Walk in the Woods in May

The single nicest time of year to go for a walk in the woods is in early May, before the leaves (and the blackflies and mosquitoes) come out. A rash of early wildflowers, the spring ephemerals, blooms before the canopy of leaves closes off their light. We hit the Bruce Trail nearby twice last week on warm sunny spring days, and the photos here are the result.

Red Trillium, one of my favourites

Dog-tooth Violet or Trout Lily

Wild Ginger

Spring Beauty

Dutchman's Breeches

The wierd purple leaves and tiny flower of the Blue Cohosh, which will soon turn a normal green colour.

Spring Flowers in the Garden

Spring is in full swing, my favourite time of year. My real love is wildflowers; a walk in the woods on a sunny day in May is just a joy. But the remarkable sudden growth of flowers in the garden is also a sign of the season. And after the undergardener has put so much time into shovelling, digging, transplanting, spreading mulch, moving rocks, etc., it's nice to see the actual flowers appear!


Crocus are among the very first, along with snowdrops, just after the aconite.


Daffodils bloom a little later, and we don't have any in the garden. But one small group got moved by accident thanks to some industrious squirrels, and it provides a handful of bright yellow blooms along the fencerow.



Varieties of early primrose, one of the first to add different colours to the garden.


These leaves you probably don't recognize, but they are so interesting I just couldn't resist. They are the fern-leaf peony, which will bloom soon, but the leaves themselves provide a fascinating pattern, rising very early out of the dirt.

Turkeys!

We see wild turkeys quite regularly as we drive around the landscape of the Beaver Valley region, all year round. They clean up the soybean fields in the fall; they walk steadily in single file out of the woods and across the roads in winter; and they gather in small flocks in the fields in spring. I've been wanting to get a picture of these incredible birds, so imagine my surprise when I looked out the window just 2 or 3 weeks ago and saw several turkeys! Just 30 feet away, walking slowly into our backyard!


The female hens led the way, picking at the grass as they walked. Wild turkeys are huge birds, and although they do fly quite well for short distances, I find myself wondering how they actually get off the ground. I know from stories I hear though that when a wild turkey bursts out of the undergrowth beside you and you aren't expecting it, it's a noisy burst of wings!


These turkeys worked their way slowly across the yard, a typical small flock of 5 hens and one tom; the hens led the way toward the further fencerow and the tom followed, stopping occasionally to fluff out its tail and look ferocious. It's 'beard', made of modified feathers, also shows up in this picture.


Wild turkeys have been one of the wildlife management success stories, perhaps even too successful, as they eat grain on farm fields. They were almost extirpated from Ontario, and re-introduced over ten years ago. The re-introduction has been so successful that there is now both a spring and a fall hunting season for turkeys.

Catching Up!

April arrives and there's so much to do outside (and I tend to be so single-minded about doing things), that I forget about blogging. So here we go to catch up. We're definitely well into spring, even though the weather has been cold, and the early flowers are up all over the place. These pictures are the very first of the spring flowers, a small patch of aconite in a neighbour's garden.


Since these bloomed, nearly a month ago, we've been through the snowdrops and crocus, and now it's time for daffodils and hyacinth. I'll post a few more pix in a day or two.

Birds continue to arrive back too. The chipping sparrows have settled in, along with the song sparrows, and the mourning dove is already sitting on eggs. Then a day or two ago I heard a brown thrasher. It has a very distinctive song, tending to sing a wide variety of phrases, but repeating each phrase once or twice. Following the direction of the song I found the thrasher, sitting at the very top of a spruce tree, singing loudly. Unfortunately, I'm not a great bird photographer, so you'll have to be content with a close-up of the aconite again.


The weather has been lousy for the 2nd half of April, cold and often rainy, even snowflakes the other day. Usually we get a lot of tree planting and garden work finished in April, but this year we've been hiding inside! I finally did get the rhubarb transplanted yesterday. Now out in the sun, I hope it will bring a better crop than it has the last few years. I triple-dug the ditch for it, filling the bottom with manure and compost, before planting the huge roots. Here's hoping it does well!

Crazy April Weather!

The past two days have seen a bout of our typical but crazy April weather. I thought we were ready to start working in the garden, and had the first tasks underway, but then the temperature plunged and we were back into winter. Light blowing snow arrived Saturday night, and continued on and off all day Sunday, interspersed with periods of rain and sun. There's still snow forecast for later today.

It's only a thin white covering on the ground, which is rapidly disappearing in the sun, but April snow always arrives like a blustery surprise, and Sunday it was blowing horizontally more than not. Reminded me of one day in a boat off the west coast of Scotland some years ago!

2nd Wave of Migrant Birds and First Frogs

A few warm days, and the snow is pretty well gone. It's mid-April, and the second wave of migrant birds is arriving back. While robins, red-wings and turkey vultures have been here for a month, now a new group of common summer birds is showing up, their calls adding to the variety of music in the air.

The song sparrows have just been back a week. They sit at the very top of younger spruce trees and call their distinctive, easily recognized song. Little brown birds, like all the sparrows, they have a dark brown spot on their breast that makes them immediately recognizable, along with their song.

Yesterday I saw a pair of chipping sparrows too. Even tinier 'little brown birds', these sparrows are one of the most common in residential yards, their call a clear trill that you will hear all summer long. These sparrows have a plain breast, and a small reddish-brown cap on their head, and are frequently heard squeaking from the ditch as they hunt for food.

A flicker has been calling it's long staccato series of notes, like a woodpecker that can't stop. I haven't seen it yet, but the call is clearly distinctive.

Finally, our favourite spring migrant arrived back yesterday, the bluebird. Calling from high in the ash tree, it sat in the sun and waited while I found the binoculars to identify it for sure. From underneath you just see the white and reddish breast, but seen from behind the flash of blue is clear. We hope it stays around and nests nearby.

And our favourite sounds of spring - the spring peepers and now the wood frogs are calling madly from a hidden pond across the road. They seem to start on the day the last of the ice is melting, and the song gets stronger by the day, filling the evening and night with frog music.

Spring is Finally Here

Well, I think spring is finally here. At the moment there's actually a thunderstorm passing overhead, it's pouring rain, and whatever snow is left is quickly being washed away. The air is now so humid that fog is washing in, cloaking the trees in a ghostly blanket of greyish-white. The temperature is supposed to soar to 20 degrees by 4 o'clock.

Turkey vultures as we usually see them.

Meanwhile, the early birds have been active. Turkey vultures are almost always visible soaring overhead, and with warmer tempertures will come the thermals that let them rise to be just a black dot in the sky. The other day though, they were swooping low over the yard, and landing to dine off some unfortunate road-kill.

Swooping in to the roadkill.

Since the temperatures rose, the robins are everywhere, running across the ground searching for worms, and the mourning doves are starting their nest under the eaves. The male red-wings are still in a small flock, but will soon disperse to claim their nesting territory too. Goldfinch are turning bright yellow, and there is still a small flock of redpolls, a sparrow-like bird with a red patch on top of its head, staying nearby. They will leave for the boreal forest soon.

Goldfinch and redpoll on the feeder.

Spring run-off has been slow this year, bursting down the streams during the warm speall in mid-March, but then freezing in place again as temperatures dropped. Only now, nearly a month later, will we see another burst of spring flow in the creeks and river.

Male redwings in the top of a poplar.