Summer ruminations on winter's impact

I might not have seen many fawns this summer, but I sure am seeing a lot of turkey poults. I found another brood of them, this group not far from my cabin. The brood was 6-7; the babies still quite small. They, mom and an "auntie" were taking a dirt bath at the very edge of the road. I stopped the car and they soon scurried back into the woods.

Turkey broods appear variably, with the severity of the winter a determining factor. One PA study showed that egg incubation after one cold and snowy winter (1999) didn’t begin until around May 15. During more typical winters, incubation begins around April 28. The hens incubate the eggs for 28 days. As I am only just now starting to see the poults, I would not be surprised if the hens didn’t begin incubation until roughly the end of May. The younger hens typically don’t start to incubate until a week or so after the mature hens.

None of the poults I’ve seen over the past week flew, though young turkeys can fly a bit within about 10 days. I suppose that just because I didn’t see any of them flying that doesn’t mean for sure that they couldn’t fly, but I can say the birds were quite small and it wouldn’t surprise me if they were under 10 days old.

So in doing the math, I’m going to say that the small brood I saw on Saturday was just 10 days old, which would make them hatched on July 9. That would mean incubation for this brood began around June 10-11. That is very late, and also suggests both hens I saw were younger birds, who would have started incubation later anyway.

Certainly 2013-14 was a colder winter than 1999, when the turkey nesting study was done. So it is likely that nesting for turkeys was even later this year than then. The little ones should still have ample time grow and ready themselves for this upcoming winter. Poults gain weight quickly and by the time they are seven months old will weigh 8-12.5 lbs depending on gender. Still, with nesting coming so late this spring, another tough winter in the upcoming season wouldn’t do the species any good locally. Winter is tough enough on the younger ones, let alone poults that may be as much as a month younger when winter arrives than is typical.

Quite a large family

 

Rain and more rain. Everyone and everything acts tired of it. The large turkey family of 10 poults appeared barely a minute after the latest round of heavy rain ended. I grabbed this shot with my phone as I was driving home last evening from a meeting. I was afraid that if I took the moments to reach into my purse, grab my real camera and take the shot the turkeys would be gone. My phone was closer, so I used that.

Not a mile down the road several more turkey, with no poults, were together in the same field as a small herd of deer. The animals all appeared for an evening promenade or meal just as quickly as that rain ended.

So, needless to say, everything is soaked around the cabin. Wellies are my footwear of necessity. The forest is as lush as a jungle. It IS a jungle in all but official name. "The Appalachian Jungle" just doesn’t have the same ring as the Appalachian Mountains.

Made it!

 

Whew! I hope I don’t have any more storms like that for a while. 85 mph straight line winds cause as much damage as an F1 tornado. Trees are down all over the place, as are garages and sheds and a few barns, too.

I escaped damage at the cabin, but have been cleaning up at my family’s farm, where dozens of trees are down. For some of the biggest ones that are still hanging over the barn we will need to get professional tree trimmers to remove them, though those people are now booked solid for a few weeks. Fortunately, no more severe weather is on the horizon for a while.

In better news, I have finally seen a fawn! This was no wobbly spring fawn, but a good-sized fawn of summer, well able to follow its mother across the mountain road in front of me.

July sunrise

Summer sunrise bodes summer storm. 

I close the windows, turn on the air conditioner and do the little tasks, like filling up water dishes, just in case of power loss.  All it takes is one tree, on the power line's long span up the mountain, to fall over in heavy rain or get struck by lightning.  Just one, and I'm out of power. 

Up here, we are always the last to get our power back.  Towns and roads with more people are the first priority.  So batteries are stored, electronic devices are kept charged and lanterns are always handy.  I just never know when I will need them, so they are always at hand.  If I don't need them this time, today, then it will be next week or the week after.  Such things are routine here.  Preparedness is a way of life.

Summer light

The past weekend was a perfect summer weekend in this part of the country. It was warm and breezy but not hot, not humid and not hazy. The temperature hovered around or just under 80 degrees, with pleasantly cool evenings. I didn’t run the air conditioner at all. Three whole days in midsummer with pleasant weather is a rare joy, too rare unfortunately.

I spent as much time outside this weekend as was humanly possible, finding any excuse to walk a little further or take the dogs for another traipse through the forest. We saw deer and turkeys, squirrels and opossums, a ring-necked snake, largemouth and smallmouth bass, heard gray treefrogs and yellow-billed cuckoos. I pulled black raspberries from the bushes and ate them straight away, my fingers turning purple with their juicy goodness.

I saw almost everything there is to see here in summer. Everything there is to see except for fawns. Truly, I must be the only person around not have seen a fawn yet this season. My neighbor up the mountain claims to have seen four at once. It’s a mystery why I haven’t seen one, but there it is. Such is life.

The light in those early morning walks has a clarity that is unique to summer. Autumn’s light is golden, winter’s light is soft, spring’s bright and warm. Summer’s light gleams with a bold clarity that is surprisingly delicate in the early hours of the day.

The hot, hazy and humid weather has returned today, though won’t last but a day or so. And since today is a work day and my time outside is limited, anyway, the nuisance of the 3H’s also has limited impact. I’m still hoping to see a fawn, somewhere, before their spots disappear.

The Three H's have arrived



Ironweed, aka wild butterfly weed

The dreaded three H’s—hazy, hot and humid—have taken over Roundtop today. Those three words are like curses to me. I can imagine a whole range of curse sayings about them: "may you live where it’s hazy, hot and humid" being one that comes to mind today.

Overnight, the mountain didn’t cool down even a little bit. That alone is unusual. More typical is that sometime after midnight, even the hottest days start to give up in the face of darkness. Not so last night. It was one of those fortunately rare days when I never turned off the air conditioner and was glad to have one to make the inside bearable. The dogs didn’t get an evening walk until it was dark, and even then we all returned to the cabin hot and sticky and ready for water.

This time around the worst of the heat will break sometime on Thursday, so it’s only 36 hours or so that I will have to suffer. The frightening part is that it is only early July, so there’s a full two months ahead where I have to face at least the threat of the three H’s. That’s another reason I dislike summer. Too many days of the three H’s and too many days when those three H’s might reappear at any moment.

I am ready for another winter.

Warm

What is so rare as a nice day in June?

This year, they were pretty rare. Rain, humidity and high temperatures marked the month, not those warm, clear days with the puffy cumulus clouds of sonnets. After a colder than average start to the year, I am not surprised that June was one that was warmer than average. In this part of the country, the long cold spell of this past winter was an exception: typically, I don’t go for so many months in a row that are either colder or hotter than average. I’m just hoping that June’s warmer than average temperatures don’t stretch for five months in a row, the way the colder than average months of winter did.

Here on the mountain, I am frequently spared several degrees of temperature that marks a day nearer the cities. I am not spared the humidity, though, so sometimes those cooler temperatures don’t feel a bit cooler. Several days of June were like that.

Unfortunately for me, the month ahead will likely be even hotter than June. July usually is. While I enjoy winters, I would be just as happy if the summers were cooler than average as long as the winters were no worse than average. I don’t really wish for warm winters; I’ve had too many of those already.

With this year’s colder winter, I was hoping that some of the nastier insects would be in shorter supply than usual. I can’t say I’ve found that to be the case so far. Mosquitoes are still plentiful. I’m not sure about the stink bugs yet. Ticks might be slightly less than average, though the difference isn’t large, assuming it’s not just my own fancy that I’ve pulled fewer of them off the dogs or me. And they could still appear in larger numbers later in the summer. I’d like to think that won’t happen.

Summer's signs

 

Is it midsummer already? The mountain has that look and the first of the summer flowers are blooming. I’ve seen daisies, in addition to these brown-eyed susans. The first farmer lilies will soon be out, too, if they haven’t already opened up in today’s sun.

Thunderstorms are marching eastward, another sure sign of summer. So far neither the haze nor the heat has reached epic proportions, though the weather is definitely moving in that direction. Sometimes the humidity makes the late afternoons uncomfortable. I can always tell how the day is progressing by the number of animals stretched out and sleeping around the cabin. The higher the humidity, the fewer animals standing on all four legs.

Fireflies seem in somewhat shorter supply this year. I usually find them starting around Memorial Day, and it was a good 10 days after that before I saw the first. Now, I see some blinking here and there, but it feels like half of the number I think I should be seeing. Perhaps they will be more numerous in another few weeks. Naturally, I am wondering why there aren’t so many and I have no real idea.

If feels as though "everyone" has seen new fawns so far but me. I don’t know why I’m not seeing them, as I see lots of deer. I’ve just been unlucky enough to miss the fawns.

Tomorrow will be another day of camp for me, and the weather looks promising.  At least I won't have to keep the camera in the waterproof bag, so that's something!

 

My first session of this year’s adventure camp was on Thursday. It rained most of the day, usually a gentle rain but with occasional downpours. I feared the rain would put the stream creatures into hiding, but mostly it didn’t. The kids caught a lot of things, including a lovely red salamander and a fat common toad, as well as the requisite number of tiny crayfish.

I’m sorry about the quality of the photo of the salamander. Due to the rain, I kept my phone in a waterproof plastic bag and took the shot through the plastic. Considering that, the photo turned out better than I expected.

Most of the kids didn’t mind the rain, or at least they willingly put up with it. A few whined about it, so I told them "This isn’t the Wizard of Oz. You will not melt." That quieted most of them, but a few still behaved as though getting wet was a fate worse than death. And this from the same kids whose feet were already soaked because they were tromping around in the stream. Most of the kids didn’t have rain jackets, so they were pretty soaked. One boy with a lovely rainjacket that covered him down to his knees complained the loudest and the most. Nothing worked with him. He was determined to be unhappy. Fortunately, that was the minority view.

Tattered

 

This tiger swallowtail is pretty tattered. It’s already had a rough life, even though the season is still early and the butterfly probably didn’t appear much before sometime in May. Perhaps the recent heavy rains damaged it before it could find shelter. So far this year I’ve seen a lot of them around my cabin. Some years are better than others for the species, and this year seems to be a good one. Typically I will find them into September, rarely later than that.

They often fly pretty high. I’ve seen them up near the tops of trees around my forest, but enticing bloom will bring them down to a level where I can photograph them. This one decided to rest on one of my outdoor chairs. If I was as tattered as this swallowtail, I’d need to rest pretty often, too.

Free vulture buffet

 

All that’s missing is a sign: "Free vulture buffet. Line forms here."

The "buffet" is a small-ish dead groundhog, newly dead. Notice the vultures include both turkey vultures and a few black vultures. Driving by, a few of the turkey vultures hopped away. Not the black vultures. My impression is that they are more aggressive around dinner or at least less likely to be intimidated by something so mundane as a car.

Blooming rain

Moth mullein

 

Rain and raindrops just won’t go away this week. Soaked is the operative word. Me, the dogs, the forest, everything.

Some plants around the mountain don’t seem to mind the lack of sun. Others close up tighter than me in my cabin, hiding away from those nasty raindrops and waiting for the sun to reappear.

One of the plants that is blooming despite the weather is the moth mullein, an immigrant that’s only been on these shores for about 300 years. It was first documented in Pennsylvania in 1818 and had reached Michigan by 1840. The flower also comes in a yellow shade, but I’ve never seen that one here. The biennial plant originated in north Africa and Eurasia and was apparently deliberately introduced here with the early settlers, as so many of our wildflowers that like meadow and forest edges seem to be. I wish I could find out more about that 1818 reference. Who brought it over?

The plant is used as an herbal remedy, apparently an effective one, for asthma and other respiratory disorders, so I can imagine some doctor or self-taught medicine person wanting it in what was then an almost non-existent arsenal of things that worked to heal people. Apparently an extract of the flowers is good for ear infections, too. I’m vaguely tempted to try it that way, but I probably won’t.

Air thicker than water

The dewpoint (and humidity) continue so high that I may as well be a fish. Relief is promised for the weekend, but before that occurs thunderstorms, possible flooding and more humidity must be gotten through. This kind of weather is the reason I dislike summer. Heat without humidity isn’t bad but even a moderate temperature with this kind of humidity makes me feel like a wash cloth that needs to be wrung out.

Around the cabin the gloomy fog doesn’t appear to affect the animals. I see deer and turkeys regularly—no fawns or poults yet. The forest is dense and wet—raingear is needed even when it’s not raining unless I want to be soaked by leaves brushing against me. Several pairs of footwear haven’t been dry in days. I will be glad when the weather breaks as long as the breaking storms aren’t severe. It will be nice to see the sky again, instead of just clouds.

In this part of the world, while the west deals with drought, rainfall is now more than seven inches above normal. More than once I’ve wondered if climate change will push this area into some kind of temperate rain forest habitat. The pattern over the last several years has been for very high humidity and more rainfall than average. Years ago I heard that climate change would make this area feel more like Georgia, but I’ve been to Georgia in the summer and it’s not at all like this. I’ll let you know if I start finding redwoods or Doug firs on the mountain. I still have a ways to go before that happens.

Dewpoint Dilemma

Although the temperature has not yet reached the summery temperature of 90 degrees, the humidity and haze of hot summer days has arrived. Even a moderate 80 degree temperature feels uncomfortable when the dewpoint is nearly 70. Still, I have so far resisted putting the air conditioner in the kitchen window. I am starting to falter, though. I suspect I will have to get it going sometime this weekend. Once I put the thing in the window, it will stay there until at least mid-September, when I’m pretty sure the temperature and humidity won’t skyrocket again one final time.

I dislike the air conditioner for several reasons, not the least of which is what it does to my electricity bill. But I also dislike the sound of it and how it muffles the noises outside in the forest. When the air conditioner is running I can’t hear the birds outside or determine if the chickens are involved in some squabble, either real or imagined. Part of that is that I need to close up the other windows in the cabin when the air conditioner is running, but part is just the sound of the thing. I can’t hear people pulling into my driveway, sometimes not until the dogs set up an outcry.

The air conditioner in the kitchen window—the only window where one will fit at all—also blocks much of my view to the southwest. This time of year the dense greenery already hampers much of my viewing and the air conditioner only makes it worse. Plus, I can’t see that end of my deck at all.

Really, the only thing I do like about the air conditioner is that it takes the moisture out of the air. I don’t need to have it particularly cool in the cabin. In fact, I don’t like a dramatic change from terribly hot outside to icebox on the inside, so I keep the temperature inside pretty warm. I do like the lowered humidity that it creates, and I’ve just about reached the point where I want to make that happen.

Summer days and summer nights

 

I probably shouldn’t say this, because if I do I will jinx it. But so far this spring, the temperatures have been pleasant, not sweltering. That’s a nice change from recent Mays and Junes, where I started longing for fall before the summer solstice. This year I’m perfectly happy with warm days and cool nights and would be even more perfectly happy if the temperatures didn’t change at all until the autumnal equinox. Alas, that is not likely to happen, but every cool day is one less hot day before fall. I’ll take that.

Around my cabin, the ovenbirds are still calling, more so than the wood thrush, who are apparently settled down performing nesting duties. I hear a yellow-billed cuckoo nearly every day, too. The Canada geese goslings are getting bigger every day—they’ve reached the size of small ducks, now—and have become proficient swimmers, dutifully following mama and papa goose around the ponds.

The forest has that early summer feel. Everything is still moist from the spring rains, though they are beginning to diminish. Instead of rain every other day, now I go 4-5 days without rain and then it’s likely to be drizzle or a partial day’s rain. It’s a comfortable time of year, when jackets aren’t needed and sweat doesn’t ruin an outing. If only it would stay this way, though it probably won’t.

When I was a kid every now and again we have a cool summer. People who loved swimming would complain about it, but most enjoyed the break from hotter and more humid seasons. I can’t remember the last time I had a cool summer, though I do remember a rainy one several years ago. Those are also unusual here. Perhaps this will be the year for one here. I can only hope for that. A cool summer is long overdue, and in this time of climate change, perhaps it’s too much to hope for, but I will anyway.

Spring was a long time arriving this year, but once it finally arrived, the season wasted no time. The forest is dense with fully developed leaves, as you can see from this view of Nells Hill, the mountain behind my cabin. The "view" from my cabin is now fully lost, and to my eye I have even less sky this year than before.

From my north window I have one very small open patch of sky visible, a few pinprick sized spots and then a mass of greenery. To the west, I wouldn’t know Nells Hill even existed if I lived here only in the summer. To the south, I never have a view, as Roundtop mountain rises in that direction. Now, I can’t even see the ground through the greenery. To the east is my driveway, a tunnel through the greenery. In years past I had to walk out to the end of my driveway, to where it meets the lane going up the mountain to see any sky. This year even that view seems constricted, and for a real view of open sky I need to walk to the end of the lane to where the forest ends.

Now is the most lush time of the year. As the summer wears on it is likely a small amount of the canopy will open up. Summer thunderstorms bring wind, and most are strong enough to down a few twigs laden with a few leaves. Sometimes a stronger storm will bring down small branches, and once or twice a year a stronger storm will bring down some branches. All of that will eventually help to open up the canopy, long before fall is even a thought on the horizon.

It’s not these normal storms that cause any worry on my part; it’s those every couple of years kind of storms that bring down large branches or even the trees themselves that give me pause. I can do without any of those this year.

Misty mornings and nights

Canada Geese eye me and Baby Dog suspiciously in the early morning

This week has proved to be one of those changeable weeks that included a 40 degree variation in temperature and a lot of overcast and rainy skies.  Yesterday afternoon I even had a fire for a few hours.  It wasn’t horribly cold but it was horribly damp, and the fire soon took care of that.  I have spent some time outside, though not as much as I typically do.  I find it hard to foray through the woods when rain pelts my face and drips under my rain jacket.  I come home damp and the dogs come home wet. I easily convince myself it’s better to stay inside.

The rain, however, makes for lovely sleeping weather.  Most nights it’s been warm enough to leave open a few windows and cool enough to snuggle under a blanket, all the while listening to the soft sound of rain on the forest leaves outside.  To me, that is about perfect.  The only thing that could make it more perfect is if I’d been in my sleeping bag in a tent, possibly with dogs (as long as they were good).

Few sounds are as lovely as the sound of a soft rain on the forest leaves, lulling me to sleep.  I’ve had plenty of that this week.  It’s not as lovely during the day when I’d prefer a foray in the woods, but I can’t have everything.  This week the rain was my lullaby.

Who's a cuckoo now?

Abundant sunshine, a gentle breeze with temperatures not too hot and not too cold.  That was my weekend on Roundtop Mtn.  I was outside as much as I could be, nosing around, looking here and looking there, just seeing what I could see.  I was rewarded with more than a few good sightings.

For the first time in years, I actually got to see a yellow-billed cuckoo! Cuckoos are never common, but each year I hear one or two residents, calling from all around the mountain.  Often I think it’s one cuckoo, traveling from one tree to the next around the cabin.  Cuckoos are notorious for being hard to see, partly because they don’t bounce around like some other birds and partly because they seem to make an effort to stay under cover.  That’s a bad combination for someone hoping to see one, instead of just hearing it.

On Sunday on one of my many forays out the door, I suddenly heard the call of a very close cuckoo.  I didn’t have binoculars and wasn’t about to rush inside to find mine.  Instead I stood in front of the cabin, trying to locate the source of the call.  I could tell the call was coming from one of the tall white oaks behind the cabin but that covers a lot of trees.  After a few more calls I was sure of the cuckoo’s general area but without binoculars (and perhaps even with them), locating a cuckoo in that mass of greenery was impossible.  But then the cuckoo flew and for a brief second or two, I saw it as it headed further up the mountain to find another vantage point for its next round of calls.  It’s always a banner day when I can see a cuckoo!

Red sky again this morning and storms are heading my way.  It's a summer kind of thunderstorm, though the temperature is more modest than the thunderstorm weather of midsummer.  That's not much consolation as the storm itself is just as severe as those of a month or so from now.

Did anyone get up/stay up for the meteor shower this past weekend?  I set my alarm and got up, loading a lawn chair and Baby Dog into the car for the brief run up to the north parking lot. In my corner of the sky, the meteor shower was a bust--I didn't see a single one in the hour I was out.  I did hear other areas of the country fared better and got a nice show.  Ah, well, it will be time for the Perseid shower before I know it.

Morning walk with Baby Dog

Milk snake

Baby Dog and I took a walk this morning along portions of Roundtop Mtn. that I don’t usually have time to visit on a weekday. But this morning no rain or thunderstorms deterred us. The puppies are off for a day being neutered and spade, and we had the morning to ourselves. The change to our routine was a good one.

Baby Dog was the first to see the snake, a milk snake I believe, perhaps just a bit shy of 2-feet long. I’m not sure Baby Dog had ever seen a snake before. Certainly she’d never seen one slithering quickly across the dirt road in front of her before. She was forced to bark at it, of course, but was wary enough to keep a reasonable distance away. I managed one quick photo before it disappeared into the grass.

Later, I came across a nice little grouping of fleabane, likely Philadelphia fleabane. The only difference I can see between this flower and daisy fleabane is that Philadelphia fleabane tends more to the lavender shade than daisy fleabane, which is usually white or just barely tinged with lavender.

The sweet song of Baltimore orioles accompanied us throughout our early morning walk. A least 6 different males, sang from every corner of the mountain. Who needs an iPod when the orioles’ song follows me everywhere I go?

Tonight the puppies will be back home, and our quiet time together will be over. Baby Dog misses the puppies, and I had to tell her that will be back soon enough. I think she believed me.

Red sky at morning...

Sailor’s warning?  So does orange count as the sailor’s warning?  I suspect it might, if not perhaps quite as soon as a truly red sky.

I would call this a sky of building trouble or trouble nearby if not right atop me.  The old sailor’s warning holds true, though it also leaves a lot unknown.  A sky that looks like this might be a storm that’s still hours away, perhaps no to arrive until overnight, or perhaps not even until tomorrow.  This same sky could also mean that someplace nearby, say within 20-25 miles, is in for trouble and “my” sky is telling me I’m on the edge of that.

What I do know for sure is that I won’t know the answers for some hours after I see a sunrise like this.  It’s the kind of sky that tells me to keep an eye to the sky to see which way of my two possibilities this sky will turn out to mean:  storm overhead but hours away or storm nearby but not overhead.

Either way it makes for a beautiful sunrise, but one to watch out for in the hours ahead.

Dogwood sunset

With spring already two-thirds gone, I should not be surprised at how many blooms are already fading.  Dogwood, though near its peak when I took this photo at the beginning of the weekend, is already today past its prime.  The redbud has gone to green, leaving nothing but twisted trees that look, even to my eye, as though they should be cut down before they infect the rest of the forest with some terrible disease.

And with the loss of some comes the first blooms of others.  The first of the wild geraniums, a delicate shade of lavender far prettier than that of their tamer, more garish cousins, are budding and almost blooming.  Perhaps this evening the blooms will be fully opened.

The first geese have produced three tiny goslings.  Another goose, one I have dubbed Mrs. Hiss, is still on her eggs.  She has chosen, rather poorly, to build her nest not 6 feet off the road around the pond near my cabin.  Every time a car goes by she stands up off her nest and hisses ferociously.  As nest choice goes, it’s a pretty terrible one.

Sunrise on a spring morning

My view of the western mountains is gone for another 5-6 months, a sure sign that the warm seasons are in full bloom.  The leaves are not yet so full that I have lost my view of the sky, though that is not long away either.  The tall oaks and hickories leaf out later than the beech and the smaller trees that strive not to be pushed out of the sun by their taller neighbors.

So considering that annual growth is still growing ever more lush by the day, it seems a little surprising that a few things are already dying back, done for another year.  The earliest of the bloomers are already tossing seeds into the wind.  Coltsfoot, that dandelion look-alike, has turned white and fuzzy, tall stems topped by the flat, white leftovers of the yellow flower. They remind me of straw hats, the kind called “boaters.”  A few still retain vestiges of the yellow flower, though tomorrow they will be little boaters, too.

The warblers are about done here until fall. I had a nice few mornings dominated by chestnut-sided warblers.  I don’t usually get many warblers on the side of the mountain, away from water, but I nearly always have a nice number of chestnut-sided.  Or perhaps it’s only that they are easier to spot—they come down to the mid-level of trees instead of flitting through the tallest ones.

On a recent misty morning warblers that favor the top canopy were nearly impossible for me to identify.  They were little gray silhouettes instead of flashes of color, and my poor hearing meant I can’t hear some of them .  That’s a bad combination when trying to identify them.  But chestnut-sided warblers are more cooperative. I can hear their little trill and they are low enough to see well and identify.  They seem more curious than most of the others, too, frequently bouncing lower to get a look at me or the dogs.

This morning the sunrise was especially good, perhaps foreshadowing thunderstorms later today.  Those are another sign of the warmer weather.  So far the storms have been meek—a few rumbles of distant thunder, a gathering of clouds that never quite turned into a storm.  That will soon change, I’m sure.

Redbuds on a gray morning

Thundergust Mill Rd., Warrington Township, York county PA

Redbud trees are in full color on Roundtop. Redbuds are not flowering trees, though they appear as such at first look. The red literally is a leaf bud that will soon turn green. When that happens the trees lose all their splendor and look like something that is diseased and broken and should be cut down. Which, I suspect, is what happens to some of them when overeager brush clearers are at work once the buds turn to leaves.

Redbud favor sunny field and forest edges, so I don’t have any right around my cabin. I am too deep into the forest for them, though the bottom on my lane, where the forest ends, has several of them.

Splindly and misshapen as the trees are, they look like a natural, more full-sized version of a bonsai tree. The trunks and branches take on their own S-shapes, without help from a master gardener.

Today, the redbud are at their most brilliant for the year, but the morning is gray and a touch foggy. Professional photographers would gnash their teeth, hoping for good lighting to match the redbud’s peak.

I am more interested in documenting the natural year in whatever lighting presents itself. Better lighting would be nice, but the redbud peak won’t wait for that. Too many professional photographs look garish to me and seem to reflect the photographer more than the world as I see it. I’m not convinced we do people with limited experience of the natural world any favors by showing nature in ways that don’t look natural. Nature is not Disneyland. Nature should be experienced as it is, for how else can we reach any level of understanding of it?

Springing

Last week’s rain brought out the neon green of spring in a big way.  Where winter browns still languished, the rain was like fertilizer, and all shades of greens soon exploded everywhere.  Redbud is budding, and serviceberry is blooming.  The forest is red and white and green right now.  The redbud down off the mountain is in full color; the trees up on Roundtop Mtn. are not quite so far along.  I am waiting a few days to take a photo of them, waiting for the color to get just a bit more intense.

More wildflowers are blooming, too.  Wild violets with their luscious shades of purple are delicate as rice paper.  Rue anemone all but cover some sections of the forest floor.  The forest is growing lush, though it is still a delicate lushness, fresh with new growth.



The first wood thrush and ovenbirds are now joined by several “friends” competing for territory around the cabin.  Last evening I thought I heard the “whoop” of a great crested flycatcher, but it wasn’t close enough for me to be sure of that.  Other migrants are starting to arrive to rest for an evening or two before heading further north.  I know I heard at least half a dozen different Baltimore orioles singing last evening.  I don’t expect all will stay here, though several are likely to.

I often don’t see many warblers down around the cabin, unless a foggy, misty morning forces them off the mountain top. I’m sure I would find more if I climbed the mountain in the early morning, but my mornings are too hectic and short for that.  Maybe next year.  It’s spring again and time to be outside.

Too wet!

Lakeshore Trail at Pinchot State Park

After the deluge earlier in the week, I was ready for some drier weather and some time outdoors! Spring is springing, and the annual explosion of new growth happens quickly.  Miss a week and suddenly it’s summer.

Baby Dog and I decided (well, I decided and she readily agreed) to go for a walk.  Although up at our cabin the ground has already drained from the 4 inches of rain that fell, flatter land at lower altitude was still soggy.  In other words, we didn’t get too far. I could easily have returned to the cabin for my wellies, but I didn’t want to have a wet and muddy dog dirtying up the car, so we aborted our walk and returned to higher ground.  Baby Dog was fine with that—she got a car ride and a cavort around the mountain.

Spring is further along down off the mountain though not by too much.  It won’t be very long before I lose my view of the mountain to the west for another 5 or 6 months. At the moment, I can still see the mountain through a maze of budding leaves.  Even that level of visibility will be gone in 2-3 weeks.

My last frost was April 18, and though the temperature has been very close to freezing several times since then, it hasn’t actually dropped to that magic number.  At this point, it’s unlikely to.

Wood thrush-yes! Bloodroot--not

Tree Swallow taken at Braddock Bay Hawkwatch

The first wood thrush have arrived by my cabin, and the first ovenbirds.  I head the sweet songs on Monday evening, the day before a long stretch of rain inundated the mountain.  The rain stopped late last evening, but I still feel I’m living in a bog.  The ground squishes underfoot and puddles are everywhere. And since I’m living on the side of a mountain, you can guess how bad it is in a valley or on flat land.  Those areas are flooded; houses are sometimes on little islands, like castles with a moat.

But this afternoon the fog has lifted and for the first time in days the sun is out and the day is warm.  The streams will recede and the island houses will revert to houses with lawns in another day or two.  I hope the break in bad weather continues for a while.  Outside chores are piling up around my cabin, and my list of them gets longer every day—move the chicken pen, clean up extraneous junk that somehow has appeared, clean the gutters, trim back the fast-growing underbrush.  I need more than a few sunny weekend days to even make a dent in the list.

I am also starting to think that for the first time in years I won’t have bloodroot at the cabin.  The little flowers haven't appeared yet, and at this point in the season I suspect they won't at all.  I watch the patch where they grow anxiously but see no sign of them.  The area hasn’t been disturbed at all, so I have no obvious explanation for why they haven’t appeared.  Now that I have wild violet in the woods, I’m thinking I won’t have the bloodroot at all this year.  At least, I hope it’s only this year that they don’t appear.  I’ve gotten used to these one-day wonders, and I hate to think it may well be another full year before I can see them again at the cabin.

It's spring flower week!

Rue anemone

 

The forest’s first, tiny ephemeral flowers are blooming at Roundtop. In addition to the yellow dog-toothed violets I found several days ago, I’ve now added bloodwort, rue anemone and coltsfoot. All of these flowers are small and easy to overlook.

Coltsfoot

Coltsfoot is the most obvious of the three new species I found yesterday, and even that one is easy to overlook. The flower looks so much like dandelion that I believe a lot of people overlook it because of that. But though the flowers are similar, the similarity ends there. Coltsfoot is taller that most dandelions and the plant flowers before you find any leaves. Often, it is the first new flower I find in the spring, but not this year.

Bloodwort is another tiny plant. The flowers are about half an inch and the waxy, clover-shaped leaves are perhaps 2-3 inches. An entire plant may be only 3-4 inches long. I found just two plants of this one, within 4-5 feet of each other. Likely, there are more that I haven’t found yet.

Rue anemone is a common plant in my forest. Every year I have multiple plants that vary in shade from white to a nice lavender. This plant is no larger than bloodwort but it grows much more densely, and I often find 10-12 plants in one area. Even a tiny flower is hard to overlook when so many are grouped together.



Bloodwort

Finding spring’s first flowers is a true sign of spring, along with the appearance of that lovely little Eastern blue butterfly. This weekend I also had golden-crowned kinglets, ruby kinglets and a pair of very curious blue-gray gnatcatchers. For the first time this year, I finally feel confident that I can finally put those snow shovels away!

Sunset through forest

 

The latest chill (and I sure hope it was the last big one of this season) is easing. The dog-toothed violets appear to have come through okay for the most part. I have yet to see any other flowers in the forest, but I am beginning to notice a green "haze" around some shrubs. That haze will no doubt soon become leaves, perhaps tomorrow when the temperature warms to seasonal levels again.

In the mornings, I hear two summer visitors—the eastern phoebe and the robins among the ever-present cardinals. Now is the time of year when, for a few days, I have both robins and juncos. It always seems odd to me to see the northern visitors and the southern visitors together. The togetherness doesn’t last long. Many of the juncos have already left.

As yet, I’ve not yet heard the song of the wood thrush or the cry of the ovenbird. It is still a few days, perhaps a week, too early for them here. I expect them about April 23, though occasionally they are 3-4 days later than that. Once they arrive, the morning chorus of bird song will be in nearly full voice, loud enough to wake me up in mornings without the need for an alarm.

For now, the forest shows signs of waking up after a very long, winter nap. It still has a ways to go, but the slumber is ending.

A wild ride

Skim ice patterns

What happened in the last 24 hours? Let’s see..the temperature dropped nearly 40 degrees in about 12 hours, and torrential rain turned to driving snow, though it didn’t accumulate. Worst of all, I was forced to turn my heat back on.

This morning the temperature was 24 at the cabin, a number the little dog-toothed violets did not like at all. Those flower stems were closed up tighter than tight this morning. I don’t know if warmer weather will revive them or not, so I will have to wait and see. Tonight’s temperature will also drop below freezing again, if not quite so far or so precipitously.

None of us should be surprised. It’s been the kind of year where atypical weather is normal. And it’s only April.

First flower

Dog-toothed violet

 

Ah, the first flower of spring has appeared.

Just past my front steps is an area that’s filled with dog-toothed violet plants. The first flower bloomed on Sunday, the first of many in this patch, which is covered with the pretty grey and green mottled leaves. The patch itself is about 4 feet by 5 feet and contains hundreds of leaves. The blooms are small and delicate, and the leaves far outnumber the blooms. In a good year, I might have 20 blooms, but the size of the patch and denseness of the leaves might lead you to expect 50 or more.

I hope the flowers make it through the snow predicted for tomorrow. Yes, you read that right.

Yesterday the temperature flirted with 80 (and no doubt passed that in some suburban areas). But Tuesday brings cooler weather, rain and sometime after dark, snow. It’s just that kind of year. One morning the heat is still on, but the air conditioner is needed in the afternoon. And then the heat is needed the next day.

No, I didn’t lug my air conditioner out from underneath the kitchen table where it spends the winter. Nor, did I place it in my kitchen window, but I did use the AC in my car after a trip to the pet food store with Skye.

Other spring flowers, like forsythia at my family’s farm, late to start this year, are blooming one morning and withering by the afternoon heat. The yellow violets are blooming the latest I’ve ever recorded, though only by 3 days. The earliest I’ve ever had them was March 21, which was still snow-bound here this winter. Usually, a blooming this late translates into a bloom that doesn’t last very long. The forsythia are certainly following that pattern. I have to look fast this spring, so I don’t miss anything.

Why does the turkey cross the road?

...To visit his lady friends, of course.

Two whole days without rain!  I hardly know how to act.  Of course, rain is forecast for Friday but I still get two whole days of sunshine and bright blue sky from horizon to horizon.  It feels as though it’s been months since that’s happened.  Even if it hasn’t been months, I’m pretty sure the other non-rainy days were overcast, so the sunshine seems a novel thing to see.

The sunshine and warmer temperatures are starting to encourage the first signs of spring greenery.  I’m seeing a few patches or shades of green on the yards, amongst the winter brown. The weather has also encouraged flocks of wild turkeys to start roaming around again.  This week I’ve seen them every day.  All sightings have been within a mile of each other, so possibly it’s the same group.  The local wood lots and orchards are their favored haunts, though I’ve also seen them in a cornfield that still boasts the shorn stalks from last fall and a fallow field.  Sometimes I hear them gobbling in the pre-dawn hour from the safety of their forest roost.

Around the cabin, I have discovered where the resident pileated woodpeckers are nesting this year.  I have hopes of getting a few half-decent photos as the nest hole isn’t far from the cabin, and I think I can stand on my raised deck and be nearly eye-level with the site.  I’ve also found where the flickers are going to nest, and that’s not too far from the woodpecker hole.

The forest itself is still as brown as it was in winter. I find no sign of buds on the forest trees or on the smaller underbrush of the forest floor.  The start of that can’t be far off, though—not with 60 degree temperatures and all this lovely sunshine!

A foggy spring day

The first signs of new growth are appearing around Roundtop Mountain! This morning I saw the leaves of the (pick one) 1) yellow dog-toothed violet 2) yellow trout lily 3) adder’s tongue 4) fawn lily were up. No signs of flower stems yet though. And the leaves of the one-day wonder, the bloodroot, are also breaking through the ground. That’s pretty impressive, considering I still had snow on the ground a week ago.

The robins are singing, as are the juncos, who will soon be heading north again. More phoebes have arrived and call from both sides of the cabin. I also had a pair of golden-crowned kinglets at the cabin this weekend. I didn’t see any insects, but they were busy little things, so I’m sure they found something. It took me a while to identify them. They like to be in the higher branches of the trees, so I never get very good views of them, even with 10x binoculars, and seeing more than their bellies takes a bit of luck.

Mud remains everywhere, as are puddles and gushing seasonal streams. With the amount of water through these temporary streams, right now it’s hard to imagine that they won’t run all year long, but they don’t. Last night I saw a frog, too, my first of the year. It hopped in front of my headlights as I was heading back to the cabin after dark and was gone before could get out of the car to find out what kind it was. It wasn’t small enough to be a peeper or large enough to be a bullfrog. It was the size of a green frog or leopard or pickerel frog.

 

Spring may have arrived later than usual, but the season is doing its best to catch up. 

Open water

Although signs of spring can be found—phoebes, spring peepers and the like—the landscape around Roundtop is still winter brown, with nary a blade of green in sight.  That will change shortly, I’m sure, but for now brown is the predominant color on the trees, on the ground, everywhere.   And with it comes the Mud season, which is not a favorite of mine, just barely an improvement over the long winter, now passed. 

Spring is slow to start this year, in part because winter eased later than usual, but some of it is simply my own impatience to see better weather and something new to look at.  I have put away the down parka for another year, though my insulated coat remains handy, just in case.  The mornings are still damp and therefore chilly, and when a bit of wind is added, the insulated coat blocks that wind better than my lighter spring jackets.

This morning I saw the season's first osprey, plying the air above the Yellow Breeches Creek, and two swallows, identified as tree swallows more by the early date than by any plumage I could see.  Spring is coming, though the landscape is still more wintry than not. 

The first official sign of spring!

Out with the old, and in with the new.

Perhaps today’s photo will be the last snow photo I take of the winter season.  Officially, it has been spring for 11 days but most of that time has still felt and looked like winter.

This morning, I heard a truly official sign of spring.  I heard an Eastern Phoebe outside my cabin door, singing its heart out just after dawn this morning. Spring has officially arrived now!

Despite the snow still left on Roundtop, the resort has closed for the season after 115 days of skiing, a record for them, I believe. For me, the closing means that the mountain is quiet again.  I’m far enough over on the western side of the mountain that it’s rarely noisy from the hordes of skiers, but I do hear car noises or the occasional teenage squeal, and the total silence now is noticeable.

This is the quietest time of year on the mountain.  In another month or so, the leaves will be out and they are nearly never silent.  They rustle and whisper to their own music, a constant background of notes and chatter.  But right now, they are silent, and only birdsong fills the air.