Highlights From May Around Here

I go out walking pretty much every day, usually with a camera. Often our Great Pyrenees is with me, his leash attached to my waist so my hands are free. We walk on the country roads, or in the fields surrounding the house. Sometimes I go alone, wandering into the woods to watch and listen for birds and to see what’s growing. It’s an immersive, soul-filling experience that is, for me at least, completely at odds with being online. Sitting down at a screen sometimes feels like breaking a spell—so I haven’t shared much in the last while. Let’s see if I can catch up, with a recap of May.

You could probably figure out the date on any spring day by observing which birds have returned. And one of the most exciting arrivals are the Bobolinks. Last year I saw my first on May 2; this year I thought I spotted one on the 2nd, and it was May 4th when I went out into the garden and recognized the burbling, R2D2-like sounds in the field. It’s all the more exciting to see a lot of them, because they’re considered an Orange Alert Tipping Point Species—a species that has lost more than 50% of its population within the past 50 years, and experienced an accelerated decline within the last decade. I hope that being good stewards of this land will also help the birds.

The Red-winged Blackbirds have been back since March; first the males with their showy red and yellow armbands, then the more subdued females.

In May the trees are still bare or just budding, making it easier to see birds—later the dense foliage will hide most of them.

Robins get their nest-building started early and by late May the fledglings are wandering around, looking a little dopey and confused.

I spent many hours in May crouched in the woods, pulling garlic mustard before it could go to seed. It’s an invasive non-native plant that can quickly take over the understory, displacing the native flora. It’s tedious work and hard on the back, but it’s also uninterrupted time in the woods, serenaded by birdsong. And of course I take my camera, afraid I might otherwise miss something.

One day, as I pulled the garlic-scented plants, I noticed this big patch of Mayapples. From the top, it’s just a patch of very large leaves, each maybe a foot across.

But if you look underneath the leaves, you discover these gorgeous flowers. Lying on the ground looking up gives you a completely different perspective.

The woods are full of mosquitoes, and ticks are a constant concern especially if you’re going to be lying on the ground, so I wear as much clothing as I can stand given whatever the weather is doing, use insect repellent, and check for ticks afterward.

The last of the spring ephemerals were blooming:

A fallen tree was loaded with fungi.

And the serviceberry trees were blooming, a pop of white amidst the tiny red and green leaves just starting to show.

The path Marc mows for me around the edge of the field takes you past a large vernal pool surrounded by big willow trees. In the spring it’s an open pond, then the grasses and cattails grow up and fill it in. This spring, a pair of Wood Ducks spent some time there. These are so beautiful, they almost look unreal. They’re very skittish, so I try to give them a wide berth and avoid disturbing them; I’d like to build a blind to watch them from next year.

The apple trees were blooming, and the Baltimore Orioles looked like orange ornaments. I’m not sure if they were looking for insects or getting nectar from the flowers; we had several coming to our hummingbird feeder and eating from half oranges we put out for them.

The tiny yellow warblers are everywhere! They’re challenging to photograph—they don’t stay still for long and are often hidden behind foliage.

One last photo: Deer are curious and if the dog and I don’t move they’ll stand still for a few seconds—in this case, long enough to show off his new antlers, still covered in velvet.

Stay tuned for notes about June, and a Moose safari in Algonquin Park!