Sunday Morning Birding

This morning Mr. Johnson and I attended a bird hike sponsored by the local Audubon Society to look for warblers and whatever else we could find. Our destination today was Indian Heights Park, a mostly undeveloped jewel of the Rochester parks system, as we found out this morning. This park is located at the dead end of a residential neighborhood right in the middle of suburban northwest Rochester. After parking our cars in the paved parking lot, we headed up the dirt trail. We were searching for warblers again this morning, but they were mostly absent (except for 1 female American Redstart spotted late in the hike). We did hear the Great Crested Flycatcher, Yellow-Throated Vireo and Eastern Wood Pewee (my FOY), in addition to the usual chickadees, cardinals, and bluejays.

Shortly up the trail, I spotted something bright yellow on a fallen down tree. "Hmmmm," I thought to myself, "I hope that's what I think it is........" I headed off-trail for a closer look at what turned out to be my first personal discovery of Chicken of the Woods (sulphur shelf) mushrooms. Charlie, another birder with our group, confirmed this ID and on the way back to the car, the mushroom you see on the top left side of this log went home with me for this evening's supper (it was delicious!) I'm thinking I may have to make a stop back here on my way home from work tomorrow to collect the rest for my freezer.

There was a huge abundance of raspberry bushes along most of the trails in this park. I also made a note to myself to return with Mr. Johnson and berry-picking buckets in a few weeks to reap some of that delicious bounty.

We did see a few downy and hairy woodpeckers, but none of the pileated woodpeckers who were responsible for creating the holes in this oak tree.

At the end of the trail, we found this scenic spot overlooking most of the eastern Rochester skyline. In this photo are Mr. Johnson, and our trip leaders, Terry (red shirt) and his wife Joyce (lite blue shirt).

This is a view of Silver Lake.

In the middle of this park is an old quarry. It wasn't a large quarry and probably wasn't used for too long. It's quite overgrown now and we did find some evidence that it's been used in the past for a teen party spot.

Another cool thing we found was this intact skull with some bones and fur nearby. After further investigation of the bones, we decided that this was probably a raccoon. Unfortunately, I didn't have a plastic bag along with me, so this skull stayed where it was (even though I really wanted to bring it home). Maybe tomorrow when I'm fetching those mushrooms.......

There were quite a few wildflowers blooming and here are some of the ones we saw.

False Solomon's Seal

Vetch and Wild Columbine

Black Snakeroot

Another look at the Black Snakeroot (with some flowers blooming)

Bloodroot

An unidentified daisy (I should have taken pics of the leaves!)

The flowers were really small - only about a half to three-quarters of an inch across

Here's a busy bumblebee pollinating some raspberries for me!

We were almost back to the parking lot when we spotted this flower. It was one that none of us had ever seen before, but after doing some checking on the internet, I'm reasonably certain that it's a Star-of-Bethlehem. It was a beautiful little plant and I wouldn't mind finding some of these to plant in my own backyard some day.

Haven't seen many butterflies yet this year, but we also saw this pretty little Red Admiral taking advantage of the nectar in this nice dandelion (another reason to save dandelions -- a nectar source for early season butterflies!)

Glad you could come along on this birding hike with me. Even though we didn't see many birds, we saw a lot of other cool things and it just goes to show that time spent outdoors is never wasted.....especially when you keep your eyes open for the unexpected treasures nature has to offer.