Kansas Dresners: May 2009

Kansas Dresners

Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Ferrets and Flowers

	Max and I went by the park one afternoon last week, and a couple had brought their ferrets out for a bit of fresh air. They let the kids -- who gathered around the portable pen immediately -- walk them, and hold them. Needless to say, Max talked about getting a ferret for a pet all the way home. The picture below is from Parsons, but it could be from anywhere around here: we had some serious thunderstorms and straight-line windstorms: lots of billboard damage, trampolines in soybean fields, and big trees.

	Squirrels! The conclave to the left was on campus: six squirrels all digging for nuts and seeds around this one tree. The two pictures below are from Lakeside Park: First, a squirrel so busy with foraging that he forgot to be nervous when we walked by. Second, the grackle was trying to run the squirrel off, but I'm not entirely sure why.

Cute:

Flowers and Bugs

Update: Northern Harrier (female). This is the kind of raptor we've been seeing all over SE Kansas. This one was in our backyard while I was mowing this morning!

¶ Tuesday, May 19, 2009 1 comments

Wednesday, May 06, 2009

Max and Family

	Max and Grandad. Max is drawing clues for a guessing game.
	Lakeside Park jungle gym, Spring Break.
	Echo and Karin's, on our quick visit to see "The Witches" at Crown Center. Max fit the hat so well, that they let him take it home!
	Also at Crown Center. Did you know that it's the 70th anniversary of the Wizard of Oz movie? They had a very kid-friendly display: lots of cute stuff to play with, and all the antiques behind glass.
	Prairie Winds! Our yard, unfortunately, is ringed with trees, so the breeze isn't all that steady unless it's really windy. But it was a good first run with the new kite.
	If you put a rubber band across the castle turrets, and attach the playmobile surfboard..... Catapult! Took a few shots to get one in-flight, but Max was patient with me.

	Very recent shot: note the lost tooth, and haircut! We're still wearing sweater-vests, though.

¶ Wednesday, May 06, 2009 1 comments

Max and Friends

	It was a mild winter, but it's been a raging Spring: we had our biggest snowfall -- and Max's first real snowman -- in late March, and we haven't turned the AC on yet, though it's May. Max has only been able to wear shorts to school a few times.
	Purim, done right. Max is a gryphon; he took his wings off, though. His friends are a power ranger and ... I don't remember. Something green.
	K-1 Spring Concert was cute. Max got to do a beatbox solo (I think that's what it was) on the "Seven Days a Week Rap" that got a great reaction from the audience.
	Max's story, "Arcti the Arctic Fox" got him a trip to the Young Authors Conference, where he got to meet with children's author/illustrator Susan Stevens Crummel. One of his teachers was helping run things, so she took him up for a quick meet-and-greet before the official business!
	There were some book characters there, and Max got shots with all of them. His reaction? "Fuzzy!"

¶ Wednesday, May 06, 2009 0 comments

Signs of Spring, 2009

	We don't have ducks in the yard often. Lots of young ones around at the moment.
	The only thing surprising about the young ducks is that any of them were born, given the sometimes exposed and odd places they were laying eggs in Lakeside Park.
	Now that the threat of frost has (mostly) passed, they've put the banana trees back out around my building. It's still odd, yes, but I'm getting used to it.
	I love the Kansas sky. When it's clear, it's really quite a sight. Not to mention a fantastic backdrop for all kinds of growing things.
	It was a mild winter, and the squirrels are still pretty fat.
	I've never seen flowers come up so quickly that they took the mulch with it!
	These were all over the place last month: some kind of pear that's very popular around here. We have two towering ones in our backyard, but we're not sure how much they'll produce.
	Could I do a nature post without bugs? This three-inch locust was spotted at Pitt State; his little cousins are trying to colonize our garage, I think. We have big honeybees, too, but I haven't gotten any great shots yet.

¶ Wednesday, May 06, 2009 1 comments

Natural Phenomena

	It's been a while, so here are some interesting nature pictures I've gotten over the last few months. This was taken about three months ago, just around the corner. There aren't a lot of birds that do hanging nests, but I'm not sure which one it is.
	The donut shop where we go Saturday mornings has the habit of tossing broken bits out the drive-up window. The grackles know this, and show up pretty much like clockwork. One of these days I'm going to just stake them out for a while, because I really want to get more good bird-in-flight pictures.
	Speaking of bird-in-flight pictures, this hawk-in-snow shot came from late February, out at Triple Creek farm.
	March was unseasonably warm this year in Kansas. This unidentified mammal (beaver-sized, but the tail's wrong) was spotted at Lincoln Park. We've seen it there before, too, but this time we spotted some of its tunnels.
	Seen on campus during the same rainy spell that drove the mammal into the open.
	During our last major wind-storm, we had a big flock of something hunkering in our trees.
	Common, yes, but up close it's pretty cool looking.

¶ Wednesday, May 06, 2009 1 comments

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