The Daily Bucket is a place to catch your casual observations of the natural world and turn them into a valuable resource. Whether it's the first flowers of spring or that odd bug in your basement, don't be afraid to toss your thoughts into the bucket. Check here for a more complete description.
You know, it seems more than a bit wrong to use the word "daily" in the title of these diaries when I've been a lot less than daily of late. If it wasn't for the much appreciated help of others in the Backyard Science group, I'd have to re-title these The Once or Twice a Week Bucket. Hopefully my travel schedule is going to cool a bit over the next few weeks and I'll be a bit more regular. And get out a diary every day, too.
Since the name of this group is Backyard Science, and I'm frequently talking about little areas around the house, today I took a walking tour of my back yard. At around three acres, it's not a huge amount of land, but it's fairly rugged back there, quite a bit steeper than it looks in pictures, and when the undergrowth is really engaged in another week or so, just making the circuit of the yard can feel like carving a path through the jungle.
The idea of "spring" in St. Louis once again proves to be somewhat ephemeral as we've moved the dial back to the 90 degree end. From the kitchen window, you can see that the warmth is starting to wake the big oak trees. Overnight they've grown a fuzzy crown of pale green leaf-lings. Give it another week and this scene will look a lot different. Give it two, and those hills across the way will be invisible.
A view to a hill
If I hike to the bottom of that hill, across a small spring-fed stream that's currently reduced to little more than a trickle (and nearly choked with winter's deadfall and waves of oak leaves) I come to a small rocky bluff, much beloved by Fence Swifts and Rat Snakes. I was surprised that there were was no one sitting up there to take in the sun today. At the very top of the little bluff is a brow of crumbled, mossy limestone that serves at the base for a knot of tough little cedars. This is the very edge of my property. In fact, if you could see right over that central bit of stone, you'd see a little yellow stake driven into the rock to mark the limit.
Expect reptile reports from this location as summer comes.
Walking back today, I noticed the fiddleheads of wood ferns unfurling and stepped over a number of small wildflowers in yellow, purple, pink, and white. The camera I was carrying is new to me, and I had fits trying to discover if there was a way to pitch it into macro mode or if there was a way to override the autofocus. As it was, I took dozens of shots and two or three came out halfway decent. When I tell you there were several kinds of buttercup, you'll just have to trust me, because none of them came out better than a yellow blur. The same goes for two different kinds of wild violent, some little blue speedwells, bloodroot that's still shy of opening, and those tiny beauties, bluets.
Rue Anemone Anemonella thalictroides
The little Anemones are one of the most common of the wildflowers in these woods, with clusters in white, pink, and a pale lavender.
This diary would have appeared two hours earlier had this not been one of the pictures that turned out well.
Cutleaf Toothwort Cardamine concatenata
I've seen these little flowers around for years, they're always out early, they're prolific, and I always assumed they were some member of the Mustard family, but when it came right down to it, I couldn't spot these things on my first pass through the field guide. Or the second. Or the tenth. Supposedly you can eat the roots and they have a peppery taste.
While staring at the camera, trying to will some kind of manual focus controls into existence, I was apparently quiet enough that a big tom turkey came strutting along and passed by my location without even a glance my way. They're generally pretty easy to spook, so it was amusing to watch this guy stride past.
What's going on where you live? I'll be sitting up for a few hours, working on two posts for the morning (it's my day for Abbreviated Pundit Round-up plus I promised one of my trademark rambling digressions) so I'll be checking in to update the map now for a few hours at least.
Today's observations come from these locations
Share your own observations in comments, and I'll add a marker to the map. Please give a city and state (as close as you feel comfortable in providing). Green pins for observations mostly about plants, brown for animals, and blue for weather or other inorganic items. The letter at the center of each pin will be the first letter of the user who provides the data.