[ValleyNature] honey bees & CCD, crocuses, coltsfoot, Daphne, hazelnut, swamp sparrow, etc.

[James W. Wolford]

APR. 8, 2009 - No noticeable flower-heads of COLTSFOOT yet west of  
Gaspereau -- very late this year.  BUT today Suzanne Clary found a  
large area of blooming COLTSFOOT in Coldbrook, a bit west of Tim  
Hortons along Hwy. 1.

APR. 9, 2009 - I checked out the planted HAZELNUT or FILBERT? at  
Hilda & Mark Taylor's old property near the top of Chestnut Ave. in  
Wolfville -- see April 4/09, when I reported the male catkins open  
but no apparent female flowers.  Well, now there are quite tiny  
FEMALE FLOWERS showing if one looks closely -- they are dark purple?  
and much less apparent than the gorgeous but small red flowers on  
wild beaked hazelnut.  The species or variety of this planted  
HAZELNUT or FILBERT? is yet to be confirmed (my encyclopedia of  
garden plants lists at least four planted species of the genus  
Corylus).  Hilda told me that they used to get hazelnuts/filberts  
from that plant, and therefore there must have been female flowers, too.

APR. 10, 2009 - Sunny and semi-warm today (up to 10 C. in a.m.), a  
gorgeous Spring day!

Our adult WHITE-CROWNED SPARROW is still at our feeders, with 2 white- 
throated sparrows.

At the Blomidon Inn in Wolfville, a BLACK-CAPPED CHICKADEE was  
SINGING (phee-bee-bee) very persistently, with one song quickly  
following the previous song, in a long series.

Oodles of CROCUSES now everywhere and all open, of several colours,  
and happily attended by LOTS OF HONEY BEES -- on April 6 I learned a  
lot from Dick Rogers' public presentation on the health of and risks  
to honey bees, to the N.S. Institute of Health -- and see the April  
2009 issue of Scientific American for a good and thorough article on  
this, concluding that the Colony Collapse Disorder is very complex  
and has many contributing causes, which have to be monitored and  
managed.

Other flowers were SNOWDROPS, blue SCILLA or its look-alikes, and  
COLTSFOOT.  The latter were abundant along Oak Avenue in Wolfville,  
where "Jean Timpa's" DAPHNE bushes are showing flower colour but the  
flowers are not quite open (very soon!).

In the Oak Avenue cattail marsh by the railroad tracks, there were 2  
male RED-WINGED BLACKBIRDS (together, and one sang once), and a very  
cooperative SWAMP SPARROW came to my pishing and posed for a minute  
or so -- too bad I wasn't leading a field trip there!  Also a GREAT  
BLUE HERON flew over downtown Wolfville.  I couldn't see any obvious  
raven nest in the Oak Ave. area today.

Cheers from Jim in Wolfville

Jim (James W.) Wolford
91 Wickwire Ave.
Wolfville, Nova Scotia, Canada
B4P 1W3

phone 902-542-9204
e-mail <jimwolford at eastlink.ca>

"In wildness is the preservation of the world" -- Henry David Thoreau


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