Birding at the Tobico Marsh

Zach and I made sort of a spur-of-the-moment trip Tuesday afternoon. Spring is coming and it's the best time of year to go birding. The migratory birds are heading north again to their breeding grounds in Canada and it's a great opportunity to spot some otherwise rare birds as they stop over.

I've noticed that the Sandhill Cranes, Mute Swans and other summertime birds have returned from their winter break. I also noticed that the Common Mergansers who usually stop over on a local lake for a few weeks before continuing north have arrived. This gave me the cue that other birds like the Snowy Owl, the Tundra Swan and many others would be stopping over in the Bay City area.

The Bay of Michigan is the area between the east side of the "Mitten" and the web of the "Thumb". The bay forms a nice little nook in Lake Huron filled with marshes, inland lakes and the Saginaw River. A perfect place for birds, especially waterfowl to take a rest.

The coast is bordered with several state parks, wildlife preserves and sanctuaries that provide miles of beautiful hiking trails, boardwalks and lookout towers. The area has an active birding community and there is a lot of information about local sightings, and signs and directories for helping visitors to see the most birds.

The park we visited Tuesday night was the Tobico Marsh. It's about an hour 10 minutes away, and not something that we'd usually do on a Tuesday afternoon, but it was supposed to be the warmest day of the week before the temperatures go back down below freezing. We have Evelyn now, our 5 month old daughter, and I didn't want to take her out in the cold for long periods of time. So off we went.

Tobico Marsh is a beautiful place with interesting trails that include several footbridges that wander over the marshiest marsh spots.

Red Winged Blackbird on Cattail

The marsh runs in miniature streams above and below the dead grasses and reeds

Pussy Willow just starting to bloom

Red Dogwood

It was a dreary day and the lime green moss seemed to glow on the forest floor.

Most likely a patch of Violet Toothed Mushrooms

Puffballs

One of the many footbridges

This might be Sheep of the Woods mushroom but much of it has broken off.

One of the lookout towers. We found a geocache near it!

These are the Bufflehead ducks. New species for me! They were really far away but the park provided high powered binocular viewers and you could clearly see that they were Buffleheads. 

 

Here is a closer image from birdinginformation.org

Growing Oyster Mushrooms at Home

In this week's video, I show how we grew Oyster Mushrooms in 10 days with the Back to the Roots Organic Oyster Mushroom Growing Kit.

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Photo Friday

It's been a busy week for us. We built a new manger for the goats with a shelf to catch fallen hay. Once hay hits the ground they won't eat it. We also reinforced the structure in every way we could so it will last. It holds a whole bale of hay, and then some so it's convenient and doesn't have to be filled everyday. A bale lasts the goats a few days. Now that we've seen this one in action, we're going to build two more for the fiber goats and the boys. 

Stacey came over the other day and we made a batch of soap. Lemon Balm, Lavender and Tea Tree. It is so creamy and luxurious!

We also dehydrated a bunch of garlic to make seasoning blends. I had pulled our seed garlic last fall and planted a new variety. The basket of garlic cloves was sitting in the backroom, so we decided to put it to good use.

We found that a great way to "shell" a lot of garlic at once is to rub the cloves between two Silpat sheets. It works similarly to those rubber garlic rollers but on a larger scale.

Zach got me a mushroom farm for Valentines Day. I'll show progress as it comes along.

And the girls are laying again! It's so nice to have a supply of fresh eggs coming in from the coop!

Wild Wednesday, Puff Ball Mushrooms

We went for a walk in the woods this weekend and came across these adorable little mushrooms. I think they are puff balls, as they are a white rounded mushroom growing low to the ground with a short stem.

They have small spikes or warts on them as once sight referred to these as pineapple markings. I guess there are some poisonous look a-likes to this mushroom, and some can be deadly.

Wild Wednesday, Dryad's Saddle Mushroom

I didn't expect to be writing about mushrooms as much as I have, but nature keeps presenting such beautiful specimens this fall. We took the goats and Ceddie for a walk in the woods this weekend to find saplings to transplant and we came across this beautiful clump of mushrooms.

 I believe they are Dryad's Saddle Mushroom. The largest one was over a foot in length. This area of the woods is always damp. It's a low spot and in the spring it floods and forms a small pond that lasts until the hot weather comes.

These were growing just under on a tree that had fallen. They look like they may be just a white shelf mushroom, maybe an Oyster Fungus?