Rainy Spring Morning

The day before had been beautiful, cool, with a clear blue sky and a few white clouds sailing across that blue sky – but it was extremely windy, windy enough to keep birds in dense cover. It was early enough in the spring that wildflowers are barely above ground, much less in bloom.

So my walk in the Big Woods was short and, other than for a bit of exercise, unproductive. I spent most of the afternoon sorting through old slides of the family from the 1970s; the best will be digitized, but most went in the trash.

On this morning the sky was gray with a light mist falling but no wind. Out I went to walk several old roads that pass through brushy areas and past several small wetlands.

I hadn’t gone too far when atop a staghorn sumac there was a robin plucking fruit. We all think of robins picking earthworms from lawns, but they also eat a lot of fruit when other food is scarce. Sumac isn’t a favored food, but in late winter when most other fruit has already been eaten robins will avidly feed on sumac.

This robin ate one small fruit after another, bending down to select one, plucking it from among all the others and often tossing it in the air before swallowing the fruit –

The robin finally flew off and I walked on, soon coming to a large pond circled by a shrubby wetland. On the far side there was something white; the telephoto lens revealed it to be a great egret –

Also on the pond was a pair of Canada geese. One goose swam back into the wetland while the other lay its head down on the water in an effort to hide. That didn’t work too well –

In a nearby tree a male red-winged blackbird called frequently as it moved from branch to branch –

As you can see in some of the photos, the drizzle had changed to rain and my hat and jacket were soaking through, so I headed back.