into the woods

i was far too tired last night to upload these photos and explain them. so.

i went to a patch of woods yesterday that i've only been to twice before. both of those times, i was with other people, who are birders, but, well... sometimes people are chatty. and we didn't stay long either time. so i knew i wanted to go on my own at some point and take my time. and actually, you know, find the birds.

so i went yesterday and was there for about four hours. although this is a fairly quiet time of year - it's all breeding, not migrating - i still got some good birds. my love affair with wood thrushes and relatives continues. i had wood thrushes and veeries. well, and robins. i also had the thrush lookalike, the ovenbird. i didn't know they bred in the area. they're warblers, and the *majority* of warblers just pass through here on their way to breeding grounds. so i was pleased to get ovenbird (i swore i heard one when i was there with other folks on tuesday, so i felt vindicated) - but i was even more pleased when i also got a young one being fed by its parent. also had a few other woodsy birds, like eastern wood pewee. oh, and a peregrine falcon up in a tree on the water's edge. that was total luck.

i wish i'd gotten a photo of it (believe me, i tried), but on this one path, a mourning cloak flew close enough to my head several times that i could actually hear its wings. (a mourning cloak is a large butterfly.) that was pretty cool.

at one point, i noticed something relatively large, for a bird in the woods, fly up into a tree. i knew it wasn't a pileated woodpecker (DAMN! *pout*) because it read brown, not black. much to my (unjustified) surprise, it was a wood duck. now, even though i *know* they hang out - and even nest - in trees, it is still a surprise when i see one in a tree. it hasn't happened that often.

so i took a photo. it's not a very *good* photo. it's zoomed all the way in.



now... the thing is, i *had* to zoom like mad to get that photo, because the bird was Very High Up. how high up?

this high up:



those are very big trees. the duck was probably a good sixty feet up. but now we know why they're called wood ducks.

june 30 photos

stained glass

this is a photo i would have posted long before now, but i had no idea it existed. it's my fractured log cabin quilt, unreliable things that hangs as a curtain over my bedroom window. apparently, when the sunlight comes through at a certain angle, you can see all the seams and it looks a bit like some kind of mash up of mondrian and stained glass.

i'm not usually home at the time of day that the sun comes through at that angle. this morning i was.

birds and vitamins

today i went to teaneck creek conservancy, which is a natural area not that far away. i went once before, in the fall, the day after thanksgiving. i like it there, and would go more often, but it's a bitch to get to. on a weekday, i have to take either two or three busses, depending on the time of day. but on the weekend, i'd actually have to go to manhattan first in order to catch a bus there. i stubbornly refuse to do that at this point. to have to use another state as a boomerang to go birding in my own state... ? that just seems silly to me.

so, i made use of my my last non-holiday weekday before going back to work next week, by heading out to teaneck creek.

again, it's a slow time of year. but the trip was kind of worth it for the house wrens. i love wrens, but i don't get many opportunities to see them. to be in the midst of all that bubbly chatter was lovely. and to actually see one sitting out on a branch singing its little heart out like a maniac, well, that was cool too.

i also watched a family of corvids fighting over some food item or other. this was a huge surprise, because they really didn't sound like real crows when i approached. i kept hearing this loud squawking, that sounded like it was *supposed* to be a crow, but wasn't really. and it was from the direction of some corporate park, so for a while i angrily thought they were playing recordings to keep birds off their building. i was irritated beyond belief. but as i got closer, i started to think the sounds were coming from multiple locations.

then i saw them.

now, this is the bothersome thing about birding. you can't always tell how big a bird is or isn't, even when you're looking at it. these birds looked Big. and for a second, i could have sworn i heard a raven in a tree above me. they had the right tails, too. but while i tried to get a look at their bills as they squabbled, they suddenly all up and flew away. i heard them again a little while later, but never got another look at them.

i did some poking around, and there's not a lot of evidence to support it. they'll go down on my list as "crow species", but i still have this lingering doubt that they were young ravens. generally, young begging american crows sound like fish crows. these guys didn't. regardless of the mystery, they were fun to watch. i don't get as many opportunites to watch crows as i'd like. although i seem them around here, they're usually just in transit. i don't get to watch a lot of behavior. and, well, obviously...i love crows. and their relatives.

-=-=-

today continued The Tireds. i only stayed at the park for three hours, then started making my way home.

i know that most of my fatigue this week is because i ran out of my multivitamin four or five days ago. and obviously, the solution to this is to go buy more vitamins. but whenever it occurs to me to do so, i'm too damned tired to go. :P

i came home, ate, had a nap. then i spent a little while mentally fortifying myself to head out to do some grocery shopping. because eating food helps with energy too. :P so i bought vitamins while i was there, though they're not my usual brand. hopefully tomorrow i'll feel more like myself again.

on the way home, at 8:45, i saw two common nighthawks. guess there are some breeding in the area. that's good news for nighthawks.

bed soon. i'm so knackered.

mischief

it occurs to me that i should document how i did myself a mischief yesterday.

the short version is to not climb over/scale/jump down off of fallen trees that are covered in poison ivy.

the longer version is that i was on a path, and headed to look for the wood thrushes i heard, and there was a fallen tree across the path. a fairly sizable one, too. i would have just scuttled over it, but it was covered in poison ivy. so really, i kind of should have turned back. but i wanted those thrushes. ;P

so i couldn't use my hands to help me climb over, and instead i but one foot up onto the trunk, and pushed myself up onto it. i needed to be careful to avoid any ivy. once on top of it, i was a good two feet up higher. which isn't a lot, but when you need to jump off of it, and have a knee that's been bothering you lately (the PT at work told me to rest it this week - ha!)... well, it makes the jumping off tricky. i was careful to land with more weight on my right foot than on my left, to protect the knee. and i did a good job of protecting the knee.

however, a few steps later, i realised my right foot wasn't exactly thrilled. it's still sore, and a little swollen.

but i did see the wood thrushes.