The 21st Century Matriarch

My husband and I did a short hike at the Springfield Conservation Nature Center in late June. It’s a place I anticipate we’ll explore more fully in the months to come. The area is an oasis with high volume traffic arteries on two sides…neighborhood and lake on the other sides. We started out our first hike on the Boardwalk Trail (map) but extended to the Sycamore Cut-off down to the bridge over a branch of Lake Springfield….downhill to the lake level then back up. The forest is dense with a different kinds and ages of trees…there are cliff faces too. The paths are gravel. We spotted a great blue heron (still roosting) in shallow water….and a very active small bird in the bushes nearby (maybe a prothonotary warbler). There were probably some invasive plants in the mix – but they didn’t seem to be overwhelming. The slideshow below contains my favorites from the pictures I took with my bridge camera.

I am beginning to appreciate my phone – with it digital zoom – for macro photography. I took one image of a bloom that was hanging over the trail…

And then did more as we left the nature center after our hike.

The round blooms of the button bush look intriguing at every stage!

I am looking forward to seeing the trails in different seasons…stay tuned.

My husband signed up us for 4 Delmarva Birding field trips as a last excursion to the eastern shore before we move to Missouri. The first field trip was at Phillips Landing Park near Laurel DE. It was a weekday so most of the other participants were retirees like us; we had two guides that were very familiar with the area…so we saw more than we would if we’d gone on our own.

Shortly after we started, my camera had a problem and I was challenged to work around it by using the eye piece rather than the screen for the rest of the morning….not what I usually do so my focusing/composition was not as good as usual even though the skew of pictures toward botanical rather than birds was probably about the same as it would have been with the camera working perfectly.

The plants are at the height of their variety in the spring with blossoms and unfurling leaves – the bright greens of mosses growing rapidly in the new warmth – unfurling ferns….good for photography although my eyes were itchy from the pollen laden air.

The high point of the botanical sightings: One of our guides pointed out a native orchid in bloom beside the path. They aren’t the large showy orchids of warmer climates; it takes a sharp eye to notice them!

There was an area near the path that looked like an egg laying site for a reptile….but something had found the eggs before they could hatch. There were eggshells among the acorns.

I did managed to photograph a few birds: courting cowbirds in the parking lot, a yellowlegs among the reeds, and a prothonotary warbler high in a tree.