Transplanting Seedlings - Phase One

Four weeks after I planted seeds and put them under grow-lights in my dining area, I finally set to work on Saturday morning and transplanted roughly 18 young tomato and zinnia plants from their starter tray (above), where they were getting quite cramped, into much larger transitional pots. Over the next week or so I will gradually accustom them to outdoor conditions until they are able to tolerate full sun. Yesterday and today they had a few hours in a sheltered, shaded area outside my back door, with just a bit of late afternoon sun, and I brought them in again at night. Each day when I put them outside I will move them a bit closer to the sunny side of the patio, so they'll get a bit more sun each day. They'll dry out much more quickly than they did inside under the grow-light, so I'll keep them well watered.

I was not able to get most of them out of their little cells in the starter tray without disturbing their roots, and several of them showed signs of transplant shock; you can see them drooping sadly in the photo above. By this morning (below), however, all but one had perked up considerably. I lost only one -- a cherry tomato plant that did not survive the transplanting process.

Still in the starter tray I have some basil and pepper plants that don't need to be transplanted quite yet -- I'll give them a chance to get bigger before getting them ready to move out into the garden.

Goslings on the Cannon

Proud and vigilant parents are watching over at least two broods of goslings on the river near Ames Park. Even if you think we have a goose problem, you might find some cuteness here. Below is a little live gosling action.

House Sparrow Nesting

This house sparrow was at work on a roof beam overhanging the deck of the riverfront burger joint where Dave and I ate lunch in McGregor, Iowa, last Thursday. We could almost have touched it, it was so close, though these photos are cropped quite a bit, so it wasn't quite as close as it may seem. Rob Hardy's post on nesting inspired me to post these shots, which catch this bird twice with bits of nesting material -- dry grass, at a guess -- in its beak.

We assumed that the nest was under the overhanging corrugated metal roof, but didn't actually notice the bird going in there.

A lovely profile and such a nice white tummy...

It was a pleasure to watch this little bird from so relatively close. No fuzzy pictures this time!

Like a Bird on the Wire

I find that in taking the photo below in the picturesque Mississippi River town of McGregor, Iowa, on Thursday, I inadvertently captured the image of two birds perching on a chain, and the rather interesting elongated shadow of one of them projected onto a dentist's sign. The bird on the left appears to be a house sparrow, but I'm not sure of the one to its right, which seems to have a grayish body and a rather brown or rusty head. Anybody?

Prothonotary Warbler Down the Great River Road

On Thursday, on the first leg of our journey to pick up my daughter from college in Ohio, Dave and I drove south down the Great River Road through the Upper Mississippi River National Wildlife Refuge from far southeastern Minnesota into northeastern Iowa. We were looking for areas where the river spills over and floods woodlands -- the ideal habitat for the prothonotary warbler, whose breeding range finds its northwesternmost point, and its only Minnesota location, along this area of the Mississippi. (That's what the range maps in two of my bird guides indicate, at least, though the map on the Cornell Lab of Ornithology page linked to above shows the Minnesota range extending farther west across the southern part of the state.) We saw miles of the right kind of swampy habitat in the NWR and found easy access to a suitable spot for observation (above) just off the highway, where a road to a boat launch was closed after a few hundred feet due to high water.

We encouraged a visit from this brilliant yellow warbler by playing its call from a CD of birdcalls for a few minutes. We were rewarded within moments by a responding call from the trees and, soon thereafter, by a personal visit from the territorial male coming to challenge the supposed intruder. This was the first prothonotary warbler I had seen -- a life bird, as they say. I missed a great shot when the stunning little bird appeared against a dark tree trunk, but did catch this not-so-distinct photo (above, cropped close in, and below, less zoomed in) from which you can see the intense orange-yellow of the head and breast of this lovely bird. (Click on any of the photos for greater detail.)

We did not want to over-agitate the warbler, so we turned off the CD as soon as we had had the chance to see the bird for a couple of minutes. While on this little stake-out, we also saw and heard many other birds, including woodpeckers, a black-throated blue warbler and plenty of yellow-rumped warblers like the one below.

We were lucky that our trip wasn't later or that this year's late spring hadn't come earlier, since the trees were just starting to leaf out. Another couple of weeks of leaf growth and it's unlikely we would have been able to see these birds at all. As we drove further south and east, as far south as Indianapolis and Columbus, Ohio, spring advanced until we were seeing trees almost fully leafed out and lilacs and many other flowering shrubs and trees in bloom.