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I got a cortisone shot the other day in anticipation of my cross-country trip which starts next week with the goal being four days at Yellowstone with many stops both to and fro. I really wanted to get out to Sterling to see the Great Blue Heron rookery which is always a treat. Today was no exception. There were a lot of other birds as well and each year I see different ones. There were lots of Blue Jays. Except for my visit to Janet's last week, I haven't seen many Blue Jays the past few years. They must have had a bumper crop this year!!
The first bird I spotted was a Common Yellowthroat -- a warbler. I have only seen these one other time -- at Payne's Prairie in Florida with my sister.
Going through the woods to the rookery, I spotted this Wood Thrush, another bird I don't see too often.
I counted 13 nests but there may hve been more. These three nests were sitting close together. Three young ones are being fed on the right.
They are all looking up to the adult for more food. Great Blue Herons are usually very solitary birds except during mating and nesting.
I think the young one is ready to fly on his own. They seem older this year than when I usually see them which is a couple of weeks later.
There were several families of Canada Geese and lots of bird poop on the pathway by the pond!!
The place was crawling with cute little chipmunks. This one stopped posed for me a bit!
This Belted Kingfisher was hanging out with the Herons.
I didn't see any ducks at all this year which was unusual but the ponds were a bit drier than usual so that may have been the reason. I saw several beautiful Bluebirds.
At the end of the walk, I sat for a bit in a picnic area and just watched the trees around me. The above Bluebird, this Cardinal and the birds that follow all passed by me there!
Downy Woodpecker. You can tell by his prominent tuft on the beak.
There were a lot of Tree Swallows round but generally they are moving too fast. A couple stopped to pose for me for a bit.
An Eastern Phoebe stopped by to visit.
Almost forgot this beautiful Caspian Tern which flew over the pond.
Last but not least was this Northern Flicker. I used to see these all the time when I lived in Batavia and do see them down in NC.
Just for chuckles, I took a picture of the trees off in the distance which show all the greens of spring here in Western Upstate NY.
I went out to my friend Janet's house to pick up some fabric she wanted overdyed with the side intention of seeing some spring birds at her feeders. Turns out she had a rare sparrow visitor in her backyard and had posted it on one of the bird sites for Western NY. Well, I definitely had to share the window with any number of visitors from west of Buffalo to east of Rochester!! This bird is a female Baltimore Oriole. There were a lot of Baltimore Orioles and Orchard Orioles at her feeders,
Just updated with this beautiful Goldfinch. There were lots of both female and male Goldfinches.
This is a male Baltimore Oriole.
Two of the Orioles made peace and were finally sharing the feeder.
It is been some time since I have seen numerous Blue Jays but there had to have been four or five at a time at one feeder!!
This was taken from quite a distance through a window (as all the shots were) and is a Brown Thrasher.
This male Cardinal was so bright I didn't think anyone would believe this was the true color!!
This was a female Orchard Oriole which is yellow almost all over.
This and the next picture are of a male Orchard Oriole. The only other time I have seen this bird was on Sanibel Island in Florida during a "fallout" of birds.
Never have seen Red-bellied Woodpecker sitting and eating like this. He was chasing away the other birds by spreading his wings over the feeder surface.
Of course, a Ruby-throated Hummingbird which had a bright red throat when facing the sun the right way.
Song Sparrow.
There were a lot of the White-crowned Sparrows which I hadn't seen before so a new bird for me.
This and the next picture were taken from a great distance. This is a White-throated Sparrow. You can just barely see the little bit of yellow on his face and his bright white patch under his chin.
This was another new bird for me -- a Harris's Sparrow which isn't supposed to be in Western NY! He hid most of the time but he was the draw for the large number of birders coming to Janet's house. He has a black face and a pink bill. This was taken from a great distance through a window!!
This female Cardinal posed with the spring blossoms in the background.
Day wouldn't be complete without Brown-headed Cowbird.
And just for completeness, I added this Common Grackle. We see the Boat-tailed ones at the beach. Also saw lots of House Finches and House Sparrows as well but they are even too common for me to include!!
This was the 40th anniversary show of one of our local Rochester Guilds and it was really quite spectacular!! The highlight of the show was the presentation of 50 red and white quilts. This had been a challenge made by the president. They were obviously all different sizes and a few of these follow.
There were a number of really well done quilts and I did get the names for a lot of them as I know a lot of the people!! This one was done by Pat Berardi who likes curves as much as I do!!
This was done by Charlotte Winkelbauer from a kit.
This is a view of Crater Lake by Elaine Criswell.
This is Glacier Star by Beth Allen. I am sure this is a Judy Niemeyer design.
I loved this piece by Janet Allmatt -- curves of course!!
This is a piece by Jenna Darlak -- I believe I took a course from the woman that taught this pattern but I didn't make this one -- I really like the colors.
This and the next piece were kalaidoscopes done by Sue Parisi and I thought they were just spectacular and definitely my very favorites in the show. One (or maybe both) with be featured in Paula Nadelstern's next book!! Oh, what you can do with bilaterally symmetrical fabric and I may rethink getting rid of all of mine!!
Can you believe how beautiful these quilts are!!!!!
I was also very drawn to Mary Wieser's quilts, of which this is one!! The next several were all hers. She has such a wonderful sense of color and texture!!
I think this was my favorite of her quilts and was done for a recent RAFA exhibit on interpreting photographs into quilts.
These next three quilts I don't have names for but really liked them!
This one was huge and even with my small camera, I couldn't get the whole thing in the picture!!
This was a really spectacular quilt and the quilting was awesome -- I couldn't get a picture to give me the detail I wanted for the quilting though.
This was by Sherri Lasky and I really liked the colors and the simple but very effective design.
This was done by Vicki Coykendall who is a fabulous artist!!
Last but not least is this tote bag which I really liked but done know whether I would have the patience to stuff all the tubes that make up the bag. Not quite sure how she did that!!
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