Birding with Malcolm

Brown Creeper

Back in December, we had an ice/sleet/snow storm that kept us all at home and inside for several days - it was far too slick to even walk in the backyard! To keep ourselves occupied, Malcolm and I spent a lot of time watching birds out of his window. I had recently relocated the bird feeder to the front yard, in part so that we could do precisely that (and partly to keep it away from the dog, who developed an unhealthy obsession with it, and would spend hours trying to keep all the birds out of his yard).

Cardinal, white chinned sparrows, and mourning doves

Because it was so icy, the feeder was the best place around to get food, and we had about 20 different species of birds show up over the 3 days. Malcolm was captivated by them, and spent 30 minutes or more at a time standing on his little chair, watching them.

Eventually I remembered that I have a telephoto lens for my camera and I started taking pictures of as many of the birds as I could. It is just a standard zoom, so I couldn't get as close as I would have liked, and I was shooting out of a (not entirely clean) window, but I still managed to get some good shots.

Carolina Wren

I am delighted that Malcolm is already interested in bird watching, since it is the favorite past time of his grandmother and great-grandparents, who used to travel all over the world to see birds. And I am happy because he is already developing a love for nature that experts warn is becoming rarer and rarer among children these days. Not that I was particularly worried about him, since Benjamin and I both love being outdoors and doing nature-related activities, and plan to take him hiking and camping as often as possible.

White-breasted Nuthatch

Since he is getting started early, I am sure Malcolm will be a better birder than I am by the time he is 5 or 6. He even started getting the hang of binoculars (when he wasn't putting them in his mouth).

Red-bellied Woodpecker

Now that the ice and snow are gone, it is a bit harder to spot birds, and they aren't coming in such numbers, but we still spend time every day looking out the window to see if there are any birds.

My favorite, the Tufted Titmouse

Fog walk

The fog starting to lift on Lake Willastein

I have been trying to get this post written for over a month now, but between chasing Malcolm around, holiday preparations (Thanksgiving first and now Christmas) and blogger eating my pictures multiple times, I haven't had much luck. I don't really remember what I had to say, but figure that the pictures are still nice, and since I have been trying for so long, I might as well go ahead and put them up.

Leaves just starting to change. Now they are all bare or brown.

Way back on the first weekend of November, when the leaves were just changing and the ice storm hadn't turned everything still alive into black and brown blahness, we went for a morning walk at Lake Willastein, the city park in Maumelle. When we first arrived at the park, it was so foggy that you could barely see the other side of the lake. 

There  were some pretty neat spiderwebs covered in dew on a bridge along the path.

The sun came out and melted most of the fog, but the lake stayed mostly still, and there were some great reflections.

Great Blue Heron, fishing

It was a lovely morning, especially compared to our weather over the last week or so. It is nice to have something colorful to look back at, instead of the perpetual brown that has taken over for the time being.

Spring flashback

Summer seems to have arrived in Arkansas to stay. April and May were cooler than normal, so we have had a bit of a reprieve, but temperatures are forecasted to be in the 90s all week. So it is a nice little break to go back and look at this pictures from our trip to Bellevue and Idaho last month, when it was cool and refreshing. Enjoy.

 Benewah Creek, just outside Benjamin's mother's house.

A door to nowhere, Lake Coeur D'Alene, Idaho. Without a boat there, I can't tell if it is supposed to keep people from the lake off the dock, or people from the dock out of the lake!

Apple blossoms.

Lavender in my mother's garden, with one of her bees.

Poppy with bee (look closely, she's in there).

Chives, and bees.

Early morning raindrops.

Roses, in a delicate state of decay.

Spiky and purple and geometric.

One more rose, because I can't help myself. I love photographing them.

Spring at the Bellevue Botanical Garden

In my (pitiful) attempts to keep this from becoming an all-Malcolm blog, I am going to share some of the nature pictures I took on our trip to Bellevue at the beginning of March. Since it is almost Easter, I thought I would lead off with this lovely hellebore, otherwise known as a lenten rose (since they typically bloom during the Lenten season). This one was in a pot at a garden center, but my mother does have some in her yard. I love the delicate pink petals and the subtle green center on this one. 

I've mentioned before how much I love the Bellevue Botanical Garden - every season has something to offer. This time it was a bank of mini-irises and a new feature - the Ravine Experience.

They have built an amazing suspension bridge over a small ravine at the edge of the garden, so you can walk in the canopy. It isn't really that much in the canopy, since the trees in the ravine are huge, but you do get to look down into the ravine. And the bridge is pretty cool.

See - the trees are all around the bridge, but Western Red Cedars are pretty darn tall, and it would take a deeper ravine than this one to pull you into their canopies.

I imagine it will be a lovely, cool and refreshing spot to visit come summer.

In the more formal section of the garden is this happy little stream. I probably should have played around with my camera settings and tried to capture the water in motion better, but at least I stopped to look at all, I guess.

And I will admit that I was less than attentive to what this flower was, but I love the tightly bunched circle and the tiny individual flowers. The yellow really stood out against the browns and greys of the leafless branches.

You have to love the various textures on this branch. The flowers, the almost fluffy moss, and the harder, crinkly lichen.

I haven't had many opportunities to take pictures of anything other than Malcolm lately, but now that it is spring again, I hope to make time. Not that I have a problem taking lots of pictures of him, but I miss looking more closely at things.

Bluebird!

 

Last week I finally got a chance to do what I have been waiting 3 years to do - take a picture of a bluebird. They are a common bird around our neighborhood and the local park, and I often see them on walks, but they do not visit our backyard very often. This is most likely because of Miikka - he is very territorial towards birds in his yard, so much so that I have had to remove the bird feeder because it drove him crazy. He barks at the robins and jays that are brave enough to visit as much as he does the squirrels. Sigh.

But last week, while Miikka was asleep inside, one lone bluebird came for a quick visit. I almost didn't grab the camera, because I was convinced he would be gone by the time I changed to my telephoto lens. But he didn't fly away, and I was able to get several decent shots through the windows.

We didn't have bluebirds in Bellevue when I was growing up, although there is a Western Bluebird species, so until we moved to Arkansas, I had never seen one outside of pictures. I think they are one of my favorites to spot, and I always give an excited little "bluebird!" cry whenever I see one.

Speaking of bluebirds, you should all go out and read The Bluebird Effect: Uncommon Bonds With Common Birds by Julie Zickefoose. She is a naturalist, artist and writer who has a wonderful blog, in addition to this gorgeous book. I requested a copy for my birthday, and then read it like dessert - a little at a time - to make it last longer. The watercolors and drawings are fantastic, and the stories are amazing. A grown-up version of all the animal rescue stories I devoured as a kid.

Hiking at Pigeon Roost, now with pictures

After all the complaining about the problems with our hiking trip this past weekend, it is only fair that I show you the good stuff. The weather was pretty good - a little warmer and more humid than is ideal (for me anyway), but not truly unpleasant. Most of the trees have not yet regained their leaves, so we had good views of the hills, and eventually the lake.

The wildflowers were delightful - violets, and little white flowers that sort of looked like a type of allium (picture of those didn't come out), and these little rock rose-types.

I'm still experimenting with the various settings on my DSLR, and trying to take pictures while holding a dog leash is not idea (yes, I did have Benjamin hold it some of the time, but not always), so the pictures didn't come out as well as I had hoped. I ended up having to adjust the balance and colors on the computer, which I would prefer not to do - I want my picture to be untouched-up. Not that it is a crime to "fix" a picture - the primary reason Ansel Adams' pictures are so very good is his darkroom technique - but I don't really like doing it because of operator error. Oh well, gives me a good reason to go hiking again next spring.

Here are a couple of pictures for those of you who want to have pictures of my pregnant belly. Since I refuse to post posed belly pictures until I am truly "great with child" (and am even more adamant about never referring to it as a bump) they are all you are going to get for a while. Not a whole lot to see yet.

Hmm. This one is sort of awkward - where is my other leg? And pictures of people eating, not generally graceful. Oh well. You can see our cooking set-up on the grill of the brand-new fire pit (and a very nice fire pit it was), and the too-short tent pad in the background.

Miikka in a quiet, and relatively undirty moment. Because the boy scouts had taken out the old, rusted fire pits (we saw them farther down the trail, waiting to be taken out by boat), they had also scattered all the old ashes around the area. Miikka had a good time hunting for food scraps and lolling in the ashes; since we also slept with him, the tent got rather gritty as well. The first thing I did when we got home was give him a bath.

And our morning view of our corner of a very large, winding lake. If the trees had been in full leaf, we would hardly have been able to see any glimmer of water. I didn't take any pictures on the hike out, since I packed the camera in my backpack. The wildflowers were still very pretty though.

More from Spy Rock

Most of the trees on the hike were bare (apart from the pines, of course), but there were still many interesting things to see. Like this cairn that some past hiker constructed out of the local rock.

And these fungi that covered a dead tree on the side of the trail.

From a quick internet search for "tree fungi" I found an index to tree fungi, which gave me a name -turkey tail fungus - and led me to this interesting website. I absolutely love the internet and the speedy finding of information! Sure, I could have found this information in a book, eventually, assuming that my library had a book of fungi.
 

There was also this lovely spiral of lichen on a rock.

And moss that seemed to glow when the light hit it just right. 

These pictures don't really do the glow justice, but hopefully you can get the idea. It is the small views like these that motivate me to get out into the woods, just as much as the vista from the top of the mountain.

Post-Thanksgiving Hike: Spy Rock, 8.8 Miles

Wearing orange so hunters don't shoot us.

 On Friday, we took our now annual post-Thanksgiving hike. We started doing this as a tradition back in Texas, as a way to avoid shopping or sitting at home doing homework. This year, we chose an 8.8 mile loop hike in the Ozark National Forest that took us through a (planted) pine grove, up the side of a ridge, and eventually to the top of the tallest hill/mountain in the area.

Because most of the leaves were off the oaks, we had some great views out over the surrounding countryside as we climbed. Although it was primarily an uphill sort of hike on the way out, it wasn't really that bad, and I speak as someone who really hates hiking uphill.

There were some great natural features, like this big boulder and moss and lichen (which I am saving for another day). 

And peeking through the trees is a view of Spy Rock - the midpoint/destination of the hike.

Hmm. I was calling this Spy Mountain when I was telling people about it, but clearly, I was incorrect. The sign from the trail proves it.

This was the view at the top. What you can't feel is the wind. Hold on to your hats!

It was a good day for a hike - not too cold, but not too hot. And it was only really windy at the exposed top of Spy Rock.

Miikka had a grand time on the hike. Yes, he made it all 8.8 miles without any trouble. And even better, he was allowed to go almost the entire way off-leash. The dog who, in the neighborhood, can't even be let out in the front yard off-leash, went at least 8 miles without wandering away or running off into the woods. He just stayed on the trail, between Benjamin and I, the whole way. Once, at a Y in the trail, he did want to go down the opposite fork, but was eventually convinced to come with us instead. And even then, he didn't just cut through the grass to reach us - he trotted back to the Y, staying on the trail. He was on the leash at the top of the mountain, while we ate lunch, because I don't particularly trust him not to go over the edge, and a couple of times when we got close to logging roads where we heard the occasional 4-wheeler (the only other people we saw the entire hike). Otherwise, totally free. What a good hiker!