Bird and Little Bird

Taking Up Residence?

 

 

I believe that my boundless affection for woodpeckers has been well established in this space.  I like birds, but I love woodpeckers, especially the big, fancy looking ones.  I've mentioned it here many, many times, and would like to officially thank you all for continuing to read anyway.  Some things just can't be helped.  So, if you are a longtime reader, you will understand my excitement at the recent, and frequent, sightings of a pileated woodpecker in a tree outside the living room window. 

 

 

I've been sick this week, and when I first saw the woodpecker, I was too out of it to properly geek out and make the trek outside to get photos.  Which is why I didn't notice that this particular woodpecker has been very busy.  As you can see, she has made two good sized holes in our tree.  As I type this, she is working away on a third.

 

 

I don't think that she is making these holes large enough for them to be nest holes, and it would be awfully early in the year for that kind of behavior anyway.  I think these birdies are spring nesters and would normally get busy with family obligations around April. But then again, she is making multiple holes, which is consistent with pileated nesting behavior, and we are having The Winter of Weird.  February in Vermont with no snow?  The birds are as confused as the rest of us, and the robins have been active in the yard the last few days, so it isn't out of the question that this woodpecker could be trying out an early nesting strategy.

 

 

Plus, this morning I saw this fellow.  The lighting was making things a bit tricky, but if you look closely, you can see the red stripe running from the bird's bill towards the back of the head.  This identifies him as male.  The black stripe in the same place on the other bird tells us that she's a female.  So these two are travelling as a pair, making holes in my tree.  Are you thinking what I'm thinking?  I'm seriously holding out hope that we've got ourselves a nesting pair and that they might be getting ready to take up residence in the yard.  Although honestly, tremendous nerd that I am, the excitement might be more than I can handle. 

Salt Water.

I make no secret of the fact that I love Vermont living.  The green, green hills.  The blueberry summers.  The enormous thunderstorms that shake the windows and light up the night.  The one thing that I have had trouble getting used to, however, is living so far from the ocean.  I lived twenty years with the ocean in easy driving distance, and now somehow find myself in the only landlocked state in New England. 

 

 

So when we flew out to Washington for spring vacation, the first thing that I wanted to do was to get out to the water.  Of course, being on The Sound isn't quite the same as being on the wild, open ocean, but it is a pretty close second.  And I was more than happy to take it. 

 

 

 

Sea carrots (are they really called that?) and little shells and various smooth pebbles and rocks were found.

 

 

My mom and Mariam made some small rock sculptures to leave on the beach for the next visitors.  

 

 

Mariam had wanted to build a house out of driftwood and stay (I'm not sure for how long), but then she realized that she was actually really hungry for lunch.  So we hiked out and went to get some pretty decent Thai food.  Which is another thing that I really miss living in Vermont.  

On the Sound.

an unusually friendly peacock

Greetings from The Pacific Northwest!  We have been having a great time riding ferry boats, visiting family, beachcombing, birdwatching and of course, eating lots of great food not normally available in small city Vermont.  We made it up to Skagit County to see the tulips blooming, and I'll share pictures of that when I have a chance to upload them, but I thought I would at least pop in and share a few of the beautiful (and mostly very big) birds that we've seen so far.  

 

a bald eagle

a golden eagle (I think!)

 

a white peacock

 

Apparently we missed the migration of the trumpeter swans by only a matter of days, which is really too bad.  As surly as they are, I do enjoy a nice looking swan.  

Okay, then.  We are off to spend the day in Seattle.  I'll try to pop in with a few more pictures when I get a few moments.  In the meantime, have you been following the Earth Day posts over at The Magnifying Glass this week?  Great stuff! 

At Water's Edge.

This afternoon I finished the last of my graduate school applications.  And, only minutes after clicking the "submit application" button, I had my boots on and was out the door to walk the snowy trail down to the lake at Shelburne Bay.  I've been wanting to get pictures of the lake in winter for the last couple of weeks but have had a hard time finding the free minutes to walk down to the water.  

So, this is is what the lake looks like in winter. A field of endless snow that hides the water completely.  I'm a bit baffled by the mini-snow volcanos that seem to have popped up right at the line where the beach meets the water (which is now frozen solid).  They are just a little mysterious, no?  

Nerd Alert.

I think that it has been an appropriate length of time since I last exposed myself for being the tremendous nerd that I really am.  In fact, this post is probably overdue.

I had the most ridiculous internal debate this morning about whether or not to go to work.  I've been feeling foggy and ineffective all week long, will this nagging little headache that comes and goes, except without ever really going.  I think I can blame it on trying to readjust to our native time zone now that we're back on home turf, but I could also see how it could easily turn into something bigger and nastier if I didn't slow down a bit.  So, I decided to stay home.

I was rewarded for my efforts when, at mid-day, I glanced up at the living room windows and saw a large and entirely gorgeous pileated woodpecker on a backyard tree.  This vision is pretty much what I hope for every time I glance up at the living room windows, so yeah, I ran outside in eighteen degree weather with no coat and the closest pair of shoes I could find.  I had hoped to get closer, but whenever I moved too near, the bird would fly off.  He was polite enough to return for me to get the pictures that I did, once I had clearly demonstrated that I knew how to keep a respectful distance.

Of course, I realize now that the eighteen degrees and no coat thing was probably a little foolish if we are thinking about the whole getting-well project.  Back to bed I go. 

 

Thirty-Three.

Well, hello!  I didn't mean to become the absent blogger this week, but somehow it happened just the same. Violin concerts, school performances and end of semester assessments.  Oh, my! 

Anyway, I did manage to get out snowshoeing again yesterday, something which I suspect is going to become my Saturday ritual.  I had ambitions of spending the time snowboarding instead this winter, but I think maybe I'm getting too old lady for that.  In the pre-parenting era I had good enthusiasm for the whole enterprise, but now I find that I would rather tromp around in the woods all by my lonesome than squish onto a chairlift with fifteen year olds.  I turned thirty-three last weekend, so it's probably that.  

Thirty-two maybe wasn't quite my year.  Is it okay to say that?  Maybe it's more accurate to say that it was a year of extremes.  We had some really, really great moments around here, but also some really, very hard ones.  More than any year that I can remember in quite some time.  I was therefore pretty happy to roll out the welcome mat for the arrival of thirty-three. 

Oh, and I did get myself a little birthday present this afternoon.  I finally got my hot little hands on a Herriott Grace cloud cookie cutter.  I've wanted one for about forever and had a little balance in my PayPal account, so what was a girl to do?  

Snowshoes, Saturdays and Very Small Skis.

 

Today was the first day of Mariam's Saturday ski school.  Six year olds on skis is a seriously hilarious sight.  They are like little balls of waterproof fabric and fleece, indistinguishable from one another except for the color of their pants. With a helmet on top?  Ridiculous. 

Anyway, with the kiddo busy all day long, I found myself suddenly gifted with the extremely rare gift of actual free time that I could use to do whatever I wanted.  This pretty much never happens.  Ever.  I don't really consider myself to be a winter sports aficionado, but my idea of summer sports pretty much extends to picking tomatoes and standing ankle-deep in lake water, so I suppose winter sports win by default.  I decided to hit the snowshoe trails for a couple of hours this morning and was really pleased to find that they were nearly empty.  Other than the occasional glimpse of a cross country skier in the distance, I was pretty much alone.  And, I only ended up knee deep in snow a sum total of one time.  Well done, I say.

I did, however, keep hearing this mysterious rumbling sound in the distance that I suspect was somehow associated with small avalanches at the higher elevations.  Or maybe mini-van doors closing in the distance.  Either way, it did make me just a little nervous.  I find that I like to be able to identify the sounds around me when I'm alone in the semi-wilderness.  Good for morale.

Oh, and lest I give you the impression that my day was all peaceful tromps through snowy forests, I'll go ahead and tell you that Mariam was so tired after her day of skiing that she came home and threw an insane and massive tantrum at bedtime.  As in, possibly the best work she's ever done, tantrum-wise.  It was truly spectacular.  And, since it is something that she doesn't do often, she had the element of surprise well in hand.  Her poor parents never saw it coming.  

Full House.

This week my best friend Natalie and her husband Ed have been here in Vermont for a visit.  They brought along their very nearly one-year old son, William, who is uniformly spectacular.  And happy.  Goodness, I love a happy baby.  We've done a bit of walking, a bit of beachcombing, some amount of crafting and a whole lot of eating.  We've had whipped cream five nights in a row and last night I laughed so hard I spit water all over the kitchen floor, Dan's pants and the cat.  Visits from old friends are really nice.  

 

Yesterday afternoon we took a walk through the woods to the beach out on Shelburne Bay.  Mariam made mud balls and scooped up handfuls of cold, wet gravel from the shore.  The days for this are numbered; we had a bit of snow this week already and I'm more than sure that there will be more in the very near future. 

 

Natalie, Ed and Will are on their way back to California very, very early tomorrow morning.  Tonight we are finishing craft projects (Ed is currently sewing a pillow for his mother and Natalie is making a birthday banner for the little guy) and making beet gnocchi for dinner.  And, we will probably eat more whipped cream.  Maybe on this.

October Weekend.

This past weekend there was a brief lull in the never ending series of rain storms that we seem to have had lately.  We took advantage of the briefly shining sun and headed out to the woods for a family hike. 

The rain and wind that we've had over the last couple of weeks have loosened most of the leaves from the trees and walking the forest trails is a bit like tromping along on a soft, crunchy carpet of leaves.  Crunching leaves underfoot might be the best sound ever. 

 

 

 

 As we were walking along the second half of the trail, headed back towards the car, Dan and Mariam decided to race to the top of a hill in the distance.  I, of course, decided to lag behind a bit and take pictures of the lake in the distance, the light in the trees and the leaves and branches covering the ground around us.  But almost right away, Dan called out that he and Mariam had found something and that I should climb the hill to join them.

 

 

They had found this tiny little stretch of beach, hidden from the trail and the road by the crest of the hill.  We climbed a steep little set of stairs to reach the water and immediately we all knew that we had happened upon something really, really good.  Dan even went so far as to mention feeling as thought the beach was an "enchanted" place.  This is a man whose idea of a good time includes reading the New England Journal of Medicine at breakfast; for him to use such an adjective qualifies as kind of a big deal.

 

 

 Instead of sand, the beach had piles of driftwood and countless smooth, mostly round and flat rocks.  A lot of the rocks seemed to be covered with thin white lines, some of them making concentric circles around the face of the stones. 

 

 

 I generally enforce a completely arbitrary rule about taking home no more than three things when we visit a beach.  I probably should be teaching Mariam not to take anything at all.  But there was something about the beautiful piles of rocks on this beach that was nearly irresistible.  With their strange markings and perfect shapes tempting us we couldn't really help but take some home.  Our nature table this fall is all rocks and acorns.

 

 

The rest of the walk back to the car was a bit slow.  Mariam's pockets were half full of rocks, after all. 

Okay, mine were too.

The Last of the Green.

I do intend to get some nice fall color photos posted in the next few days; it seems like the entire state of Vermont is exploding in shades of red, yellow and orange.  Being close to the lake means that we still have a bit of green left, however, and I thought I might appreciate it just a bit longer before it disappears for a good many months. 

These days I have a little pocket of time each afternoon between leaving my own school and needing to pick Mariam up at hers.  It's only a couple of hours, but it's the perfect length of time to go for a walk in the woods when I can convince myself that the various errands I need to run are actually not that important after all.  I took these pictures on my walk yesterday.  I give it a week before these trees are entirely yellow and orange.