Category Archives: Wanderings

Birds, Snapshots, Wanderings, Wildflowers

A detour along the way

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As if the ride to Upstate NY wasn’t already long enough, we took a couple hour detour along the way to search for some special sparrows that had recently been seen in a random field about an hour off the thruway. So special that I can’t even remember which sparrows, but I think it may have been Henslow’s. Like any good detour, we didn’t find what we’d been looking for, but instead amused ourselves with what was at hand. There were Bobolinks, always a treat, but as is typical I lost interest after about ten minutes and wandered away with the camera.

If anything convinces me of my ADD tendencies, it’s birding with a group of *serious birders*. You know the type. And then there’s me: wandering around studying the sky in between checking my email, chasing butterflies, cracking jokes or complaining about something, puzzling over wildflowers. Just look at these people! How do they manage such sustained intensity?

😉
The weedy field invited me; up to my knees in birdfoot trefoil and chickory I found a kestral preening on the powerline and hazy hills in the distance. All those flowers at my feet and the insects that tended them kept me interested for a good while.
One nice thing about birding with a varied group of people is that there’s bound to be someone among them who knows the answer to most any question I can dream up. We’re all at least marginally interested in something other than birds and the expertise of others comes in handy. I’d have quickly given up trying to ID this skipper, but Pete knew it right away as a European Skipper (one of two introduced butterflies) and ID’d the flower for me.
There were quite a few fellow plant nerds in the group and we happily geeked our way through the weekend identifying any wildflower we came across, or at least, trying to. We only got so far as to know this was a knapweed; not the Spotted Knapweed that’s so invasive out west, but some other we couldn’t decide on.

This was a nice detour, as they go, but I was so glad to finally get to Saranac Lake and stretch my legs in the bogs and forests of the Adirondacks for the rest of the weekend.

More tomorrow…

Birds, Snapshots, Wanderings

From Whiteface

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The cloud cover at Whiteface Mountain cleared just enough for us today to enjoy some nice views… (please click on the pic!) I could see Lake Champlain from the summit, but not Montreal. This is a partial view of Lake Placid, btw. There’ll be days of pics (yawn!) when I’ve recovered some and slept. There were singing Bicknell’s and Swainson’s today and a far-off view of a Bald Eagle from the very tip of Whiteface.

😉

Happy to be home.

Birds, Remembering, Snapshots, Wanderings

Gipsy gold

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“Gipsy gold does not chink and glitter. It gleams in the sun and neighs in the dark.” ~attributed to the Claddaugh Gypsies of Galway

I’ll leave you for a few days with an image from North Dakota that’s captured my memory and a small part of my imagination.

Pasture horses. Not the usual pampered racing thoroughbreds I see everyday here in NJ. These were full of curiosity… alarming, almost, in the way they surrounded us when we came upon them. There’s a story to tell, but I haven’t exactly found the way, yet.

I love horses; it’s irrational of me… I’m not some country girl, after all. I don’t want a horse; I just want to be able to look at them. Seeing them makes me wish I knew how to work clay in my hands.

That first morning in North Dakota, I was awake before the sun came up. It was my birthday. I was outside in the near dark, barefoot in the wet grass, wondering at my good luck. The sky was so filled with stars… I could see the Milky Way and birds were waking up around me… strange sounds, but ones that would soon become familiar there… Clay-Colored Sparrow and Western Meadowlark and Common Snipe.

There were unseen horses closeby; I could hear their snorting and soft nickering in the dark.

Magic.

😉

Birds, Wanderings

Heading to the High Peaks

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I’ve hardly made it through half of what I want to tell you about my trip to the prairie and already I’m off to the mountains!

😉

I’m leaving on Friday for a couple days in the Adirondacks; one of my most favorite places. It’s a trip for birds, ostensibly anyway, but the fact is that I’ve already seen most of the specialty birds the area has to offer on past trips there. Except for Spruce Grouse and that’s a long shot, as even the trip leaders admit. I have wonderful memories of Evening Grosbeaks, Boreal Chickadees, Gray Jays, Winter Wrens, Lincoln’s Sparrows, Ravens, and Black-backed Woodpeckers. I don’t much care what birds I see this time. So long as I see some, of course!

I’m more looking forward to hearing the cry of a loon or seeing the spruce and tamaracks mirrored in a lonely pond. Standing at the summit of Whiteface Mountain with alpine plants at my feet and Lake Champlain and Quebec off in the distance, while Bicknell’s Thrush sings somewhere below me. Waking to morning mist rising from the lake outside my door. Paddling that lake for an hour or two between birding and dinner. Watching the stars for a few quiet hours each night…

Birds, Snapshots, Wanderings

Straight out of the field guide

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“The ecstatic upland plover, hovering overhead, poured praises on something perfect: perhaps the eggs, perhaps the shadows, or perhaps the haze of pink phlox that lay on the prairie.” –Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac

God I love it when birds do what they’re supposed to… and then pose for pix while at it!

😉

We’d nearly missed this roadside Upland Sandpiper as we chased the tour bus along the prairie trail heading to Chase Lake NWR, but a quick stop and then a very slow progression forward, all the while hoping the bird wouldn’t fly off, let me have my fill of pix hanging out the sunroof of the car like a crazed photographer. I got lots of nice pics, but this one is today’s favorite.

Not a life bird for me, but I couldn’t have asked for any nicer looks at it. Can’t you just imagine it soaring high in the blue skies of a North Dakota spring, its long, drawn out song drifting down over a sunny meadow…

Dog days, Snapshots, Wanderings

Escaping along with everyone else

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I almost didn’t go to the Pine Barrens today when this was what greeted me at the entrance to the Parkway. Ughh… shore traffic. I was committed, at least until the next exit some five miles further south, but thankfully the standstill was due to an accident and the traffic cleared just when I could have made my exit.

An hour or so later this beetle caught my eye as it meandered through the sand and grass while I sat in the car eating my lunch. I stepped out for a pic, leaving the remainder of my sandwich unattended, and came back to find the sandwich gone. Had I mentioned that Luka was along for this adventure? Anyone care to save me the trouble of looking it up in a field guide? It reminds me of the beetle in the header at Mutual Casualty but I don’t know that one either.

As often happens with a visit to the barrens, I happen upon something accidentally that I’d purposefully searched for at some prior visit. Today it was two wildflowers that I’d endured a sweaty deer-fly infested hike searching for early last summer. This one is Swamp Candle; a yellow loosestrife that can grow so abundantly in cranberry bogs that it gives a pretty yellowish haze to the bog. It’s considered a nuisance in commercially operated bogs, but I was happy to find it today.

This one made me really happy – orange milkwort – showy and impossible to miss. On my knees taking pics I also found a blooming thread-leaved sundew and a few other tiny little wildflowers that I haven’t made up an ID for yet.

The water in the bogs is controlled by dikes and in those places where it was fast flowing there were ebony jewelwings patrolling the margins. A beautiful damselfly, I think; very fluttery and nice.
My idea with bringing Luka along on this particular adventure was so that he could do some swimming at our favorite hidden spot along Cedar Creek. Turns out our secret swimming hole is better known than I’d realized – the place was packed with paddlers stopping for a swim, too. Some were kind enough to amuse Luka with a really big stick. Turns out he’s a good swimmer since our last visit in the fall.

The cranberries are blooming now and I was surprised to see quite so many beehives along the dikes. Each field of 3 active bogs had a stack like this, busy with honeybees keeping Ocean Spray in business. Luka had a tussle with a bunch of them while I paying attention to something else – there was much fussing and rolling in the sand – but I don’t think he was stung more than a couple times. Dopey dog!

Cranberry flowers are very tiny and the plants grow *wild* along the margins of most cedar streams in the barrens; a particular delight of paddling there in the fall is the chance to sample a couple. The same plant is cultivated commercially and then harvested just in time for Thanksgiving dinner. The flower is deeply lobed and curled back on itself to expose the stamens. Early settlers saw the neck, head and beak of a crane and so called it *crane-berry*.

Another beautiful day in one of my favorite places. Plus, Luka’s tuckered out, finally.

😉

Snapshots, Wanderings, Wildflowers

Indian paintbrush

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Not the breathtaking scarlet, orange and yellow prairie flowers I was expecting, a rather more pallid view, but spring was slow in coming to North Dakota this year and the wildflowers were a few weeks behind schedule. A hint of color is just beginning to show on a few of the bracts in this pic and the leaves are shaped something like birds’ feet.

Indian Paintbrush is sort of interesting in that it’s partially parisitic – it derives some of its nutrients from other plants. Common hosts are little bluestem, blue-eyed grass and prairie smoke. There are at least 200 different species that are near impossible to separate from one another.

(End of geeky plant interlude)

Birds, Wanderings

I know, I know… it’s a Swainson’s

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I can be… um… slightly hard-headed at times. I want very badly for this to be a Ferruginous Hawk. Not that I think it necessarily looks like one, just that I want it to be one, you know?

I went all the way to North Dakota and deserve to have seen a Ferruginous, don’t you think? I had my life Swainson’s Hawk in Cape May years ago and a textbook-looking one that Bill of the Birds showed us on my birthday on the first day of the Potholes and Prairie Festival.

Then, we surprised this hawk the following day in the hills of the Coteau Region. Tell me what makes this a Swainson’s… maybe I’ll take your word for it.

😉

As an aside: I’d thought separating Eastern hawks was difficult. Pfft!

The Swainson’s has 3 age classes and is polymorphic (whatever the heck that means!) The Ferruginous has 2 ages classes and is also polymorphic. (I think!)

Birds, PSA, Wanderings

Dakota Driving

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I think the people behind Birding Drives Dakota must be pretty smart: they understand that those of us from more heavily trafficked parts of the world are awed and befuddled by the emptiness of the prairie pothole region. It’s as if they anticipate that we’ll bliss out with the scenery and forget that we might just need directions to find all those prairie specialties.

They’ve conveniently created a couple maps and a glossy brochure to lead the directionally-challenged (like me!) to the best birding spots. I’d imagine it easy for more left-brained folks to navigate the right-angle distances, but I found myself constantly distracted by something… a group of pelicans kettling overhead… a jackrabbit running through a farm field… a pleasing look at cattle at the roadside… you name it! North Dakota was made for daydreamers like me, I think.

That being said, I was glad for the maps detailing the more than 600 miles of birding possibilities in the Jamestown/Carrington area alone. They make it easy to wander at will at your own pace and on your own schedule, which is the way I prefer to bird. I can handle only so much time spent in a bus with strangers peering out through dirty windows. Sure, I did some of the planned events with the festival, but there was also lots of time spent exploring in solitude, wondering what might be found at the next “X” on the map.

I wonder about the rest of you that’ve had the opportunity to attend a birding festival or two: would you rather have every minute of your trip planned and scheduled for you or, like me, do you appreciate the chance to be a little more adventurous?

Birds, Snapshots, Wanderings

Love in a pothole

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Western Grebes were the first *western* birds found on the adventure that was getting to North Dakota. A makeshift dinner beside a lake somewhere in Minnesota was accompanied by their whistling between dives for fish. They’re really striking birds – click on the pic for a better look at those red eyes!

Try as we might, we never picked out a Clark’s among the Western’s that populated the larger lakes and potholes. Nor was there much of their famous courtship display; they’re said to rise up and run across the water’s surface – might’ve been nice to see that! I like the suggestion of a heart in the space between their graceful long necks in this pic; maybe they were just beginning to think of love in that moment.

The breeding ducks were the biggest draw to the region, I think. There’d been more than a cold winter’s day or two spent searching the small local ponds and inlets in NJ for wintering ducks – to see Ruddies again; now with their ridiculously bright blue bills or a pair of Blue-winged Teal in every puddle and Canvasbacks and Shovelers and more Redheads than I’d really imagined possible – I’d felt lucky to find a single pair this winter – and now here they were, again, for our finding. The only real miss, in the breeding duck department, were Hoodies. I’m sure they were out there, we just didn’t find the right pothole.

😉