The End?

Signs of spring are everywhere!

All good things must come to an end. Here I am at the end of spring break.  I'm happy to say that it did have a good end. A spectacular end!  The end of a warbler kind of end...which can only mean we are at the beginning of something else.  Something spectacular is beginning. Something good has begun!  It's warbler migration time!

Can you find the woodpeckers?  I felt dizzy trying to get this picture.

This yellow- rumped warbler is one in a group of most the abundant warblers
 in NorthAmerica

My husband and I were standing watching a pair of downy woodpeckers do a little ritualistic dance around each other.  It was hard to get a picture because they kept taking turns flying over each other to go a little higher in the tree until one would fly to the next tree and repeat this dance from the base of that tree.   All of a sudden flying straight at our heads was this little gem of a warbler.  He seemed as surprised as we were and made a quick U-turn and landed with his butter-butt in clear view.  I could have gone home right then and

there, but I kept pretending I was spending time with my family and ignoring all birds...My family didn't believe it for a minute.  I even took pictures of them to drive the point home!

He turned around and posed before quickly flying back the way
he had come.

No one in our party had ever seen such a small turtle in
the wild.

On down the path we found the smallest turtle I have ever seen in the wild.  Our children had wheels on and were ahead of us on the bike path that winds its way through the Muskegon Lake Nature Preserve.  I had to show them this and I correctly predicted my youngest would want to take him home.  I denied the request, of course.  We can't throw off the balance of nature. Because she is a Dr. Who fan, she understood keeping him could have thrown off the whole space-time continuum.  We returned him close to the place we had found him, but off the trail and a little closer to the water. I hope he makes it.  I hope this is his beginning and not his end.

I'm ready to get back into a routine tomorrow and give these last few months my best. I get to spend my days with some of the most wonderful people I've ever met.  I'll be sorry to see them move on to second grade.  At the end of the day tomorrow when I have to come home and make dinner you can bet, I'd rather be birding!

Jenny

Brown Creeper is Not a Disease!

Brown Creeper.  Have you ever had one?  It sounded so awful to a friend that she said, "Is this another one of those things that happens to women as they get older, but nobody talks about?"  I hadn't thought about it that way until she posed the question.  After giving a little chuckle I relieved her tension and assured her it was a bird.  Her reply?  "I should have known!"

Most people think of robins when they think of the first bird of spring.  I see those guys all winter long.  I see them in large flocks devouring berries from trees that may have been lucky enough to hold onto them through the fall.  Nope, Robins are not my harbinger of spring!

No!  You are not my Spring Harbinger!

I cleaned off my counter for you!

I have a perpetual calendar that goes back about eight years.  I have written memorable and noteworthy events on this calendar.  I have made a record of births, baptisms, wedding anniversaries and even deaths of loved ones on it.  It sits on my kitchen counter and is looking a bit used, but that's a good thing.  I have also included spring arrivals and fall departures. Look who had arrived on April 2, 2008.  

SPOILER ALERT!!

Yesterday I sat on the couch for TWO hours waiting for a brown creeper.  That's a long time to just sit.  I was just about to give up and start again on April 3 when something fluttered down to the base of a tree.  It almost looked like a leaf, but it immediately began "creeping" up the tree.

He is a hard bird to photograph!

   My harbinger of spring had arrived.  It is the sweetest little bird.  Difficult to see because he blends in perfectly with the color of my oak trees, he reminds me of a mouse.  Why didn't they name it the mouse bird?  Anything but "brown creeper" would be a nicer name for this sweet spring friend.  It must have been at the end of a very long day of exciting bird names that this guy was named.  Poor thing.  Let's start a petition to change this guys name to Spring Peeper....Shoot a frog took that name.  How about you and I call him,  "Certhia americana"?  That's his scientific name anyway and I'd rather have that then brown creeper!

I'm off to get my son's drivers license.  You can be sure....I'd rather be birding!