Guess What's Up?

Blue Dicks are up. I'm just sayin'...

Yeah, every spring I make the same limp joke about Blue Dicks, an early season wildflower, being 'up'. I know, I'm juvenile. But you know, the other name for these flowers is 'Purplehead', so be grateful I'm letting sleeping dogs lay. Yeah, yeah, right, they're also called 'Cluster Lilies' and 'Brodiaea', but where's the fun in that?

There are other wildflowers popping up but they aren't as much fun as the.. .uh... Brodiaea (BLUE DICKS!).

Fiddleheads are lumped in tangly clumps

And not to kevetch, but vetches are only sort of fetching

The odd California Poppy is up too, but they're not as fun to crow about.

Bored, I thought to take a little swing through the local boondocks to see how spring is shaping up bird-wise. I know it's pretty much spring out there, not because of the sunrise which has already started off my biannual insomnia - which happily only lasts a few days at worse -  but because the squirrels are chasing each other and as I said before, the Blue Dicks are up!

And the colorful, pink and iridescent green Lewis Woodpeckers are out
posing like they own the joint. Can you see the one there on the log?

I didn't see any unusual birds, but the spring birds are returning. There are Western Bluebirds, a few Horned Larks and Robins and Varied Thrush are nosily taking possession of woods and urban trees.

A Horned Lark that made a spectacle of itself

White-breasted Nuthatch, lookin' all innocent there

Of course some birds stayed put all winter to begin with.

The Killdeers never go too far either - I think.