I saw this adorable little bird a few days ago while we were on her afternoon walk. We were near the river and I noticed a small, speckled bird with a brown back and white underside on the trunk of a tree. Read more …
We’ve been seeing a lot of woodpeckers now that the leaves have fallen. A few days ago I counted close to a dozen downy woodpeckers on one of the trees near my house, and red-breasted woodpeckers have been coming around to peck at the locust tree outside my kitchen window. I’m not sure why hairy woodpeckers are called “hairy.” I guess it’s because the feathers on their bellies are fine and hair-like, but so are the feathers on the bellies of many other woodpeckers.
It’s that time of the year for great blue heron sightings, so if it shows up as bird of the day more than once, don’t blame me. We saw this one on the lakeshore during our afternoon walk, near sunset. Read more …
I saw a great blue heron today, which means I’ll probably start seeing sandhill cranes again soon, as well. The heron was hunting on the edge of a pond, and it found a frog … or maybe it was a piece of mulch. Read more …
Have you ever been walking peacefully along on a warm afternoon, enjoying the sounds of nature, when suddenly a grating sound not unlike the popping of a flame starter on a gas stove, but about one hundred times louder, pierces your ears?
It’s probably a chipmunk.
I saw an Eastern tiger swallowtail today, and somehow I ended up staying past my bedtime brushing up on genetics. How did that happen? Read more …
I heard a bird tweeting loudly and insistently overhead as I approached the pond on my walk today. It turned out to be an Eastern kingbird chick demanding to be fed. Read more …
Purple martins are the largest swallows in the US, and since much of their natural habitat of sickly trees with large woodpecker holes has been destroyed in the East, the best place to see them is anywhere someone’s put up a purple martin apartment. Read more …
On our walk today, I spotted this male Eastern black swallowtail butterfly (Papilio polyxenes asterius) flitting about among the swamp milkweed and chased it down for a closer look. And it was flying quite well, despite an injured wing. Read more …
I only started noticing Eastern kingbirds last year. They’re only around in the summer (they migrate to the southern hemisphere for our winters), don’t come to feeders or hang out in residential neighborhoods (at least not in my experience), and they tend to perch in higher branches, so usually you need to be looking up to see one.