This little guy greeted me this morning on my way back from the bus stop this morning:

I'm pretty sure this is a song sparrow (Melospiza melodia) singing his little heart out on a bare big leaf maple branch.  He saw me and carried on singing while I took this little video.  He then darted into a neighboring cedar to continue his song out of sight.  I'm sorry for the quality (or lack thereof) of the video - it was mostly the song I wanted to share with you.  He does come briefly into focus in the middle of the video.

Makes me happy listening to him!  I hope you feel the same way.

More about song sparrows:
Seattle Audubon's Song Sparrow Page (The song is different from my little guy's, but my book says there are 43 different subspecies, so I presume the song varies.)
Cornell's Ornithology Lab's Song Sparrow Page

Groundhog Day

So, our East Coast friend, Punxsutawney Phil, predicted an early Spring this weekend.  Looking around my garden, I thought... "Well, I could have told you that!"

I have 3 "early bloomer" plants in my garden, and 2 of the 3 are ready to burst:

This is an Indian Plum (Oemlaria cerasiformis).  It is the earliest native bloomer.  It is a medium-sized shrub that will have some lovely small white flowers soon. 

Close-up of Indian plum bud

The second early bloomer is my Helleborus.  This was an impulse buy at the local home improvement store a couple years ago.  I took a detour through the plant section and saw this in bloom in January and HAD to have it! The species is native to Eastern Europe and Asia, but is grown extensively here in Washington State.  Most importantly, it does well in the SHADE, so it is a good plant for my back yard where the sun is blocked year-round by the house and the mature fir and cedar trees.

Helleborus Silvermoon getting ready to burst!

USDA Helleborus plant profile

Hellebores.org - a site for people who grow Hellebores

My third early bloomer isn't visible at the moment.  I'm afraid my neglect of this corner of the garden has choked it out this year.  It is a "White Glory of the Snow" or Chionodoxa gigantean alba.  This is a lovely delicate bulb.  The first year they came up I thought  they were going to be snow drops, but then they opened up into beautiful star-shaped flowers.  Here is a photo of one from 2 years ago when it first came into bloom:

BBC Plant Finder - Glory of the Snow

Hopefully I can get out there and de-choke the bed so we can see them this year.  Stay tuned and see!

Rhododendron Hedging (Bets)

We have at least 7 rhododendron plants in our yard.  They vary in color and variety.  Unfortunately I have not yet learned enough about them to know what varieties they are.  They were all here when we moved in and one of them even looks like it may be a "wild" variety (Pacific rhododendron [Rhododendron macrophyllum]) as it is at the edge of the wooded area of the property on the "other" side of the stream.  The "wild" one has never bloomed, so I can't say for sure.

There is one, however, which is the first to bloom every year without fail. 

This is a very large rhodie that is located in the north east corner of the property.  It is flanked on either side by laurel bushes which are also large and bully and crowd the rhodie a bit.  It is on the edge of the wooded strip of land between us and our nearest neighbors and it gets LOTS of afternoon sun on its western side.

When I say it blooms first and early, it usually has its blooms open in March or early April, whereas the rest of the rhodies wait until late April or May to show their colors.  This year - mild winter it has been - this plant had her blooms open in DECEMBER.  My daughter noticed it during the week after Christmas.
 
Unfortunately, we then had two weeks of frost in January, so the blooms have received some serious frost damage.

When I went to examine the blooms, however, I noticed something interesting.  There were 3 different stages of bloom on the bush:  Fully open, and now brown and crispy; partly open, brown-tipped, but possibly not all lost; and quite healthy-looking tiny unopened buds. 


Brown frost damaged blooms.  They used to be pink.

Partly opened bloom with some frost damage.

Unopened blooms.

We talk a lot in the Northwest about microclimates.  The weather forecasters say it is impossible to predict the weather for the Puget Sound area with any degree of accuracy because of all the microclimates around the Sound.  I find the same thing in my garden:  certain areas are warmer than others, receive different amounts of sun and rain, are slightly different elevations (the northeast corner of the property is 50 feet higher than the southwest corner), etc.

So were the blooms on this plant simply responding to the microclimate on their particular part of the branch... or was the plant "hedging" her bets?

Links of interest:
Western North American Rhododendron Species Project
Rhododendron Species Garden Botanical Garden

Brown Creeper

As I was trying to take photos of the very quick Townsend's warblers I noticed another bird off in the woods, about 20 yards away, circling the trunk of a large fir tree.   It was another small bird - about 5 inches long with a brown dorsum and a strikingly white belly.  It was clinging to the bark and hopping around in a spiral up the tree trunk, occasionally stopping to probe into the crevices in the bark. 

It turns out this little beauty is an appropriately-named Brown Creeper (Certhia americana). 

Here are its pages on the Seattle Audubon website and the Cornell Ornithology lab's All About Birds site.  Both sites say that these birds are permanent residents of Washington State and are common.  This is the first time I've noticed one, but will be keeping my eyes and ears open for them in the future!

Townsend's Warblers

A couple weeks ago we noticed a new kind of bird in the yard, but couldn't get close enough to see it.  At first we thought it was some kind of hummingbird because it would hover around the trees.  We decided it couldn't be, though, because it would then land and hop around the branches like a chickadee.  Also, it was in the fir and ceder trees, not around the flower beds.

I saw the birds again yesterday morning on my way back from walking the kids to the bus stop.  The five-minute walk back from the bus stop is often my quiet observation time since there are often birds and red squirrels (Tamiasciurus hudsonicus) around busily gathering their breakfast.  I was able to get quite close by staying very still and listening for the soft "chip" of their alarm call.  They were small - about 4-5 inches long - similar to a chickadee in size and movement except for the hovering they would sometimes do with their wings dissolving into a blur at their sides for 2 or 3 seconds at a time.  They had dramatic yellow stripes on their heads and wings.

Like the black-capped chickadees (Poecile atricapillus) we often get, these moved too fast for me to get a photo.  I managed to find a photo in my bird book of a bird that looked similar, so I'm pretty sure they are Townsend's Warblers (Setophaga townsendi).

I found information about them on the Seattle Audubon website as well as the Cornell's Ornithology Lab's All About Birds site.

They eat insects which they glean from the branches and leaves of trees.  They prefer coniferous and mixed coniferous/deciduous forests and they migrate down to Mexico in the winter.  The Seattle Audubon site indicated they they should be gone by now.  I suspect it has been such a mild winter that they have had plenty of food and haven't had the pressure to migrate this year.

In our neighborhood, they were going through the downed fir branches on the ground, the blackberry brambles and salmon berry thicket, the cedar trees and the noble fir by the side of our house.  One could watch them pecking at the joins between needles/branches, leaves/stems, and branches/trunks.

I hope to obtain a picture of these little cuties at some point, but I need a faster shutter!

POST SCRIPT:
Looking through the photos (mostly of branches and brambles) I did manage to capture one, but you get the "impression" of the bird rather than a nice sharp view --

First Frost

January is certainly the coldest month of the year in our neck of the woods. I thought it was rather fitting that the first proper frost of this season in our yard happened on the first of January 2013.

The skies had cleared over the previous weekend and the temperature had gradually dropped until all the moisture in the air solidified and blanketed all the surfaces outside.

The back deck on a frosty morning.

Lavender

The grass turned crunchy and the lavender and strawberry leaves looked like they were made out of sugar.  Inside the humidity dropped dramatically as well.  Suddenly our hair lifted with static like it does in Utah or Arizona and the skin on my hands started to crack.

Our trusty analogue thermometer showing
 the temperature under the deck cover
 at  noon as 34 degrees.

The next two days were frosty as well and it was a good opportunity to teach the kids about checking the thermometer before heading out to the bus stop - if it's below 40, you will want an extra layer or two!

From the garden perspective - all of the plants that I have purposely planted are hardy enough to withstand a short light frost like this one.  Several of them get damaged by heavy snows or prolonged frost, but something light and brief like this isn't a problem for them.  Even plants in pots that I haven't gotten in the ground yet seem fine after this kind of weather as long as I haven't *just* watered them.  I did kill a pot of rosemary last year by watering it the day before a heavy frost. Oops.

Strawberry leaf

Jack Frost making patterns on the front deck!

Fallen Leaves

Most years, we don't get snow before January, so we have lots of time to get the leaves raked, should we choose to do so. Today I started raking up some of the big leaf maple (Acer macrophyllum) leaves that currently carpet sections of the yard.

 

I do actually rake the leaves.  I am morally opposed to gas-powered leaf blowers. Why would I spend money on a machine and gas to do a job that I can do as easily by myself? Why would I forgo exercise and fresh air in exchange for exhaust fumes and contributing to climate change?

 

There is actually an argument for NOT removing leaves from your lawn. The recommendation is actually to spread out the leaves in an even layer over the lawn and then mow the leaves and allow the minute pieces of leaf to remain on the lawn to decompose and add their nutrients to the soil. For me this isn't practical. All my big leaf maples are in the wooded parts of the property and the only leaves I bother to rake are those that fall from the edges onto the lawn. It's easier to rake them up and put them in my long-term compost than try to spread them so they carpet a wider area.

[I’ll mention here that I employ 3 methods of composting. Firstly, kitchen scraps, eggshells, lint from the dryer and shredded paper go into a worm bin (see adventuresinvermicomposting.blogspot.com). Secondly, large volumes of kitchen waste, pet litter and compostable paper products all go into a large covered compost bin which I turn with a pitchfork whenever I remember, or otherwise just leave. Thirdly, I choose a spot in the woods each year to put yard waste and long-term compost. I leave it for 3 or 4 years and it breaks down on its own over time.]

The other reason to not rake leaves is that it provides habitat for insects and small amphibians.  A search on Google for “leaf litter life” reveals a plethora of videos and articles showing and describing the various insects, arachnids, gastropods, amphibians, and mammals that live and die among fallen leaves.  When I address the leaves on my lawn, I don’t do all of the raking in one day – not only would that completely wreck my back, but I feel it gives time for the animals to migrate if they need to rather than disrupting everyone all at once.  I love to see the birds rifling through the leaves and even tossing them in the air in pursuit of the creepy crawlies underneath.

One thing I have noticed about the fallen maple leaves in our yard is that they have clusters of little raised black dots around the edges and the leaf veins. 

 

With a little research, I have determined that these are a fungus called Rhytisma punctatum. This doesn’t appear to be harmful to the tree nor does it cause a problem with aesthetics while the tree is in leaf – the fungus makes its appearance as the tree is preparing to drop the leaves anyway.  If I wanted to get rid of the fungus, I would have quite a job of it since I would need to gather up ALL the leaves and burn or otherwise remove them from the vicinity of the trees before spring when the new leaves emerge.  Since that won’t be possible, we are embracing the fungus as part of the biodiversity of the yard.  (See Tom Volk of the University of Wisconsin’s Fungus of the Month blog for a discussion of Rhytisma.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

See also an interesting project involving a women’s corrections facility and Evergreen State college helping to study the the fungus in the Pacific Northwest:



http://blogs.evergreen.edu/sustainableprisons/blog/2012/12/12/butterfly-techs-at-mission-creek-helping-with-the-evergreen-environmental-observation-network/