Come Visit

I will take you this morning on a short walk down to my dock. The back patio is only 150 feet from the water as we walk along a gentle slope of weedy mowed lawn and then across the back lawn under the sprinkled shade from the tulip and oak trees. Then we go down a gravel path under the arching branches of the viburnum that has now formed its seeds.  These will be eaten later by cardinals, robins, Eastern bluebirds, and cedar waxwings among others.  Now the fruits are too green, but they will become a dark blue and the leaves will become wine red in autumn.  Mother nature has planted dozens of them by the river for us to enjoy.

Even before I break into the sunny part of the dock the sharp-eyed osprey across the river has spotted me.  How can he see my movement behind the heavy shrubbery?  I really think this is the one that I worked so hard years ago to prevent nesting on the roof of our boat.  I destroyed the nest every day or so and they have never forgiven me, even though we built them a platform within weeks.  He cries and cries to warn others that the bird killer is out and about.

I duck down to take some photos of the grasses.  That is when I hear the gagging cry of our resident heron as he leaves one side of the river to fly to the other, perhaps responding to the osprey.

I duck down low to photograph the marsh.  You can see above that we have a freshwater seep into the brackish river because the cattails are happy here. In later fall they will burst their seams into an untamed beard of seeds.  Also, this flowering shrub below that I think is a type of mallow has really bloomed this year.  We have the rose mallow, but the flowers are so much larger and they have stopped blooming, so I am not sure which one this is.

I have to zoom in with my lens so that you can see their real beauty.

The butterflies and bees do love them and stop by often.  They are good natural pollinators.

I can hear a woodpecker tapping sharply on a tree in the distance on the other side of the river.  I hear his trumpet call.  It is the Pileated who commands such a presence that he can echo from across the river.  His territorial cry is unmistakable.

As I work my way down the dock I hear a murder of crows in the trees along the neighbor's shoreline.  Their call is guttural and angry.  I think they have cornered an owl.  I look and look, but the trees are too heavy to show me what they have bullied.  Even if I saw a shape, owls are impossible to see with their natural camouflage.  The call of the crow is really frightening.  Glad that the brave owls and eagles ignore this bully.  Although they are there to protect their own young crows from these predators.

Well, this morning has been much noisier than I expected.  Clearly, I have risen long after the birds have been up.  In the next post, I will show you the project(s) my husband has started down at the dock.