Saturday Morning Nature Hike-Part 1

Since warblers are still migrating and gas went up to $3.69 last week, I decided to try birding within walking distance of my home (no danger of speeding tickets either!) My neighbor Jack (who lives up at the end of our subdivision) still owns at least 40 acres of property--a lot of which is wooded. I called him on the phone last night to get permission to cross his fence and do some birding, and of course, he graciously said yes. When Mr. Johnson was out for his morning walk, he met up with Jack and they talked a little bit out Jack's wooded acres and a few things Jack wanted Mr. Johnson to tell me to keep an eye open for: a pair of red-headed woodpeckers, a pair of pileated woodpeckers and possibly a wolf! Wow, is that possible? Apparently the DNR has documented the presence of a couple of wolves in that area. On my morning hike today, I saw only 1 pileated woodpecker and no evidence of anything that looked like wolf tracks, but that will be something to keep my eyes open for next time.

So anyway, I didn't get started until about 8:45 and my first destination was the little pond I've shown you in a couple of earlier posts. The developer has resumed road construction activities that will eventually turn this wooded area into another housing subdivision, so the dynamics of this natural area will be changing over the next couple years, but for now, it's still fairly wild--especially down at the end adjoining Jack's wooded acreage.

This little pond is for stormwater runoff. I didn't see any wildlife as I approached the pond, but there were frogs singing and jumping into the water as I approached.

Once I got close to the water, I could see there were millions of tadpoles swimming around in there. See all the black stuff in the water on this picture? Those are tadpoles! I've never seen so many in my life!

Unlike the frogs, the tadpoles weren't bothered by my presence and I managed to capture this little video of them.

We had a little rain shower late last night, so the dirt around the pond edge was still nice and soft and I could see lots of footprints from previous visitors. Here's a perfect little raccoon "handprint."

I also saw this very tiny deer hoofprint. I asked Mr. Johnson if baby deer were being born yet and he didn't think so, he said this tiny hoofprint was probably from one of last year's does (a yearling who was still pretty small).

A couple of cautious frogs allowed me to snap a picture of them.

While I was walking around the pond, I saw lots of little birds flying around the edge of the woods and in the tall weed stems around the pond. These birds included House Wren, Yellow Warbler, Chipping Sparrow, American Goldfinch, American Redstart, Eastern Phoebe and Indigo Bunting.

I finally moved on from the pond and over to the gate that would let me into the woods. Tune in next time as I take you down this wooded trail for Part 2 of the Saturday Morning Nature Hike.