Perhaps this wetland will be where they have their little ducklings.

Do you see the irridescent green head on Mr. Mallard? You can also see where the sun is not reflecting and his head feathers appear black.

Seeing this Mr. and Mrs. Mallard reminded me of the most wonderful book Make Way for Ducklings by Robert McCloskey, you may be familiar with that one. If not, be sure to check it out!

Northern Flickers are found year-round across pretty much the entire United States. They are fairly large woodpeckers, 12” in size. At first glance you may think they are rather drab in color and pattern, but upon closer observation you’ll notice the bright red sash across the back of their neck, a thick black necklace on their chest, perfect little black polka dots, bars and crescents adorning their front and back, and bright yellow hiding beneath their tail feathers. It is important to note that there are variations to these colors and patterns depending on their location in the U.S.

You can visit the above link for more information on the Flicker or also I did a blog post previously about the first time we observed one of these interesting birds HERE.

My Gabby Rose is so small compared to the high drifts of snow.

Male Northern Cardinal in tree near feeders.

Northern Cardinal at feeders.

AND, I’m so excited that I got my first 12-Sided Snowflake photo today!!

This beautiful poem is excellent to read for vivid metaphors such as…”and swarming frost flakes fill the trees with billions of albino bees.”

Whenever we read poetry it seems to inspire art, so that is just what we did.

Hannah's Artwork

Mom's Artwork

On the subject of snow, here are my latest macro snowflake photos and one from our bird feeders.

Sectored Plate Snowflake

Stellar Dendrite Snowflake

Broken Pieces of Stellar Dendrite Snowflakes

"Harold, they are making me nervous, there are too many of them."

How about you? Do you have a funny caption to go with this picture? I’d love to hear!

In the meantime here is a website where you can get more information:

National Bird Day

My son came blasting into the house yelling, at first making me think we were on the way to the hospital again:), but thank the Lord it was just an excited yell because he could hear them coming. So we all jumped up and ran out onto the sidewalk to see several large V formations of the beautiful birds flying overhead. The sound they were giving off was amazing! If you visit THIS website you can hear their call, just multiply it by about 50!

According to what I read, this is the time of year to see the Sandhill Cranes migrating. They are mostly  located in the Northwestern areas of the United States and Canada during the summer months, and in California, Southern Florida, Texas and Mexico during the winter months. We would only see them here in Kentucky when they are migrating, so it was quite a treat!

If you visit the above linked website you can also read up on some other interesting information about Sandhill Cranes such as they choose a mate for life and migrate with their offspring!

We’ve checked out a couple of books from our library to learn more, including the following:

Luck by Jean Craighead George

I love everything that I’ve read of Ms. George’s, so I’m sure this is a lovely book.

“MAYAPPLES” 

I want to send out a big thank you to my blog friends for helping me identify things. I just love knowing the names of things in nature!! If it weren’t for you all I might not have found the name Reeves Pheasant or Mayapples. I think the reason I love knowing the names of things so much is the neatness of being able to recognize them and call them by name when I see them in nature. Over the past few years of studying nature more in-depthly I’ve slowly, and sometimes quickly, built upon my ability to recognize more and more things. I’m also blessed when I find out the name of something to be able to read more about it and learn everything I can.

After discovering what mayapples are and at Holly’s suggestion, I looked them up in the Handbook of Nature Study and read all about them to my kids. After that we took a walk out to observe them and draw them for our nature notebooks. At Ms. Comstock’s suggestion Hannah fashioned a beautiful little doll from them!

“This is a study of parasols and, therefore of perennial interest to the little girls who use the small ones for their dolls, and with many airs and graces hold the large ones above their own head. And when this diversion palls, they make mandarin dolls of these fascinating plants.” – Handbook of Nature Study, page 479

We also learned about and was able to find a Mayapple fruit on one of the plants.

We read that the fruit is edible, but the stalk and other parts of the plant are very poisonous. We decided not to take any chances in trying the fruit! I was also surprised to find out that they are classified as a wildflower; an unusual one to add to our notebook.

Also suggested was to look for the “umbrella case” at the base where the plant was enclosed before it opened up.

Another thing we have discovered the name of the past week is a Nurse Log. Nurse logs are basically fallen pieces of tree trunks that are decaying and “nursing” the woods floor with their nutrients. We found several of these on our walk.

Nurse logs are excellent places to discover other things as well, such as mushrooms, insects and woodpecker holes.

And the newest Reeves Pheasant news is that I spoke with a lovely lady from the Kentucky Department of Wildlife about our new friend and she was a surprised as I was to hear that the fella had taken up residence with our wild turkeys. I have sent her a couple of photos and a few videos. She affirmed that indeed they are not running around in the wild, they are only in captivity here, but as long as he’s posing no apparent threat, it’s ok to let him be. So far he’s ran/flew away at the sound and sight of us. Then she informed me that that the poor thing probably won’t survive long due to the hawks; seems they are not very good at getting away from them. I suppose this is one of the reasons attempts to bring them here haven’t worked. So, we’ll enjoy his visits for now. Here is my video proof of him hanging with the turkeys. It’s not the best quality because I had to take it through our window.