I'm Lichen Pie! (it's Punday!)

 That lil Black-capped Chickadee is lichen that Hammered Shield Lichen! 

Ha? Maybe not...

We had another fun filled festival of food, friends and fauna at the Shreve Migration Sensation recently. It was enough to finally get us out of the house and the winter doldrums. This has been a rough winter, if you hadn't noticed. This first fest in March every year gives us the inspiration to get our behinds in gear for another mad spring warbly season.

Shreve is great...inexpensive to register every year(this was our 10th!), great programs and speakers(Kim Kaufman, Jim McCormac and more!), lots of ducks and birds migrate through here every March, AND...home baked Amish PIES!!! Can life get better?

With all of the snow, then the warm temps and the snow melt, quite a bit of the area was flooded. Good for ducks. Bad for Dave and The Doodles. We slogged around looking and searching for our feathered woodland friends, but not many were seen this year. Doodles did see an Eastern Bluebird...about a mile away with her mighty 10X bins! I struggled seeing any birds, butt, the Ohio Division of Wildlife came out with a new guide to the common lichens of Ohio. Those I could find! Sound boring? When you start looking around, almost every tree you see has something growing on it's bark.

A new obsession is born...LICHENOLOGY! Well, maybe when I can't find one of those warbly things...

 My pieology guide lists this as Coconut Cream Pie, Creamius Coconutii.

Look it up.

 Brown's Bog is a great place for lichens, mosses and fungi...and even birds on a good day!

This may be a species of Ruffled Lichen.

One day I will know for sure...one day...maybe...

 This is the human species known as "The Doodles." 

Very rare.

She likes that Funk Bottoms.

(I don't know what that means either.)

 This is stuff growing on a dead tree.

?

 WAY out in the distance is the viewing platform we usually stand on to see ducks, bluebirds and more.

There's more water than birds today.

LOTS more water.

Loopys don't swim.

 Another type of bracket fungus I believe.

I loved the moss with the sprouts popping up.

 Doodles has taken photos of this barn every year.

The upper floors have finally collapsed, I fear its time is nigh...

There's some Rough speckled shield lichen growing between the fungus.

Wow, I can be a real fungi too!

(You can laugh if you like.)

 Here's some very odd looking fungi growing under a fallen tree.

I guess I would look odd too if I was under a fallen tree...

 If you look very closely you won't see the Lesser Black-backed Gull that was there that I didn't see either.

There are Northern Shovelers, Hooded Mergansers and Ring-billed Gully things though.

Gulls...silly birds.

 I find whatever these funguseses are much prettier than those gully things.

 Doesn't it figure?

I finally get close enough to a bird and this silly Song Sparrow moons me!

It's a curse...

A second earlier he even stuck his tongue out at me.

Rude...very rude.

 Sphagnum Moss.

The Doodles is a seed eating vegetarian.

I had to tell her not to eat this.

She said she was hungry. 

I said wait for pie.

 She said okay.

We got pie.

 More pie.

Dutch Apple if you please.

Scrumpdillyishious.

Truly.

PIED-billed Grebe.

He has pie on his bill.

Looks like chocolate.