Saturday, May 05, 2007

On the Waterfront



It was lovely at sunrise and it's clear and sunny now that I have to clean house, but naturally it was cloudy, gray, windy, and COLD for the two-hour period I spent down on the Great Lakefront this morning. I decided on the spur of the moment to take part in an organized bird walk though an area usually closed to the public, an old landfill gradually being reclaimed for Mother Nature. A number of people showed up without binoculars; not sure why they were there. But, for those of us who could see, a May morning is a wonderful thing:

Palm and yellow and
chestnut-sided warblers

White-throated and white-crowned and song and savannah sparrows

Veery and hermit thrush

Rose-breasted grosbeaks

Great egrets and red-breasted mergansers and cormorants and lesser scaup

And the guide said he could hear orchard and northern orioles -- not a skill I share.

The dogwood in our front yard is in bloom. There are a lot of sad-looking azaleas and magnolias around, victims of that Easter blizzard, but the survivors among the flowering trees are making themselves known.

4 comments:

Unknown said...

We briefly saw a rose-breasted grosbeak on our bird feeder her in Iowa.

Lisa :-] said...

All our blossoming trees and shrubs have been dutifully doing their things, even though the weather has been blustery, rainy, and COLD (for here...) I want SPRING. Now! :P

Anonymous said...

Beautiful word pictures of spring. I would like to learn more about all those beautiful birds.

Today, I get to take a large group of 9yos for a walk in the woods. It's a perfect day. Perhaps I'll even bring my bird book and see if I can learn anything.

Stratoz said...

came to see some of your bird posts... Grebes bringing a peaceful death and this post. I am itching to walk in the woods.