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Yellow-rumped Warbler
Yellow-rumped Warblers, Setophaga coronata, have to come to visit for the winter. They’re also affectionately referred to as Butter Butts. When insects are available, that’s their meal of choice but here, in the cold months, they will settle for goldenrod seeds, and the berries of juniper, poison ivy, poison oak, greenbrier, grapes, Virginia creeper and dogwood. Some people are able to entice them…
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Northern Flicker
A patch of the native plant, Smooth Sumac, Rhus glabra. A wonderful magnet for birds during the late winter and early spring. Hard to decide which might be my favorite bird, but one that is right up there at the top, Northern Flicker, Colaptes auratus, is one of the birds that is attracted to the rich crimson berries. The…
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Robin
American Robin, Turdus migratorius. Two in one of my Eastern Red Cedar trees chowing down. They love those berries. Robins have no concept of the legends we humans have, such as Robins being a sign of spring. This photograph was taken in December. They’re around my cabin from time to time throughout the winter. Silly Robins. Wishing you…
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Cooper’s Hawk
A very fine (as in, “this is good”)(and as in, “the flakes are very small, but plentiful”) snow is falling out of the heavens, has been since lunch time when a Cooper’s Hawk, Accipiter cooper, not an unusual sight in the vicinity of my feeders, came by to see what was on the menu. Luckily for…
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Red-breasted Nuthatch and Chickadee Compared
This season two little Red-breasted Nuthatches, Sitta canadensis, have decided to spend some of their time close to my cabin. I’m delighted in part because this species doesn’t often show up here. The last time I saw one was the wonderful winter of 2009 – 2010. This is the one I saw back then, in the…
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Poison Ivy
Poison Ivy, Toxicodendron radicans I’m feeling itchy already just anticipating writing this blog. It was not until I was well into my adult life that I first got a Poison Ivy rash, complete with huge blisters. OH! How very painful it was. Fast forward 30 years or so and I’ve grown to love, or at least…
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Fruit at the Cabin
In front of my cabin right now, there is a constant buzz . There are loads of trees and bushes involved in the sound, three good sized trees, planted soon after our cabin was built, many years ago – pear, MacIntosh apple, and Monmorency cherry, and a good number of blueberry bushes planted at about the same…
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Sap is Flowing
In the past three days I have been entertained by a visitor that I have not seen for more than two years. I don’t really know if this visitor is actually one that I saw during the bitterest of late January and early February of 2014, but she is quite fun to watch whether new to my…
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Yellow-bellied Sapsuckers
Beautiful patterns, holes in tree bark, looking like a sort of Morse Code, is not the work of Martians leaving us a message, or wood boring insects. These holes are the work of a brightly colored, medium sized woodpecker, the Yellow-bellied Sapsucker, Sphyrapicus varius. The photo, above, is a cluster of holes (called sapwells) that I discovered less…
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My Winter Birds
Perhaps these are my pets, the birds that come to my feeders. Wild birds that give me comfort just by being there. The bird you see in the picture, above, is a winter bird in my area (the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia), a White-throated Sparrow, Zonotrichia albicollis. He has a sweet song that is easy to remember,…