New Orleans to Memphis and MN - April 6 - 14

Returning north on the Mississippi River on the Paddlewheel - Queen of the Mississippi we were able to observe two weeks of change.  What we found was that the peak of Azaleas had moved north to Vicksburg and Memphis - the beauty of the southern cities had changed to more green.

Lesser scaup were still in the lower river

The live oaks had fewer flowers among them

Cardinal in still leafless shrub

Amaryllis now fuller flowered 
Brown thrashers sand along with Mockingbirds
The floodplain at Baton Rouge fully leafed out

At St Francisville the flowering had increased
Spider lilies
legumes

buttercups

fleabane

spring beauty

Happy dog

Brown Thrasher

camillia

crayfish chimney

Primrose - which had been in NO in previous week

Red Headed woodpecker
Ducklings in Natchez
Azalea and Camilla in Vicksburg - peak had shifted north
Floodplain below Memphis fulled leafed out
White pelicans now in Memphis - they were gone from the areas further south
While up north - April 14 was the seen below in our front yard.
And new at our feeders were juncoes and Purple Finch

More to come!!  Spring.







Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

New Zealand Birds

Image
By Kate Crowley As soon as I saw the kookaburra, the song started playing in my head, “Kookaburra lives in the old gum tree, merry, merry old……”  I don’t know how often I sang that song in school or at Campfire Girl gatherings, but I never could have imagined as a child that one day I’d see the real live bird in the wild. This kookaburra however was not sitting in a gum tree.  It was perched on a wire alongside a road on the North Island of New Zealand.  The kookaburra is a native of Australia and was introduced like so many others here. New Zealand, having been separated from Australia for millions of years had its own unique flora and fauna. But as soon as people arrived, the composition began to change.  Native birds were killed off – the Moas (there were nine species) being the most famous. These birds were bigger than the ostrich (12ft) and had hair-like feathers and no vestigial wings.  Its big size and unfamilarity with a predator as efficient as man brought it to exti
Read more

Sense of Place

Image
GOING NATURE’S WAY By Kate Crowley I am intrigued by the idea of Sense of Place; to feel completely ‘at home’ in one particular place.  I have read that people who grow up on the Great Plains feel claustrophobic when they are in forested environments and in reverse,  people who have grown up surrounded by forest find the openness of the plains unnerving, with nothing to break the view to the horizon. I grew up in the city, but the Minnehaha Creek and Parkway were just two blocks away and I spent countless hours playing and exploring there.  The city lakes were within biking distance. The Mississippi River was just blocks away from the apartment where I lived the first four years of my life.  When I was 36 I married Mike and moved to our current home and it was perfect.  When my dad first visited us in our new home, he said, “Kate must think she’s died and gone to heaven”.  This is where I am supposed to be.  Scientists who have studied the evolution of humanity have proposed
Read more

Sabula, Iowa, the Island City

Image
This is an amazing location that I did not know about until I went by on my boat.  Sabula is truly an island city and the only one on the river.  Across the river is Savanna, IL. Sabula is 1/4 miles wide and 1 mile long and connected by causeways to Iowa and Illinois.   Legend has it that Isaac Dorman crossed the river on a log and decided to settle here.  Must have been quite a log and a strange wind/current that day.  Sabula was the site of a button factory - clam shell buttons.  Strangely it was also the site of hog butchering.   Originally the island was surrounded by marshland, but when Lock and Dam #13 was put in the pool flooded the marsh and made the town in to a water surrounded island.   The Geneology Trails site says:  Commercial fishing is engaged in to a considerable extent with about 120,000 pounds of rough fish - carp, buffalo and perch - and about 25,000 pounds of dressed catfish being shipped annually. The town was platted and recorded in Dubu
Read more