A newly discovered nest!

Yesterday I was picking wild blueberries along the edge of our woods.  I noticed that the majority of the ripe ones were the ones in the areas with the most sunlight, which makes sense of course.  I puttered around finding ripe berries and observing woodland plants and insects.  I was about finished, but then I decided I would just check along the slope that runs in front of our house next to the road. I thought there might be some berry plants there that had received a good dose of sun.  Here's a picture of that area of ground.

There were indeed some ripe berries along that stretch, so I began picking.  As I carried along, I noticed a little area that seemed kind of hollowed out.  I thought maybe it was a chipmunk hole, since I've noticed my chipmunks seem to disappear into little holes along the slopes when they're distressed.  You might see the little area I'm talking about just to the left and slightly below centre in this picture.

As I peered down to get a closer look, I realized it wasn't a chipmunk hole, and I realized there was something in it!

Can you see the tiny beaks?

How about now?!  Four little baby birds in a wee nest, but it was my first experience with a ground nest built on a slope like that.

When I made a bit of noise, the beaks immediately began to open!

It took a while for me to discover who owns the nest.  I carried on with my berry picking, watching for an adult bird to appear.  It was a while, but finally a parent appeared.  The nest is a family of dark-eyed juncos.  I wasn't successful in getting a good picture of the parents, but you can see a dark-eyed junco here at the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology's website.  I had no idea that they built their nests on the ground, so I learned my new thing for the day!  I hope to have a few more pictures before they fledge.

Update:  Managed to snap a vaguely decent picture of a parent junco - they move a lot!

Friday's Hunt

Today I'm joining in Friday's Hunt, hosted by Eden Hills.  Today the categories are:  Starts with D, Week's Favourite, and Summer or Winter.

Starts with D
Today I was absolutely delighted to find that not all of my daylily plants are Stella d'oro. Don't get me wrong - I love the Stella d'oro daylilies - they are vibrant and cheerful and produce loads of blooms, so I'm happy to have some in my garden.  Sometimes, though, I find that they are overused, to the detriment of other daylilies, since there are so many lovely ones to be had.  I had noticed several clumps of daylilies here in the new gardens, but the first three clumps that flowered were all the same, and I figured that they would therefore all be that way.  Well, I was wrong!  Today, just in time for Friday's Hunt, and much to my surprise, I found three new daylilies blooming.  I don't know the names of any of these since I didn't plant them, but I'll be trying to find them in the coming days.

This first new daylily is a paler yellow than the Stella d'oro - it's more of a buttery yellow, like a pale custard.  It has a greenish centre and has narrower petals.

This second one is a peachy-apricot colour with a red band around the throat.  Quite attractive, and you can see the form is more like the Stella d'oro flower in shape.

This third flower may possibly be "Autumn Red" daylily.  It is taller than the others but has the typical daylily leaves and based on some pictures I found, I think that it fits the appearance for the Autumn Red.  I'm not sure about the underside of the three narrower petals though, which are yellow.

The colour is just stunning - so deep and rich, like velvet.

I have another plant-related "D" to share as well.  I have a plant that I was having trouble identifying, so I sent some pictures to my mother to see if she could help.  She's very clever about a great many things, but she is especially knowledgeable about plants.  Sure enough, she almost immediately suggested that it was a Daphne mezereum.  I had never heard of this plant, but it flowers in early spring (no doubt before we moved in) and then produces these stunning red berries.  It's extremely poisonous, but really pretty!  No worries - I won't be eating it.  Apparently the flowers are very fragrant, so I shall look forward to that aspect of this plant next year.

Week's Favourite
I had a really special moment this morning.  I was outside after hanging some laundry on the line and I noticed a group of chickadees at the feeder.  They didn't seem to mind my presence, so I got closer and closer to them, and managed to get a great picture of this one just above where the feeder is tied to the tree.  Shortly after this picture, I went inside and grabbed a handful of seed.  After some patience (and a sore arm from holding it out for so long), I was rewarded with a chickadee who alighted on my hand for a moment and took a seed.  It was just magical.  I'm not sure if it was this exact one, but it was one of a group of about 5 that were all at the feeder at the time.  I'm hoping to keep up with this habit so that they will get used to me.

Summer or Winter

Well, it's certainly summer here, and many of my recent blog posts seem to be showcasing the summer season - birds and blooms! Here's another exciting new sign of summer that I found this week. I have ripe blueberries throughout some of the woodsy areas of our new property!  They are the small, wild blueberries that are native to this area.  I have already eaten a few and they are delectable! Here's a picture looking down at the ground where you can see the ripe little bursts of blue throughout.  There are many berries still to ripen.

Here's what I picked today.  YUM!  A sure sign of summer, indeed!

I've got wild raspberries just starting to ripen as well - so lucky!

Un-fencing...err...de-fencing?

Today I spent several hours at the old Nova Scotia farm property taking down metal T-posts and some page-wire fencing that I will subsequently be installing here at the new place in order to bring my sheep and goats home (finally!)  The old fencing posts will be quite useful and they are not easy to find here in the Maritimes.  In the US, they were in every hardware store you could find, but not here! So, I was determined to get as many as I could since they are quite rare.  This weekend is going to be busy for us and I wasn't sure if the weather was going to cooperate, so instead of waiting for Marc to help me, I went to do it myself.

The weeds are high....and when I say high, I mean over 4 feet high in many places.  The burdock was like small trees.  It was, to say the least, a challenging time.  I found my old shearing stand, which I was unable to bring back yet, because it's too heavy for me to lift and navigate by myself.

You can see the fencing that I was taking down in the background of this picture, in the middle - just that top line of the wire.  That gives you a sense of how tall the weeds are, since the fencing is 48 inches high.

Fortunately, it was a lovely day - not too hot, and not too buggy - and there was a good breeze.  Still, I had not brought a machete for cutting through the jungle!  I ended up with more burdocks clinging to me than I could count.  Not easy to remove all those tenacious little things!

In the end, I was able to take down about two thirds of the T-posts that were there.  Some were just too deeply pounded for me to remove.  I used to have a T-post puller in Iowa, but I think it got left there in the end.  I salvaged some of the page wire too - it's not cheap here, at least not compared to the cost in the US.  I also brought a bunch of boxes in the truck - always hauling a few when I have the opportunity.  So much stuff still to move.

You can see the ends of all my T-posts.  Quite a good haul, considering that I was by myself in the jungle!  I also brought my sheep "deck chair" which is really useful for doing hooves and other checks, including belly shearing.  I brought some garden tools as well.

I didn't come out unscathed.  I burst a blood vessel in my little finger which was exceedingly painful for a time, but it's OK now.  I've got a series of bruises up and down my arms, and another on my knee.  I fell over some wood that was hidden under all the weeds.  I have had more accidents at that dreadful place than anywhere else I've lived.  Still, I'm alright - no broken bones!  Just damaged dignity!

More birds and flowers

Things have been blooming nicely in the perennial garden beds here.  The Stella d'oro daylilies are in full bloom and looking absolutely stunning with their burst of golden yellow.  I couldn't resist some close up shots of their delectable blossoms.  They almost look like they're made from butter.

Here you can see the pollen on the anthers just waiting to be gathered by bees.

The Astilbes are flowering now - both white and pink, although the white is further ahead than the pink.  They are both very airy and light, and the flower fronds gently move in the breeze making a beautiful display.

The flowers are so delicate.

I also have a sumac that is starting to bloom.  The flower buds look like tiny snowballs.

They open into a frothy mass of tiny white blossoms that kind of look like little exploding stars.

Meanwhile, the birds have been enjoying the seed at the feeders.  My bird pictures still aren't great because of the distance I need to maintain, but I managed to get a decent picture of a blue jay on the stump eating seeds I had placed there.

The nuthatches are regular visitors to the house-shaped feeder.

This one even did an inspection of the structural integrity of the floor boards!

Inspection complete, a seed was selected...

...and off he went to eat his snack.

Friday's Hunt

Today I am participating in Eden Hills' Friday's Hunt.  The prompts for this week are "Starts with C," "Week's Favourite" and "Unique Perspective."

Starts with C
This is a picture of Cornus canadensis.  (double c credit there!) The common name for this plant varies tremendously, depending upon the region and even the country.  This plant is native to parts of North America, but also native to Greenland and parts of eastern Asia, including Japan, China and parts of Russia.  Locally, the most frequently used common name I am aware of is bunchberry.  It is a dogwood species, and some places call it creeping dogwood.  It was a carpet of little white flowers in early June, and now the berries are just turning red.  It's a pretty woodland plant and I have a lot of it in my wooded areas.

Week's Favourite
I think some of my favourite pictures this week were the chipmunk photographs that I blogged about a few days ago.  However, I am just so excited about the subject of this picture, that it just has to be my week's favourite.  A day or two and this little gem will have mysteriously disappeared, into my mouth!  First ripe tomato (this is a Burpee "power pop" cherry tomato) of 2016.  Hopefully there will be many more!

Unique Perspective
I had a lot of fun playing around with the "unique perspective" prompt for today. I wasn't sure about the best way to showcase "unique perspective" in photographs.  I decided that my interpretation of the prompt was to take pictures from angles or directions that we might not normally use.  With that as my starting point, I went walking around the yard looking for opportunities.  I know I've shared too many of my resulting images, but I really had fun seeking out new perspectives.

This is probably my favourite picture of those that I took.  It's a macro shot of sphagnum moss growing in my yard, except that at this close distance, it kind of looks like miniature palm trees of some kind.  I felt like this gave me a bug's eye view of the vegetation.


I really liked this shot looking up a pair of lichen-covered tree trunks.  It almost looked like the tree trunks were the legs of some giant creature, gently crossed at the knees.

This is a shot looking along a split tree root at ground level.  The split is filled with forest "decorations" including seed pods, pine and spruce needles, moss, lichen, leaves, and other bits of vegetation.

I took a picture of the lichen and moss growing on the rock that I call my "thinking rock." Sometimes I go sit on this rock for a while to think and meditate.  I like the way life is growing on stone.

This is the perspective from the inside of my vine arbour.  Usually I'm looking at it from the outside,but instead, I went inside and looked out.  I love the way the vine makes its own little viewing panels.

Here's a unique perspective that you would only get if you were me!  I took a picture of my reflection in the window of Marc's workshop.

This is a view across the top of an old, rotting stump.  I love the new growth here of the moss and lichen - it's like a tiny forest playground for a tiny bug.  I also love the range of colours - greens, browns and golds in so many shades.

I realized that the stump was next to a tall tree, and probably was once a similar tree before being cut. That made me think about the view that the stump "sees" when it is next to its neighbour tree.  That's my last picture to share for unique perspectives today!

Skies Above

After the cool grey skies we had recently, I'm really enjoying the clear blue sky today and yesterday. I took some pictures when the weather was a bit dreary, playing around with different angles, and some of them featured the sky.  I was trying to capture what it might be like to be a bird, or a small mammal, looking up at the sky from under plants and trees.  This is a picture taken from underneath the umbel of my climbing hydrangea - on a grey day, obviously.

I took the same shot under the same umbel today.  What a difference!

Likewise, I took a picture of the grey skies from under the maple tree.

I prefer today's view!

I also pretended to be a chipmunk under a fern, and thought about the view of the sky.  I thought this was a rather lovely shot at the time.

This one really lets the fern detail shine.

Today, a glorious blue sky is all around....not a cloud to be seen.

The view through the Virginia creeper over the arbour was lovely.

The view from underneath the honey locust tree was very appealing.

I also took a picture looking up at the sky from under the Lysimachia bloom - I really like this one. You can see edge of the house-shaped bird feeder from below, in the lower right corner.  It was interesting to spend time looking from the ground up, instead of the other way around.

I'm hoping for some more pretty sunsets in the skies over the tops of the tall spruce in the backyard, like this one from late last week.