Things with wings

One of the goldfinches, sitting for his portrait.

It was a dark and rainy day today. There are a half-dozen goldfinches that are apparently resident in our backyard and this is one of them.

In May month, a sunny day with ten degrees temperature is a brilliant one. And all hands get out to catch a few rays.

That's not quite true. I saw a Yellow-rumped warbler a few days ago. But he got away before I got a picture. This one, this afternoon, was nearly tame and I got a couple of dozen pictures of him before he got bored with me and flew further into the woods.

It wasn't even ten degrees this afternoon in the higher levels around Town. But down in the sunny niches by the rivers, like in one of my favourite parks, Bowring Park, it was warmer at least in spots. Thus this fellow, a Green comma, had awakened from his seven- or eight-month slumber, and was flitting around in the pretty temporary warmth. It's going down to two degrees tonight. I didn't know what he was at the time. But when I got home afterwards I perused the guides until I narrowed it down to Green comma. And I cannot say the name comma without hearing Del Shannon's falsetto singing "Comma comma comma comma com com...."

I could hear a goldfinch singing. Checking, I saw this fellow sitting just outside the window, singing in the rain.

We walked in the four-degree, grey weather this afternoon down the Waterford River, along the old railway track, just about to the harbour. Along it there is a stretch of birches, spruce and fir overhanging the river and there was a flock of at least two kinds of newly arrived warblers -- yellow and yellow-rumped. Herewith, one of the latter, leaving little doubt about his name.

Another one of the (probably) newly arrived warblers hanging out on the river I walked along today.

He was wondering whether to get down to retrieve his peanuts.

This moth was on the outside of a window in last night's rain. I got this picture, of his/her rather more-than-usually-intimate side, from inside the window. I was not inclined to go outside in the wet and dark to try for a more formal shot. But not knowing what his upper-side wings looked like means I have little hope of knowing what he/she was. Oh well.

It is often said that we, here on the island of Newfoundland and especially on its East Coast, are susceptible to long stretches at this time of year of wet foggy and cool weather. "Three-week fogs" some of us call them. We're in one now. In that sort of cool dark weather, the flowers do slowly get squeezed out of their plantworks, but the pollinators, like bees, need something warmer than day-in-day-out six-degree temperatures. Today for a few minutes it got up to fourteen degrees (plus change), and the fog lifted long or high enough for the sun to cast vague shadows. The bees were out their gates. This one was face and eyes into the pistabeds by our house.

Fifty years ago, the ground around Mr Mundy's Pond was a kind of post-industrial nightmare with big chunks of metal and concrete and dumped construction materials lying around. There are still signs of early 20th-century foundations but largely the area has been cleaned up, with plenty of mostly-native trees growing in along the paths. There are even trouters around the pond (though the trouter we spoke to said he doesn't eat the trout he catches). And the birds love it. This afternoon (besides the newly arrived sparrows disappearing into grasses) there was a small flock of Yellow warblers, mostly in the more secluded area on one side, but also on the more open and windy side, too.

Another one of the Yellow warblers we heard and saw this afternoon.