Birdy Birdy! And Rainy Day

Happy May Day.. a day short!

This Oriole has a super dark chest and was only around for a little bit yesterday. A female Oriole chased him off the feeder and he eventually disappeared.

This brightly colored one has been staying around. Was the one above an Orchard Oriole? That may be the first time I've seen one of those here!

This one below is an Baltimore Oriole? 
Anyway, they are brilliant in color and provide a lot of entertainment.

May 1st was also the first day we saw a Hummingbird.

I like rainy days. Not downpour windy gusty lightening blowing driving rainy days. But days with light rain are fine. They are especially great for going out in the forest to find cool things.

The all day rain and the humidity can create mystical scenes in the macro world. I intended to just go out and browse plants but once I saw the droplets, I knew I had to get down and dirty in the mud and dirt to enjoy what surprises the forest had for me.

When I saw water clinging to plants and moss. I just had to go macro.

Mayapples or we called them Maypoles or Mayflowers.

Moss Sporophytes with rain drops.

Wild Strawberry plants.

I found some emerging Maidenhair ferns and laid on the steep bank to put my Mini me and Mini Charlie next to them.

In the corner of my vision, I saw something quite strange. It looked like slime mold. But it hadn't been warm enough to form in the forest yet .. I thought.

It looked like delicate webs topped with blobs and water. I've never seen anything like it.

Take pictures. Explore it. Admire its strange beauty. And then try to figure out what it was I was seeing!

I was able to find info on this delicate beauty on a New Zealand website called The Hidden Forest. The author says it is the reproduction system of Liverworts. I thought it was moss, but I can find that spot again I will look under the moss to see if I can find different leaves.

From the website:

In leafy liverworts the antheridia produce mobile antherozoids (sperm), which require a film of water in which to move to the archegonia, where fertilisation takes place. After fertilisation, a new plant develops, which remains attached to the parent plant. This is the sporophyte.

I had a penny in my pocket so I stuck it behind the structure to measure for size....

Isn't that the most amazing thing you've ever seen? Okay, maybe not. But I love the little things found in mosses and along the forest floor.

Here is a couple more moss shots...

and I think this is or was a fungi of some sort.

It was on a stick so you can imagine how small it was.
I had to get down in the dirt and wet mud for these shots but it was so intriguing to see.

I do love rainy days.

Weekend recap

Early morning hunt for eatable's in the forest with Olive.

Olive took a shot of me takin a shot
of the twisted trees...

Olive. Just as nutty as me!

Sunday morning's fog and morning walk...

Infrared IRChrome shot.
IR picks up more light and works

well on foggy scenes. IRChrome sees green

as red.

Cherry blossoms in the fog

Dandy-lions...

Multiflora Rose

Virginia Pinks

Wild Strawberries

Pheasantback mushrooms starting... I wasn't the only one interested in them!

It was warm and humid Sunday with occasional showers but I got a lot of gardening done. I hauled buckets of dirt from the old manure pile to patch up holes in the yard. I cleaned the gardens around the house and added dirt from that old manure pile to enrich the soil.

I dumped the old dirt out of my 3 containers I have for geraniums and refreshed them with new dirt. 

The mules all walked up for a grooming and I had an assembly line going. Each one walked up to me, got curried and then I tapped them on the rear end to move them along for the next in line. 

Last but not least. The first hummingbird showed up as well as the first Oriole. 

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