Little Among Us

Do You See Him?

There He Is, Watching!

Like a Fairy

Flitting in Shadows

Among Nasturtiums

Problems loom large. We hit a deer Friday night and our hood, fender and spirits are crumpled. The next morning, the car won't start and Todd walks to the neighbors behind us to ask for a jump. They loan him a battery charger.

As he walks back, past my garden, he's watched by a tiny bird.

He's so little among us that he's easy to miss, a male black-chinned hummingbird with iridescent back feathers of army green. He's like a glittering little warrior; a fairy or wee-folk. And I watch him, watch Todd. Are we as fascinating to him as he is to me?

Early in spring when apple blossoms scented the air, we had many hummingbirds buzzing the old tree. It hummed with life, fully charged. In my excitement, I bought a hummingbird feeder. I kept it in the pasture by the pond until the grass grew so tall as to cover its plastic blossoms.

When I came home from Montana, after loosing Kate, an empty hummingbird feeder hung with dead flowers in baskets. It almost overwhelmed me, so I turned to my garden instead. I thought the hummingbirds long gone, but when I replanted flowers and filled the feeder, he showed up.

This is the same hummingbird that paused in my sprinkler that first night back and gave me a sense of peace and hope. Now I watch eagerly for him and he flits about my yard everyday.

I've actually seen him among my squash blossoms and flitting from one tiny purple potato flower to another. He loves nasturtiums and petunias. Sometimes it's just a quick movement out of the corner of my eye.

Fairies dance among us. Little but there.

Joining up today with abracabadra for Wordless Wednesday. My photos are of my own; the spirit belongs to the green-chinned hummingbird of Elmira Pond.

Five Photos, Five Stories: Day 3

Hallelujah! I shot a hummingbird! My prize of the day: a clear shot of a female black-chinned hummingbird.

White butterflies wobble like tissue caught in a breeze; dragonflies zip past with iridescent wings; and swallowtails flutter like elegant breeze dancers. Amidst these dainty flyers, I seek the buzz of hummingbird wings.

My first hummingbird encounter on Elmira Pond took place two summers ago when one mistook my hot pink t-shirt for a large flower. I had binoculars scoped on the pond as I sat beneath the apple tree. A persistent buzzing at my right ear made me think it was a bee and casually I would swat at the sound. Finally, I put down the binoculars to be face-to-face with a hummingbird!

Often I catch them buzzing about and when the apple tree was in full blossom this past May, several hung out as if it were a favorite pub. They sipped apple blossom nectar and I identified three different kinds: black-chinned, red-throated and calliope.

For so long, I've wanted a photograph. I've learned what they like -- hairy vetch blossoms, radish blooms, colorful perennials. I also bought a feeder which they've drained three times in two months. I catch glimpses and snap blurry shots as they flee my camera lens.

Today I was determined. After watering, I sat beneath the spruce tree by my gardens and waited with camera, cat and coffee. Todd walked out onto the porch and I tried to shoo him away. After weeding and planting more beets (because one can never have too many beets), I sat again in the shade of the spruce, drinking cold water. Todd got his camera and joined me.

Then he got bored. I watched wispy white clouds pass overhead. I listened to the steady strum of summer traffic on Hwy. 95. I spotted a chipping sparrow in a tall pine. Bootsy sat companionably beneath my chair. I saw a black and white dragonfly. And then I heard the buzz of wings.

Snap, snap, snap! She posed, drank and left. At last, I have her in pixels. My hummingbird patience paid off.

This is Day 3 of a photo and story challenge from Norah Colvin. Today I nominate author and poet, Susan Zutautas, to take up the challenge if she is so obliged to participate.

The rules of the Five Photos, Five Stories Challenge are:
1) Post a photo each day for five consecutive days.
2) Attach a story to the photo. It can be fiction, non-fiction, poetry, or a short paragraph. It’s entirely up to the individual.
3) Nominate another blogger to carry on the challenge. Your nominee is free to accept or decline the invitation. This is fun, not a command performance!

Pinkest Flower in the Field

Bridge Over Grouse Creek

Elk Herd

A Cool, Pink Morning

A Dino Fly-by

Flapping Away

Zippy King-fisher

Mama Merganser?

Young Hooded Mergansers

Merganser Family

New Arrivals

Cedar Wax-wings, For Now

Red-Tailed Hawk

Soaring, Hunting

Dragonfly #1

Dragonfly #2

Dragonfly #3

Red Tail

July 25 Omission:

Hot...in need of cool...mountain...stream...

Yesterday's pond report was omitted in favor of seeking cooler climes along Grouse Creek. We nearly made it to the falls, but were beat to the spot by a family with nine children. And a dog. Our dogs barked at their dog, and leashing ensued. I fell in a mud-hole, had to wash off in the creek, lost my husband and had to wait for him at the truck. Not my ideal situation, but he reminded me that he had hero-status for at least another week. And even a bad day along Grouse Creek is a good day.

On the way home we ate tuna-fish sandwiches on sourdough rolls and slices of orange-flesh melon that dripped down our chins. Just a few miles from home we saw a herd of elk grazing on ranch pasture. A beautiful excuse not to write...filling the well.

Morning Pond Report:

Mist rises off the pond like steam from hot summer sidewalks. Ah, but this is no urban setting along Elmira Pond. A crisp night promises a cooler day than those of this past week. The sky is pinking later; no more 4 a.m. dawns.

Elmira Pond has touched my pink side. Pink mist, pink skies, pink flowers, why not. Not normally a woman of that shade, I bought my very first pink t-shirt in what feels like a million years. And today I am wearing it, my hot-pink t-shirt with a white silhouette of a German Short-haired Pointer (GSP), and the back that proclaims, "Keep calm; point on." This comes into play later.

And speaking of a million years or so, that is how old Blue Heron's drivers license would read, if he needed one to fly. He doesn't grace the pond today, but flies by low, a pterodactyl shadow of blue-gray against the dark green pines and trees. Flap. Flap. Silent as he is, he looks like a flapping dinosaur seeking giant pond frogs. Bull-frogs seems to suffice, and I realize it's been a while since I've heard a sonorous croak from that group. I'm not complaining. But the grasshoppers need to learn a new tune or two.

Another blue-gray bird flits fast around the pond, up to the sky, across the trees, back to the pond and over the power lines. All in about 10 seconds. If only coffee would course through me that way. The most hyper bird I know upon this pond is the belted king-fisher. I actually snap a few shots of him so maybe the coffee is working after all. Big head, long dark beak and crisply tailored-white neck. But no fishing for him today. Who knows where king-fisher go.

A single Lady Merganser holds court on the log. It's been several weeks now since I've seen the female ring-necked duck. Maybe she is shrouded in reeds, secluded on the cup of a nest, incubating eggs. Or maybe she has simply flown elsewhere. I don't see the other three mergansers, but splashes on the far south-east side hint at their presence.

Finally I scope the splash-makers. They look sort of like mergansers, but smaller and the coloring is different. Scrutiny is tough at a distance. If they are babies, they are juveniles. Do you mean I missed the cuteness and back-packing of merganser chickhood? These awkward younglings are trying to walk on water, probably practicing for flight. Between two of them I think I see a turtle. If so, it is my first pond turtle sighting.

Two of the three merganser brood hang out with the Lady on the Log. Is she mama or auntie? She doesn't seem real interested in them, perhaps preparing for an empty nest. It's interesting how many trinities of birds I seem to see upon this pond. Migratory wanderers, passing through.

Another bird group is noticeably absent--the metallic-blue tree swallows who used to make ferry-rings upon the pond. Their nestlings fledged and now they are all gone. The barn swallows are still in residence, but are not in great numbers. Yet another bird has appeared, soaring more so than flitting, yet acrobatic all the same. They seem to be after insects but their shape and whistle is different from swallows and their color different from sparrows and siskins. Nor are they as big as robins, but close.

Are they brown? Gray? Their tails seem lined in yellow. Is it really yellow? The kingbird has a stripe like that, but boldly white. A few pause in a tree and there is something about the eyes...the head. I am so engrossed in the binoculars that I am ignoring bees. They bounce from clover head to tree tops, yet I am unafraid. I'm birding. If you know of my recent woes with a bee, it's an amazing feat--to ignore the humming of bees.

This bee is now so close to my ear, it is the loudest thrumming I've ever heard from an insect. Cautiously, I set down the binos, prepare to swat with my right hand until I turn and actually glimpse the bee. It is no bee. A hummingbird has taken tremendous interest in my pink t-shirt, zoning in to my shoulder as if I am full of nectar; the pinkest flower in the field. Now it is my turn to surprise him as I leap from my chair, squealing like no flower has ever squealed. I never did wear pink well.

But as my shirt reads, I stay calm, twittering just a bit, and bird on. I'm fairly, mostly, pretty certain that the newest pond arrivals are cedar wax-wings. In fact, one photo shows the brown and gray coloring and the distinctly yellow tail stripe. Until I prove myself wrong, I'm going with cedar wax-wing. While they are known to devour berries, they seem more interested in insects. Go for the protein wax-wings.

Ah, and here comes the red-tailed hawk, soaring high on the thermals. In total, the hawk sweeps over  the pond valley north to south and then south again at least five times. He's hunting the fields and meadows. Any time he nears the pond, birds harass him and he dives, trying to escape their nagging advance. I waffle between thinking maybe he's an immature bald eagle or red-tailed hawk. But several photos clearly show the stripes and red tail of the latter although the head and chest pattern could be young eagle-like.

If it is that difficult to identify such a big beast of the blue skies, I don't even try to tag the dragonflies flitting by and clinging to dead limbs and fence line. But I can assure you, that none of them are as pink as the pinkest flower in the field.

Pink Negligee

June 23 4:41 a.m. Pond Report:

Horse in Pink

Pond in Her Pink Negligee

Pink Mist in the Pines

Well, Hello Kingfisher

Power-line Dove

Birds or Punks?

Pasture Flockers

Red-shafted Northern Flicker

Imagine a Hummingbird Here

Pink as a Negligee

There Goes the Sun

Evening Falls Across Still Waters

No Super Moon for This Place

Truly I have cause to be up at 4:41 a.m. At one time in my life, that hour signaled rise-and-shine to load up in my Dad's logging truck to drive over Ebbett's Pass and arrive at his logging camp in Pacific Valley. I cleaned an entire valley of limbs and logging debris. That's what I got for telling Mom I didn't want to work in the store that summer.

Thus I still think of 4 a.m. as the logging hour.

So it makes me giggle to find Elmira contained in pink mist. Pink is not a color I associate with logging. But pink it is, colored by the early dawn. The pond looks as if I caught her early out of bed wearing nothing but a pink negligee, one of those gossamer see-thru nighties for intimate occasions.

Does anyone (but the pond) even wear pink negligees any more? At one time I had a stellar collection of wispy nighties that must have been so fantastical to my three children that they absconded with my sheer wardrobe, turning the collection into dress-up princess clothes.

It marked my fall from sexy-woman. However, I fell squarely into motherhood which fit me better, anyways.

Not much more to say than a pink tangent. The setting of the super moon was my reason to rise, but the mist and thin clouds hide it from view. Dawn is pretty to see, one of those unexpected surprises. The horses bed down in the mist, the birds chatter and the pond parades in pink.

June 23 Afternoon Pond Report:

A new orchestra arrives. Today, the sounds shift, even for one such as me. I can't carry a tune and my listening skills can be weak (psst...don't tell my husband that I might admit to having impaired-listening). I'm often so excited to feel the music or capture the story that I miss the individual details like notes or names. So for me to say that I notice a shift in sound, the shift must be significant.

It's like going to hear the symphony. You know how the musicians warm up before a performance, and all you hear are disconnected blasts of notes? You can tell the clarinets from the flutes from the trombones, but you can't catch a song. That's what it sounds like around the pond today. Like a greater number of different birds are tuning their instruments.

So today I turn the binoculars on the the trees and fence-lines surrounding Elmira. At first, all the birds look alike, just as everyone in the orchestra dresses in black. But I start to capture nuances, subtleties. I'm surprised to find the belted kingfisher sitting in a shrub on the south side of the pond. He seems decaffeinated today, less fluttery.

Movement catches my eye and I follow it to the power-line. Turns out to be a dove. Another flies past and the dove on the power-line flies off with it. On the far fence-line sits a group of birds like teenagers hanging out at the soda shop. Grayish, blackish, I'm not sure what they are. Another flock of birds is rising and settling like locust in the grass. Actually, if there were locusts, these birds would be feasting. As it is, they are either munching seeds or insects. They continue to rise and settle in the far pasture.

Robins poke at the ground and some unnamed nut-knocker whistles abruptly from the pine tree by the porch without ever revealing his presence. Tree swallows continue to dance but I distinctly hear a chickadee, one bird call I do know. Chickadees are also fly-catchers and may flock with the swallows. Or, not. Then, I see another bird perched on a fence-line and as it darts away, its salmon-red underwings tells me its a red-shafted northern flicker.

Then a hummingbird flits up to the mass of wild Nae Roses for a nectar kiss. I try to follow his retreat but he is so tiny and fast. I learn that the tiniest bird north of Mexico is the Calliope hummingbird and it actually nests in the extreme cold of high mountains, including northern Idaho. I'll have to look for distinguishing marks next time. If I can look that fast.

So many birds in a single day. Like the roses, did they suddenly bud? The music is different, the late afternoon smells of roses and meadow grass and the birds seem to sing of it. Another Lady Rose unfurls.

June 23 Super Moon Report:

The sun glows behind thin gray clouds and prepares to dip behind the tallest peak west. As evening falls I anxiously await the super moon. Last night, through binoculars, it looked like a navel orange. Tonight I want to capture its fullest rise in the east. Several times I step outside, hoping to see the clouds clear as they did last night. Alas, the moon never shows. The only glow for miles around is that of my own windows.

Guess it's time to go to bed and put on my own pink negligee...who am I kidding? I wear t-shirts and flannel and pink is not a common color to a logger's daughter. But orange is a close cousin.