squirrel alarm!
the end of february came up with some real frigid days - and some snow, too! and that wasn't even the last one, as winter had a hard time leaving us this year and stayed way into the middle of march. while i was frolicking about spring arriving in my last post ( mainz-walking ), i soon had to realize that, nope, it wasn't over yet. winter still had us in its grip.
on one such wintery day i left my flat for a small walk near frauenstein, particulary around the gänsheck area, which is an area that's used for agriculture mostly. you can find a cute farm there, called hof armada, which keeps a lot of horses & ponies. there are also a lot of vineyards in that area, so that means it's hilly and full of nice views over the landscape.
on my walk i encountered quite a bit of wildlife ( and farmlife, too ;) ), which was amazing and made me happy as a bee on the quest of searching and finding lots of pollen for honey producing ( 😂 ).
i feel way blessed whenever i come upon animals - of any kind.
like this squirrel that i found early on and couldn't stop taking pictures of! it sat really still for me, so i could easily snap a few pictures. such a model!
( i really love squirrels and will probably tell you, if you ask me what my spirit animal is, that the squirrel is 100 % me ;) )
and just like that it hopped up the tree, never to be seen again.
lichen-covered trees. it really stood out, almost glowing bioluminescently!
thorny fingers reaching out into the sky.
close-up of some lichen-covered twig.
i really like the structure of this. apparently it's called foliose. lichen are pretty interesting organisms!
while on most of the hills surrounding the area you couldn't find a lot of snow, this particular hill was an exemption! and it was such a lovely coincidence that two ponies were currently searching for some leftover grass on here!
the scenery felt so idyllic with both these sweethearts in the picture :)
the ponies belong to this charming farm: hof armada. the farm's history reaches way back into medieval times!
way up on a hill i discovered a heron! herons are so majestic and i will never get tired of seeing them out in the wild.
this is slightly out of focus, but i kinda like it that way!
this pointy ( temporarily sunlit ) structure is the 'goethestein'. it's situated on some vineyard hills overlooking the rhine river. it's a tetraeder memorial built for the german writer & researcher johann wolfgang von goethe who visited this exact hill back in 1815.
sometimes you can find the sweetest things on the dirty ground - like this wire heart for example 🖤
view back onto frauenstein and its vineyard hills.
this little medieval-looking farm is 'hofgut nussberg' - but i didn't find any info whether it really is used as a farm these days. i also didn't get closer, but maybe i will make the effort and check it out more closely in the future ^^;
these little tender blossoms braved the cold very courageously. they are called bird-eye speedwells!
there were some dead-nettle blossoms in the mix, too :)
at the end of my walk i heard a distinct bird call ( for laughs, translated into human sound: fiti fiti fiti fit! 😂 ) and promptly discovered the great tit! look how fluffed up this ball of feathers was!
mid-singing! can i be proud of this picture? you rarely get to photograph birds like this, sitting still, on a twig and singing. i spent quite a while listening and watching it, before it finally flew away and i made my way back home.
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