Wild Wild Woods

In the woods today, Solomon's Seal, Rue, Violets, and Trout Lily.  After the very cold wet months of April and May, native wildflowers s...

Another wave of migrants stopped here for refueling: Tennessee Warbler, Yellow Warbler and Indigo Bunting.      They gorged on suet a...

The post on 4/23/2014 was about a nest containing two eggs.  If you guessed it was a Northern Cardinal nest, you were correct.  Today the fi...

Migrating birds stopped at the edge of the wild wild woods this week.  On Friday, one Yellow-rumped Warbler Setophaga coronata hopped...

 Larch, magnolia, maple, and pussywillow display their springtime beauty. Larch Larix laricina branch with green needle tufts and fe...

Nestwatch season has begun in Minnesota and the wild wild woods. http://nestwatch.org/ Discovered today in an evergreen tree at the ed...

Baltimore Oriole Close up: the beaks of Baltimore Oriole, Red-winged Blackbird, and Common Grackle.  All three of these birds are in th...

  We watched two young female Pileated Woodpeckers Dryocopus pileatus this morning.  They were hunting for bugs in grass at the edge...

Nest cameras are ready in the wild wild woods! This is one camera's view into a wooden nest box from the inside of the roof, looking ...

April 1, 2014.  No, not a joke.  I saw my "first" Eastern Bluebird of this spring season at the edge of the wild wild woods this...

Aren't they amazing close up? The feathers on the birds in the wild wild woods are showing some wear since last summer.  Flying, pree...

I've occasionally noticed something about the eyes on some of the birds I observe: milky or filtered texture. According to the Corn...

This Eastern Cottontail rabbit ( Sylvilagus floridanus ) has a thick fur coat in cold weather, but does not turn white like the native har...

Watching the feeders and counting birds today for Cornell FeederWatch http://feederwatch.org/. All the birds are fluffed up as they hun...

Sub-zero!  Really sub-zero.  Thanks to Winter Storm Hercules, a polar vortex is invading most of the nation with record-setting low temperat...

This Sharp-shinned Hawk appeared again near the edge of the wild woods.  He perched for a while on the top of the feeder poles, grooming f...

At the edge of the woods, I found some raspberries that did not ripen before frost.  These berries are evidently too dessicated for the...

Cold, sub-zero windy day.  In the sun against dark tree bark was a safe place for this female Red-bellied Woodpecker to rest for a while....

FeederWatch, the citizen science project with Cornell Lab of Ornithology, is one way to learn birding.  Along with learning the habits and...

Now that snow cover is complete, the House Finch Haemorhous mexicanus are more visible . . . rosey red against the white of winter.  They...

We have several types of suet feeders to accommodate different sizes of birds.  The male (red moustache) of our Pileated Dryocopus pileat...

  A heated water bowl at the edge of the woods has been our bird oasis through several cold winters.  It keeps water available for the bi...

A Northern Flicker Colaptes auratus has been coming out of the woods almost every day, to get some of the suet from our feeders.  We se...

Cold winds of November have all the birds hanging on with clenched feet and fluffed feathers. They are beginning to look like holiday tre...

This flock of Cedar Waxwings browsed through the viburnum, bayberry, black chokeberry, and dogwood shrubs looking for berries.  They gath...