You might think this an ordinary weed, climbing over the sidewalk, but it’s not. It’s knotweed.

Prostrate Knotweed

Last fall we had some cement work done on the sidewalk leading to the deck. The ground had settled significantly in the 20 years since the house was built, and the cement sidewalk settled with it. This project was to correct that. In the process of completing the work, the ground next to the sidewalk […]

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A female cardinal rests in Karen’s hand, victim of a lethal encounter with a window.

Lethal Hazard: Window Glass

Have you ever watched a bird crash into your window? It’s heartbreaking to see it happen. There’s that thunk against the glass, and then the bird falls to the ground. Maybe it gets up again and flies away, and maybe it doesn’t. 60% of the birds that survive the collision die from it sooner or […]

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A little grey songbird perches atop a bare twig. Eastern Wood Pewee waits to sally forth on its next mission to snag dinner-on-the-wing.

Flycatcher: Eastern Wood Pewee

On May 14, 2025, a little olive-gray bird with a big voice joined the chorus on Owl Acres. It’s a voice that’s relatively easy to identify. It features a clear, bright, sliding whistle. It slides down and then up sounding like “pee’a’wee.” He’ll sing to us all summer while he guards his territory, and courts […]

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Large pink flower stands out from dark green foliage. Peony blossom has dense, crepe-paper-like petals that form a soft ball atop a short stalk.

Protection Racket: Peonies

Once when I was about eleven, my friend and I were walking to Mass at St. Mary’s Catholic Church when we realized we had forgotten our chapel veils. These circles of lace were mandatory as head coverings for girls at Mass. What to do? We spied some flowers growing next to the sidewalk and picked […]

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A songbird perches on top of a post, facing the camera. American redstart has a black head and mainly black body, with bright yellow and white patches on his underside, wings and tail.

Warblers: American Redstart

May is the busiest month for spring migration. Here on Owl Acres, we’ve been keeping track of our visitors using the Cornell Lab’s Merlin ID. Each morning I stand on the deck overlooking the back yard and woods and let Merlin capture the soundscape and name the birds. A second session from the front porch […]

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Dense clusters of tiny white flowers with yellow centers (several hundred individual blossoms) adorn the end of a green leafy twig. Hundreds such twigs on this one shrub, make many thousands of flowers, each a potential fruit. Not all flowers will succeed to produce choke cherries, but for now they all provide an abundance of nectar and pollen for spring insects, especially clouds of tiny bees.

By Any Other Name: Chokecherry

A chokecherry by any other name would taste as bad. And it has many other names, including: bird cherry, chuckleyplum, sloe tree, bitterberry, jamcherry, chokeberry, cabinetcherry, rum chokecherry, whisky chokecherry and black or red chokecherry. It also borrows location names like eastern, western, Virginia, and California chokecherry. And then there’s the scientific name Prunus virginiana. […]

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