Cardinal

Cardinals: red, brown, and sometimes, vary rarely, yellow.
You mite see a male cardinal in a goldfinch nest by the young goldfinches, he is not baby siting, he caught too much and doesn't want to throw it away.  They will also feed baby jays (not by the parents!) and even other cardinals. (once again, the parents don't see)

The male cardinals are red, red, red, with a black face and a larger crest then females and have a baseball team. (sorry I like jokes, I'm talking about the team called the cardinals. . .)

Okay, most cardinals are red, but some yellow cardinals are out there, males that are yellow, thats all they are, they are vary rare, they are not endangered, they are different in the sense that you can be born with one arm or leg, the same thing happened.

Now, females are fawn-brownish, and clearly not as brightly colored as her mate, but thats good, because, think of a male bird of paradise siting on a nest, easy to see. To her, if she wants to hide, she flies to a tree, and she's gone.

By A, age 10

(all pictures credit to google image search)

Identifying Birds

Before we can identify a bird we have to have the words to describe what we're seeing.

Z's been learning about birds and this is what she has to say about identifying them:

     For instance if you see a Chickadee they will have a black stripe on their head, other birds have black stripes on their wings, you have to know where the stripe is on the bird to identify the bird.

     Knowing the words for the body parts is important. A cardinal has a crest on his crown whereas robins do not but they both have red on them. A robin has a red breast but cardinals are red everywhere.

     If you're looking up to find out what bird you see every bit of information helps.

Picture from Cornell Lab of Ornithology

Woodpecker

From the words of a kindergartner, with my questions edited out.

We have a woodpecker in our yard.  I know it's a woodpecker because it has a red spot on the back of it's head and stripes on the wings.  Most of it is black and white, but it has a little bit of red. It has a little beak, a beak is a bird mouth and it is hard.

I know about woodpeckers because I have my own stuffed woodpecker and the one in my yard looks the same.


From the middle-schooler.
Woodpeckers have spongy skulls around their brain to protect them from concussions.


From the adult:
The woodpecker we have hanging around is a male Downy Woodpecker.  He is right at home in the mixed flock of chickadees, robins, sparrows, and juncos that live in the backyard.  Aside from the robins they're all small birds, about six inches or less - approximately half the size of the stuffed one below. He eats mostly from the birch tree but also enjoys the suet block.

Updates Soon

This blog was started as a project nearly 10 years ago in order for me to learn about my new surroundings.  I lost track of that project once life got more busy in Texas, and eventually we moved back to the Midwest.

Now I have several curious little minds who love the outdoors and ask questions like: "why do trees look different?" "what kind of bird is that?" "what is that plant?".  The idea is to work together and learn new things.  What a kindergartner will learn might be a bit basic for a middle school kid, but what an elementary age child might learn would amaze a toddler.  Each of us will be able to write and post what we have seen, observations we've made, and species we've identified.

There will be no strict update schedule, but because we're all in this together hopefully it will be much sooner than nine and a half years before another post shows up.

Not Kudzu

Driving along the interstate sometimes I see trees that look like they've been taken over by Kudzu. Kudzu has reached Texas, but not deep into the heart of Texas, so I was confused. Especially since Kudzu does not attack one tree in the middle of a Kudzu free area.
I found the answer.
I have spoken of three vines here on this blog and they are the culprits. This morning I found two trees that had been grown over by none other than Saw Greenbrier. I'm not quite sure how they made it up 20 plus feet into a tree, but there it was.
The first Black Willow I found was hard to identify due to being completely covered in Mustang Grape. The grapes are the main culprit in the Kudzu like tree attacks, they can go from one tree to another and create a thick blanket over the tops effectively killing the trees after a while.
The Snailseed can get really high in the trees, but they have bright red berries and don't generally fill the tree so they aren't quite so bad. They're even quite pretty.
So you may see Kudzu in Texas, but more likely than not it's not Kudzu.

"Winter" "Fall"

I have been looking for things to identify, and aside from easy things that are all over the US at various stages of the year I haven't found anything new for a few days.
There's clover; the cowpen daisies are still blooming (though pitiful looking); we had some visiting cardinals; and then there are the unidentifiables.

This one has been growing and green since August at least. It's a very common yard weed, and I don't see it growing past six inches. It's very pretty, not annoying like the following plant, and if it has noticeable flowers they're winter or spring bloomers. It has an odd half-circle stem and has eluded identification for over three months now.

And here to the right we have another sneaky little plant. This one is green with little stripes of purple on the leaves in summer and is now a nice red-orange - the stems especially. It spreads over the ground by rooting it's long feelers into the ground. Now that it's dry you can actually pull up the thick mat without any resistance and the yard looks better without it. You can't mow it out because it's a creeper so it doesn't get high enough to be mowed.

Whatsit... maybe...

I'm pretty sure I saw a Golden Eagle.
The only problem is since it wasn't nearby I can't be sure, but it was the biggest bird of prey I can remember seeing in a long time and it looked about the right color.
Interstate spottings are the most difficult to identify.