nature photography in nylons

A patch of trillium along the trails. The woods were brown and covered in leaves just two weeks ago and are now green and full of wildflowers and a lot of thorns.

Trillium, the state wildflower in Michigan.

In the garden.

Forsythia

Redbud tree blooms.

Bleeding hearts. The next night we had a freeze that killed all these flowers.

One of my favorite trees

A cardinal nest.

There’s finally an egg in the cardinal nest.

Newly hatched Cardinal

Pregnant deer…. see how the belly protrudes below her middle?

Some of the first wildflowers spotted in the woods.

Michigan wildflowers

The last bluebird egg in the first laid clutch sits on the ground destroyed. It is now legal for me to remove the nesting material from the nest box. It’s illegal to destroy a viable song bird’s nest.

A few days later there was a new clutch of bluebird eggs laid.

Female Eastern Bluebird guarding her nest.

Eastern Bluebird fledgings

Sometimes I’m driving down the road and I’ll see a horse, a donkey and a goat hanging out.

Or catch sight of a bird nesting on my way home from work and have to stop for a quick picture.

A leaping deer.

Three robin eggs.

Magnolia

Catching some down time in the park.

Had a great visit to the Skeba’s farm on Lake Leelanau.

We found some morel mushrooms.

And we found a fawn too.

Allium

Jack in the Pulpit

too busy to enjoy the 100 year flood

Daffodil

Hyacinths

Grape Hyacinths. I used to see the deer right outside the front door every morning chowing down on these flowers.

Daffodil

An Eastern Bluebird nest! As of Friday there were no eggs in the nest. I can tell it’s an Eastern Bluebird nest because they make tidy nests woven from uniformly shaped grass. The invasive House Sparrow uses grass, litter (like candy bar wrappers or bits of plastic) and pad the bottom of the nest with feathers from all sorts of different birds.

The Eastern Bluebird nest holds three eggs by Tuesday. I’m guessing there will be a total of five eggs by Thursday… then an exciting (**for a nerd) 14 day countdown begins until the eggs hatch. The begins a ten day period of growth before the hatchlings start to fly and live outside the box.

Miniature Iris

Despite enough rain to break our city’s 100 year flood records and the snow flying in between the rain storms we have been able to see the sunset once or twice in the past month.

wet, active and unsettled

A weather blog for the local area states the week’s weather will be spring-like and wet, active and unsettled.

I took a long and quiet run on the first day of spring…in a snow storm. I did see four bikers on the trails that day.

Turkeys trying to build their harem. The hens completely ignored them and continued to eat the whole time I watched. They need to work on their game. (and grow their beards to more impressive lengths.)

Turkeys and deer. The buck that had the weird shed is on the right. The shed is gone and the snow is melting- finally!

The streams make noise now that the ice is melted.

The floor of the woods

It’s nice to be able to forget to take off your sunglasses and toss them to the side of the trail and not worry they’ll be buried by snow…. or taken when you forget to pick them back up from the trail for a few days in a row. Lookey here, they’re just where I left them.

It’s warm enough for the bugs to rejoin us. I’m amazed that I can spend months accidentally inhaling bugs and spiders in the woods and completely forget about those accidental meals during the winter season. The three black dots on my lips are tiny bugs. They’re way too small to have a flavor.

I barely made it out of the woods by sunset. I saw a raccoon wading in the stream and a skunk on the bank of the stream. They both went into a hollow under a tree’s root system and I was hoping to catch a picture of them together in their hide out. I couldn’t see them when I got closer and I didn’t get sprayed by the skunk or my face eaten off by the raccoon. Disappointedly uneventful.

And it’s dry enough to bike…for now!

Last March was perfect (more than amazing)

Last March started out cold.

The bluebirds fought over food.

And then the light changed…

I saw bald eagles on my way out to the woods.

and turkey feathers…

and feathers on turkeys….

and turtles laying eggs….

..and snakes.

and many pregnant deer.

The birds and the bees arrived early.

And I thought it was a good idea to set my Christmas tree on fire.

As it turns out it wasn’t a good idea to set my Christmas tree on fire. The tree rolled right off the fire pit and toward the dry wooden shed.

Here are the Christmas trees I stuck in the ground safely not-on-fire next to the shed.

But we were saved from ourselves by an unusual and beautiful March thunderstorm.

Last March was perfect for me and for none of the reasons above.

My bff on top of L.L.

The barn. Heading out to a basketball game in a snow storm….but no one that lives in northern Michigan would call getting 10 inches of snow in a few hours a storm.

It’s easy to forget the sky is blue during the winter.

Skeba Farm

I took a run through the woods and up to the orchard. The crusty layer made it slow and the most difficult run ever. Like my finicky picky eater children say, “Crust KILLS!”.

Jodi’s back yard.

Bluff close-ups… so many acres of untouched snow.

My tracks on the bluff. The snow builds up along the edge… I ran over the bluff hoping to avalanche myself down the huge hill, but the snow held. I was disappointed. I was hoping for the adventure of the fall and an easy way to the bottom of the trail.

Over-looking Jodi’s yard and the lake… It’s the swath of white beyond the pine trees.

The sticky bug card is still hanging in the orchard.

We had lots of time for fun and jackassery, a specialty of my friend and I.

My bff on top of Lake Leelanau. (“My bff on top of L.L.” sounds provocative and I like it.)

We went into town for a festival. Most of the bike racks downtown were in use despite the ten inches of fresh snow. Bikers don’t mess around in Michigan.

Bench-high snow. Bikes on both sides of the street.

I spotted this cat in a fox hat. Jodi and I ran him down and asked to get a picture with him. He nonchalantly said “Sure, just a minute” while picking up his dog. He was taking her to the car to warm up. He was booking down the sidewalk to get her out of the cold.

Carting a kid in a sled. Strollers are useless at this festival.

I was too busy having fun to take out my big camera and I stuck to using my phone for pictures.

you should know the rich have better outdoor bathrooms than you

A rare sunset. I mean. the sun always sets, but it’s rare to see actually see that happen because of near constant cloud cover.

A sunrise along a creek. It was 0ºF or about 17º C on this morning.

There’s a little bench off to the right of the water.

Grape vines

I got tangled in some roses taking the grape vine photo. Looks like the deer enjoyed eating some greenery. See the gnawed off ends of the branches? I was surprised to see the green.

My not-boyfriend Eric Fischer from the weather channel retweeted this picture and I was totally geeked out. (a sure sign of a geek) It’s snowed another 12″ since this picture was taken.

The difference between the “haves” and the “have nots” extends far beyond disparity between education and social resources. Check out this fancy OUTDOOR bathroom in the fancy pants neighborhood. It is always stocked with rolls and rolls of toilet paper and cleaned every day. Once the cross country skiers started coming out of their mansions there’s a path to the bathroom plowed. Frankly I’m counting down to the first week of May when the trees and shrubs leaf out and I can hit the mountain bike trails even if I have to relieve myself.

I’m considering changing to longer running socks now that there’s a few feet of snow on the ground…or stirrup pants.

wtf weather

It snowed a few inches most days last week.

The local area is still about 30″ below normal snow fall.

Then the skies cleared. Michigan enjoys maybe two or three clear days most winter months.

First run this winter in deep snow.

The woods were beautiful… and hilly.

Snow covered ant hills. That’s my glove for perspective. I’d like to dare some one to lay across them during the summer.

More ant hills.

The stream partially frozen.

The woods were packed with cross country skiers and their golden retrievers. I forgot, until I got on the trail, that the skiers rule the trail. The skiers claim the center of the trail as their territory. There is even a sign at the trail head with a diagram of the ski tracks in the center of the trail and the snow shoes on the outer edges of the trail. (feet not even illustrated and bikes not allowed)

A rare spot with room for two lanes of traffic. The rest of the trail system only has room for the skiers. I ran alongside the trail most of the time. I am still amazingly sore days later.

This is the sunflower the one-legged grasshopper hung out on for three weeks this past summer.

July and January weather. We did have a few 110ºF days. Today, in the dead of winter, it’s 60ºF and thunder storming. It’s the second year Michigan’s winter is full of spring and summer weather.

Almost abducted, but luckily it was just a dude killing with crowbar.

May is my favorite month for many reasons.

If you sit still on a windy day in May, you’ll likely spot a fawn wading through the tall grass.

They usually wander your way.

… and wonder what you are.

At this point I always get a little nervous and a lot excited about a wild animal running my way. Kind of like a strange dog running at you, but without the possibility of being bitten…or anything harmful for that matter… and it’d be a pretty small dog with a dainty build.

It’s still coming this way.

One last picture before enjoying touching the wild.

I forgot a death in my last post. Last fall after hearing a thud we went outside to investigate and this is what we found.
How could this turkey NOT see our house? Was it a daydreamer and staring into space as it flew through the air?

Speaking of death, I thought I was possibly going to die last week. I was out running before work.
(Mom, please stop reading now. I’ll tell you this story later…like in 30 years)

It was still a little dark so I stayed out of the woods and on the paved path…ya know…to be safe.

Not far into my run a junky truck slooooowly crept past. At the top of the hill the truck turned into a driveway and parked there for a minute.

I turned around heading back to my car in case the truck was plotting a possible abduction. My plan to dress in camouflage and be invisible to traffic may have failed. The truck turned back down the hill past me again very sloooowly.

At the base of the hill the truck did a U-turn and turned back around heading my way once again. I stopped, dropped a pin in my GPS coordinates, punched in 911 on my keypad ready to call and got my pepper spray situated. The truck pulled along side the side of the road about 50 feet in front of me. I thought, “Oh shit, there’s two dudes in the truck… I wanted to use this pepper spray on a bear not like this….would have been way cooler…and how much pepper spray is in these things anyway? Damn it, a shitty end of the year and now THIS?”

I had to pass the truck to get to my car. I waited for another car to come down the road (ya know for witnesses…) before running as fast as I could past the truck. A man got out of the truck and circled around the back of the truck. A short foot bridge railing separated me from the men and the truck.

As I tore across the bridge, closer to the man, I was stopped by the sight of him leaning over a deer that was sitting along the side of the road.
I heard myself ask, “Oh a deer. So that’s why you stopped?”
The man silently raised his arm over his head and slammed a crowbar into the deer’s skull in response to my question. Crowbar to skull makes a loud cracking sound.

I ran like hell back to my car a half mile down the path beating my HIGH SCHOOL half mile record by a LONG shot in that run.

Even though I logically knew the guys had hit the deer, saw it wasn’t dead and were coming back to do the nice thing and put the doe out of her misery, I was still a little fearful the skull cracking guy may have gotten a taste for death during his crow bar swinging and my skull may be next.

So now I take my morning jog inside my garage and it it totally lame in comparison. But no more running out in the dark, I promise.

The Six Most Impressive Deaths of 2012

If you have a weak stomach stop reading this now.

I saw a zillion amazing animals in the 2012 year. Some of them were dead. Here are my favorites…

CUTEST DEATH

“Mom look how cute this little guy is. Will you peel him up for me so I can freak Krystal out?”

adorable

“I’ll give ya one last ride, freak Krystal out and then set you in the garden.”

SADDEST DEATH

A young groundhog with a parasitic brain-eating worm. This one was half the size of its siblings and circled around in odd little circles before dying. The mother tried to corral the brain-fried little one back into the burrow for hours the first few days before giving up on her pup.

MOST BEAUTIFUL DEATH

The second clutch of bluebird eggs were over due to hatch. Temperatures soared above 104ºF/40ºC for a few weeks. The eggs looked a little cooked on the bottom

I took an egg out of the nest and cracked it open to make sure the clutch wasn't viable. I surmise the clutch overheated early.

MOST EXCITING DEATH *gory warning

I just bought a snake field guide and then saw this blue racer- the first one I’d ever spotted! I was excited, but didn’t feel comfortable posting this treasure due to the gore. It would have been much more amazing to see this blue racer dart across the road, but that’s not how it happened.

GROSSEST DEATH AND KIND OF LIKE A DREAM I ALWAYS HAD WHEN I WAS A KID

I glanced down at the trail and got a flash of what looked like a line of ants going into a mouse eye. Pretty gross. It WAS a line of ants going into a mouse eye….and ear. I was thankful the mouse was too small to stink like death.

MOST LOGICAL DEATH

Farm style fly tape. “You’ve got to know what’s around your crop.” This makes sense.

Christmas Eve’s Glory Hole

The days are short. There’s only time to run and carry the camera.

holiday lights

frozen tree sap

My dear friend Alisun breezed into town like a waft of intelligent air and taught me and our chums some glass blowing terminology. She also indicated I shouldn’t use wikipedia to help my kids with their homework. I’m just trying to figure out how you find the number of neutrons in an atom. I need a workshop Alisun.

Glass Blowing: Glory Hole Tips on Howcast

just after solstice sunset

temperatures way above freezing…lots of mud

moss

the glow of sunset

maybe the moon will light the trail

savor belonging to yourself

…only in the winter, in the country, can you have longer, quiet stretches when you can savor belonging to yourself. ~Ruth Stout

The trails are deliciously empty after it snows.

Saturday we woke up to a blanket of snow. Thousands of people took to facebook to announce that it snowed. This is what my Mom posted.

She’s so smart. I saw her before I took off to run on Sunday and she asked if I had a mask to avoid a chapped face. I thought it was too warm and clear for a mask. As soon as I got to the trail it started snowing heavily before turning into large jagged chunks of ice.

My piles of running clothes have gone from summer’s few small scraps into winter’s mounding piles of layers.

The temperature rose and the snow slipped off the wet branch.

I usually don’t feel what I’ve gotten myself into until after I take the picture and turn to leave.

Made by a woodpecker.

Made in Michigan.

How Things Look

My eldest daughter brought this fiery sunrise to my attention. It’s easier to take good photos when a fleet of people are keeping a look out for beauty and critters.

A frosty morning.

The cold sunrise was more yellow.

Squirrel in da house. (the greenhouse)

I’m sure I’d adamantly vote against spending township money on these warning signs during a spring meeting. By fall it becomes obvious I’d be running through the woods (in olive colored clothing) while people were bow hunting if it weren’t for these township warning signs.

I feel as if this sign may have saved me from being pierced with an arrow. I also wonder if an orange laminated sign nailed to a tree would have worked as effectively. It certainly wouldn’t look as classy.

breaking up with birds: harder than you’d think

I haven’t fed the birds the past few weeks in hopes of staying focused. What? What are we talking about?…..

I had a few days off from work and couldn’t stand starving the birds to death another second.
They line up in the deck rail and stare at me.
So I fed them. And then I feel compelled to take pictures of them. And then nothing productive gets done.

Downy Woodpecker

White-breasted Nuthatch

Another Downy Woodpecker.

Female Red Cardinals. When the weather turns cold birds are competitive feeders. They’ll spend a lot of time chasing each other away from a food source, even when there is plenty of other food to eat. Since it’s cold and these two are hanging out together, they are likely a mother and daughter combo. Male cardinals feed females seeds as part of their spring mating ritual and then change to complete dick heads in the winter and aggressively chase the females away from a food source.

I don’t have a name for this sparrow, but know what page it’s on in my field guide.

I moved my stack of 20 field guides I usually keep on my nightstand. My thought was that I don’t have time to indulge in taking nature photos and identifying migrating birds this fall. (:

caught in the dark

I was caught in the dark running in the woods the other day. I don’t have time for these shorter days.

I made it out of the woods despite the leaf-covered trail.

There were lots of noises as critters ran through dried leaves. I was a little scared I was going to accidentally startle a skunk and get sprayed and less afraid I was going to get stalked and eaten by a mountain lion. It was great to hear the stream since that meant I was close to the trailhead.

http://youtu.be/oW8pzkERLZ0

Here’s the same video essentially, but taken during the day.

http://youtu.be/UjSdEn7i_4U

The trail was difficult to follow in the dark…..

It’s raining leaves

A leaf temporarily caught in the sumac berries. It drifted off in the wind right after I took this photo.

my favorite watering hole

We got in some fall camping the other weekend… always a good time.

Through the woods and to the beach…

Lake Michigan

We are finally tall!

Camping is a little messy, but we don’t mind.

We kayaked through some cool wetlands.

…chasing this Great Blue Heron and some Sandhill Cranes.

I’m huge

…compared to a spider.
A  Banded Argiope missing a hind leg. The grasshopper with the missing leg is still hanging out in the front garden too.  They are harmless like most spiders and  are capable of consuming insects up to twice their size.

More webs highlighted by fog.

A roller coaster of web…

dots….

Last day at Cannonsburg State Game Area….

My new maid is a non-lactating squirrel

Tyrant, the red squirrel that calls my yard and walnut trees home, has been busy bringing nuts into my shed a few hours a day.

Last winter I watched Tyrant spend hours and hours chasing larger squirrels away from the drift of walnut trees out back. I assumed Tyrant was male because this chasing behavior seemed aggressive and futile and I judged it as masculine. I also named the squirrel Tyrant at this time. This squirrel really seemed the jump-on-your- face-and-eat-it-off type of critter. When spring came I realized I was a judgmental idiot as soon as I spotted Tyrant’s six huge lactating boobs hanging out of her fur.

Last year Tyrant used the woodpile for winter shelter and food storage. The pile was a horrible choice for a shelter since the wind blows directly at the logs and its kind of a cramped space.

Now she’s back to stock piling winter treats and has moved from the drafty woodpile to my shed. I had “face the squirrel” on my to do list for a few weeks. A few friends mentioned, “You have got to kill it/get rid of it. Those things are trouble.” I didn’t have any intention of killing Tyrant, but knew I should check the well-being of my shed. I was shocked when I opened the shed to investigate and/or get my face eaten off by Tyrant, figuring I’d see a trashed mess of red squirrel destruction. Instead this is what I saw…..

Tyrant’s nuts stacked neatly in my empty flower pots. For the love she’s neater than me!

She also had a little nest in the most protected corner furthest away from where the winter wind blows. Now I know a lot of readers have an Aunt whose house was terrorized by a red squirrel eating through the screen and gorging themselves on appliance wires, or perhaps a cousin who had a red squirrel fill his attic to the rooftop with shit after biting their baby’s leg, but I’m letting Tyrant hang out in my shed this winter. She’s neater than I am so really, the way I see it, I should invite her to live inside and get her started on whipping this place into shape. I’m not too worried about Tyrant’s new shelter. She is just looking for food, water and shelter for the winter, which she now has secured neatly in my shed. I’m confident she is not going to branch out into gnawing weed whacker string because she saw it done on a reality show or that’ll she’ll try to create a larger home by destroying the shed windows because she read about it in a fancy glossy magazine.

A lovely sunrise I watched on a run through my best friend’s orchard.

Chickadee hanging out on the deck.

See the cool pattern on this grasshopper’s leg?

See how the cool leg pattern is missing on the other side of this grasshopper? I bet a million dollars a bird snatched its leg and the rest of the grasshopper got away.

bright color in the garden……

cool

A Great Blue Heron downtown Grand Rapids in the Grand River. (lower middle)

giving my boobs a break

Last week we lost summer’s hour of dusk and the nights turned cool. The lack of daylight combined with cooler temperatures starts the leaves’ colorful death cycle.

I spent the weekend in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula at my cousin’s wedding. I also picked up some art from the artist Dominic Fredianelli, who along with my cousin, is in the movie Where Soldiers Come From.

It’s REBAL with an A in a rebellious fashion. It was a tight squeeze in my vehicle since it’s 8ft. x 4ft.

It’s down to the last few weeks to enjoy the trails at Cannonsburg State Game Area. Luckily there are several other local trail systems closed to hunting. All spring and summer I stuff any trash I come across in the woods into my shirt. Most of the trash is shotgun slugs. It’s time to give my boobs a break.

A mushroom in Cannonsburg State Game Area

Spotted Cucumber Beetle

Tree Frog

Crocosmia

Rose-breasted Grosbeak

Goldfinch

Tomatoes from the garden

Swallows

Some seriously amazing sh*t!

seriously click to enlarge….way worth it.

ASTOUNDING AND IMPRESSIVE

Speaking of poop, an amazing number of people stumble onto my blog looking for information on turkey poop. (welcome to my blog) Michigan’s fall turkey hunt is almost here so if you successfully drew a license I can let you know where a large flock of turkeys hang out in the Cannonsburg State Game Area.

Sunlight through a hole eaten by a Monarch caterpillar in a milkweed leaf.
***Light and Joy and Peace Abide in Me***

A newly hatched Monarch caterpillar and the leaf of a burning bush. The last batch of monarchs will live longer than a few weeks and travel 1,000′s of miles to warm breeding grounds in Mexico. I found three little ones in the garden yesterday and so far only one is missing.

A Great Blue Heron peeking.

FLYING….Check out the talons and meaty thighs…probably tastes like pond muck though.

CHICKADEE

BLURRY HUMMINGBIRD

A mixed flock of Cedar Waxwings and House Finches fluttering and chattering.