My mother used to take us on walks in the mountains or the hills and she would point out different species that she identified, both fauna and flora. — Albert II-Prince of Monaco
Spring is truly in the air, even with a few nights of cool temperatures, it’s nice to wake to birds singing, bees buzzing on cherry tree blooms, butterflies flitting across dandelions. Oh, it is all so glorious after a very, very, long year. Spirits are lifted. Wilhelmina, the cat, pirouettes across the new green grass leaping for butterflies she’ll never capture. Harry, the other cat, crouches in the clover eyeing bluebirds as they check out bluebird boxes.
While waiting until after Good Friday, I prepared to plant wildflower seeds ordered for the raised beds. It’s a good thing I waited as every year when early temperatures deceive us into thinking spring is really here and the garden centers tempt us with abundant and beautiful plants and flowers, here comes plummeting temperatures below freezing; out come sweaters and raincoats.
Last year we gathered local wildflower seeds from a farmer’s field. I’ve seen bits of green emerging so I’m hopeful they will thrive in the same Prairie soil they have known for years. Some people will think of these flowers as simply old weeds but they are beautiful in clumps and with unusual foliage and flowers, perhaps a few with stickers. Stickers hopefully will only discourage deer from munching. I think of the proverb- a weed is simply a flower out of place. It’s been said of dandelions-if you had to pay for them everyone would want one.
Across the Prairie are multitudes of yellow wildflowers of all shapes and sizes; I find it almost impossible to identify each with any certainty. There’s a small yellow flower than can cover an entire pasture and seems to enjoy doing so. It perhaps is one of the primroses. Another yellow flower with a foot long stem and yellow blooms at the top I’m pretty sure is butterweed as it typically grows along fallow fields and roadside ditches. Check out uswildflowers.com for photographs of a kazillion wildflowers that grow in our area.
From the flora to the fauna. While feeding the Pekin ducks I noticed four Black Bellied Whistling ducks standing tall over by the cypress tree at the edge of the lake. While the ducks are not native to our area more and more are being sited here, building or finding nests, and raising their young. The bird is quite beautiful in a comical sort of way. Unlike the identification of wildflowers, the markings of a Black Bellied Whistling duck cannot be confused with any other. The bird stands erect on its long reddish legs. Its bill is a bright pink-orange color. Of course, his belly is black. There’s rather a chestnut color across its breast and its head is a lovely dove gray. The bird is not skittish but stands and observes. The bird’s habits are described as “gregarious and social.” I’ve not heard the duck whistle though you can hear the five different whistles at Audubon.org. There is a duck box on the lake. Hopefully, our Black Bellied Whistling ducks will make it a home.
Columns by Shannon Bardwell of Columbus appear in The Dispatch weekly. Email reaches her at [email protected].
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