Monday, May 26, 2008

Wildflowers

The rains have made the flowers happy. What's blooming now...
Wild strawberry
Phlox
Oregon grape
Arrowleaf balsamroot...did you spot the crab spider?

Saskatoon berry Violet
? These are tiny.
Toadstools are popping up.I don't know what this is, but it smells like gardenia.Bird activity...
Bath time! I saw this beauty from the kitchen and grabbed the camera, but had to take the pictures through the window so I wouldn't scare it. I've only caught brief glimpses of these before, but not at home. I had to look in the bird book to identify it as a Western Tanager. Stokes says if you put out halved oranges they may come to feeders. I'll try that.
Uhhh, someone just took a bath in that water you're drinking...the grosbeaks have been around a lot. They like the critter food. The hummingbirds like to perch in the willow.
Crossbills are regular visitors.The bluebirds are in the box on the garage, this is one of their lookout spots.

The Mountain bluebirds are in the box by the garden and the Tree swallows are in the old nestbox down by the fir tree.

I left the plants outside last night! It was only 38 degrees, so they survived.

It's 57 degrees at 8:00 am, sunny. It looks like it's going to be a very nice day. The weather forecast says "isolated thunderstorms and a 30 percent chance of rain."

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Do the birds eat spiders?

janet copenhaver said...

Hi there S. I love your blog and photos. Makes me miss my birds down in Westcliffe. We do have birds here in Denver but not many. Have plenty of gophers! We've been waiting for someone to come through with a bull snake on craigslist. One guy wanted to sell his for 40 bucks, but know we can get one for free if we are patient.
Last year had a couple western tangers hanging around. Didn't try an orange but they seemed to like strawberry tops. I hope to see them again this year sometime. I have a better camera and telephoto lens that should bring them in nicely.
Adding you to my google reader so I'm alerted when you have a new post.

Gnome said...

Yes, the birds eat spiders. Even hummingbirds, and they use spider silk to make their nests! But the crab spider has camo, just like Coconut.
J-I would like to get a better camera too, it's on my wishlist, the one I use is actually a video camera and it only holds 20 photos, so just as I'm about to get a great shot, it blinks FULL! It works a lot better than my cheap little digital camera though...

Anonymous said...

You really know your flowers, impressive. I like your bird photos too.