Morning ramblings

American beech

This morning I heard three calling eastern phoebes while standing in one spot. One to the right of me, one to the left and the third overhead. They seemed to be engaged in a round robin (pun intended) of “fee-bee”ing to see which could out “fee-bee” the others.


The blue jay nest that I found last week appears to be finished and doesn’t look any better than the mass of sticks it was when it was still a work in progress. This morning, mom blue jay was on the nest—I could see her tail feathers sticking out of it. As the nest is high, I can’t tell if she was intent on laying an egg or already incubating her clutch.

Yesterday, one small and unknown warbler was flitting around on the other side of the lane. As I was letting the dogs out after returning home from work, I did not have my binoculars in hand. Dogs and binoculars do not go well together, so the warbler remains unknown.

My photo today is of one of the three large American beech trees in my front forest. This one could be a bit larger than the other two, but all are very nearly the same size. I can’t photograph the entire tree in one photo because whenever I back up far enough to get all of it in the same shot, the other trees around it begin to obscure it. It is a lovely and venerable beech tree, with small sapling beeches all around it. Most of those won’t survive, as they can’t compete with this large tree for light. Those little trees won’t get their chance until this large tree has had its century or two and no longer dominates.

The tree is more than twice the height of the cabin and way too big for me to circle the trunk with my arms. It’s always been my favorite tree at the cabin, rising straight and tall, past the tulip poplars and even some of the oak trees. I’m sure it’s more than 100 years old and is easily going on 3 feet in diameter. Someday I should measure its trunk so I can tell you exactly how big it is. But that’s a topic for another day.