June blooming lilies

The month of June continued giving us a variety of colors and plants in our yard. Here are my favorite photos of our lilies, all located in the front yard. Below, you can see among the daylilies that I also have a few calla lilies. I love calla lilies although the flowers are too short-lived. But they do stand out among the other more colorful daylilies.

Here is a view of the daylilies as they encircle our crape myrtle tree. The smaller looking flowers in the foreground happen to be our white trailing lantana.

And my Easter lilies surround the birdbath.

Our best blooming roses in June

The month of June continued to give us some really nice rose blossoms. Below is one of our hybrid teas named Cancun.

This is Golden Showers. It doesn't realize it's supposed to be a climber, but it does just fine as part of the bushes in our front yard.

Here is another shot of Cancun a few days later.

As mentioned in a previous post, this is one of our favorites, Desert Peace -- another of our hybrid teas.

Our third hybrid tea is called Mojave. This is what we enjoyed the first week of June. This is another beauty, but I feel the flower pops open much too quickly. But I do love the color.

Here is a shot of all three hybrid teas together.

Time for some fledgling and nestling photos

June 1st was a banner day for birding. Heidi and I not only visited Shoreline in Mountain View, but we also visited Palo Alto Baylands. And the best part about visiting on the first of June was the number of "baby" birds that were roaming around. Here are a few of the photos I took of the "youngsters" at the Baylands.

Above is a fairly young American Avocet walking around on its own. Mama or Papa was probably watching closely. I think the parent was no more than twenty feet away. Below is another American Avocet with its chick in the mudflats. I would assume the chick was in no danger. Can you imagine how muddy this little one was? I'm glad it wasn't one of my own!

This babe is a black-necked stilt. Again, a parent wasn't too far off.

And here is another parent with its chick. This one didn't really look like it was ready yet to go into the water. These little chicks are so fluffy, and they don't stay that way for long. I'm glad we got to see these little offspring. That was quite a treat.

And here are a couple of cliff swallow nestlings. I'm sure by now they are no longer nestlings or fledglings. I'm fairly certain they are flying around with their folks all over the Baylands.

And, of course, we had to get at least one photo of a mother mallard and her darling little ducklings. This mama had nine ducklings following her.

I have more photos to post from this outing, although these were the only "baby" photos I had. Hopefully, I will post the next set of photos sooner than it took me to post this one!

Our roses during the month of May

During the month of May, our roses put on a beautiful show. And I thought it was about time I shared some of my best photos of them. We have quite a variety, yet most of their proper names are a mystery to me. The majority of our roses are in our front yard which has a southern exposure. We have four others on the east side of our house, and only a couple of them are located between our workshop/shed and the back of our house. These roses that are between the two buildings get early morning sun and late afternoon sun. They are also "protected" by a bunch of my cannas. And the mixture of colors is kind of funny. Our house and shed have a New Mexico adobe type of color, our cannas are the bright neon orange, and the roses are a vivid pink, as you can see in this photo below. The cannas are missing from this photo, but you'll have to use your imagination for that color.

This miniature rose is located by our front pathway. It's a bright salmony color, and is quite prolific when it's in bloom.

This one is called Golden Showers. It is supposed to be a climber, but it does better as a "bush." We used to have it in a pot near our front patio, but it never did very well once it was pot-bound. So, my husband planted it in the ground between our front pathway and our crape myrtle tree, and it is flourishing.

This beautiful rose is a floribunda named Princess of Wales. I got it "free" as a gift for purchasing other plants through Garden.com. This was also in a pot for quite a few years, and is now in the ground in our front yard and seems to be a bit happier. I really like its white blossoms with dots of pink on the undersides of its petals.

This is one of our three hybrid teas that are grouped together just outside our large kitchen window. In the front yard it's located between our driveway and our crape myrtle tree. This is a perfect location for them, a southerly exposure and a great place to see these beauties first thing in the morning when I go out to the kitchen to feed our kitties.

This is another miniature rose, I think it's called Candy Stripe. I've had this one for many years, and again, one that was in a pot for years until we were able to landscape our front yard about 6-7 years ago. Gosh, I can't believe it's been that long ago we put in the pavers and landscaped with a drip irrigation system.

And back to our trio of hybrid teas outside the big kitchen window. This one is called Mojave. Its color looks so much like a Mojave or southwestern sunset.

This pink rose was here when we bought the house, and it looked like it had been there for quite a few years. I love how this rose first opens up with the dark petals on the outer edges and the inner section a lighter shade of pink. This rose has a very nice fragrance. The bush itself (the main trunk) looks terrible. It looks like somebody had taken a hatchet to it. But, it was most likely damaged in a storm and/or a tree branch may have fallen on it when it was much younger. Anyway, this rose is located on the east side of our yard, and we've been fixing up the side yard, which means we are thinking of disposing of it. But first I want to try to get some cuttings and see if I can root them. I'd love to have another one of these roses, and I have no idea what its name would be.

This is the third rose of our trio of hybrid teas (front yard). This one is called Desert Peace. I love its multi-colored petals. It seems to be appropriately named since the colors could possibly make one think of the beautiful southwest desert (especially in the spring when the desert is in full bloom).

This is what the month of May brought us in the form of roses. I hope you liked seeing the beautiful colors we enjoyed.

Terns and swallows at Shoreline

Heidi and I re-visited Shoreline, Mountain View on the first of June. We had not been there since last fall. We had no idea of what birds we would see this time of year. So we were pleasantly surprised by what we ended up seeing. One of the birds we had fun watching as well as being challenged to photograph them in flight were the Forster's terns. They are loud and gregarious birds, and certainly a challenge to photograph. Below is probably my best shot of a tern in flight, flying over a flock of gulls. We think the gulls were California gulls. In the distance you can see what looks like a couple of white circus tents. That is the amphitheater where quite a few musical artists perform every summer.

Here's a second shot of a tern in flight.

While watching the terns we also saw a pair of gadwall swimming in the channel. From what I can tell, it looks like a pair of females. I think the males would be more "flashy" than this, and both of these ducks had orange and black bills, which is prevalent on the females, and not necessarily on the males. Besides, I would think that the males should have been in breeding plumage by the first of June. Anyone care to affirm this or correct me on this?

When the gulls got tired of the terns flying over them, they decided to "take off." Here's my shot of several of them in flight.

Shortly afterwards, Heidi and I decided to walk a little farther. And in another location that, at first, looked like there wasn't anything to see, she spotted in the distance a small "flock" of white pelicans. How cool! If you click on the photos you can probably get a larger image.

Shortly after the pelican experience, we thought we would head out. At first I was telling Heidi about barn swallows that have nested around a building there at Shoreline, and I was disappointed that I didn't see any flying around. Last year, my husband and I visited around this time of year and saw many barn swallows, all in flight. And I was never able to get a picture of them. No sooner I had mentioned this to Heidi, then we saw a few swallows flying over to a concrete wall, more like a culvert. The area had a large chainlink fence around it, to keep people out of it for safety reasons. Here are a few shots I took; you can see part of the chainlink fence in these two photos.

Ooohh! Love those wings!

There was a wooden stairway and railing nearby where more of the barn swallows were perched. I find these birds almost as beautiful as bluebirds. And I was certainly surprised that this many birds sat still long enough for me to get a photo of them.

On our way back to the car, we could hear a few song sparrows. It sure wasn't easy to locate them until Heidi pulled out her "trusty iPhone" (which has the iBird app on it) and called a song sparrow close enough that we could get a shot. How cool is that? Just an FYI: we don't do that very often. I'd rather try pishing before using the iBird to call the bird(s).

Needless to say, it was a good day for different species I hadn't seen in a while.

Lilies in May

The month of May we experienced a multitude of color from most of our plants. Here are some of my daylilies I was quite pleased with. For years I had all of my lilies in pots, but finally, last year we put them in the ground. We planted all the daylilies around our crepe myrtle tree, and they apparently love their location. Here are a few photos I took during the last half of May.

If you look closely you will see a spider inside the calla lily blossom.

And here is a big bee getting into one of the Stella d'oro daylilies. These daylilies are planted in the parking strip. The purple blossoms in the background is the wooly thyme at the peak of its blossoms.

More May flowers from our yard

I posted this photo (here) on a previous post. This was our side yard earlier in the spring, mostly in May. During the last week of June my son and husband started revamping that part of our yard. So the yellow flowers are now all gone. I don't remember the name of these flowers, but I've always called them (and that's what they look like to me) marguerite daisies. At the moment, the rose bushes are still all intact, but we have been discussing about where to replant them. There is one bush that will not be moved, and that is the deep red colored rose. That plant has probably been there for at least 15-20 years and we really don't want to lose that one. It's a prolific bloomer.

This is what the side yard looks like today with only the rose bushes (on the left). Between the rose bushes and the house is a gravel pathway. The rocks are what was removed from the front yard. My son and husband have also installed new water pipes from the front yard where the dark green plants are showing on the right, all the way back to the end of the back yard. We now have a faucet at the end of the back yard so we can more efficiently water our orange tree and future veggie gardens.

And now on to some of our May blooming plants. This photo (below) is a flowering pomegranate. This little tree is actually our neighbors', but it stands between our two side yards near the front. This particular tree always seems to "hide" several of our yard birds, mostly house finches and lesser goldfinches. I do think there are several house sparrows in this tree, too, but most of them are usually living and perching in our neighbors' palm tree that sits out in the front yard.

Our honeysuckle plant is on the west side of the house, not far from the flowering pomegranate. It seems to like this location; we've only had it for about a year now. We planted it where we once had a passion flower vine growing. I miss that plant, but this one is nice, too. It certainly does a good job attracting bees.

This is my autumn sage. It used to be a potted plant, but last summer we put it in the ground and it is doing so much better. It has room to spread its roots. It seems to always have flowers on it.

And here is one final shot of our marguerite daisies we had growing in the side yard. May was the best "show time" for these flowers. Once June came along, the flowers seem to be finished blooming.

These pink flowers are called sea pinks. We have several of them planted in the front yard closest to the sidewalk. They bloom in May and then look like tufts of grass the remainder of the year, including the winter months (provided we don't get a bad freeze).

This is part of what we call our parking strip - the strip of land between the street and the sidewalk. Besides the big old elm tree, we have planted and now enjoy wooly thyme and Stella d'oro daylilies. There is also a small amount of some type of sedum ground cover I planted there about the same year I had planted the wooly thyme. The sedum usually blooms in June, after the wooly thyme is done blooming.

I hope to post more yard flora featuring our roses. Stay tuned.

MIA - again!

Well, I've been missing in action again! Another whole month has gone by; I can't believe I didn't post anything during the month of June. Granted, we've been busy, but it seemed like the desire wasn't there as well. At least I've been trying to keep up with everyone else's blogs, and commenting now and then. I spent a few minutes going over my photos trying to find the last ones I posted. And now I realize I've got quite a few photos to share and posts to blog about.

The last post I mentioned going to our local county park where there was a "population explosion" regarding all the Canada geese we saw around the lake and picnic area. I mentioned in the first few sentences that Heidi and I went to look for nesting birds, namely snowy egrets and possibly great blue herons. We wanted to walk over to an area we had not checked out before. On our way we crossed over the creek by way of a pedestrian bridge. This area is known to have cliff swallows nesting all around the undersides of the bridge. And we enjoyed all the activity by the cliff swallows. They seemed to be quite busy, but we couldn't see them very well once they went under the bridge. As we continued to the other side of the bridge we could see quite a bit of activity on the ground. Swallows were flitting and fluttering all over the muddy ground. I saw one lone killdeer nearby; I wonder if this bird was preparing to build a nest, too.

If you click on the photos you can probably see a larger image. This photo, below, shows some of the flitting and fluttering activity, but I mainly focused in on the swallow in the lower right corner. This one was gathering little bits of grass.

Apparently, we were being entertained while these swallows were hard at work. They were busy making mud balls to take back to their nests they were building under the bridge.

Here is a closer view of these fascinating birds.

We finally made our way over to the eucalyptus grove. And, lo and behold! We actually saw great blue herons nesting! Can you imagine seeing these large birds way up high in the tops of the trees. They sure did look "out of place." There wasn't much activity other than seeing a heron here and there craning their beautiful long necks.

These birds were not necessarily easy to see in our binoculars, and it was even more difficult to get half-way decent photos. They definitely blend into the trees.

This one made me think of a sentry guard, keeping a lookout to make sure no predators invaded his territory. I do believe the females were probably incubating their eggs. I don't think there were any hatchlings yet. (This was back in early-mid May).

And if you can look closely, you will see this bird stretching his wings while his beak is barely visible behind the branch.

On our way back from the eucalyptus grove to the bridge Heidi and I saw this beautiful western bluebird. This is the very first time I have seen a bluebird in this valley. But then I don't have the "right stuff" in my yard to attract bluebirds. Maybe some day I will.

I love how this bird fanned his tail for us. He even let us get a good look at him from all sides.

As we were returning to our car by way of the trail we kept hearing this beautiful song bird, and then finally it made an appearance. I love hearing song sparrows. Getting a decent shot of this bird was a challenge, too. But here are a few shots I thought were decent enough to post.

I caught him in action here while he was singing.

As for nesting snowy egrets, we could only get a distant glimpse of white now and then (with our binoculars) on an island out in the middle of the lake. A nice well protected location for some snowies.

Population explosion

Heidi (aka Red) and I visited our local county park a few weeks ago. We had not been there since November, so we were fairly certain that we would see a variety of birds we may not have seen last fall. We didn't know what to expect, except we thought there should be some birds nesting in Vasona County Park in Los Gatos. We both have Mondays off which helps when one wants to visit a popular spot. After walking about a mile on a trail that follows Vasona Lake, (this is the back way in), we finally approached the main part of the park. On this day there was a group of school kids with parents and teachers having a picnic. And there are always lots of bikers and runners along the trail and within the park. We didn't see any others with binoculars and cameras. Little do they realize how much they miss when they aren't looking around their environment. Everyone seems to be in a hurry to get from point A to point B. Oh well. Anyway, I wanted to present a few parents and their offspring in this post. It was funny to see a couple of Canada geese swimming in the lake and then proceed to go past a lot of people guiding their little blessed events to a grassy area to feed. One thing for sure. They were not afraid of humans!

Here is a gosling all by himself/herself. I'm sure mom and/or dad was nearby. Two surprises with this visit was the number of adult Canada geese waddling around with their offspring. There were so many of them, and each family had a varied number of offspring. The other surprise was the difference in the size of the chicks/goslings. Some looked like they had barely hatched, and others looked like they were 2-3 weeks old. Any idea how old this little one is?

Here is one parent with just three little hatchlings. You can click on any of the photos to see a larger image.

Here are mom and dad with their 5 little goslings swimming toward the edge of the lake to head off to feed in a grassy area.

Here is another family of 5.

And look at this prolific family! Ten little chicks!

Here is another family of ten. Notice these chicks are larger than the previous photo.

You have to enlarge this one! Count the number of chicks - how many do you see? Heidi and I think this may have been a combination of two families, but we're not certain of that. Heidi thinks there was at least one "stray" chick that joined the group, but they all look the same size to me. What do you think?

Revisiting Palo Alto Baylands

Heidi and I went back to Palo Alto Baylands at the beginning of the month because I thought we would see the snowy egrets nesting there. But there were none to be found. Nonetheless, there was plenty to see there that day. We saw several red-winged blackbirds, but I had a difficult time finding one that would sit still long enough for me to get a photo.

Over by the ranger's station there were some beautiful rock rose bushes. These are really a beautiful color and they really stood out around all the other greenery.

While getting shots of the rock roses Heidi saw a California ground squirrel and pointed it out to me. These squirrels are so much more wild and wary of humans than our regular gray squirrels we get in our back yard.

At the duck pond area we saw these different looking mallards. Very interesting colors, would you say? At least we think they are hybrid mallards since they have the curly tail and dark colored heads. But the color of their heads is definitely not the typical green you would see on the males. And look at the color of their bills -- rather strange color again.

And speaking of strange, we saw a pair of Muscovy ducks also at the pond. I mentioned to Heidi that as tame as they seemed to be these ducks were probably left here by someone who had them as pets and decided to "let them go." I don't know that for a fact, but they did act tame around people, like they were expecting a hand-out of bread. Now the signs are posted everywhere that we are not to feed the animals. The signs are in three different languages; but no one pays attention to them. How sad for the animals who hang around the pond. They will never learn to fend for themselves, and that makes them more prone to predators.

If you take a closer look you will notice the duck in the back is all white. It also had beautiful blue eyes. Was it leucistic? I surely wouldn't consider it an albino since it still had red on its face and a reddish beak as well as yellow feet.

Right after the duck pond adventure we saw something large fly overhead. It looked like a hawk and landed in a nearby tree about 75 feet from the pond. While we were trying to get a decent angle to take photos of the hawk we also saw a jackrabbit. Watch out Mr rabbit! That hawk might want to try to take you down for his dinner! You do seem to be a fairly good size; maybe you're too much for the hawk to take on.

After getting home Heidi was able to correctly identify the hawk as an immature red-tailed. Here is a view of his back. Click on the photo to get a larger view. Just look at those beautiful feathers. The funny thing about the hawk that we had noticed was that it looked a bit disheveled.

Here's the front view. Notice the disheveled look on his chest feathers? These are still magnificent looking birds anyway.

As we headed back toward the pond we noticed at least one black-crowned night heron (BCNH) in a tree across the path from the pond. So we headed over to get a few shots. As we looked around Heidi noticed there were nests in the tree and there seemed to be more than one BCNH in the tree. Most of them were well hidden behind branches or tucked down in the nests. But this BCNH was more cooperative.

I got this shot of him just as he had landed in the tree.

In this shot, BCNH looks like a sentry, like a guard on duty.

We also encountered this little gosling around the duck pond. At first we thought he was a little stray. We wondered where Mama or Papa was.

And then we saw this as they walked away. Isn't this cute to see -- parent and offspring taking a stroll around the duck pond to show the little one what a big world it is.

HAVE A HAPPY MEMORIAL WEEKEND EVERYONE!!