First Day of Spring

On our first day of Spring, March 20, 2010, we had a blizzard in Kansas City. Or, at least a heck of a lot of snow. It snowed all day. We had maybe 8 inches altogether.

Snowy weather brings many feathered visitors to our backyard, and yesterday was no exception. In fact, we added two new species to our backyard bird list (included on the left side of The Life Less Hectic), bringing our total to 55. The additions are Song Sparrows and Fox Sparrows. Here is a picture of the Song sparrow, which spent most of the afternoon digging for seeds under the snow.


We attract a good many birds, by far the greatest variety of species, by scattering seed on the ground. Many interesting species, including most of our native sparrows, rarely ever visit feeders. They prefer to feed from the ground close to cover like shrubs and bushes, wooden fences, and trees. Here is another picture of the Song sparrow.



And here is a picture of the Fox sparrow, which showed up later in the afternoon. Both birds stayed long enough for Elly to see them when she got home from work around 6:00 pm.


An American Tree sparrow also put in a brief appearance. We first spotted these in our backyard on December 27, 2009, and have only seen them once or twice.

We have had male red-winged black birds for a few weeks now, but hadn’t seen any females until a group of five or six showed up yesterday. Juncos are still plentiful, and will remain in the area into April, when they migrate to northern breeding grounds. We have had throngs of goldfinches, two and three dozen at a time. Late yesterday a group of 6 or more house finches arrived to share perches on our spiral finch feeder, easily the most effective feeder we have found for smaller birds.

Another Addition to the Backyard Bird List

Well I have obviously fallen short on my 2009 resolution to write at least one blog post a week, having let two months slide by since my last post. Yikes! So this is going to be something of a compilation.

Yesterday afternoon I stepped outside and noticed what I took to be a flock of geese flying overhead at first glance. But they were awfully low and their wings looked odd. It dawned on my they were gulls. At least three dozen, of them, in fact, flying in formation. A quick call to birding guru, Mark McKellar, at the Backyard Bird Center, helped me identify them as Franklin's Gulls. Mark says that Franklin's are the type that fly in formation like geese.

They were gone in an instant, so needless to say, no picture. Here, however, is a picture I took at 6:09 am on September 16 from our backyard showing a conjunction of the moon with Venus in the eastern sky.


This is actually a handheld image. I didn't even use a tripod. These digital point and shoot cameras are amazing. (Mine is a Canon S2 IS.) The trick for something like this is to set the ISO speed at something reasonably fast, 200 or 400 ISO, and then significantly underexpose the image.

Here is a fun picture I took of bees on a flower in our neighbor's yard a few days after the conjunction. We sort of skipped October and zoomed right into November in Kansas City, this fall, with temps quickly following into the 40s during the day. Not too many opportunities for fall flower pictures now!


Here is a picture of Basie and me taken in the last few weeks -- on Elly's birthday camping trip to Pomme de Terre state park. Pomme de Terre has become our favorite state park this year (the Pittsburgh side!), followed closely by Arrow Rock state park.


The sunsets were beautiful during our visit.


Here is Basie, enjoying the sunset in his preferred snoozing orientation...

Snake Redux

We have some soffit and fascia that needs to be replaced on a corner of our front porch roof. It has been needing repair for quite some time, actually. Starlings have taken to nesting inside it. This morning, as Elly was leaving for work, I stepped up on the front porch wall to take a closer look and was startled to see a snake poking its head out of the soffit. I'm not sure it was the same black rat snake we saw on our back porch because its head seemed quite a bit larger than the last one. It must have climbed up the stone pillar on that corner to go in and visit the starlings. Black rat snakes are reputedly excellent climbers, and now we have evidence that such is the case.

Backyard Bird List Hits 50

Yesterday afternoon was a wonderful time for bird watching in the Miles backyard. The pine siskins hung out all afternoon, mixing it up with the house finches. I counted 7 siskins at one point. One of our favorite sparrows, White-Crowned, put in an appearance for the first time this spring, a black-capped chickadee came by to visit, the first we've seen in months. And, most fun of all, a white-breasted nuthatch chose to visit our peanut feeder when I was sitting about 8 feet away reading a book. I didn't have the camera so I couldn't get a picture but it is the first white-breasted nuthatch we've seen in our yard. And that brings our backyard bird list to 50. Here is a picture I took yesterday of a white-crowned sparrow.


Our first Peony blossom opened this morning. We have nine large peony bushes in our front yard, a mixture of white, pink, and a reddish-purple. We'll have huge peony bouquets for the next few weeks and our house will be redolent with their fragrance.

Pine Siskins and House Finches

I saw both pine siskins and house finches on one of our feeders this afternoon and took the opportunity to get pictures of them. Since the birds look somewhat a like, it is interesting to see them together. The bird on the right side of the feeder is a female house finch. The other three are pine siskins. You can see that they are smaller and that the house finch's tail is longer. The siskin's markings are more vivid, too, but that is not as easily seen in this image.


The birds on the right in this image are house finches (top female, lower bird male) and the bird on the left side of the feeder is a pine siskin. Here the difference in their beaks is obvious -- the finches have much thicker and more powerful beaks. Also, this is about the best picture I have gotten showing the yellow covert markings on a pine siskin's tail.

It doesn't require a really expensive camera to get interesting and attractive photographs of birds. More important is to understand how to use your camera effectively, get in close to your subjects, and keep your eyes open for good image opportunities. These latter two items are easier to accomplish in your own yard than anywhere else because you needn't dedicate large amounts of time solely to the project and you can control feeder positions and attract birds to good spots for pictures.

Clay-Colored Sparrow

We added another bird to our backyard list (and our life list) yesterday -- a Clay-Colored Sparrow. According to Sibley, these birds often intermingle with chipping sparrows, whom they resemble somewhat. The facial markings easily distinguish them from the latter, at least during the spring when they are breeding. These are migratory birds in our area, nesting in the far northern US and in Canada. Chipping sparrows nest across the US, including in Missouri.

Elly had just returned from her trip to Phoenix, and we were enjoying a glass of wine at our kitchen table when this little bird showed up. I didn't have enough light to get a great picture because it was cloudy and the bird was a bit farther away on our driveway. This was the best shot I managed. The "clay" markings were a beautifully delicate bluish-gray color. This visitor brings our backyard list to 49.

Pine Siskins!

I've been meaning to post about this for a few weeks. Elly and I spotted our first Pine Siskins on Tuesday, April 21, on the new spiral feeder we put up this spring. We have heard of them, but have never actually seen any. A pair showed up while we were sipping coffee and tea at the breakfast table. (I'm the tea drinker.)

We knew immediately what they were. Superficially, they look a little like female house finches. But they are smaller, their markings are much more vivid, their beaks are thinner and more pointy, and their tales are shorter. The yellow markings on the wings and tails are quite subtle -- at least in the ones we have seen, a dozen or more over the past few weeks. They mostly all have fairly obvious supercillium markings, as well.

Mark at Backyard Bird thinks a large group of them wintered over in the Ozarks due to the harsh conditions further north. Now they are heading to their spring breeding locations.

It is fun to identify a bird you haven't seen before, and even more fun to be able to do it in your own backyard. We've also seen many kinglets and brown creepers, lots and lots of chipping sparrows, even flocks of them moving through our neighborhood, and a few Yellow-Rumped warblers (the Myrtle variety). Our backyard bird count now stands at 48. :-)

I took this picture of a saucy white-throated sparrow the same morning the Pine Siskins showed up.

Easter Sunday

Elly, Basie, and I had a wonderful Easter Sunday. A few weeks ago I put up a new Spiral Feeder from backyard bird and the finches just love it. It's about 3 feet tall. They really like being able to slip along the spiral perches from hole to hole. So much so that our older finch feeder, with individual perches, only serves as a backup feeder now -- the birds spend 90% of their time on the new one. I took this picture Sunday afternoon.

We decided to spend the day at home (a typical holiday choice for us) cooking a multi-course dinner. Elly had the clever idea to listen to choral masses. We have a good-sized collection of classical CDs, both instrumental and vocal, but haven't listened to them much over the past few years. We listened to three Tallis Scholars CDs -- Palestrina Masses, Allegri Miserere, and a Josquin CD with Missa Pange lingua and Missa La sol fa re mi. We also listened to Dvorak's Stabat Mater.

Basie seemed to think it was good napping background music.


I started off making biscuits, following a recipe from the Cook's Illustrated Baking book. These turned out marvelously. I won't tell how many Elly ate. My first adventure in making biscuits.


Elly made a Gruyere and leek tart, combining multiple recipes, which turned out quite nicely.


And also a puff pastry with an asparagus and shitaki mushroom filling that was another triumph.


I took charge of dessert, making a parfait with layers of strawberries, lemon mousse, and white chocolate mousse. I used some more of the lemons from Dick Harshaw's yard in Phoenix.


Here is one of the parfaits. They weren't quite a photogenic as the Bon Apetite version, but they were delicious.


We enjoyed a terrific bottle of 2005 Treana Red supplied by my sister and brother-in-law (Karen and Tom) with our dinner and ate leftovers for days.

Harris's Sparrow

Elly and I added another bird to our backyard bird list yesterday -- a Harris's Sparrow. We're now up to 45 birds identified from our backyard. Harris's sparrows are not uncommon in our region, but we have not seen one in our yard before. In fact, this is the first Harris's Sparrow either one of us has identified.

I wasn't able to get a picture of the bird, but will be keeping a close eye on our yard for photo opportunities. I did find a picture on the web that is similar to the bird we saw. Our visitor had a strikingly jet-black cap and throat. In full breeding plumage, which appears by the end of April, adult males sport gray cheeks and a decidedly pink bill.

These are our largest sparrows, slightly bigger than white-crowned sparrows, with whom they are frequently seen. We had a goodly number of white-crowned sparrows last April, though we haven't seen any yet this spring. Here is a picture I took last spring of a white-crowned sparrow.


We also spotted two female redwinged blackbirds this morning -- the first we have seen this spring. Adult male redwinged blackbirds arrive four to six weeks before the females. While the adult males are unmistakable with their deep black plumage and red and yellow epaulets, the females look more like overgrown sparrows.


The bird on the upper left is a house sparrow (not a true sparrow, at all, but an invasive English species). The bird in the upper middle and the one on the far right are female redwinged blackbirds, which gives a good size comparison with a typical sparrow-like bird. The bird in the lower center is a young male redwing. His shoulder markings are just coming in and he still has some brown on his back. Juvenile males look like over-sized female redwings. It is hard to see in this image, because of the angle, but the young male is significantly larger than the females.

Impulse Book Purchase

It's windy in Kansas City this morning, though the stiff breeze doesn't seem to bother these red winged-blackbirds. Robins aren't the true harbinger of spring, as some people suppose. They actually remain with us the year round. But, not so with red winged-blackbirds. Their arrival really does signal that spring is near.

One of my New Year resolutions is to avoid impulse book purchases, and I have done fairly well in that regard. But, I could not resist Charles Tunnicliffe's A Sketchbook of Birds when I saw it in a window display at Spivey's a few days ago.



I also ordered Suzanne Dunaway's No Need to Knead from Chequamegon Books in Wisconsin yesterday. This was not an impulse purchase. I found Dunaway's book at the public library and have been going nuts baking bread recipes from it. They're nothing short of wonderful. Only a few copies are available on Abebooks.com -- a sure sign of limited supply. But Elly, munching a slice of Rosemary Filoncino, dipped in rosemary olive oil (both recipes from No Need to Knead), agreed the book is well worth $65. We have had the pleasure to correspond with Ms. Dunaway, who is as charming as her book suggests, and have learned that a reprint from 10 Speed Press may be a possibility. Here is a picture of the filoncino loaves, baked in a baguette pan added to our cooking arsenal after I read about them in Ms. Dunaway's book.



I also had the good fortune to come across the March/April edition of Greenability magazine (Living well, by living green in Kansas City) yesterday. It is actually published by a neighbor of ours. This is an outstanding local resource for eco-friendly lifestyles. Elly and I are now subscribers.

Snow Day

The weather forecast called for maybe an inch of snow. Instead, we got a good six inches on Saturday, which was a great way to end out the month of February. Nothing is more fun and relaxing than to spend a snowy day in the kitchen, reading, cooking, watching birds, and, now, thanks to the new addition to our family, watching Basie play in the snow.




Basie loves snow, which isn't a big surprise. He loves to play in the backyard, loves cold weather, and loves to explore. He is 11 weeks old now and growing fast.


My two new journals -- the green one is for birdwatching and the tan one is my kitchen journal. Among other things, this is great for remembering what cookbook a particularly good recipe came from.


Elly was busy making a Cauliflower Cheese Pie from Mollie Katzen's Moosewood Cookbook. We substitute a regular pie crust for the grated potato crust called for in the original recipe. This is awesome with white cheddar cheese, BTW.


I've been on something of a baking binge since trying a Ciabatta recipe in the March/April 2009 Cooks Illustrated which turned out marvelously. Then I came across Suzanne Dunaway's No Need to Knead cookbook at the library. This is one cookbook that seriously needs a second edition. It was published in 1999 and is not readily available on the used book market. It is one of the best cookbooks I have found, even including original watercolor illustrations by Dunaway. I made Apricot Focaccia following her recipe exactly and the result was divine. Easy too. It is suprising what great bread you can make without kneading. Seriously. If you are interested in baking at all and can find a copy of Dunaway's book at your local library, do yourself a favor and check it out.

Some more birds. I can't seem to stop snapping pictures of birds in our backyard. Believe me this is a tiny sample of my total image haul. :-)


Lots of activity at the niger feeder. Goldfinches give larger birds like Grackles a very wide birth, but they aren't afraid to mix it up with birds their own size like house finches and juncos.



The quintessential snow birds in our backyard are cardials and dark-eyed juncos. These are a couple of nice junco pictures. They stay with us from October through April, traveling north into Canada to breed and next in the spring and summer.


Bluejays simply can't resist peanuts in the shell, even if they have to do a little snow removal to uncover them.


Starlings are widely reviled by birders because they are an invasive species and force out many lovely native birds. Well, at least in urban areas. I have to confess that I enjoy watching the. They are handsome, fiesty, and often hilarious.

Here are a couple more pictures of Basie, for his many blog-stalking fans...


Playing in the snow can wear a puppy out!

Common Redpoll

Elly and I have been keeping a close watch on our Niger feeder since Mark McKellar at the Backyard Bird Center told me cold weather up north has driven many birds down into our area that are somewhat unusual here. Large numbers of goldfinches have been frequenting the feeder. So many, in fact, we plan to put up a few more feeders. Some of the northern visitors like to mingle with goldfinch flocks.

We were rewarded today with the appearance of a Common Redpoll, mixed right in with the goldfinches as predicted by Mr. McKellar. He showed up about 11:40 am. Definitely a male from the coloring. I got a few pictures. No great shots but the bird can be readily identified. Their tails are proportionately longer than those of goldfinches, and, as can be seen in the second image, much more deeply forked. This is the first Redpoll we have seen in our yard, so we get to add another bird to our yard list.

Goldfinch Convention

We got some bad news on the bird front. Our bird guru, Mark McKellar, who operates Backyard Bird Center, told me my New Year's day "merlin" is actually a sharp-shinned hawk. Drats! Now I'm determined to get out and observe some merlins this year. We did have a consolation, though, Elly and I saw a brown creeper on one of our hackberry trees a few mornings ago. We've never seen one in the backyard before. This is the best picture I got of the littler bugger. He came early, so I had to shoot at a higher ISO setting (200, I think) which is pretty noisy on the Canon S2 IS. Still can't bring myself to spring for a full-blown digital-SLR though.

We're also having large groups of goldfinches at our niger feeder. All 8 perches are frequently occupied with more birds waiting their chance. One day I counted fourteen. Mark said the harsh winter up north is driving birds down to our area, including common red polls and pine siskins. Even a white-winged crossbill has been spotted. They like to flock in with gold finches, so we have decided to add more niger feeders to encourage them.

Here are several pictures showing how we have mounted the niger feeders so they can be raised and lowered easily for refilling.





I looked through my many image folders and discovered I don't have a picture of the niger feeder with 8 goldfinches at once, so that will be an image goal of mine. Here is the closest I have gotten so far -- five. This quality is more representative of what the camera can manage in good lighting.



Here is another of my favorite birds, a Carolina Wren, which obligingly posed in full sun for me this week. These visit our yard regularly, but we're trying to figure out how to encourage them to be daily visitors.