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Sunrise on Mother’s Day. Now now some insects for my favorite mother. An orbweaver (spider) and two wasps. Gray spring moth and Lucerne moth. Mottled gray moth Olethrutine leafroller. Fish’s dart The Joker Columbian pug Northern spring azure. Happy Mother’s Day to all of my friends who are mothers. More later…

Trying to get photos of the large numbers of Evening Grosbeaks passing by is really challenging. I had close to 300 fly by the cabin in the morning. Large numbers of Broad-winged Hawks are still around, but the numbers are much lower than in the past few days. The Sharp-shinned Hawks are taking advantage ofContinue reading “South winds brought some great migrants”

Well, it was bound to happen, but Blue Jays arrived en masse today. While one or two can be rather attractive, when they arrive by the 100s or 1000s they can be serious pests. Here are a few of the 100s at or below our feeders. At the same time the jays arrived there wasContinue reading “Migration continues at Whitefish Point”

To say that chickadees are moving through is an understatement. These are the feeders at the Whitefish Point Bird Observatory. Between here and the waterfowl counter I tallied some 450 (or more) chickadees, with a few warblers mixed in. Another bird that made an appearance in good numbers is White-crowned Sparrow. Warblers also arrived inContinue reading “Broad-wings!”

It’s always fun getting good looks at individual Broad-winged Hawks. Because as the morning passes they start getting higher and higher. Before you know it they are passing high overhead. Or sometimes they are in swirling kettles where it is all but impossible to count them. At the same time there are eagles passing. ThisContinue reading “Hawk migration at Whitefish Point”

Geese, cranes it’s all the same – stay in formation. Ahh, the shy dessert animals. Yes spelling is important. John James Audubon, the father of modern ornithology, and a great artist as well. Yep, that’s why we have two French presses. I’ll admit it, I killed two of the coffee makers. A different take onContinue reading “A little humor to start the week”

I am attempting to not be completely engulfed by birds while we are at Whitefish Point. But, since it was rainy today until close to 4PM it was easy. I filled part of the morning making bread dough, half of which went to making these. These are bacon-wrapped bread sticks. We discovered these at theContinue reading “A rainy Sunday morning”

Yes, a Star Wars themed way of celebrating the day. But sometimes you have to have some luck with the day as well. The garden gave Susan a gift today – morels. We had morels appear when we once had an apple tree, but this is the first time we had the “pop up” inContinue reading “May the 4th be with you!”

We went to Nichols Arboretum this morning hoping for some spring migrants, of which there were very few. There were however some nice plants in bloom, like this swamp buttercup. We also found a number of jack-in-the -pulpit, which is always nice. There were also a lot of rue anemone. This was a particularly denseContinue reading “Cold May morning in Nichols Arboretum”

This showed up in my news feed the other day. As a person who has studied genealogy for many years I found it quite interesting. When I was born my mother had turned 26 the day before I was born. Her mother (my grandmother) was 43, her mother (my great-grandmother) would have been 66 hadContinue reading “May flowers in Ann Arbor”