last one I recorded happened on April 5 -- a lot earlier in the season. I just hope this is the last!

But things are still moving forward... the yellow blur in the middle of this photo is a goldfinch. Key word: Yellow! That's summer plumage.

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.

Yesterday...

A trout lily's petals peel back to reveal long, yellow anthers. These aren't in my yard. I suspect the ones in my yard are going to be just leaves this year as they settle in. More specifically, 2 leaves. But I hope they'll be happy and spread and make more leaves and flowers in years to come, like these wild ones which carpet the forest floor.

I don't even know what this is. It's some sort of ornamental garden flower, probably an annual, but its layers of opening petals in this bright yellow color were striking to me.

Weeping willows are swaying in the wind these days, with their tiny green leaves and long bright yellow flowers... They are some of the greenest trees around.

Yesterday was also the second day in a row I saw a goldfinch sporting its bright yellow, celebratory summer colors.

Bird Brained

This morning was perfectly calm -- not a bit of wind to ripple the water -- and warm. Despite a full cloud cover, the sky was bright. Birds must have loved the weather, as I had a bird-filled morning. (Birds... one thing for which my point-and-shoot camera, carried in a pocket and pulled out discreetly during class, is really inadequate.)

This coot was swimming in the pond this morning, along with several mallards, one of whom is reflected in the water at the top of the photo.

Red-wind black birds were out in huge flocks, and very talkative. Their calls sound like March to me, if March can have a sound, although obviously theirs is a spring arrival announcement AND a fall going-away call.

That little duck-shaped dot in the center is a grebe. I spent some time watching them go under and re-appear in different places. I could watch diving ducks for hours as they disappear and pop back up. First grade students, though, have about 3 minutes of duck watching in them. (Also note: by late morning, the water is less mirror-like and the wind is causing a bit of a chill...)

I saw 4 herons this morning, but none in such a strange position as this fellow, who actually camouflages perfectly with the roof upon which he is perched.

Other bird sightings this morning, which went unphotographed: a bluebird, on a bluebird box, looking grayer than usual, but still definitely blue. And a bunch of LBBs, goldfinches, etc.

In the non-avian world, these things were all over the edge of the pond. I suspect they are frog eggs, which may not make it, as they are on the shore. The lake levels were very high last week with all the rain we've gotten and are starting to recede. I guess these almost future frogs got stranded. (Anyone know more about what these are? Let me know!)

This is our car katydid from yesterday. It was on the windshield. So cute.

Coneflower Study

In the beginning of the school year, I have the pleasure of starting classes with their year of nature journaling. This means I get to go out and journal up to three times a day... never is my nature journal so full as late August. I do love doing it -- it's a lucky way to get paid to spend a day -- although sometimes, by the third time in a day, it gets hard to be inspired to actually write or draw. I should have this complaint in three weeks, when I will be too busy to find the time even on my own!

Here is what I wrote under this coneflower sketch:

Despite the plant's name, it is the red and orange that are the really striking colors in a purple coneflower. The disc flowers are bright orange with red tips, and the sun shines through them. When it catches them just right they look as though they were glowing with fire... as though the plant had a halo.

And next to this coneflower:

In the strong wind [yesterday's weather was crazy. Very

windy, which made the clouds move fast. One minute, it was bright and sunny, the next ominously cloudy and grey. And back and forth again. Now let's start over]

In the strong wind, the hanging petals of the yellow coneflowers flop around, twisting and turning. They look precariously attached; I expect them to blow away like fallen leaves on a windy day, but none do. The stems strain to remain upright, leaning on each other.

Other observations of the day:

• Many grasshoppers all over the place, like the grass itself was jumping.
• Goldfinches are active and vocal and all over the place... and starting to turn a drabber shade of yellow.

Two goldfinches...

yellow as lemons, fluttering around the backyard birdfeeders this morning.