Recent outings...

It's been incredibly England-like this spring, lots of rainy, grey days... Penns Creek has flooded it's banks behind my apartment 3 times.  It's a muddy mess that we braved last week, and I took some photos...

 In the lower part of our back yard there are two apple trees that have been left in a feral state for many years.  Every spring they are bursting with blooms, as you see here.  In the fall, of course they produce a large quantity of smallish apples which attract lots of bugs and worms, and therefore aren't really palatable.  A great many blue jays make them their home. 

 The lower two of the Gray Squirrels is "Miss No Tail".  She has kept me company throughout the winter, coming to my window to pan handle for nuts when I'm studying.  I fed her peanuts and walnuts, some chestnuts, and some hickory nuts.  Something nearly every day.  ( She turned her squirrel nose up at dry Chick Peas and Sunflower seeds...  evidently the protein is just not there... )  One day, as she stood on her hind legs, I saw that she had obviously been "feeding" little ones.  She was also losing a lot of hair, or molting.  I suppose this might have been from the strain on her of bearing a litter.  Now we see her frolicking with one of her offspring.  In this photo, she is chasing the little one up a small tree.  :)

 It was  very muddy along Penns Creek, and we had to step carefully between clumps of grass.  We got a bit muddy, but our feet managed to stay dry.  Here's some raccoon tracks. 

 These were growing in some gravelly sand-stone rubble, and were rubbery and "ear-like".  I picked one, and it felt very cold.   Their sandy color blended into the background, they were almost camouflaged.  I can't believe camouflage has a U in it.  :p. 

 The farmers have had to wait to get into their fields for plowing as it has been very wet.  This farmer has a large tract along the river that is excellent for scouting for arrowheads when it's been freshly plowed, and just after, a slight rain.  The soil here contains a lot of flint, and some kind of periwinkle-bluish stone.

 Pheasants backs newly formed, this little trio is only about 4" high by 4" wide.  Each segment is about 1" across.  They are so strange.  They grow to enormous sizes... and we later saw some that were "full blown"...

 These are about 12" across when theyré mature. 

The snapping turtles were sunning themselves en mass on each log that protruded into the river from the banks.  They have extremely sensitive sense of sight and hearing, and this turtle was the only one of them that I managed to take a clear photo.  It was also the very last one I saw before leaving the woods and entering our town again. 

At the edge of the forest there was a "run off" that had formed from the draining floodwaters, and it had left a very dark residue along the ground... It doesn't look as black in the photo as it did in person.  It looked sort of like "coal".  There is a coal fired electric plant about 5 miles up stream from this point along the river.  Along this newly formed "run off" trench laid a dead muskrat.  You can see it,nearly centered in the photo, it is a very small dark spot.    :(   I don't know what this sediment was, but it didn't look like it belonged  here, and the muskrat was not a good sign... 

When we got back into town, a block down the alley was this little bird, standing stone-still.A juvenile who was apparently sulking from having been thrust into the world from the nest...  I squatted down and was only inches from it, and it did not move.  I snapped its picture as Nik said, "Is it real?" (jokingly).  I reached out, and just barely touched it, and it flew away only about 2 feet off the ground.  It was pretty obvious that it had only just learned to fly.  :)