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It is now is one of my favorite times of the year because trees, such as these Oregon white oaks, are busy losing their leaves.
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I dig the forms of the bare branches and I like to paint their silhouettes against gray skies, capturing variation within and among species.
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The fallen leaves are impressive as well. These huge black cottonwood leaves are held near the dog's nose for scale.
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Andie enjoys sniffing and running through the newly fallen litter.
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Now that many trees have lost their leaves, I have been relocating nests from this summer, such as this robin nest,
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an American goldfinch nest,
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and this cedar waxwing nest I helped
build.
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At Dawson Creek, I spotted another nest high in an aspen.
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Upon closer inspection, it is an old wasp or hornet nest that probably would have terrified park-goers had the leaves not hidden it while it was active.
3 comments:
Great pictures and very informative. I can't tell one nest from the other and the two that I do see in my yard are so large I assumed they were squirrel nests.
Seeing the nest photos of various birds is making me reconsider this and I will have to go check them out further.
Hmm, I was also going with squirrel nests - interesting
The last nest looks like a squirrel's because it has captured a few leaves, but our trees are not big enough to harbor squirrels.
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