Hapless harbingers

It was just over a week ago, a cold and snowy day when a host of Red-wing Blackbirds, huddled in the bushes heads hanging.  They had come our way, much to their regret.  Someone, no beaks were pointed, had really messed up the return schedule.  It was February, not March, and these harbingers of spring in our part of Michigan had hurried home to the north only to be greeted by the biggest snowfall of the year.  But I don’t think we can really blame them; it had been a funny winter with warm days doing in any snowfall that was deep enough to please the skiers, skaters, or sledding enthusiasts -- anyone who loves winter.

Not feeling too harried this week, I went exploring for more information on Red-wing Blackbirds on the web.   And, happily, I was alerted to what a female Red-wing looks like.  And, hooray, I had photographed her that snowy day not knowing who she was or why she was hanging out with all the Red-wings!  Check out this Wikipedia article where you can learn what to call a Red-wing in the languages of their summer territories ("....in vast majority of the other Ojibwa language dialects, the bird is called memiskondinimaanganeshiinh, literally meaning "a bird with a very red damn-little shoulder-blade." However, in the Odawa language, an Anishinaabe language in Southwestern Ontario and in Michigan, the bird is instead called either as memeskoniinisi ("bird with a red [patch on its wing]") or as memiskonigwiigaans ("[bird with a] wing of small and very red [patch]").^[22]

And when the snow melted, these other too-early harbingers of spring were once more visible, also several weeks earlier than usual!

P.S. in case you didn't know about them, our Michigan pro-hockey team is called the Detroit Red-wings and their logo combines two important loves in this state: sports and cars!  And does three photos turn this blog into a hat trick?!

I don't mean to harp at you, but please, please, don't leave the web
without visiting the heterogeneous but never hapless bloggers at
ABC Wednesday.

Exciting Event for ABC Wednesday

We interrupt our regularly scheduled programming, As the Cardinals Fly, to bring you this important announcement.  From our Bird-on-a-Wire Service, we have learned that the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, the Audubon Society, and Etudes D'Oiseaux/Bird Studies Canada are partners with Wild Bird Unlimited in sponsoring the Great American Bird Count this weekend, February 17-20, an exciting three-day event 

Keep your eyes on the birds for as little as 15 minutes and be a "birder" for the day!  For all the details and the reasons why this is important, please visit the Great Back Yard Bird count website at Bird Source.  

GBBC is fun to do and you get feedback from a local "expert" if you have come up with a bird rarely seen in your locale.  My first year I counted several Purple Finches and the Michigan ornithologist questioned my seeing them here as they are rare in SW Michigan in the winter.  But I had luckily photographed the finches I thought were Purples not House or Rosey.  I sent him the photo and he replied, "yep, those are Purples!"  However, I still have trouble distinguishing Woody and Hairy Woodpeckers, the other lookalikes around here.

Here is one of my photos from last year's GBBC, a Red-bellied Woodpecker.

Ease yourself on over to ABC Wednesday for ever exacting,  exotic, but hardly evanescent contributions to  E-day from Mrs. Nesbitt's emphatically enthusiastic bloggers.

 

Drinking with a buddy

In last week's post for ABC Wednesday we saw the dejected and rejected Monsieur Cardinal as Madam decided to distance herself   from him.  As Jane speculated, she was indeed disappointed in the dandy-like color of his coat and felt distinctly drab in comparison.  And as Roger guessed, this soap opera was not done.

This week we find our dandy at the bar drinking with a more conservative dresser determined to get advice, I am assuming, on dressing for success with his deranged (his words not mine) mate.   His  emotions have run the gamut from depression to delight to demanding to know if there was more to her desertion than she had admitted.  Did she suspect that he had a dalliance going with another?  What other delusion might she be suffering from?  Was there relationship doomed?  Did he really call her a dimwit? 

Stay tuned for more delicious gossip next week on As the Cardinals Fly.

Fly on over to ABC Wednesday to detect what the other inmates are up to when blogging on D!

A bevy of birds

They came for my birthday last week.  Too bad a few Blue Jays didn't show up!

A bounty of B's awaits you at ABC Wednesday, so briskly betake yourself there.

Great Blue Heron sees his shadow

So quiet I tried to be after an earlier attempt to photograph this Great Blue Heron in the marshes southwest of Pleasant Lake caused him or her to flee.  This time I succeeded with a series of shots as he fed and then sauntered slowly over to another Great Blue whom I assume was a mate. 

The shadows of the bird, grasses and sedge only struck me when I cropped the original photo.  I am grateful for the digital world when a photograph keeps on giving!

Enjoy more shadows and reflections this weekend by visiting this sites:
Weekend Reflections 
Hey Harriet's Shadow Shot Sunday

Blue Jay in a blue sky

We heard him before I could see him to take his picture.  He was singing away as happy as we were with the week-long string of days with blue skies.  Since you have heard me complain regularly and probably too frequently about the lack of such skies, I must now report on the lack of clouds.  Bill the Channel 8 weatherman says we have had a record-setting number of sunny days this week -- five in a row.  Whew!   Seek more blue skies from around the world at Skywatch Friday.

P.S. You might remember that this is the same guy who looked so cranky just a few weeks ago.

One in, one out

The cardinal about to land and the house finch off to the nearby bush.  Still working to catch my birds in flight, with a camera.

Who is that masked man?

 

This was last Sunday when the sun was shining bright -- not today when the snows are flying again but not too seriously.  The snow and ice are still clinging to the north slopes and the shaded areas of the woods.  Two pathways can only be tread, still, in yak-traks-covered boots.  

So birdwatching is de rigueur from the kitchen windows.  I am trying to catch the birds in flight but am also coming up with little tableaux like this inquiring house finch and cardinal.  Is that sun flower seed shell falling from his beak?

Yesterday Willow and I tried to follow the cry of the Sand Hill Crane.  He or she was across the road, up a hill, and try as we might, he kept himself unseen but heard, oh so close.  We came back home and heard him once more, and then, could see him flying overhead and to the south.  No photos of him, just the sky where he had been!

Welcome!

The house finches are so happy with the milder weather!
According to scientists, the total House Finch (Carpodacus mexicanus) population across North America is between 267 million and 1.4 billion individuals.  Whew!  Once confined to the western United States and Mexico, they were sold in Long Island in 1940 as "Hollywood Finches" and guess what?  They escaped their cages!  Learn lots more at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.

In fine fettle for ABC Wednesday

Fixin’ to find a seed or two to keep themselves fit as a fiddle, my feathery friends flit about the feeder. Finally, in a flurry of feathers, they fly off to fresher venues to further their fight for winter survival.  P.S. I think this is a female finch.

Fiddlin' around on the net to find out more about the idiom, “fit as a fiddle,” I discovered that it was a song in the movie Singing in the Rain.  And then found this You Tube video of Gregory Hines and Steve Martin singing and dancing their way through it. Fabulous!  
And for finer and definitely refined f-blogs, please visit my unfeathered friends at ABC Wednesday.

Now as I was saying

Now as I was saying, this cold is getting ridiculous, seven  degrees and snowing again.  Good thing Willow and her friend keep these feeders full for us!

Hello

Do we know each other?

Newbie

Just one of the many offspring from this year's hatch at our house -- carndinals, grossbeaks, finches, blackbirds, towhees, and countless ones I cannot identify.   I captured a young grossbeak with its father a couple weeks ago and now this newbie cardinal who looks a little scruffy still.

a Catbird seat

Have you heard what sounds like a kitten mewing in a tree?  Here is the source of that cat-like sound, a Gray Catbird.  We can never tell if our cats are crying to come in or whether the Catbirds are calling us!   see what Wikipedia and Oxford English Dictionary has to say about this idiomatic phrase, the "catbird seat."

Who are these two sweeties?

Can anybody identify these two for me?  I thought purple finch?

in honor of The Great Backyard Bird Count, I present....

a foggy day in Fabius Town

Warming (wow, in the 20's) plus snow equals fog in southwest Michigan.

birds of different feathers