Wednesday, April 23, 2008

New Spring Birds

I found two new birds for the year on my walk in the local park this morning. A house wren was singing high in a tree at the start of my walk. A treetop is not exactly where I would expect to find a house wren, but that is what it was. I also saw my first gray catbird. Other than that, I just found the usual resident birds. The number of geese, ducks, and gulls has decreased dramatically in the course of the past few weeks. Recently I have just seen a handful of Canada geese, compared to the hundreds I would see in March.

There park also has a small patch of trout lilies – maybe about a dozen flowers in all. I find this flower difficult to photograph because of its shape and closeness to the ground. The name comes from the speckled leaves, which resemble trout skin.

This patch of skunk cabbage was much easier.