Treasure

I was out on a job site yesterday, and as I was opening a gate to get onto the property, a pair of western kingbirds kicked up a almighty fuss, swooping around and squawking and chittering.

I didn't think much about it, but when they did the same thing at the same spot when I was leaving the property, it made me pause.  They were still swooping around and yelling at me, and alternately perching on the nearest bush. 



I took a closer look at my surroundings, and spotted this fuzzy clump in the angle of a fence post, safely held in place by the barbed wire cross bracing.



It held treasure.



Four perfect eggs, beautifully speckled with rich mahogany brown.  I snapped a couple pictures and left quickly so I wouldn't stress out the parents any more than I already had.

Seeing eggs in a nest is so special and rare.

2017 Ladd Marsh Bird Festival

Today was the 12th Annual Ladd Marsh Bird Festival.  This is the 11th year that I've been here for it, and I have to say, it's one of the highlights of my year.

It starts off with a music program and guest speaker on Friday night, and this year the speaker was Mark Obmascik, who is a journalist and author of The Big Year.  It was great fun, and when we left we were treated to this amazing sunset.



I was also somewhat more excited than usual, because I made a purchase at the program!  This is new-to-me spotting scope, a Vortex Viper HD. 



I've been saving my pennies for several months to upgrade my scope.  You may remember that last year I was given a Bushnell Spacemaster II scope (I still can't believe that).  While I like that one, I frequently found myself wishing that the optics were a little better, so the image could be a little brighter and a little clearer.

The owner of the local bird shop had this one for sale at the Friday night program.  It has been gently used, and other than a cosmetic scratch on the casing is in perfect condition.  He gave me a good deal, and now it's mine!  The tripod is the one I bought last year, so Yay! I'm set for a while!  I'll probably hang on to the Bushnell, since it's a good scope.  Maybe I can convince Emma to go birding with me.

The Vortex has a larger lens (80 mm vs 60 mm for the Bushnell), so it's much brighter, and has a higher magnification (20-60x vs 15-45x for the Bushnell), though I will say that the image quality and brightness significantly decrease at the higher zoom levels.  This is to be expected with a zoom lens, and happens with both scopes.

I was able to take a couple bird shots with my iPhone 5 through the new scope, and it did well.  This one of a coot on a nest came out the best.  This is taken from about 100 feet away.



I have a hard time lining up the camera with the scope lens properly, and holding the camera steady enough to get a clear picture.  It will take practice, but I also may or may not be ordering a phone-to-scope adapter mount to be able to get clearer images. (Hint: I already did.)



The marsh part of the Bird Festival weekend was great fun, and we saw 67 species of birds in six hours at my station.  That's fewer species than normal, but the water was really high in the marsh this year, and we didn't get the suite of shorebirds that we usually do. My prize for the morning was a wood duck.  They're so fancy!

After lunch, Anne and I went birding on our own around the valley, and added another handful of species to our lists for the day.  My highlights for this part of the day were Western tanagers and a lazuli bunting.  Beautiful!

We drove up and around High Valley Road and a couple side roads, between Cove and Union on the southeast side of the Grande Ronde Valley, which is one of my favorite bird routes.  The views along this drive never fail to take my breath away.



All in all it was a great day.

Fragility

A red-tailed hawk just swooped across the street into the flock of Bohemian waxwings in the mountain ash tree by my house. They scattered everywhere and one flew into the window.

Emma and I went out to look, and it was lying in the snow gasping. I picked it up so I could move it to a non-snowy spot to recover. It gaped its beak and shivered for a few seconds, then gave a little shudder and died in my hands.



It was so sad and more than a little humbling to be witness to the actual moment, that sudden stillness, when it was no longer a beautiful live creature.

Snakey snakey

I am pleased to report that I have achieved one of my life goals. I have successfully taken a picture of a rattlesnake.



Strange goal, I know, but I have seen SO MANY rattlesnakes during the course of my job (and occasionally while hiking) and I have had no tangible proof of it up until yesterday. Usually I'm moving in the opposite direction too fast to stop and take a picture.

Yesterday, though, I was out in Gilliam County looking for wetlands along Rock Creek, and this two-and-a-half-foot long guy was hanging out on a log near the stream.

He was very calm and just sat there; didn't move at all or even rattle at me. So after my initial high-pitched yelp when I came around the tree trunk and almost stepped on him, I carefully backed up a long step, pulled out my camera, and snapped a picture. I still had the goosebumps from that visceral frisson of fear, but I had evidence at last!

Then I high-tailed it back to the other side of the stream, trying not to think about how there were likely plenty of his buddies scattered across the rest of the project area. I did scare up another big one from under a sage bush about 10 minutes later, but he rattled at me and coiled up... so I was moving too fast in the opposite direction to stop and take a picture.

Ladd Marsh Bird Festival 2016

Today was a special day- the 11th Annual Ladd Marsh Bird Festival!  And not only is this one of my favorite days of the year, it's extra-special to me this year because it's the tenth time I have participated.  I work as a volunteer at one of the birding stations, helping people find and identify birds.

I have been doing this for a decade.  When I realized that, I almost couldn't believe it.  I had to count the years on my fingers, but yes, it really is true.  I started going to the Bird Festival in 2007, so this is the tenth year.

The corollary to that, of course, is that I have been living in La Grande for a decade as well.  Yikes.  A lot has happened, not least of which is that Emma, who had just turned three when we moved here in the fall of 2006, is now as tall as me.

But I digress.  This weekend was the Bird Festival! And you know, sometimes the Universe Provides.



I have wanted a spotting scope for years and years and years, ever since I took Ornithology in college in 1993.  Off and on, of course, as my birding activities waxed and waned depending on where I was in life.  But spotting scopes are pricey, good ones anyway, and there were always other things that were higher priority.  Two years ago I made room in my budget for a good pair of binoculars, and that was enough.  But still, the lure of a spotting scope was there.

This past Wednesday, a friend at work said that she was clearing out unused things from her house as she prepared for retirement, and could she give me this spotting scope she found?  She said she didn't know anything about it other than it was at least 20 years old, and didn't know what condition it was in.  But if I wanted it, I could have it.

Ummmm....YES THANK YOU!!



It's a Bushnell Spacemaster II, and it's in great condition. It's nothing fancy, but the optics are fairly good and everything is still in alignment.  It came with a tabletop tripod, but that doesn't really work for birding in the marsh, so I got a full size tripod with a pivoting head on Friday.

Sweet!  I have a spotting scope!

I put it to good use this morning at the festival.  I was at my station from 6am to 12 noon, and in that six-hour stretch I saw 77 species of birds.  That's the same number of species as I saw last year, but this year I saw everything so much more clearly!  A lot of the time at my station is spent scanning out across a pond to identify distant ducks and shorebirds, so having a scope with higher magnification than just handheld binoculars makes a big difference. And beyond just ticking species off a list, being able to see the birds more clearly really adds to the enjoyment.  You get to see the feather patterns, the eye colors, the behaviors, the whole package.

I also tried taking pictures through the scope.  This is a killdeer, which is a roughly robin-sized bird, photographed from about 80 feet away.  Considering this was taken with an iPhone just held up to the eyepiece (I don't have one of those brackets that attaches the phone to the scope...yet...), and the picture cropped after uploading, this is pretty amazing.  It's not perfect, but you can see the raindrops on her back.



I love birds.  I love the Bird Festival.  I love Ladd Marsh.

Random-osity

The first nasturtium flower opened on Sunday!  Nasturtiums always look so cheerful.  These are growing really slowly, and most are nowhere near blooming.  Ah well, I know to plant them earlier next year.



The Boston Pickling cucumbers are also starting to bloom.  Just one male flower so far, but there are lots more buds coming and I can see at least a couple that are female flowers.



The pattypan squash, on the other hand, is doing exactly squat.  Oh, it's blooming like crazy, but only sending out male flowers!  I know the squash family tends to start out with only male flowers for a while when they start blooming, but it's been weeks!  I want some squash!  I'm going to try stuffed sauteed flowers with dinner tomorrow unless a female bud shows up.



Emma's Black Magic petunia is doing really well. I bought this under duress, because she wanted it sooo badly, but it's really grown on me.  I like the contrast it brings to the half barrel with the marigolds and bright red penstemon.



The green beans are still pretty small and spindly, but they are starting to flower and produce itty bitty beans!



The Tomato Annex is doing great.



I don't really appreciate the day to day differences until I go back and look at previous pictures, like this one, taken just two weeks ago.  The vines are about two feet taller now, and look at the tomatoes!



We've only harvested five tomatoes so far.  It's been really cool here for the past couple weeks (daytime highs in the 70s and 80s, and a low of 39 is forecast for tonight! Yikes!), but it's supposed to warm up into the 90s again later this week.  The cool weather has slowed down the tomato ripening, but I haven't given up hope yet. 

The hummingbirds continue to swarm my back yard.  I've lost count of how many adults there are, plus the youngsters have started showing up.  There are probably upwards of 15-20 in the general yard area.  This is a female rufous hummingbird, blurry because the picture is heavily zoomed and cropped.  They're so much fun to watch.



As an aside, that's a Hummzinger feeder, and it's the absolute best hummingbird feeder I've ever had.  It doesn't drip and attract ants like the bottle-types do, the bees and wasps can't get to the nectar AT ALL so they have stopped coming around and chasing off the hummers, and it's so easy to clean and fill.

The new feeders were required because I went out to the deck three Saturdays ago and it looked like half the population of a beehive was at my two former feeders- the kind with an inverted bottle and the red and yellow flower ports for the hummers to sip from.  There were probably 500 bees flying around and on the feeders, plus a healthy group of wasps.  The hummers kept trying to come in to feed, but the bees chased them off.  I had to give the bees a (gentle) hose shower to chase them off so I could bring the feeders inside.  I'm all for helping the bees, but this was out of hand.  I want to be able to use the deck too.

I ordered the Hummzinger feeders that morning, received them the following Monday, and the hummers were buzzing around them within 5 minutes after I put them up.  I got two originally, then ordered two more the next day to try and calm down some of the infighting between the hummers.  With four feeders up, it dilutes some of the competition.  Even the rufous hummers will let someone else drink at the same time.  No bees, no wasps, no ants, lots of hummers.  Perfect.

Fledglings

The flycatchers left the nest today.  We found the first one resting on the step at about 10:30 this morning, having a snooze in the sun.  He/she seemed completely unconcerned that I was there.



At that point the other three were still in the nest.



We had to leave shortly thereafter, and when we got home at 6:30, the nest was empty.  We could hear Mama Bird still chirping in the big tree out front, and little baby peeps coming from the front garden.

We didn't investigate too closely, since we didn't want to scare them.  I'm so proud.

A ripe tomato!

Ta Da!!!

I'm so excited!  We picked the first Black Krim tomato tonight!



Isn't it a beauty.  Not huge, but so flavorful.  We sliced it up and had it with fresh basil and blue cheese crumbles.



It was an indication of how much I love Emma, that she got three slices and I got two even though she made fun of me for arranging the plate so fussily and taking a picture. "It's just a tomato, Mom!"  Just a tomato, hmph.  I told her that the first tomato is special, and we don't have to do this every time.

It was SO delicious.

OK, OK, I'll stop now before I start composing poetry to my tomatoes. Sorry.

Also of note recently is the appearance of four baby Pacific-slope flycatchers in the nest on the front porch.  Mama Bird has been flying back and forth constantly for a week or so, and last weekend we saw the tops of fuzzy baby heads for the first time.  Now they're vocal and insistent that Mama Bird bring them food NOW!



Out in the back yard, Coco the house kitty is thoroughly pleased with the yard.  When we let her out, she runs straight to the shady part of lawn and flops down to survey her domain.



But it's just so comfortable...



So very pleasant...



That there's nothing to do but take a nap.

Black Lake hike

Emma and I went on a little hike yesterday, up to the Anthony Lakes Basin.  La Grande was a sticky, miserable 105° F, so getting up into the relatively cooler mountains sounded like a good idea. Our target was Black Lake, which is only a mile or so from the parking area.

Emma was somewhat reluctant and whiny about hiking, but once we were actually out there she had a blast.



The first stop along the trail was Lilypad Lake.  This is such a pretty spot.



We spent a little while looking at the trout and dragonflies and lilypads and balance-beam logs.



This dragonfly, a pale snaketail (Ophiogomphus severus), was very cooperative for a portrait.





Once we left Lilypad Lake, the trail went uphill for a while, then leveled out as we started to approach Black Lake.  The outflow stream from the lake trickles through a very pretty meadow that was stuffed with these Sierra bog orchids (Platanthera dilatata var. leuchostachys),



and these elephant's head flowers (Pedicularis groenlandica).



We continued along the path, then Emma went around a corner and stopped short.  She backed up a couple steps and bumped into me, and said "Mommmmm!  There's a GOAT!  What do we do?!?"

Sure enough, there was a big female mountain goat on the path about 50 feet up ahead.

We excitedly stepped off the path behind a convenient big tree, and watched to see what she would do, and I grabbed my phone (camera).  She ambled down the path toward us, very curious to see what we were doing.



She stopped about five feet from me (Emma was about 10 feet further back), and just looked at me.



She wasn't aggressive at all, thank goodness, and fairly quickly turned around and went back the way she came, and went up off the path into a jumble of rocks.

I hadn't realized how big a full grown mountain goat is. It was pretty cool to see one up close.  And I'm very proud of Emma for not freaking out.  She's so skittish about bears, wolves, mountain lions, bees, snakes and other assorted wildlife that this felt like a triumph.

After the goat left, we continued on and finally made it to Black Lake and walked part of the way around it.  It's so pretty, and I feel so lucky to live in this area.



We didn't stay long, though, because the mosquitos were draining us dry.



The hike ended up being about three miles by the time we stopped off at Lilypad Lake again on the way back, and walked a little way around Anthony Lake at the head of the trail. Such a fun day!

Developments

The first freesia has bloomed, and it's yellow!  The second spike is just starting to swell, and I think it's going to be purple- you can just see a hint of color at the tips of the buds.  I love the fragrance of freesia.



And speaking of fragrance, here's the sambac jasmine I got last weekend. (I know, I know...)  It's spectacularly perfumed.  I had one of these plants 15 years ago when I lived in North Carolina, but left it with a friend when we moved to Friday Harbor.



It's been giving me a flower or two every night (today I have three!), and I've been carrying it back and forth between my bedroom and the deck.  It's inside at night so I can enjoy the perfume while I sleep, then back outside during the day to get lots of sun.  Even just one flower fills my whole bedroom.

I pick off the previous night's flowers when I put it back outside in the morning, and drop them in a little jar of 190-proof alcohol.  I'm making jasmine extract to store the fragrance.  The flowers won't last through the heat of the day anyway, and this way I get to enjoy the scent longer.  It's slow going with just a flower or two at a time, but I've got all summer.

Now, let us pause and take a moment to appreciate this next picture.



I look at that and almost hyperventilate, it makes me so happy.  That is a lovely bunch of Amish Paste tomatoes.

Also, the first cucumber is almost ready to pick!



And the grapes are moving along fine!



As I was leaving for work today I grabbed a handful of chocolate mint, and one sprig of orange mint. (Yeah, there's an orange mint now.  I know, I know...)



Chocolate on the left, orange on the right.  I chopped them up and made a lovely mug of tea to start off my day in front of the computer.  There was a bit too much greenery for one cup of tea, so I only used about half of the orange mint.  I'm rooting the rest... because I need more mint...



And to wrap up this post, here's a view of the newest resident at my address.



This little flycatcher built her nest in the inside corner under the front porch roof, a lovely protected spot.  She doesn't seem too fussed about us coming and going through the front door, and just sits up there quietly and watches.