Category: Nature

I found these beautiful poppy flowers in a scruffy back alley here on Capitol Hill.
From Wikipedia:  Ancient Egyptian doctors would have their patients eat seeds from a poppy to relieve pain. Poppy seeds contain small quantities of both morphine and codeine, which are pain-relieving drugs that are still used today.

This little pot-bellied thrush came and sit on my garage roof last night at dusk. It sang a song or two before leaving. I believe it is a hermit thrush (Catharus guttatus). In French: grive solitaire, the lone thrush.

Here’s a tulip from my walk around the block tonight.
It might be a broken tulip: one infected with a plant virus called a potyvirus. The virus infects the bulb and breaks the single color in the petals. Bars, stripes, streaks, flames or feathers of different colors can be the result.

Unfortunately the virus is not benign — it eventually kills the bulb. The Semper Augustus with its fine red and white stripes was a broken tulip, famous for being the most expensive tulip sold during tulip mania. It is now long gone, and growing broken tulips (except under supervision) is illegal in the Netherlands.

We had gusty winds on Saturday. The wind blew a robin’s nest out of the tree in front of my house – at least I think it’s a robin’s nest. Other birds lay blue eggs as well. As far as I can tell, there were no chicks that came down with the nest.

There were three woodpeckers (Northern flickers/ Colaptes auratus) in the alley, at the back of my house, at dusk tonight.

One was looking for bugs in the wooden utility pole — and found one.
Nearby on the overhead power lines, a male was courting a female.
Be careful, I thought : don’t let the sparks fly between you two.

Volunteer Park is closed for picnics and group gatherings, but it is still OK to walk through (while steering clear of others, of course).
It would be impossible for bugs and butterflies to miss the flaming orange tulips, by the Asian Art Museum.

Check out this stunning picture of a mature South Philippine dwarf kingfisher, published in the New York Times. It was taken by Miguel David De Leon for the Robert S. Kennedy Bird Conservancy, in a forest in the Philippines.

The little birds are just about impossible to catch sitting still, and it took three years of patience and trying to get a picture of the bird.

The little bergenia ‘Bressingham White’ that I have in a pot, has produced its first flowers.

Mr Squirrel is catching a little sun, oblivious of the pandemic that the humans have to deal with.

The new spring blooms on my camellia are serious competition for roses, as far as looks go. As for fragrance: no match at all.

I ventured out of the house with my camera this afternoon, and found this American robin (Turdus migratorius).
The ‘late’ bird was looking to catch a worm, and sure enough! it found one in the dirt next to the sidewalk.

Spring has arrived here in the North.
As of this hour, Earth’s Northern Hemisphere is starting to tilt towards our sun.

P.S. This year marks the earliest start to spring on the Gregorian calendar in 124 years. How so? Well, it’s complicated.

I had three of the beautiful blue-feathered Steller’s jays (Cyanocitta stelleri) in my backyard today.
For a while, they sat quietly inside my laurel fence (the second photo), and then got out and flew away.