Unusual Place for a Nest

And the award for "Most Creative Place to Nest" goes to...

This Carolina wren (and its mate). Now, I know Carolina wrens are not too picky about where they stash their babies. They're cavity-nesters, but they seem to use a very broad definition of "cavity". I have known them to nest, not only in tree holes and birdhouses, but air conditioning units, pockets of shirts left on clotheslines, shoes left outside, and now...

This cow skull my next door neighbor has stuck in the fork of a juniper tree. Now, I don't know why he has a cow skull stuck in a tree, but he does, and now this deceased bovine's brain case is home to a brood of Carolina wrens, with the foramen magnum apparently making an excellent doorway for the wren parents. I watched this wren and its mate flying back and forth delivering caterpillars and other insects to the skull for at least half an hour the other evening while grilling dinner on the back porch. Unfortunately, as many birders have noticed, birds have a great talent for going away right when you raise up a camera or binoculars, so I didn't manage to get an actual shot of the wren poking its head into the back of the skull.

In other bird news, this morning I saw a female Black-Chinned Hummingbird enjoying my Scarlet Runner Beans. At least those beans are benefiting somebody. I think it's too hot here for runner beans, since they've only put out one pod all year, despite growing huge and making lots of blossoms. There's a possibility they might start producing in the fall, once it cools down but before it freezes, but I'm starting to think they're not worth growing around here.

A Brand New Swallowtail

I showed mercy towards the parsley worms feasting in my herb garden, and this is what I get! Yes, this is a parsley worm all grown up, a newly emerged Black Swallowtail Butterfly on the boxwoods in the front yard. You can see the empty crysallis right above the butterfly's head. My cat, Basil, is the one who alerted me to its presence, poking at it a bit with his paw. I thought it was odd that the butterfly didn't fly away until I realized it had just come out of its pupa and hadn't fully "inflated". Quite an exciting thing to see!

Despite his protests, I put Basil inside so the butterfly could dry its wings in peace. And the parsley worms even left me plenty of parsley for my own use, so it's a win-win. If you ever see some of these critters on any of your parsley-family plants (which includes carrots, dill, and cilantro), you might want to think twice about squishing them.

Goat Cheese and Summer Vegetable Pasta

This is another recipe that doesn't have any precise measurements. Just use what you have and eyeball it. It's a nice, light, vegetarian lunch that's a good way to use up summer produce from the farmer's market or your own garden.

Ingredients:

• garlic - I used one of my "runt" bulbs that only got about as big as a quarter. Use as much as you like depending on how garlicky you want it.
• onion - My onions didn't do so well so I only got a few golfball sized bulbs. I used a whole one. Again, use how much you like
• young summer squash - I used yellow crookneck from the garden. Zucchini or pattypan works too. Just try to get the youngest specimen you can so it will be nice and tender
• wine - whatever you have around, I used Chardonnay
• cherry tomatoes - quartered, or if you have larger tomatoes, diced
• cherve goat cheese - very common at farmer's markets around here, or some other soft cheese
• herbs - basil, parsley, thyme, or whatever you have
• pasta - I used whole wheat spaghetti. Use whatever you want.

Other vegetables that would be good include young eggplant (same as the squash - get the youngest and tenderest you can), mushrooms, sweet peppers, and green beans.
Heat up some olive oil in a pan on medium-low and add thinly sliced onions. Cook them slowly to let the sugars caramelize so the onions turn golden, then add the garlic and thinly sliced squash. Cook until the squash gets soft. Oh, and don't forget to get your pasta going while the veggies are cooking.
Splash in some wine and let it reduce a bit, then add a chunk of goat cheese and the tomatoes. You don't want to cook the tomatoes, just warm them up and melt the cheese. This is the part where you would add herbs as well, but my goat cheese already had herbs in it, so I skipped that part.
Once the pasta is done, add it to the vegetables while still piping hot. Stir it around so the pasta gets coated in the sauce.

Add salt, black pepper, hot pepper flakes, Parmesan cheese, etc. to taste. Serve with that same wine you used in the sauce. Enjoy the cheesy pasta, bursts of sour-sweet tomato, and nutty bits of squash.

First Tomatoes (and squash) of the Year

And the award for the first tomato variety to ripen this year is a tie between Hawkins Plum and Black Cherry! Both were picked on May 31.

Unfortunately, the first ripe Hawkins Plum was rotten on the bottom and full of bugs feasting upon its spilled guts (yuck!). I'm not sure if it was because of BER or it touching the ground or both. The one in the picture wasn't quite ripe all the way, but I went ahead and picked it because it was starting to show signs of rotting too, and I didn't want it to get as bad as the first one. As it is, the rotten spot is small enough that it can just be cut off to save the rest of the tomato, and it's ripe enough that it can go the rest of the way on the counter.

I confess I usually prefer to pick tomatoes when they're not quite ripe and ripen them the rest of the way in the kitchen. This time I wanted it ripe all the way for photogenic qualities, but see what happened? This is why I like it pick them early, just in case. Less time for bugs or birds or other critters to get them, and once the tomato has started to turn to its mature color, it can ripen the rest of the way off the plant without a noticeable difference in flavor. This is different from the tomatoes from the store, which were picked while still completely green, and then ripened with ethylene gas, because at that early stage they wouldn't ripen on their own without help. That's part of the reason why they taste like crap.

By the way, BER stands for Blossom End Rot. It's supposedly caused by a calcium deficiency in the soil, but I doubt it because, well, have you seen my soil? It's MADE of calcium! On the other hand, it could be a calcium uptake problem, which means it doesn't matter how much calcium is in the soil, if the plants can't absorb it. I don't really worry about it too much because it seems like only certain varieties are prone to it, namely the plum category of tomatoes, and those seem to only get it on their first few fruits and then grow out of it. And, like I said, if it's not too bad, I can always cut that end off. Hopefully Hawkins will get over this BER thing soon enough once most of the tomatoes ripen.

The Black Cherries could maybe use a bit more ripening on the counter too. It's hard to tell. They don't look as dark as I thought they'd be, more of a light purple than black, with green shoulders (in tomato speak that's when the area around the stem of the tomato stays green even when the fruit is ripe). Basically, Black Cherry, as the name suggests, is the cherry version of a black tomato, another category of tomatoes that are very dark purple in color and often have green shoulders. They're also known for having a rich flavor. So far the only black tomato I've grown so far was Cherokee Purple, but I was sure happy with it. It made an excellent BLT.

The other tomatoes haven't shown any signs of ripening yet, not even the Yellow Pears, another cherry sized variety (even though they're pear shaped) which should ripen early. They've got a lot of green pears on them though.

I found this blog here where the author does tomato tastings every year of the varieties she's grown. That sounds like a good idea and I may steal it, if nothing else than to keep track of the tomatoes I have grown for my own reference, because there's so many varieties out there. Also, the flavor of a tomato can depend a lot on the growing conditions, so a variety of tomato grown in Texas may end up tasting a bit different than the same variety grown in Ohio. For example, the famous Pink Brandywine tomato doesn't do well here at all. It can't take the heat and drops most of its blossoms. On the other hand, black tomatoes like Cherokee Purple do great, while I've heard that in cooler climates they never really develop to their full potential color and taste-wise.

This is why heirloom plant varieties are so good, because they are diverse enough that you can find varieties that are adapted to your specific habitat, you just have to do a little research. Of course I'm not that interested in tomato varieties described as ripening early in cool weather, but I'm always on the lookout for ones that are touted as being heat-tolerant.

Well, enough rambling about tomatoes. As you can see from the picture above, I also harvested the first of another summer favorite, squash! Yellow Crookneck, to be precise. Actually, those pictured had gotten a little too mature and were a little on the seedy size. Summer squash are best harvested before the seeds have hardly developed at all, and in this variety the rule of thumb is to harvest them before they've started growing those cool warts. However, I am making one exception, since I need more seeds. I'm letting one squash on each of my six plants mature so I can harvest seeds. Supposedly letting any of your summer squash mature will cut down on production since the plant figures it's job is done once it's made some mature seeds, but with how prolific summer squash is, I'm not too worried about that.

On the other hand, when they're at this stage where they've gotten a little on the seedy side, they're great for stuffing, since you scoop the seeds out and are left with a nice container. But these guys ended up sauteed with some of my Chet's Italian Red garlic.

Finally, on that day of harvesting, I should also note that I dug up the last of my potatoes, the Rio Grande Russets. It was another disappointing yield of only 4.62 pounds. Now I'm pretty sure that it's not a variety thing, since all my potato varieties did lousy, but something to do with bad conditions for potatoes in general. I decided to give Rio Grande another chance as well, and separated out the smallest tubers for seed to plant this fall along with the Purple Viking ones I saved. I'm going to have to do some more research to find out what went wrong. The plants and potatoes themselves looked healthy, so I don't think it was a disease or anything. I just got pitiful yields. Maybe they need some kind of fertilizer.

Full Flower Moon

I'm going to call this moon by its Native American name, the flower moon, rather than the English name of milk moon, mainly because of these Black-Eyed Susans coming up under the elms in my back yard. Finally, some of that shade wildflower mix I planted is starting to pay off!


That's not the only thing that's blooming. My fence apparently came with Unexpected Bonus Morning Glories. When I took this picture today's blooms were just started to close back up. They're pretty earlier in the morning. I like how my yard was neglected for a while before we moved in and then I'm getting all these surprises coming up. (Except for the Bermuda grass. Still hate the Bermuda grass.)

Here's a wide shot of the Scarlet Runner Beans, because they're now well over my head. Sorry about the glare, it's a sunny day. They're still blooming a lot but not many pods. I hope it's not too hot for them already. They're growing up some bamboo stalks I, um, borrowed from the neighbor behind me that has bamboo growing into the alley. The stalks die every year and new ones come up, so I sorta helped myself to some of the dead stalks, tying them to the chain link fence for extra bean support. Soon I will be able to get that giant.

The regular beans are just starting to reach the top of the chain link fence. I have bamboo poles ready for them, but I don't think they get as tall as the runner beans.


Also in bloom is the squash. Under the squash jungle you can see a little yellow crookneck starting to grow. Won't be long before that baby is ready for the grill.

The cushaw squash vines are getting a bit huge. Lots of Bermuda grass coming up in the paths that I haven't put landscape fabric over yet, but these squash vines may be tough enough not to care.

I'm still waiting for my first ripe tomato, but it looks like I've got a contender! It's one of the Hawkins Plum tomatoes, and I've got lots more green ones on my plants. This is a family heirloom I got from a GardenWeb member (so it's not commercially available), and so far it's one of my best performing varieties, at least as far as how vigorous the plants are. The tomatoes are nice and big too, much bigger than Roma tomatoes from the store. But the real test is if they make good sauce. All my other tomato varieties are covered with green fruit but none have started to ripen yet, not even the small-fruited ones (Yellow Pear and Black Cherry).

The tomatillos are blooming and setting fruit as well. I hope that three plants will be enough for canning some salsa verde. Tomatillos are prolific, but I was planning on having more plants than three.

At least they're doing better than the peppers. I am having a horrible pepper year. Through a combination of late frosts, April heatwaves, snails, and cutworms, out of the several varieties I started from seed only a few stragglers have survived. My CSA farmer gave me three Jimmy Nardello plants and one has already been cutwormed! I never had a problem with cutworms before, so I didn't do any of those things you're supposed to do to protect from them. The eggplants fared abou the same, but I planted less of them, so now there are no survivors. I guess there's always next year, and for this year I will have to rely on my CSA and the farmer's market for peppers and eggplants.

I even resorted to buying a dozen jalapeno plants from Home Depot so I'll at least have something. They're sharing a bed with the Hawkins tomatoes. Only 8 of them have survived, but those look like they're going to make it.

If you'll recall, I was also having a lot of okra problems, but now I've finally got some big plants growing. I'd still like to have more, though. Maybe I'll put them in a different bed. As you can see here, I added watermelons (the viney things with the deeply lobed leaves) around the okra plants to hopefully act as a living mulch and help them along. Maybe later I can add black-eyed peas as some sort of African variant of the three sisters method.


Along the back fence I've got pickling cucumbers (seen here), luffa gourds, Charantais melons, and Malabar spinach planted. Most of them aren't very far along, as you can see here. There's a lot of dayflowers coming up along the fence as well, but they're a native wildflower and don't seem to hurt anything. The Malabar spinach is not related to true spinach, but is supposed to be an ornamental vine with edible leaves that likes hot weather, which is good since most greens don't do well in hot weather.


The Swiss chard's still fine though. I thought it should have bolted by now, but it's still going. I got a bit sick of it and haven't harvested any more in a while. In the middle of it you can see the Broadleaf Czech garlic that's about ready to harvest. I pulled up one earlier this week, but it looked like they needed a few more days.

The peas are kaput. Here's the last bit of dead vine before I pulled it up and chucked it in the compost pile. This fall I'll plant a lot more so I'll have enough to freeze. I had a good pea crop this spring, but just enough to eat fresh for a few meals. The weird weather didn't help though.

Earlier this week I also harvested the Purple Viking potatoes. They didn't do quite as bad as the Red LaSoda, but it was still a little disappointing. I ended up with 5.7 pounds, and a lot of them were split or chomped by bugs (the weigh-in was done after I washed them and threw away the ones that were too damaged to be worth saving). I'm going to go ahead and save the littlest ones for seed and try planting more this fall, but I was expecting a bit better than merely doubling the amount of potato I plant. What kind of yields are potatoes supposed to get, anyway? Well, Rio Grande is still in the ground. Maybe they'll do great.

The sweet potatoes are supposed to actually like it here, so hopefully I'll be getting more than a few pounds out of each bed for them. I've got them all planted now, all five varieties, two per bed (so one bed is half sweet potatoes and half I don't know what else yet). Aren't they pretty? They're really good looking plants. They look more like some tropical houseplant than a vegetable plant. They need a long growing season, though. I won't get to harvest them until frost, seven months from now. The good news is they'll be one of the few plants I expect to actually still be green and lush in July and August.


Finally, I leave you with a good look at one of my garden friends. I have a variety of different critters living in my yard, but a lot of them are quick and hard to photograph unless I happen to be ready with a camera at just the right time. Well, this Texas spiny lizard (Sceloporus olivaceus) was hanging out on one of my elm trees just as I was going in. I've got several of them in my yard (another one likes the oak tree in the front), and they live all over Central Texas, though they camoflauge so well on tree bark that they're often not seen (they also tend to quickly run around to the opposite side of the tree trunk when someone walks by). It's amazing that a lizard that can get up to 11 inches from nose to tail-tip can be this sneaky, but here he is giving me that look that says, "What are you looking at? Just some tree bark here. Nothing to see. Please move along." I hope he's hungry for lots of nasty garden bugs.

The Garlic Harvest Begins

Finally, after a long wait, I have started harvesting garlic! My garlic was planted way back in September, so that's 8 months of waiting for good heirloom garlic, but it's finally paying off.

Having never seriously grown garlic before (besides half-heartedly planting some store cloves and not getting much out of them), I was unsure which varieties to plant, so I ordered the garlic sampler from Seed Savers Exchange.
I recieved the following varieties.

• Bogatyr - Originally from Moscow. Beautifully marbled brown or purple striped cloves. Good storage qualities. Consistently one of the largest garlics grown at Heritage Farm
• Broadleaf Czech - Nice big tan cloves with a hint of red. Cooked flavor is very nice, described as mild and full flavored. When raw the flavor is hot to very hot.
• Chet's Italian Red - Highly productive and adaptable strain. Heirloom variety found growing wild in an abandoned garden along the roadside. A good garlic for eating raw, because the flavor is not too strong.
• Chrysalis Purple - Dependable variety with large heads and easy-to-peel cloves, excellent flavor. One of the hardiest varieties we offer. Holds well in the field during harvest.
• Elephant - Not a true garlic, but actually is a type of leek. Huge cloves, and much milder flavor than regular garlic.
• Georgian Fire - Obtained from eastern Germany. Described by chefs as a truly “white hot” garlic. Raw taste is strong with a nice hotness that is not at all unpleasant. Great for salsa and salads.
• German Extra Hardy - Vigorous grower with long roots that enable it to overwinter without heaving out of the ground. Outside skin is ivory-white, but the clove skin is dark red. Strong raw flavor, high sugar content, one of the very best for roasting.
• Pskem River - Originally from the Pskem River Valley in Uzbekistan. Beautiful purple striped cloves, full flavor.
• Persian Star - This variety was collected in Samarkand, Uzbekistan. Pleasant flavor with a mild spicy zing. Good all-purpose variety that produces reliable yields year-after-year.
• Tochliavri - From the village in the Republic of Georgia where Chester Aaron’s father was born. Original stock obtained from Dr. Peter Hanelt at Gatersleben in eastern Germany. The standard by which all other garlic flavor should be judged.

That's a LOT of garlic, but I use a lot of garlic, and I wanted a good variety so I can see which ones do well in my climate. I've been told that softnecks do better in the south than hardnecks, but I would like to have some of both. Supposedly hardnecks have better flavor, but that may just be hype since the garlic you buy at the store is almost always a softneck variety called California White. Hardnecks may seem special due to being less common.
Timing of garlic harvest seems tricky. If you pull them too early, the bulb will not have divided into cloves yet, and you'll get a solid bulb like an onion. Too late, and the cloves fall apart. I've gotten garlic in my CSA bag that was harvested either too early or too late, so I know what these look like. They're still usable, but not ideal.
The problem is judging what stage your garlic is at underground by looking at what's going on above ground. On top of that it can vary depending on your garlic variety. First I read that garlic is ready to harvest when 1/4 to 3/4 of the leaves are dead. That's a pretty big range! Chet's Italian Red seemed to be the earliest garlic I have. Its leaves started dying before any of the others. I pulled one up when it was 1/4 dead, and a bulb had hardly begun to form.
After that, I was more careful, trying to gently dig around the garlic to take a peek at the bulbs without actually pulling them up. Finally I also found tips that softnecks are ready when the tops start to flop over, and you should squeeze the stalks to check them. If they're spongy feeling they're ready, if they're still hard they need more time. Of course spongy vs. hard turned out to be relative.
Finally this past Thursday I couldn't wait any longer, and dug Chet's up.


Looks like I did well. The tops are about half dead, the stalks were spongy and starting to fall over, and when I dug them up, I could see individually defined cloves bulging out, with the outer skin still in tact, just like the garlic at the store. As you can see, they're pretty dirty, since we recently got rain, so my clay soil is still a bit sticky. Garlic varieties vary on how many cloves they get per bulb, and I got two bulbs of each variety, so I ended up with vastly different numbers of plants per variety. Chet's had the most, so I ended up with 25 bulbs total! A couple of them are puny, but most were about average sized, and I got two or three monster-huge ones. Those are going to be saved to re-plant this fall.

Now comes the curing stage.


For now, I tied the tops to clothes hangers and hung them up on hooks in the garage. (And now the garage smells like garlic. No vampires here!) They're supposed to be allowed to dry out for two or three weeks, depending on the humidity (which has been high around here lately). I left all the dirt on so it can dry out and will be easy to rub off later. I'm not supposed to wash them with water, since that will make them take much longer to cure. The outer skin of the bulbs is supposed to dry out and form a protective cover for the cloves inside. Once it's dried out and cleaned up, maybe I can try braiding it.

The softnecks are certainly maturing faster than the hardnecks. The leaves have always been much bigger on the softnecks as well. I wonder if it's always that way, or if it's because my hardnecks are having a hard time. It looks like Broadleaf Czech is about ready to harvest next, and then the last softneck, Tochliavri, after that. The Elephant garlic, besides being really, really big, is acting more like a hardneck. My other hardnecks are just now putting out scapes.

Here's a nice bunch of scapes from German Extra Hardy. I let the Pskem River scapes get too big, so they were tough and fibrous when I tried to eat them. They need to be harvested before they uncurl. Then they're still nice and tender. Bogatyr is just starting to have scapes poking out, so I'm going to let them get a little longer before harvesting them.

Everything seems to be going well, and I like having a staggered harvest like this. The hardneck bulbs are taking longer to mature, but they're making up for it by giving me some scapes first. Bascially I'm in garlic heaven right now! I'll try to post more pictures of the different varieties once they're all harvested and cleaned. When I recieved my garlic sampler way back in September, I was amazed at the variety of shapes and colors garlic can be, from ugly bumpy irregular Chet's Italian Red, to beautiful purple striped Pskem River. This is why I find heirloom vegetables to be so interesting

Balcones Canyonlands National Wildlife Refuge

On Daniel's most recent day off we took a daytrip to Balcones Canyonlands National Wildlife Refuge, northwest of Austin.

We remembered to bring binoculars and water, which was GOOD, but we forgot to bring walking sticks and a camera, which was BAD.

Especially the camera. I reeaaally wish I had brought a camera. Sorry, readers. I am totally kicking myself about that.

It took about an hour and half to get there from San Marcos, taking us out to some really pretty country around Lago Vista. I hadn't been out there before, but WOW. This is the kind of country that makes me really resent people who think Texas is some kind of barren wasteland.

Since it was a weekday, there was nobody at the wildlife refuge. Really, I think maybe we passed one car. There was one USFWS vehicle parked by the toilets at the entrance. That's it. I've never been to a national wildlife refuge before (well, there was that one grad school trip to Aransas Wildlife Refuge to see the whooping cranes, but I wasn't paying much attention to the logistics), so I guess I expected it to be more like going to a national park, with some kind of visitor center and entrance fees and human beings of some kind of greet you, but no, just a parking lot, composting toilets, and an information kiosk with trail maps. Other than that, we were on our own, which is not necessarily a bad thing.

We were at the "Warber Vista" area of the refuge, with the trails that go through old growth Ashe juniper (aka the much-maligned "mountain cedar") mixed with oaks (shin, Texas red, and live to be exact) that is prime nesting habitat of the federally endangered Golden-Cheeked Warbler. We could already hear the warblers singing in the distance at the observation deck near the parking lot. I had never heard one before, but Daniel works at the only state park (last I heard) that has GCW's nesting in it, so he knew what they sounded like. The brochure at the wildlife refuge described their song as "Please, please your teacher," which we both thought was lame and maybe even a little kinky. (Oh, in case you didn't know, putting words to a bird's song is a common thing for birdwatchers to do to help you remember it.) I much prefer Daniel's version, that the birds are actually singing "La Cucaracha", especially since it helps you remember not just the rhythm, but the melody as well. You can listen to their song here. The La Cucaracha version is the Type A song, and the one we hear most often. We did hear Type B as well, but we haven't thought up a good way to remember that one yet (suggestions are welcome).

Having already accomplished Daniel's goal of making sure I "get to hear golden-cheeked warblers before they go extinct", we started the hike into the canyon. The trails here are rated as "moderate", but I was very grateful for the shade provided by the majestic junipers. I've been on much more difficult hikes than this (but a walking stick would have helped). Good thing I wore my good boots. I guess lack of shade bothers me more than rough terrain, so I found the hike quite easy, aside from some slippery spots caused by recent rains.

Early into the hike, we passed by a karst limestone outcrop, and out slid a Giant Centipede! This is when I started kicking myself for not bringing a camera, as the centipede crawled all over the rock face, poking into every nook and cranny for goodies (and if you know what the limestone around here looks like, you know there's a LOT of nooks and crannies for centipede goodies to be hiding). We felt we were a fairly safe distance from the venomous creature, and it was so preoccupied with its search that we watched it for a long time, until it crawled back into a crack and out of view. I knew we had giant centipedes but had never seen one in the wild before. Another first!

Further on down we heard more warblers, but all of them were just out of view. I resigned myself to the fact that I probably wouldn't actually see one, and was just happy to hear them. We pressed on, and finally Daniel spots a warbler way up in a tree ahead of us. I pull out my binoculars to get a better look, but it swooped away before I got a good focus. A little while later, another one whooshed by. Darn it! Birds are so fast like that. Daniel's already familiar with what golden-cheeks look like, but if I was on my own and didn't know what was supposed to be there, I wouldn't have been able to tell anything more than that they were probably warblers of some sort. The brochure said that Black-and-white Warblers are also here, and I mistook a golden-cheek or two for a black-and-white, but Daniel assured me they were golden-cheeks. The rest of the GCW's body is black and white, so without seeing the gold, I was playing it safe and assuming them to be the more common warbler species. However, one important distinction is that black-and-whites act differently than golden-cheeks. The former has a habit of crawling up and down branches and trunks of trees similar to a nuthatch. These warblers weren't doing that, so I believe Daniel was right. (Getting familiar with how different species of birds move and act is also a really helpful skill for a birdwatcher to have, especially for those situations where the lighting might make hard to see colors and markings very well.)

Ok, so not only did I get to hear them sing, but I got some brief glimpses of golden-cheeks flitting through the treetops, AND I got to watch a giant centipede for a while. I was happy then.

But there was more to come. Later, practically right in front of my face, I saw a warbler that I couldn't identify. I pointed it out to Daniel, and he was stumped too. It was rather dull for a warbler, and I noticed it was kind of scruffy-looking, and acting a bit clumsy clambering around on the tree branches. Before my mind could really click with what I was seeing, and adult GCW holding a big fat green caterpillar in its beak swooped down and shoved the caterpillar in the mouth of the bird I had been watching. Oh my GOSH, it was a fledgling warbler!

Why, why, WHY DID I NOT BRING A CAMERA?

Looking around, we realized that we had strolled right in the middle of a family of warblers! We had been hearing this strange, chirpy call, and realized it was the babies begging for food. On the other side of the trail were two more fledglings clumsily hopping through the trees, while the two parents frantically collected more green caterpillars to shove in their mouths. I pointed out to Daniel how the babies were fuzzy looking, clumsy, and fluttered their wings, all indicators that they're fledglings that have just left the nest and not adult birds. Well, you know, that and the adult birds shoving food in their faces. I really should have known what the baby was when I first saw it, but I guess seeing fledgling golden-cheeks seemed too good to be true, so I was afraid to say it until it was undeniable.

I did, incidentally, see a Black-and-white warbler pass by as well, as we stayed in that spot to watch the GCW family. I also saw another adult warbler that I couldn't identify. All I could see was a solid yellow belly, which neither golden-cheeks nor black-and-whites have. I didn't get a good look at the dorsal side.

Another way to tell a fledgling is that they're kind of stupid. Well, ok, more like they're inexperienced, so they'll get a lot closer to you than an adult bird. That's why these guys would get right in front of our faces (Argh! Why didn't I bring a camera?), and when we'd have a baby right there in front of us, Mom or Dad would swoop down close as if to check us out. It felt like we could reach out and touch them, but we just stood quietly on the trail trying not to scare them. Finally, after I don't know how long, they started moving off. Maybe Mom and Dad had some kind of method to herd the kids away from these questionable mammals standing there staring at them.

After they moved on, we did too, and there was less excitement for the rest of the hike, though we did see some very pretty scenery, interesting native plants, and more common birds. We even heard one of the most majestic sounds in nature, a red-tailed hawk scream (a sound awesome enough that in the movies they make all birds of prey sound like red tailed hawks, even those squeaky bald eagles). We also saw a few more golden cheeked warblers. The finale was seeing one grab a green caterpillar about the side of its head and try bashing it to death against a branch. Ambitious little guy (or maybe he just had some really hungry mouths to feed and wanted to get it over with quickly). No more fledglings were seen. Perhaps the word had got out that nosy humans were in the vicinity and it would be best to call the kids away from the trail.

All in all, it was an amazing experience, and I hope it wasn't a completely "you had to be there" type thing. We didn't even see all of what is open to the public. The other side of the refuge is where they have the Black-capped Vireo habitat, our other federally endangered songbird. I was too tired and hungry to go on another hike after that, so we saved that for another day. I'll remember my camera next time!