April 9, 2015 – Wolf's Birding and Bonsai Blog

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One Week in April

Natural Moments

This past week has been rather amazing with lots of good birds and a couple of special butterflies. The weather has been warm and sunny for the most part and it’s been a big week for owls and owl babies. Lots of pictures in this posting, but that’s the kind of week it was.

Checking in on nesting progress at several of the Great Horned Owl nests early last week brought a few fun surprises. At Calabacillas, the adult was just peeking out and it wasn’t until I got home to look closer at the picture that I saw the beak of the little one just in front.

Great Horned Owl – Calabacillas

At Piedras Marcadas, the male perched in a tree close to the nest gave me a good look at his face for the first time and didn’t fly away like he did on my last visit.

Great…

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Following through on two ficus bonsai I teased you with….

Adam's Art and Bonsai Blog

Two trees on my bench, which to work first…..

The left hand one is the tree I teased at the end of theClump style willow leaf fig from a sawn off root ballpost. The right hand one was a tree I teased about on Facebook. I was challenged by Seth Nelson (Mr. Melon, as he’s taken to call himself. I call him Spanky, it’s Bohemian for “he who whacks off his trunk”) because he has never seen a semi-cascade willow leaf ficus.

Let’s go left to right. Look at that base! I can’t wait to see what’s underneath the soil, the anticipation is terrible, I hope it lasts. You can’t really see much with all those leaves though. I know, the solution to every problem, let’s get naked! Awesome! Very interesting trunk, right? Difficult even. Before you begin any branch selection you should find the base of the…