Goldenrod: Fill Up the Feeders
Big winter storm! For once the weather hysterics were right, and we got a lot of snow, even more than they threatened. A winter wonderland which is great for kids (tough luck it’s on a Sunday, guys, could have been a snow day…). Great for skiiers. Great, in fact, for all snow lovers, including mice, red squirrels and meadow voles who can tunnel safely beneath the drifts and avoid predators. But deep snow is tough on some types of wildlife. If the seeds are all hidden underneath a blanket of white, what’s a bird to do? Looks like it’s shaping up to be a long cold...
Read MoreCattails: Winter Warmth
Cattails in a winter marsh, with a skim of ice on the water. This chilly picture seems to be the very essence of cold. But actually this is an image of potential warmth. You’ve seen cattail seed heads, I’m sure, when they’re just ripe–they look like a brown velvet hot dog impaled on a stick. Just one of those spikes can hold an unbelievable number of seeds–somewhere in the vicinity of a quarter of a million seeds on each stalk. Each individual seed is a tiny dot, almost invisible, attached to a little cluster of fluff, which acts as a parachute so the seeds can...
Read MoreThe Dishevelled Cardinal
Thanks to Diane Hale Smith for this photo of a female cardinal having, as she put it, “a bad feather day.” Look at that beak–built like a nutcracker to crush the hard shells of sunflower seeds. Cardinals love feeders as much as we love watching them. Their bright red plumage seems made for inept birdwatchers like me who can never spot the little brown birds hiding high up in the branches. Cardinals don’t flee the snow and cold, they hang around all winter, brightening up the drabbest months. It’s hard to imagine this tiny morsel of a bird surviving subzero...
Read MoreCelandine: Sweet Young Thing
One of the best things about writing a blog is that it gives you a reason to look at everything with new eyes.
Read MoreThistle: No More Waiting
Last December, I was at the Beacon train station, and I noticed a really magnificent specimen of a thistle. It was growing, still green in December, thriving among the gravel so carefully placed to keep weeds down (see Thistle: Waiting for the Train). Well, today I happened to be at the Beacon train station again, waiting for the New York City train, and there was my prickly friend. The thistle has weathered the winter, better than I did–no colds, flu or dry skin–and is in fine shape. No more just a flat basal rosette of leaves–now it’s time to spring into action....
Read MoreRed Osier Dogwood: Winter Fire
This time of year, all the color seems to have drained from the world. No flowers yet, no butterflies. Even the birds are hiding till the warm weather comes. In the early spring drabness, this shrub stands out like flame against the dried brown grasses. Red Osier Dogwood–one of many species of dogwoods, with juicy berries much beloved by fall birds. The berries are long gone, but the twigs still glow like embers. It’s a native plant, a cold-weather-lover. It grows all over the US, but can even tough it out way up north in Alaska and the Yukon, where it does its best to warm the...
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