Wet weekend

Mayapple

More flowers and more birds are making their first spring appearances around my cabin. Alas, none of the birds were warblers. However, that doesn’t mean I haven’t had any good ones. A male scarlet tanager seems to be taking up residence right by the cabin’s north side. I was treated to his sweet song all weekend long and saw him a few times as well.

I frequently see scarlet tanager deeper in the forest. Down in the valley between Roundtop Mtn. and Nell’s Hill they are regular summer residents. I’ve never had one so close to the cabin before, though, so I’m quite enjoying his presence. I haven’t yet seen him with a female so I don’t know if he will end up with a nest nearby or not.

The blue jays that are nesting on the south side of the cabin must have hatched. I no longer see mom’s head or tail constantly poking up out of her stick nest. The babies, if there are any, aren’t yet big enough for their heads to appear above the edge of the nest.

The first wild geraniums have appeared and, as you can see, so have the first mayapple blossoms. Mayapples are difficult to photograph. The flowers are usually hidden under the umbrella-like leaves, which means I have to get down on the ground to get a photo. That’s not so bad, but at least at my cabin, wherever I see mayapple blooms, I also find poison ivy. You can see one of those on the left side of today’s photo. I’ve already had all the poison ivy I need for this year. A few weeks ago before the leaves of anything were out, I pulled up some stray twigs and roots and ended up with poison between my fingers. That was not fun at all. I know enough to wear gloves most of the time, but I wasn’t thinking that those bare roots might be poison. Now I know.

Sometimes, I'm more than a little lucky

Yesterday was another day with the kids from adventure camp. A few days ago I lamented that the kids preferred seeing things that were big and splashy and that even a Baltimore oriole wouldn’t be cool unless it was sitting just above their heads and singing. We did one better than the sitting, singing oriole yesterday. A scarlet tanager did just that during the 9 a.m. hike. The only unfortunate part was that the bird wasn’t performing an entire concert, just a few songs. Some of the kids couldn’t see the bird even when they appeared to be looking right at it. But most of them saw and heard it and thought it was pretty cool. Me too.

The afternoon hikes were cancelled by a severe thunderstorm, which was better, I think, than hiking in 95 degree heat. At least it was better for me. The morning was very hot and humid by 10 a.m., and it didn’t take me long before I was wondering just how I was going to make it through the afternoon hikes in that heat. Some of the kids were starting to flag after one trip partway down the mountain and then back up again. I had six such rounds to make during the day.

During the noon break I went back to the cabin, took a quick, cool shower, drank another quart of water and ate a popsicle, and even though that helped, I wasn’t sure if that was going to help enough for me to get through the afternoon. Then I got lucky.

I turned on the TV and saw the radar, a strong and severe thunderstorm was heading right in my direction. At that point, it looked as though the storm would arrive during the 2 p.m. hike. When I got back to camp, the kids for the 1 p.m. hike arrived a bit late and by then I could see the storm would not wait until after 2 p.m. So I took the kids just into the edge of the woods where they managed to find one ripe raspberry apiece and tasted a bit of sassafras. Then I took them back out of the woods and showed them the difference between a storm cloud and a regular cloud. Then we headed for the cover of a sturdy building and waited out the storm. It was a doozy. And it looks as though my luck will hold—the forecast for next week is already promising cooler weather!

Black snake and other summer residents

I don’t see many snakes here at Roundtop. I have often gone a year or more without seeing any at all. At least 95% of the ones I do see are black snakes, like this handsome one that I found yesterday. I’ve never seen a poisonous snake here, though I know they’re around. This one was about 4 ft. long, a decent length, though it was slimmer than some I’ve seen.

Probably the weather this spring hasn’t been easy on reptiles. It’s dry, it’s wet. It’s hot, it’s cold. The changes are annoying enough for us warm-blooded creatures. I can’t imagine how the cold-bloods are doing with it.

Yesterday was pleasant but cool, and I first found this snake at the corner of the dirt lane and my driveway. I pulled the car into the driveway, grabbed the camera, returned to the spot and in that short time the snake had moved. I thought my photo opportunity was past, but I slowly checked around and found the snake again, this time on the opposite side of the lane, just off the road. I grabbed a few shots and then let it alone.

This clearing weather has brought a lot of new arrivals to my woods. The Canada geese have launched five new babies. The Eastern kingbirds have arrived on the slopes.

On Sunday morning a pair of scarlet tanagers were curiously eyeing the dogs as we were all out on the back deck. Tanagers usually nest at Roundtop but often they are further down the slope of the mountain. That I saw a pair of them right overhead makes me hope they will nest close enough to keep an eye on them while they do it. I’ve certainly heard the male singing all around the cabin this weekend. Having them next close enough to see them regularly would be exciting.

At this point, I think the only spring arrival I’m missing are the peewees, the latest of the summer residents. And they will be here soon. The rain held everything up for at least a week, but once that storm system cleared, that also cleared the way for the summer residents to show up and step out.

A Walk on the Mountain

Baby Dog and I took a nice walk aroiund the mountain on Sunday. We didn’t walk all the way down to the creek at the bottom of the mountain. Our walk stayed 50 feet or so above the bottom so we wouldn’t get wet feet. The old woods roads that winds around the side of the mountain was damp enough as it was. The trail down by the creek stays muddy for much longer from run-off and little springs that suddenly spring off the hill or seep up from the ground.

The sky grew ever greyer and the air ever more moist during our walk, but except for a few raindrops, we stayed dry. Baby Dog hates to get wet and to this day refuses to even get her toes wet, let alone the rest of her. We started out heading downhill to f ind one of the old woods roads that crisscross the mountain. Most of these were originally logging roads created 100+ years ago. The roads were just wide enough for a horse and wagon to haul out the trees that were cut. The woods roads are rarely, if ever, traveled these days, though a few have been kept open with once a year brush clearing. For a walker, they make excellent trails. Hunters will use them too, as the roads make access into the deeper woods much easier.

I had no real goal in mind during this walk, except to get outside for a bit and see if I could see anything different than what I see around the cabinr. The vegetation here isn’t much different, though I see more ferns than up at the cabin.

My first good sighting was of a scarlet tanager, though my photos are so bad I almost didn’t put it on the blog. Photos like this one usually go in my scrapbook of truly bad bird photos. Sometimes, I like those photos anyway, especially when they are my only shot of that species. The worst of my truly bad bird photos is a least flycatcher that flew the moment I snapped the shutter. It's only a blur but to this day it's my only photo of a least flycatcher.

This tanager did not cooperate by perching in clear view on a close branch. Instead I have a distant bird with at least half of it hidden by leaves. What you can see from the photo, though, is the bird’s very distinctive shade of scarlet. You don’t have to see the entire bird or even get a good view of the bird to know what it is. Just a flash of that color is enough. The song is distinctive, too, of course.

The tanager had claimed a spot that is slightly more open than the rest of the forest. It isn't a clearing so much as an open area created when the largest tree on the hill fell a few years ago. That tree took several smaller trees with it when it fell, and the result is a small area where the sky is visible, unlike most of the forest, where the sky isn't visible during summer. The tanager was perched on a tree at the very edge of this open area, so it had perhaps 75 feet without a forest canopy around one side of the perch it kept returning to.

Baby Dog and I also saw four deer, a pair of Baltimore orioles and heard rose-breasted grosbeak on our walk too. Near the end of the walk, we headed back uphill towards Roundtop's new pond, where we saw 7 new goslings, their proud and vigilant parents, and a host of other geese helping to guard the perimeter around the new babies.

My walk was pleasant, if somewhat uneventful--no bears, no foxes, no copperheads. It was just what I needed to end the weekend.