Spring...or not.

An ugly day outside. Cold. Rain. Storm warnings out.  This morning when I left work there was frozen precipitation covering my car windows.  This is so not like Spring.  Or is it?  I suppose it is typical for early Spring.

those of us with Spring (planting) fever don't want to admit it.

A few pics from the past couple days. 

I thought this female was so pretty with her striped brow, despite it being a house sparrow. 

 Is it just me, or are mourning doves a bit comical?

 I believe this is Little Dude! Can't remember if I reported that the space under the shed has been opened up for awhile now, though I hadn't been seeing him. I think he's using that as an extra escape path, rather then full time residence.  I saw him, noticeably smaller then the one the other day, across the stream.  He was having problems figuring out how to get across the stream.  The swiftness of the water made him hesitant to cross, plus it's a bit wider, so it's almost impossible for him to jump over like he had last summer.

So he backs out of there and makes his way over to a tree that hangs over the stream. Part way up he realizes it's going UP. So he turns around and goes back down the trunk.

Finally he decides on a branch that lays across the stream and makes it safely over.

 The attraction?  Cracked corn.

 Gets comfy, laying down to eat! 

 He knows I'm watching from the window.  He did run off, and headed for the burrow under the shed.

 This little muskrat has been busy. It seems to be making use of the whole stream. Very ambitious.  Makes me wonder if he's got a mate and needs to do a lot of work building a burrow.

 Though the above pics show him looking a bit like a drowned rat, here you can see that very little of his fur is actually wet.

 While I was following him along the stream I noticed a lot of splashing in some areas he passed.  I suspected what it was, though I thought it was a little early. But the creek chub are making that difficult trip up the stream. It's cool to watch them. They have to flick their fin a lot to make it over ridges of rocks and through the small rapids. They always to go the spot in the stream where it bends around the corner. Creek chub are known for the stone piles they build in streams, into which eggs are deposited. There's plenty of stone here for them!  The one in the photo, also had 2 others right along side him, looking almost like they were riding partly on him.  I'm wondering if they travel like that, using the power of several swishing fins to launch them over the rocks.

One of them startled me, as I must have startled him when I put a bucket in the stream to get some water for the butterfly bush I'd just transplanted yesterday.

What a mess I made of that. I know little of these things, truth be told. I have to look up everything, or ask Sister. I didn't  realize how shallow rooted these plants are, and thus how far out their roots can travel.  It looks like one of them made its way under the patio. I'm hoping I didn't disturb Bobs burrow tooooo much. Let's just say I disturbed a lot of yard yesterday! 

Sister told me I could cut off some of the root.  I had researched about transplanting this, but didn't see anything about the roots until after getting Sisters advice. Then I found more info! Isn't that usually the way?  But actually by talking to her I was able to better define my Google search.

So we'll see if this works or not.

This robin was chirping away. I took some video but seems the sounds didn't pick up nearly as well as I was hearing it.  But you can see it's beak is open. It was a very short chirping. At first I didn't think it was coming from the robin.

It is the high-pitched "Seeeee" call,  given in response to the presence of an aerial predator, like a hawk. Hmmm it mistook me for a hawk?

We're getting some thunder now. That's Spring like isn't it!