I woke up the other morning around 5:00 a.m. and could not get back to sleep. This is not an unusual experience for me. I usually hate just lying there waiting to drift off into a little more slumber before I need to get up. But on this morning I found it rather pleasant. The neighbor’s rooster was crowing every now and then; the peepers were still singing; and an owl was hooting in the woods. We don’t normally hear owls so it was extra special to hear it.

And what about those crazy peepers? We don’t normally hear them until late April/early May but for the past week we’ve been hearing them and they are getting more numerous by the day. Yes, Spring certainly is eager to get going this year.

While out in Mia we could see the pinkish-red fuzzy blur of the popped maples everywhere we went. In our woods there is an ever-so-slight tinge of green from the undergrowth starting to leaf out.

The forsythia bushes have clusters of plump buds just waiting to burst open in an explosion of yellow happiness.

I took advantage of the warm weather yesterday to rake part of the big flower bed where the forsythia is planted, and also to clean out all the leaf clutter from the day lily bed in the rock bed by the pool.

Here is a before, during, and after photo of my hard work on the day lilies.

The rest of the large bed and all the ferns in the rock bed still need attention, but at least it’s a start. I might just get out there this afternoon and do a little more. They really need the extra attention this year as last year I had injured muscles and was unable to do much yard work so the beds were left pretty wild.

The warm weather has also brought out the cherry blossoms in Branch Brook Park a few weeks early. Here they are last year. I hope to talk Rick into taking a long lunch on Friday and going there for a few hours to get some photos since it’s supposed to be a pretty nice day. I love the cherry blossoms!

 

If you’ve been checking back here to see if I’ve written anything this week you would have noticed that I didn’t. That’s because there is not much going on at the moment. It seems that all our energy for the past few months has gone into the Academy Awards trip, and now that it’s over with we are spent.

Winter passed us by this year although we did wake up to about an inch of wet slushy snow yesterday morning. Today there is a bitter wicked wind blowing outside so we are inside for the day. There is nothing I hate quite as much as the wind. If it’s not going to give me snow and true winter then it can just turn spring as quickly as it can. I’m done this year!

Since winter passed up by without nary a thought and spring has yet to arrive (although the witch hazel bush in my neighbor’s yard has popped, and another neighbor had one crocus up the other day, and my daffodils have broken ground) there is nothing to take photos of. Boring.

I saved another bird yesterday. Sam was sitting and staring out at the deck rather fixedly and when I looked out there was a poor little junco huddled in the coating of snow on the deck, shivering. I put on my gloves and went out and picked it up. Its poor little beak was opening and closing at an alarming rate and I could feel its little heart beating away. I held it for awhile and was not confident it was going to make it. Its little beady eyes were closed and its feathers were heaving up and down. It was raining at the time, so I really could not stand out there and hold it any longer. I went back inside and brought out a towel, wrapped the little junco in the towel and put it on top of the BBQ. I left the towel lightly draped on it so it would not weigh it down. I did other chores (splitting wood) for about fifteen minutes, then went to check on my little bird. When I opened the door I could still see the bird inside the towel. Damn, I thought. But the next second the bird was out of the towel and flying away! Off into the trees it went. Another soul saved. Makes me feel good inside.

Are you still reading? Bless you if you are. Pretty boring stuff.

In other news, the two amaryllis that I mentioned here that I thought were not going to bloom have fooled me again. They both have buds coming! Amazing! While the new one has yet another bud about to pop. I think amaryllis might just be the most wonderful flower bulb yet.

I hope to be as inspiring as my amaryllis in the week to come. At least I would like to think so. Here’s hoping.

Since there is nothing happening in my own particular little world today and it’s gray outside, I thought I’d take you back to Panama and show you some colorful birds I came across on our visit there last May.

One of the first birds I was introduced to was this little guy: a Red-Legged Honey Creeper. I love his black mask and his deep indigo color.

Here is a male and female side by side. Of course he gets to be dazzlingly beautiful and she gets to be a rather drab yellow-green!

A bird that was pretty hard to get photos of was this Thick-billed Euphonia with his bright yellow and dark blue coloring. You can see a few Red-Legged Honey Creepers in the same tree with him.

An unidentified bird. My notes say “Flame Tanager” but it’s not! The beak is too large.

All these birds were photographed outside Panama City in the yard of a Bed & Breakfast we had lunch at. I could have cared less about the delicious lunch that she served with all these beautiful birds all around us!

The following bird photos were taken at our small boutique hotel in Boquete. Each morning they would put out fruit for the birds. You had to be an early riser to see the birds before the fruit was gone. Here is one of the bird “feeders.”

The Blue-Gray Tanagers were plentiful; whether they were by themselves

or sharing with a Red-Legged Honey Creeper:

or feeding their young:

And certainly lots of my already favorite birds: The Red-Legged Honey Creepers again!
In this photo you can see more of his gorgeous coloring.

Here he is pretty darned intimidated by the much larger bird. I’m pretty sure the other bird is a Streaked Saltador (female?) but I was never certain of the identification. Just look how he’s trying to make himself look bigger by ruffling up the feathers on his head.

Mrs. Honey-Creeper:

Another Thick-Billed Euphonia with a very curious Streaked Saltador (love its expression!). This Euphonia is very dull in color compared to one at the beginning of this post, so no sure if it is a female or just in a molt.

I also loved the Silver Throated Tanagers.

These colorful birds with their blue beaks and half-orange breasts I could never identify from the guide at the hotel. (My bird book does not cover the tropics!) Maybe in the Tanager family??

Another unidentified bird.

The common robin!

A Social Flycatcher.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful to have these colorful birds in your back yard?

What do you do with a photo of house finches all with their mouths open?

We had the first snow of the season that started in the wee hours of the morning on Saturday and ended after noon. It left behind about 7 inches of fluffy white snow in its wake. Finally! It was lovely to have nowhere to go and to just sit by the fire and watch the flakes softly falling.

The birds were very active and we both had great fun watching them and trying to capture them in photos.

female cardinal and junco

male house finch

male cardinal

The dogs enjoyed the snow too! Here are Alex and Hailey on the deck. If you look closely you can see Bella down in the yard.

Repeating patterns!

Our new little electric snow shovel (that acts like a snowblower) made cleaning off the deck an easy task. It worked like a charm!

Yesterday it did not get above freezing and cloudy so there was no melting going on. This morning it is already above freezing as I type and we are supposed to have temperatures in the 40’s with rain and fog. Easy come; easy go I guess. It was nice while it lasted!

leftover snow on our bathroom skylight

Woodpeckers, that is! Remember I talked about how we had hairy woodpeckers now in addition to the downys and that they were considerably larger? The other day I was lucky enough to catch both the downys and the hairys on separate suet feeders at the same time. I think the difference is obvious. Here you have a female downy on one feeder, a male hairy on the other, and a male downy sitting on the clothesline.

And the beautiful Red-Bellied Woodpecker visits quite a bit too. (Don’t blame me, I didn’t name him!) Look at the gorgeous red head!

I am also it would seem, a bird rescuer. Many times the birds fly into our sliding glass doors on the back of the house and are stunned and cannot get up. I go out with gloves on, pick them up and hold them until they recover enough to stand by themselves. It’s rewarding to go from a bird that is lying on its back with its legs straight in the air to one that flies away. Yesterday it was a little chickadee. Keeping them warm is key so they recover from the concussive shock. I’ve done this many times with a 100% success rate!