Eat more cookies

Saturday morning came proof that we have taken good care of our hibiscus - it bloomed again for the first time since December!

Also on Saturday, I went out to do my first round of nest searches for Black-and-white Warblers. I couldn’t find the nest for the first pair - `cause their babies were still out of the nest - fully fledged! This means that the birds got back to Stillwater in late March (when I first noticed them), started nesting almost immediately, and then survived two cold snaps (with snow!) and three big storms with 2-3″ of rain. That’s a pretty hardy little 15g bird to cross the Gulf of Mexico, fly up here, and nest on the ground in the snow!

Finally, yesterday brought our first Mississippi Kites back to Stillwater! If you don’t have kites where you live, then we live someplace nicer. . .

Way back on November 2nd, I wrote of Franklin’s Gull, then streaming southward on a migration that would take them to the Southern Hemishpere and the Chilean Coast. Through ice, snow, daffodils, tulips, redbuds, leaf-out, more ice, and eventually more leaf-out, I have kept my vigil for their return. A few weeks ago, I spotted the first two sojourners, and I saw no more ’til last evening. It was a healthy flock of about 30-50, and they streamed along at eye level into a stiff headwind. They were beautiful!

Not only do Franklin’s Gulls not occur in the East, nothing like them occurs there. I don’t think there is a species that does anything similar out West either. From what I’ve experienced, they really are unique: Bounding, wheeling, and coursing at eye level across the greening prairies of the Central Plains.

Geese and swans fly high and noisily overhead. Pelicans and Sandhill Cranes set their wings and ride thermals, often disappearing as mere specks overhead. Songbirds travel at night, and in loose flocks. Other gulls are much more confined to the coastlines.

But Franklin’s Gull races past in tight flocks, during the day, and close to the ground. I can think of no other bird that better illustrates the magic of migration than these gentle travelers, so low you might feel the pulse of their wingbeats if you were standing in just the right spot.

Have a great summer, long distance friends! See you next fall . . .

Spring Break mini-vacation, St. Patrick’s Day, bird meeting in Boston, waterthrushes, black-and-whites, scissortails, prairie doves, summer, WINTER!, summer, winter again, floods 1-3, dissertation defense, Ginger bath, stuck in the mud, computer-no-turn-on, Poppy and the Buffalonians, field trip, don’t be PTA president, Anna Nicole, peas, Hokies, more pain in Iraq, gardening, Imus is a jerk, lots and lots of lamb, Red Slough field trip, insomniac mockingbird, window feeder finally works, and can we please get the heck out of Iraq?

Too much going on.

We are caught in a whirlwind.

Time spent is time lost.

Right here. We’re fine; just busy.
~eatmorecookies