This Week in My Viewfinder

April 11–17, 2021: Springing forward

Text and photos by LensAfield

I ended last week’s post noting that the Canadian goose couple nesting near the parking lot appeared to be settling in for the month-long nesting period. At week’s end, the female had built an uncharacteristically tiny and pathetic-looking nest, which made me think she had second thoughts and abandoned it.

I arrived at work early Sunday afternoon—just me, no one else to be around for hours—to find the nest unattended on this rainy day. After a quick look around, I found them both feeding in the grass of the adjacent business.

My sudden presence caused them both to return to our parking lot, then her to her empty nest. The banner shot shows her checking me out as they did!

The male decided to take a little time to wash in a puddle and do a little dance once he finished.

dancing goose collage

sitting in the rain

The male was standing in the parking lot when I left work Wednesday night, in a position not much different from the bottom right shot above, on one leg with his head tucked under his wing. I needed to leave and am kicking myself now for not taking the time to take a couple of iPhone shots of him standing motionless, apparently, asleep. I watched for a minute. Never saw him move a muscle. She was content on her nest only a few feet away.

I saw on Wednesday afternoon that there were still no eggs in the nest. I was very busy at work Thursday, but the few times I could look, I didn’t see her off the nest, so I am assuming she had laid her first egg sometime that day. Perhaps when I return to work on Sunday, I will get a glimpse of how many eggs she has in her surprisingly small nest.

Almost all buds on the grapevine have at least swelled out of their winter shell. Well over half have opened such as these:

This shot shows the two ruptured scales from which these two (front) buds emerged. These are about three-quarter of my thumb length.

This is a bud I showed last week that is in an excellent location to follow its development. Now a bit longer than my thumb, I can see the beginning development of the flowers just under that little strand. There is one bud still in the latent scale stage under the smaller bud.

This bud is starting to open up, exposing the very early development of a bunch of grape flowers covered in wool. The crimson color of new growth won’t last long.

A closer crop showing exuding balls of sap called pearls. It would be very imprudent to do any pruning at this point as cuts would bleed sap continuously for days. Likewise, I must be careful not to cause any breakage. The back leaf shows how all aspects of the new growth remain covered in the fine wool.

The Jacob’s Ladder bloomed this week:

And the Alliums developed their flower buds: