{"id":146,"date":"2009-02-22T23:13:52","date_gmt":"2009-02-23T05:13:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/?p=146"},"modified":"2009-02-22T23:13:52","modified_gmt":"2009-02-23T05:13:52","slug":"early-spring-and-a-mystery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/?p=146","title":{"rendered":"Early Spring (and a mystery)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Even in a drought year, trees put out buds–at this time of year, the elms and hackberries\u00a0 and the early oaks may flower, and some of the migrant birds enjoy a lofty “salad” of buds from them.\u00a0\u00a0 Here’s one of our taller elms showing golden-green lace against the blue sky.<\/p>\n

\"Early

Early spring elm<\/p><\/div>\n

This afternoon’s walk produced another mystery.\u00a0\u00a0 I was walking past a group of young cedar elms that have sprung up in one meadow–we decided to leave some of them to form a small thicket–and noticed a sort of lump that seemed to be hanging from a twig:<\/p>\n

\"What's

What's that lump?<\/p><\/div>\n

I highlighted around it in this image so you could see it more easily.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I’ve walked past this little tree before and not noticed it–which is exactly what its maker had in mind.<\/p>\n

Here’s a close-up:<\/p>\n

\"Who

Who made it?<\/p><\/div>\n

It has the same shape, though it’s much larger than, the casing made by juniper bagworms.\u00a0\u00a0 The leaves on the upper part are all cedar elm leaves, which suggests it was made before this tree lost its leaves…though there are plenty of leaves in the grass nearby.<\/p>\n

I\u00a0 don’t know what made it, or what the adult form looks like…but I’ll be watching for more of these to find out.\u00a0 Anyone who knows, feel free to comment.\u00a0 (I may send this to one of the specialized listservs or sites to find out.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Even in a drought year, trees put out buds–at this time of year, the elms and hackberries\u00a0 and the early oaks may flower, and some of the migrant birds enjoy a lofty “salad” of buds from them.\u00a0\u00a0 Here’s one of our taller elms showing golden-green lace against the blue sky.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,4],"tags":[23,70],"class_list":["post-146","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-photography","category-wildlife","tag-observation","tag-photography"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=146"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":150,"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146\/revisions\/150"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=146"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=146"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=146"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}