Discovering the world around me.
Eastern Chipmunks Tamias Striatus We have a bumper crop of black walnuts, and Bryan has cleaned the hulls off two five-gallon buckets full. The shells are very hard, so I crack them on the front porch with a specially made walnut cracker. It works pretty well, but it flings bits of shell and nutmeat all […]
Continue reading Cheeky Little Critters
Red Maple (Acer rubrum) It’s a perfect fall for color this year. The nights have been in the 30s and 40s, the days have been sunny, and it hasn’t rained much. These are ideal conditions for our Autumn Blaze red maple to give us a spectacular show. What makes the leaves turn red, though? Why […]
Continue reading Autumn Blaze
White-throated Sparrow (Zonotrichia albicollis) It was an unusually cold, wet spring last May when the white-throated sparrows sailed through on their way to the Canadian woods. The clear whistled song calling “O sweet Canada Canada Canada” if you’re Canadian, or “Sam Peabody Peabody Peabody” if you’re not, rang through the trees, announcing their visit. They […]
Continue reading O Sweet Canada
Tomato Hornworms, Hawkmoths and Parasitic Wasps Early last spring, my sister gave me an heirloom grape tomato plant. I hadn’t done anything about a real garden by then, but had a space next to the front porch that I thought would do. I planted it, and it began to stretch and grow in all directions. […]
Continue reading Monsters in the Garden
Beggar lice. It sticks to everything! Dave’s coat; my hair; my socks, jeans, jacket and sweatshirt, even the strap on my hiking stick. We’ve gone for a walk in the woods on a beautiful autumn day looking for hickory nuts. What we got was 13 hickory nuts and bazillions of beggar lice. The term “beggar […]
Continue reading Aggravation
Coyotes The neighbor’s dog begins barking and howling. What’s up with that? And then we hear it—a jumble of high-pitched yips, barks, cries, snarls. And it sounds fairly close by. Clearly it’s not a pack of dogs. It’s not raccoons fighting. It sounds like coyotes making a kill. Or fighting among themselves. Or whatever coyotes […]
Continue reading The Trickster
Black Walnuts Fall has arrived on this early October day. Standing in the yard I hear several walnuts tumbling through the branches and plopping softly in the duff of fallen leaves and grass beneath the tree. As I walk through the yard, they squish and squirm beneath my feet. Owl Acres is studded with black […]
Continue reading The King of Nuts
Broad-Winged Tree Crickets It’s 10:00 on a late summer evening. Dave and I are out for the final walk of the day. The soundscape is complex and varied, with individual crickets here and there and a background of buzzes and whirs of katydids. The cicadas have gone to bed, but one other sound dominates the […]
Continue reading September Night Song
One Sunday in late August, an amazing ballet grabbed our attention. In the front yard a swarm of dragonflies whizzed around, filling the air from three to 50 feet above the ground. Outlined against the bright afternoon sky, we watched them hunting, each dragonfly pursuing its own quarry. What were they hunting? Closer inspection revealed […]
Continue reading Hunters’ Ballet
We are having a party, barbecuing in the yard, using the open garage as a staging area for the food and utensils. Suddenly something whizzes past into the garage, startling Bryan, a giant insect? No, it’s a hummingbird come to inspect the bright red handle on the rope that allows you to raise and lower […]
Continue reading Tiny Warriors