Skunk Cabbage Trail & Frog Swamp

This morning I biked to the Arboretum and walked around, trying not to trip over birdwatchers. This is a favorite spot for people looking for spring migrants, though in my opinion not the best spot–too leafy already, and not so much on a main waterway. But it’s a wonderful place to hang out, and there are always plenty of good birds, especially if you’ve got a good ear for bird song.

There’s an overlook where the path passes over a natural spring. This is what it looks like when you look down…

 

 

…and this is what it’s like when you look up. A beautiful and peaceful place it is, and pretty good for birds. Saw some warblers, nuthatches, and hawks, and I think a scarlet tanager, but I’m afraid I didn’t get a good enough look to be sure.

 

 

This is what our back yard would look like if we didn’t pull up the approximately 10,000,000 maple seedlings that pop up each year.

 

 

You may have to biggify this picture to see it, but there’s a sandhill crane near the middle, right at the tree line. When I came to the frog swamp, it was much quieter than expected, but when I noticed the pair of sandhills wading through it I knew why! After a little, they went back into the trees and started doing a courting dance; the male was jumping around and flapping his wings and just generally acting obnoxious, while the female acted like she didn’t even know he was there. With them otherwise occupied, the frogs got a lot more vocal.

 

 

Meadow Rue.

 

There’s a turkey smack in the middle of this one. Again, sorry, kind of hard to see, but visible. It seems to me there are fewer of these guys in the Arboretum than there used to be a few years ago. The whole Arb used to be totally infested with them. Maybe they relocated some, or had a nice Thanksgiving dinner.

Birds seen that I remember: hawk (not sure what kind), Sandhill crane, those warblers with the black uspide-down U on their front I haven’t got a positive ID on yet, yellow warbler, chickadee, nuthatch, white throated sparrow, a bazillion redwing blackbirds. Heard many more than this, including lots of phoebes.