We have had a flock of Red-winged Blackbirds calling all fall even though most of the migrating birds were gone weeks ago. Yesterday, along with the heavy frost, there was silence from the Red-wings. I thought they were all gone. There were the sounds of Blue Jays, Starlings, Chickadees, and Nuthatches but no Red-wings. On to winter I thought. No, this morning there was the sound of at least one Red-wing calling as if it were March. Wonder if he plans on staying the winter?
Acer rubrum is RED Maple. It really lives up to its name at this time of the year! Most of the walnut leaves have already fallen but the willows are still green. Lots of variety in leaf fall happen in the autumn.
Meanwhile, the Red-winged Blackbirds are singing their spring songs when they are not flocking to fly south. Spring Peepers are calling every night and crickets are still singing too. Southern Ontario is not quite ready to say winter.
Two views of a Herb Robert (Geranium robertianum). The first is a bit more than life size on my computer and the second is through a microscope, so it is much larger than life size. It was one of several late blooming flowers in our area that I saw today.
Meanwhile, overhead, some geese were flying east. They were probably on their way to Lake Ontario.
It's getting cooler in our house. Down to 16 C (61 F) this morning. Since it was dark and raining most of the morning it felt even cooler so the fireplace seemed to be calling for some fire to help us warm up a bit.
Meanwhile, yesterday, I heard lots of Eastern Meadowlarks in song. I don't know why they were singing unless it was a call to join in for migration time.
I made this sculpture several years ago and put it in our west meadow. The weather took its toll and not many people saw it so I rescued it, replaced some pieces, repainted it and moved it to the roadside. Several people have stopped to tell me how much they like it but no one has offered to buy it. Ha!
As I ate my oatmeal I caught a bit of motion from the corner of my eye. My iPhone was used to record the event. The deer stood and watched us eat for a bit and only left after Fleur-Ange went for her camera. It wandered along the edge of the yard and then took one of our trails as it headed toward the willows round the east pond.
(Paonias myops) is another of the many moths found in our barn this summer. According to the information I read, the larvae eat leaves of hawthorns and cherries but the adults don't eat at all.
The heat waves continue . . .
What you don't see is all the mosquitoes!
These lilies started blooming last week in the RBG's Hendrie Valley. Always a treat! It seems that bright orange wild flowers are few and far between.
Our canoe has been in storage for too long. We paddled from Paris to Brantford today with the water levels not too low yet. We only hit bottom a few times and only had to walk once. I lost count of Great Blue Heron sightings. I think it was 6 or 7 plus 3 Mergansers and almost 40 Canada Geese, several kayaks, a few canoes, and a rubber raft or two.
According to my insect book these large silkmoths only live a few days as adults and do not eat. The larvae eat a variety of leaves from trees and shrubs. It is found in most of southern Canada and the lower 48 of the U.S. We see them almost every year and, yes, I am still in the barn. We have a bug zapper with a black light there and many moths are attracted. Fortunately this one is too big to get into the zapper but many micro moths are not so lucky. It's really for mosquitoes but many other insects are attracted.
The camera and I were on the ground for this photo. We have lots of Sheep Sorrel growing in our lawn and in our meadows. I think it is good to eat but we have not added it to the vegetables on the table yet.
The other strange looking flowers in the photo are on English Plantain (Plantago lanceolata.)
Yes, another moth. They seem to be catching my eye lately. This one is the Virginia Ctenucha. It appears to be very common on our area and is often seen flying about during the daytime.
I found this one while I was out walking the dog this July 1st morning. Because it was only 8 degrees C. (46 F), the moth was not moving.
I am looking at many moths in our barn these days. This is one of the larger ones. I think it is a sphinx moth of some kind but I do not have a proper ID yet. Any help would be appreciated.
I have a bug zapper in the barn to help cut down the number of insects pestering the goats and donkey. Unfortunately it also attracts and kills many small moths. The larger moths cannot get through the screen so are safe but that mean that we often have more moths in the barn during the daylight hours. I found this one early this morning on the gravel floor of the barn. It's common name is "Virgin Tiger Moth."
It's rare that I find any slime moulds and never have I found two in two days before. Well, actually Fleur-Ange found this one but it was on our front lawn.
The photo was taken through a microscope at 20 x.
This slime mould is "common" on lawns according to the literature. It looks like someone spilled grey ashes on the grass.
According to my mushroom book, slime moulds move like an animal but reproduce like a fungus so they are hard to classify in the regular scheme of classifications.
(Beorge Barron's Mushrooms of Ontario.)
If you are looking for some, have a look at a rain soaked, well rotted log.
I used new software to stitch together four or five iPhone photos to make this image. Water levels are low in northern Ontario due to lack of snow last winter. I've not seen this little water below the dam before.
This is the Smooth Rock Falls dam across the Mattagami River. Smooth Rock Falls is the home town of Fleur-Ange.
Sorry, no close up this time. The wind was blowing and I did not want to get down in the poison ivy patch with all the moving leaves. Like many other plants, the ivy is blooming early this year. I almost missed it.
I quite liked the shape of the fence repair at RBG's Arboretum so I took the photo and then erased the fence and vegetation. The repairs were made with the plastic tabs that are used for closing garbage bags at times or for attaching cables to bicycles or timing chips to shoes in road races.
Part of spring time rituals down by the Grand River. Turtles come up to the rail trail and lay eggs and then raccoons dig them up and eat them. I wonder how many turtle nests go unfound.
This was my third encounter with a new fawn in two days. Wonderful.
I attempted to use a 15x hand lens in front of my camera to take a photo. This was the only one of about 6 attempts that came out well enough to share. It was hand held but I think a tripod would have helped in this attempt if the tripod were small enough.
As I looked out the window this morning I saw lots and lots of spiderwebs catching the early morning sun so out I went. Yes, it was worth being wet up to my knees to get out into the early morning meadow.
I saw two toads yesterday. The first was dirt gray all over and gone by the time I got my camera. This was the second. It was a much brighter colour and trying its best to climb a tree to get away from the camera.
At the "you me Gallery" Fleur-Ange met with the owner, Bryce Kanbara, and a fellow exhibitor, Leo Davis, before the show opening last night. The show is on until June 6 on James Street North near Barton Street in Hamilton, Ontario. Fleur-Ange is also exhibiting some of her other works at several other locations during the next couple of months.
After listening to a beautiful coyote chorus last night, we were lucky again this morning with deer visiting our east meadow. I saw two deer but from the upstairs window, Fleur-Ange saw three. Nice way to start the day.
I seldom get to see Sycamore tree flowers as they are usually too high to see properly. There are very low branches on a Sycamore tree at the RBG Arboretum in Hamilton, Ontario.
Over the years I have found Morels various times but often too late. These were just right! They just needed slicing, hot butter, salt, & pepper and a couple of minutes in the fry pan before the table.
The cherry trees are blooming in the RBG's Arboretum. Nice to see some colours again but I worry a bit that they are so early this year. I wonder what the summer will bring.
In bloom 5 days earlier than I have ever seen it before . . . along with several other wild flowers. The American toads were trilling today too.
A mallard duck flew up from beside the path this morning as my dog and I went for a walk. I checked to see where it came from and found this single egg in a new nest. Given that mallards lay from 5 to 14 eggs and then incubate for 26 to 30 days, I am not sure if this will be a successful nest. We plan on putting a small fence around it so the donkey and goats will not step on it accidently but it may be a futile gesture given the location of the nest.
Instead of snow on the ground we have asparagus pushing through the soil. Early, early.
I did not really expect to see any but checked the asparagus patch anyway. Lots of grass that needs to be removed in the patch but also asparagus pushing through already.
Some people should recognize this by now.
It's growing about 100 metres from our home near our east pond.
We saw the first snake of the season on our property today and one that we rarely see. It was the Storeria dekayi dekayi or Northern Brown Snake. The old name was the DeKay Snake. It is a very small, hard to see snake that likes to eat slugs, earthworms and soft bodied insects.
We saw it because our dog started jumping around it. When we took the dog away, the snake froze for many attempted photos. This was the best I got in spite of many tries.
From Susan Fenimore Cooper's Rural Hours entry for April 3, 1848:
"Delightful day; first walk in the woods, and what a pleasure it is to be in the forest once more! The earlier buds are swelling perceptibly - those of the scarlet maple and elm flowers on the hills, with the sallows and alders near the streams."
Each week I spend a half day working at Plan B Organic Farm in the Hamilton region. There are many seedlings up in the greenhouses but the garlic is up in the fields already.
We enjoy fresh organic food all year round grown both locally and from other places on the day that it ships in.
Over 7000 runners headed out from the start line. Fleur-Ange (Eglantine) was on a pedestrian overpass about 500 metres from the start line when she took this photo. I was somewhere near the back of the crowd you can see. Four minutes of runners had already gone past.
I did a 10 kilometre run for a 3 person relay. Most of the runners you can see here were doing the whole 30 kilometre run.
An early view of an Early Saxifrage (Saxifraga virginiensis) just up. Bloom time may be a week or away depending upon the weather.
Temperatures were up to + 18 C (64 F) on Friday but down to below freezing Sunday. I suspect this Garter Snake is well underground again. We had a skim of snow on the ground this morning and no snakes in sight.
Unseasonably warm here yesterday.
Anyone know what kind of spider this is?
Saw the first Mourning Cloak butterflies here yesterday and the Silver Maple, Aspen, and Willows are all blooming. The American Woodcocks are calling morning and evening and Robins, Killdeers, Grackles, and Red-wing Blackbirds are all here and in full song.
Too bad I cannot add the sound to this as the coyotes were serenading a train as I went out this morning. I liked the look of the crescent moon coming through the twigs in the trees.
I found this Western Conifer Seed Bug (Leptoglossus occidetalis) in our living room yesterday. I wonder where it spent the winter?
A couple of days ago Gangi [http://www.flickr.com/photos/gangie/4409284914/ ]
put up a photo of milkweed seeds so I went out to see if there were any left on our property. Yes, there were!
Spring is coming but winter is not over . . . These two photos were taken about 300 metres apart in the RBG's Hendrie Valley. Still ice on the ponds but there are flower up and blooming in sunny, protected spots.
Other people told me that the willow buds were opening. This is the one by our east pond. It is not swelling as far as I can see but maybe this weekend when the temperatures are supposed to get above 10℃.
These two deer were on the edge of our west field when I walked the dog yesterday. The chose to stand still and listen and look instead of running. I took the dog back to her pen and then returned with the camera to get this photo.
Finally we got some snow! It's late in the season and the temperatures will be above freezing soon but at least we got some snow to play with. On the other hand, when I went out to shovel I found that someone had beat me to it. Guess I was not the only one to want to play with a snow shovel.
