butterflies

After being woken up early this morning, we decided to make the most of it and go for a birding walk (something we haven’t done in months). We first headed to Lake Artemesia, and kept on driving when we saw a park ranger directing people into the lot and a big sign announcing a fishing event. Bazillions of people fishing with their kids does not for good songbird sighting make. Since it was cool, windy, and early in the season, we opted to give Greenbelt Park another try. We’d heard that it was nice, but were too scared to get out of the car when we were greeted with a huge BEWARE OF LARGE NUMBERS OF TICKS AND CHIGGERS sign at the entrance. The sign was off when we arrived at 8am this morning, which is probably a good thing; when we left around 10am it was again advising people to be alert for ticks (which is a warning we expect in this part of the country). After making a loop of the park, we located the open picnic and parking area and headed off on the Azalea Trail, a 1.1 mile loop (whereon we did not actually see any azaleas, although some of the understory shrubs might have been ones that had already bloomed, it was hard to tell at a distance).

The first bird we spotted was a Yellow-rumped Warbler, quickly followed by a pair of Eastern Towhees. I’ve only seen them a few times before, and it was a new bird for my partner. Further down the trail we then broke our necks craning up into the very tall trees to eventually locate and identify a Red-eyed Vireo, worth the trouble as a new life bird. It was also a bird we were able to confirm via its song, which allowed us to not feel the need to break our necks a second time when we heard (and eventually did spot) another one a few minutes later. The other exciting find was an Ovenbird in the scrub, a songbird that forages on the ground and looks like a very small thrush. After some time of tracking it through the brambly undergrowth, it obligingly hopped up onto a higher branch so that we could get a nice long look at it. Once back at the parking lot, we saw Barn Swallows and a couple of butterflies: an Eastern Tiger Swallowtail and a Red-Spotted Purple (which reminds me that I saw a Mourning Cloak in our town park about a month ago now).

Overall, it was a pleasant trip and the ring road meant that joggers were generally keeping off the hiking trail. As a note for next time, in the interest of keeping ourselves as tick-free as possible, we’ll probably bail from the trail at the end and walk back to the car from the road to avoid having to hike across the playing field (where the Azalea Trail terminates).

It’s been a long time since I’ve hiked around Patuxent NWR, and I took advantage of yesterday’s beautiful clear afternoon to suggest a trip up there. The full Cash Lake trail was open, not yet closed for the season to protect the waterfowl that winter at the park. In addition to getting some fresh air after days of being stuck inside avoiding first humidity and then thunderstorms, we were also testing out my partner’s new hiking boots in advance of our trip up to Acadia National Park next month.

The hike itself was really more of a nature stroll than a hike that anyone who owns those pants that zip off into shorts would recognize as such. Patuxent is usually good for birds, but we saw hardly any: some goldfinches in by the Redington Lake bridge, a red-tailed hawk being chased by some crows above the beaver dam, some chickadees and nuthatches in the woods, a noisy red-bellied woodpecker, and a lone male kingfisher flying up the shore of Cash Lake. The highlight of the walk was definitely the amphibians: the previous two days of rain had created the ideal summer environment for frogs. We saw green frogs in the learning garden pond by the visitors’ center, a veritable mob of leopard frogs in a puddle at the base of the trail, and a lone cricket frog doing exactly what the guidebook said it would, which was attempting to evade us by a series of erratic hops. (I still caught it, but only to examine the teeniest frog I’d ever seen for identification purposes and then move it to the grass from the path of the trolley.) We also saw a skink, climbing a tree near where we’d stopped to locate the woodpecker; it was only the second time I’d seen one, so that was exciting.

In addition to frogs, the meadows were alive with butterflies. We saw Monarchs, Eastern and Black Swallowtails, Red-spotted Purples, a Great Spangled Fritillary, and a Common Buckeye. It’s possible that I also saw Spicebush and/or Pipevine Swallowtails, a Common Wood Nymph, and Least or Delaware Skippers (I didn’t have the book with me, so all identifications were from made at home from memory). We also saw a couple of something that looked like a cross between a cicada and a hummingbird, that we named Mini Mothra. There were dozens of dragonflies, including several distinct types I’d never seen before, but I didn’t have that book with me, either. All the dragonflies and frogs, in combination with a nice breeze off the lakes, meant that we weren’t bothered by mosquitoes at all.

being not doing

letting it be.

birds : new life birds at Greenbelt Park

weekend visit to Patuxent NWR