My Little RBG

Jascin N. Leonardo Finger • May 17, 2021

Yeah, no, not Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Sorry.


This is actually one of my favorite birds – a Rose Breasted Grosbeak (which basically means “big nose”). Cardinals – my favorite – are grosbeaks as well.


But in any case, I have not seen a RBG yet this spring. For quite a few years, I believe the same one showed up at my feeder at home like clockwork every May 7th or 8th until he didn’t anymore. That was really sad as I figured he was likely gone. But on May 10th, I was walking into the backyard of the Mitchell House. The sun was finally out after being cold and rainy and I saw something flutter from the ground and grab the side of the Solomon’s Seal where it paused. I figured that it was a robin – they are building nests back here – but realized it was smaller. I looked more closely and there was the RBG in all his scarlet/pink glory.   


If you have not seen one before, they are stunners. He looks like someone shot him in the neck – it’s a large splotch of color with a line (like a drip) running down his breast. I have never seen one on Vestal Street so I am still rather excited. I took a photograph – it’s pretty far as I didn’t want to scare him. He seemed to be eating bugs or taking water off the Money Plant (the purple flowers) and then doing the same to the Lily of the Valley. Initially he flew off over the fence into the neighbors but after a few minutes he came back and continued to peck and hunt about on the ground for quite a while. I am hoping this was not just a weigh station and that perhaps he and the Missus have a nest. I’d love to be an auntie. Each spring we have multiple nests and babies in the Mitchell House backyard. It’s fun to watch them albeit at times a bit stressful!


It was a banner bird day for me that day. When I got home later that evening, I was happy to see a Ruby-throated Hummingbird at my hummingbird feeder and then, the next morning, a Baltimore Oriole on my oriole feeder!


Spring IS here!


P.S. About May 12th, baby Robins fledged from the nest in the Mitchell House yard so I am an auntie, I guess.


JNLF

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By Jascin N. Leonardo Finger • May 11, 2026
A repost – with my apologies – from last year. It started budding the week of April 30 this year. This is what our landscaper for the MMA calls it. “The ancient vine.” He tells the people who work for him not to touch the “ancient vine.” I have probably made him – and all of them – terrified of it. I am even terrified of it to some degree. I refer to the grape vine behind the Mitchell House that is supposed to be Peleg Mitchell Junior’s grape vine – Maria Mitchell’s uncle who inhabited the house from about 1836 to his death in 1882. It has two trunks but one died several years ago. Because of that, each year I try to root shoots. It’s fairly easy to do – when you cut back the vine in late fall/early winter. I have had success but not success protecting the shoots I baby all winter from bunnies and other critters once I plant them – try as I might. I started doing this when the one trunk died – I was PANICKED! The landscaper stays away because I have told him if anyone is going to accidentally harm or worse yet, kill, this grape vine it would be me so I only have myself to blame. So each November/December – once ALL the leaves have fallen off – I climb my ladder and quietly, carefully, and fearfully cut back the stems typically to two buds. I have been somewhat successful in spurring grape production – and these grapes attract some amazing birds in the fall. It takes me some time – and I pretty much hyperventilate the entire time – and then, I stare at it all winter. Passing under it multiple times a day to reach my office. Hoping, and yes, praying, it will come out in the spring. It’s a late budder so just recently the buds started to show themselves – thank goodness! – and I was rewarded today (May 5, 2025) with this wonderful hot pink color on the edges of the leaves as they are uncurling. JNLF

Maria Mitchell In Her Own Words

By Jascin N. Leonardo Finger • May 4, 2026
May 6, 1878 Between the clouds, Miss Spalding obtained 7 photographs of Mercury on the Sun. It is comfort to me to be able to plan and do a new kind of work. The large telescope worked better than usual, Clark having just been to the Observatory. Clark, as in Alvan Clark, a man who would become the premier telescope maker in America and who built Maria Mitchell’s 5-inch Alvan Clark refractor that she purchased from him (after working with him to build it per her specifications) with money gifted to her from “The Women of America” led by Elizabeth Peabody. More than likely, it is this telescope she is referring to as she did use it in the Vassar College Observatory with her students – and it is also taking center stage in photographs, along with her (first her father’s) Dolland telescope.  Maria had decided she would photograph the Sun on every clear day, and this was one of those results. She would use these images, with her students, to study sun spots and their changes. With her students, Maria would photograph the transit of Mercury as noted above. She would also photograph the transit of Venus a few years later with her students. JNLF

Spring Has Sprung!

By Jascin N. Leonardo Finger • April 27, 2026
And with it, some of the heirloom daffodils I purchased for the Mitchell House last fall. A place was recommended to me by two longtime friends of the MMA and gardeners extraordinaire. It is called Old House Gardens. I ordered a small amount as we now have a plethora of voles on Vestal Street – I believe I complained about them here last year. They won’t eat daffodils so I got a few of “Butter and Eggs” (1777) and “Conspicuus” (1869) as either of these could have appeared in William Mitchell’s gardens. They were not listed in a letter from John Quincy Adams that I have mentioned before. But, Adams was not here visiting the Mitchell family when the daffodils would have been in bloom. The one pictured here is “Butter and Eggs” not completely unfurled. JNLF
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