We’re home again, jiggity jig, with quite a bit of snow still in the front yard where it slid off the tin roof over the long winter. The bird feeder is full of goldfinch and purple finch.
When I was unloading the car last night I heard a loon call over the hill at Limekiln Lake.
The trout in the pond were taking flies off the surface just waiting for a few food pellets after their long winter’s nap under the ice.
Things are still pretty gray in the forest but that can change quickly with a warm rain and some sunshine.
The folks down south have sure been hit hard with severe weather and tornadoes. We got out just in time and had clear weather the whole trip north.
We had a couple slow downs for accidents and construction, but Karen was driving every time that happened. She says I planned it that way.
We only saw two major accidents all the way down and back. Yesterday in Pennsylvania there was a tractor and trailer jammed in a deep ditch in the median. It was going to take some major work to get it out.
We had great weather while on vacation. It was a little cooler than normal and the ocean was a tad cooler than we normally find it, but we went in anyway.
The fish weren’t on the bite with the cooler water temperatures but things were beginning to improve.
The birds on the other hand were moving through each day as more new ones came ashore after crossing the Gulf of Mexico.
We had a couple thunderstorms during our stay that knocked down a good number of different species of birds. We saw more hummers than ever.
There are just like bullets when they fly across all that open water.
Then you see small birds such as the house wren or common yellow throat with their short stubby wings and wonder how many beats it takes them to get across all that open water.
One day when we had a hard shower just before dark I went up to the Lighthouse to see if anything had been knocked down.
The birds were dripping off the trees—and I mean that literally—as they were very wet and looking for any food they could find to get their bodies warmed back up.
Luckily there were lots of berries on many of the fruiting trees and bugs hatching out of the fresh water there.
Cell phones were humming to contact other birders about the fallout, and the next morning there were many more birders than there had been the previous few days.
Most of these birds hung around for everyone to see and photograph.
Some of these birds were working the treetops for food and catching bugs out of the air, while others were just hopping around on the ground right at your feet.
One colorful warbler, a hooded, spent three days working the same little area right in the open giving everyone great looks and photos.
The last couple of mornings there was a blue-headed parakeet flying around the Lighthouse that I managed to get a few photos of.
We didn’t know if this was an escaped or wild bird, but it was very vocal.
The last day at the Lighthouse there was a group of local artists painting the Lighthouse.
Karen and I talked to couple of them, and the one Karen met turned out to be Liz McDowell’s sister-in-law. What a small world we live in.
We went in Ding Darling Wildlife Drive every other night and the roseate spoonbills came in each night to join several white pelicans that were still there.
I think the pelicans got a weather report from Minnesota and Wisconsin where they summer and decided to wait another month before going north.
Normally they are gone or leave while we are there, but not this year.
We biked through Ding Darling one cool day and found a little green heron nest that had four babies about four days old. Both mom and dad came in to feed them while we were there, which was neat.
There was a big water snake not far from the nest that the male heron drove off before he left to get more food for the young ones.
I biked through the Bailey Tract while Karen was at a couple bookstores and found a pair of black-necked stilts, two blue winged teal and a little blue heron.
There were several big alligators out sunning themselves and many more small ones floating around in the ponds along the bike path.
The flowering shrubs and trees seemed to be about normal with lots of color. Some of the plantings that the city did after Hurricane Charlie have really come out with flowers and fruit.
The night blooming cereus plant that I always check at the bookstore on Periwinkle had a couple buds for flowers but they weren’t going to bloom until after we left.
I found a new cereus plant outside of Cheeseburger-Cheeseburger that had bloomed the night before.
We ate there, as there were three spent flowers hanging from the plant.
There were several more buds on this plant also that were going to bloom after we had gone north.
I found two more night blooming cereus plants growing on palm trees along the bike path but none of these had any buds on them. My plant at home has grown over five feet tall with arms and legs coming out all over the place, but no flower buds on it yet.
Maybe someday it will produce a flower or two.
My orchid cactus has a bloom coming out so there is always hope.
Fall is pretty, but spring is amazing… but that’s another story. See ya,