Sunday Morning Birding

This morning Mr. Johnson and I attended a bird hike sponsored by the local Audubon Society to look for warblers and whatever else we could find. Our destination today was Indian Heights Park, a mostly undeveloped jewel of the Rochester parks system, as we found out this morning. This park is located at the dead end of a residential neighborhood right in the middle of suburban northwest Rochester. After parking our cars in the paved parking lot, we headed up the dirt trail. We were searching for warblers again this morning, but they were mostly absent (except for 1 female American Redstart spotted late in the hike). We did hear the Great Crested Flycatcher, Yellow-Throated Vireo and Eastern Wood Pewee (my FOY), in addition to the usual chickadees, cardinals, and bluejays.

Shortly up the trail, I spotted something bright yellow on a fallen down tree. "Hmmmm," I thought to myself, "I hope that's what I think it is........" I headed off-trail for a closer look at what turned out to be my first personal discovery of Chicken of the Woods (sulphur shelf) mushrooms. Charlie, another birder with our group, confirmed this ID and on the way back to the car, the mushroom you see on the top left side of this log went home with me for this evening's supper (it was delicious!) I'm thinking I may have to make a stop back here on my way home from work tomorrow to collect the rest for my freezer.

There was a huge abundance of raspberry bushes along most of the trails in this park. I also made a note to myself to return with Mr. Johnson and berry-picking buckets in a few weeks to reap some of that delicious bounty.

We did see a few downy and hairy woodpeckers, but none of the pileated woodpeckers who were responsible for creating the holes in this oak tree.

At the end of the trail, we found this scenic spot overlooking most of the eastern Rochester skyline. In this photo are Mr. Johnson, and our trip leaders, Terry (red shirt) and his wife Joyce (lite blue shirt).

This is a view of Silver Lake.

In the middle of this park is an old quarry. It wasn't a large quarry and probably wasn't used for too long. It's quite overgrown now and we did find some evidence that it's been used in the past for a teen party spot.

Another cool thing we found was this intact skull with some bones and fur nearby. After further investigation of the bones, we decided that this was probably a raccoon. Unfortunately, I didn't have a plastic bag along with me, so this skull stayed where it was (even though I really wanted to bring it home). Maybe tomorrow when I'm fetching those mushrooms.......

There were quite a few wildflowers blooming and here are some of the ones we saw.

False Solomon's Seal

Vetch and Wild Columbine

Black Snakeroot

Another look at the Black Snakeroot (with some flowers blooming)

Bloodroot

An unidentified daisy (I should have taken pics of the leaves!)

The flowers were really small - only about a half to three-quarters of an inch across

Here's a busy bumblebee pollinating some raspberries for me!

We were almost back to the parking lot when we spotted this flower. It was one that none of us had ever seen before, but after doing some checking on the internet, I'm reasonably certain that it's a Star-of-Bethlehem. It was a beautiful little plant and I wouldn't mind finding some of these to plant in my own backyard some day.

Haven't seen many butterflies yet this year, but we also saw this pretty little Red Admiral taking advantage of the nectar in this nice dandelion (another reason to save dandelions -- a nectar source for early season butterflies!)

Glad you could come along on this birding hike with me. Even though we didn't see many birds, we saw a lot of other cool things and it just goes to show that time spent outdoors is never wasted.....especially when you keep your eyes open for the unexpected treasures nature has to offer.

St. Patrick's Day, 2010

We both had a day off work today and once the fog cleared late in the morning, Mr. Johnson decided it would be a good day for us to take down the 3 remaining deer stands still up from last fall. It turned out to be a really nice afternoon for spending an enjoyable couple of hours in the woods. Taking down the tree stands is a job that Mr. Johnson could certainly do by himself, but I believe he enjoys having me accompany him for the insightful commentary and helpful advice I provide from the ground. In fact, after struggling to get the padlock open on this particular stand, he vacated the ladder and allowed me to remove this stand and ladder all by myself! (I can't remember for sure, but I believe the words, "do you just want to do it?" were uttered somewhere along the line.)
While hiking from stand to stand, I had plenty of time to walk around the woods and look for signs of spring. I even remembered to bring my camera along this time and there were plenty of photo ops along the way. We've had enough warm weather and rain the past few days, but the only real signs of green in the woods so far was lots of moss. It was so nice to see this moss growing that I couldn't resist getting right down on the ground to take a photo.

By looking close to the ground, I managed to spot some other interesting signs of spring too. Thanks to a Google search on "orange cup fungus" I found out this one is called Scarlet Cup Fungus (Sarcoscypha dudleyi). Isn't it neat looking? I almost missed spotting this. Although it looks really large in this picture, it was only about the size of my pinkie fingertip. It was attached to a little piece of wood about the size of my index finger.

I was keeping my eyes open for birds, deer and squirrels, but the only moving creature I did see was this one small earthworm.

Another special sighting was this small feather caught on the end of a branch. It was mostly white with dark gray on the top edge and very fluffy. It didn't look at all like a turkey feather, so I'm thinking it might have been from a Cooper's Hawk or some other raptor.

Here's an old treestand Mr. Johnson built many years ago that we don't use anymore. It looked to me like there was a corncob laying on top (arrow's pointing at it). That got me to wondering whether the squirrels or raccoons had been using this as a convenient dining table.

Fortunately there were still a couple steps in the tree that allowed me to climb up for a closer look. Aha! Just as I suspected! Now I'm wondering.....was it raccoons or squirrels dining up here? And if it was squirrels, how did they carry those corncobs up this tree? This "table" was at least 10 feet up in the tree.

Finally, the last stand and ladders were all down and loaded into the sled for transport back to the truck. All this equipment is pretty heavy, so it was quite a workout for Mr. Johnson hiking back to the truck. I dutifully followed along behind to keep an eye on the load, while humming "I'll never be your beast of burden" to myself. (yeah, cuz I'm just helpful that way!)

Here's probably the most unusual sight we saw this afternoon.....the farmer who rents this field was picking last year's corn today! Due to the wet and cold weather last October and November, so many of the farmers around here were unable to get their corn crop harvested and are making up for lost time this spring.

And on our drive home, we saw a couple of happy ducks enjoying a sunny afternoon in their little pond that's finally thawed out after our long winter.

Happy Spring!

Some Time Well Spent

Yesterday afternoon, Mr Johnson and I took a trip out to our deer hunting woods. He had put a block of "deer candy" out a couple weeks ago and wanted to find out whether the deer had found it yet. (In case you're wondering, deer candy is the brand name on a big mineral block enhanced with molasses and other stuff deer are supposed to like, plus it's supposed to help the bucks grow better antlers.)

It was a sunny day, but nowhere near the mid-30's temps predicted by the weatherman (a stiff breeze from the east felt pretty chilly blowing across the snow). I was interested in going along mostly because there are a pair of bald eagles that hang around down there and I wanted to see if I could find out if/where they're nesting. It's ideal habitat for the eagles, with high limestone bluffs and a river meandering through the bottom with some open water most of the winter. There are towering white pines along the bluff tops and also large deciduous trees on the rest of the hills.

When we finally found the deer candy, we found that no deer had yet partaken of the treat, so we moved it closer to their trail. I happened to look up and see a Bald Eagle soaring overhead. It headed to the top of a white pine, but I couldn't see if a nest was there. A few minutes later another eagle soared over and we knew it wasn't the same one because it had a feather missing from one of its wings. I stayed there a while to watch some more and it wasn't long till I saw both of the eagles soaring overhead and could even hear them vocalizing a little.

I couldn't get a good photo--I have yet to figure out how to take a good picture of a flying bird, but I did manage to capture a few seconds of video (hope you don't get motion sickness watching it!)


I watched long enough to see one of the eagles land in a tree across the valley. My monopod/walking stick came in really handy for taking this picture (not to mention helping me maneuver up and down the hillsides in deep snow).
Here are some interesting tracks I found in the snow.
I'm thinking raccoon, but 'coons generally hibernate around here in the cold weather and I thought these footprints were really big for a 'coon.
Anybody have an opinion on these tracks? We've seen some pretty huge 'coons in these woods before, and maybe the weather has been moderate enough to wake up some of those big daddies.

I never see a fungus covered tree without thinking of Jennifer! This was a really nice one.
Looks like a woodpecker has decided to excavate for a new home in this tree. I asked Mr. Johnson to put his big paw next to this freshly drilled hole so you could get an idea of how big it is. It's about 4" deep into the tree, but nothing's been chipped downward yet. This hole is only about 6 feet above the ground, so pretty easy to view, and I'll be curious to see if there's any more development when I visit this area next time.
Here's an interesting-looking tree. What do you suppose happened to cause this tree to grow this way? I'm thinking maybe when it was a much smaller tree another larger tree blew over onto it. Of course, there's no evidence of a blown-down tree near there anymore, so this crooked tree will remain a mystery.
It was getting late, so we decided to head for home. Along the way, Mr. Johnson spotted a couple of hen turkeys scratching around in some corn stubble where enough snow had melted away that they were able to find something to eat. One of the hens was pretty cautious and took off shortly after we stopped the car, but I got a good picture of this other one still searching for food. Those big feet can really scratch!

The discussion in the car was Mr. Johnson asking if I could hear her clucking....at first I couldn't (concentrating on taking the movie), but then I listened closer and heard it (affirmative at the end). The hens are funny birds.....they will walk around in the woods just clucking softly to themselves as they dig and scratch for something to eat.

Hope you enjoyed this little trip to the woods without having to bundle up!

Here's an Update on the tracks: I got a couple of e-mails this morning from Richard and he was busy doing some homework for me. He sent me some links to look at for porcupine tracks: http://www.bear-tracker.com/porcpine.html and http://www.fishbc.com/adventure/wilderness/animals/porcup.htm. Sure looks a lot like porcupine tracks to me. What do you think? I never even thought of a porcupine, but according to Stan Tekiela's Mammals of Minnesota field guide, Fillmore County (where I took these pictures) is at the western edge of the North American Porcupine's range and they are active all year round! Now I wish I had paid more attention to where these tracks led. You can bet that next time I'm down that way I'll definitely be searching for these tracks again to see if I can solve the mystery. Thanks Richard for your help!