It was a better day than we had been having, so we felt a walk through Fletcher would be good. I left my camera gear at home so it would be a real walk, and besides we might see more😊.
As soon as we started on the trail a pair of rose-breasted grosbeaks were 40 feet away!! Not a rare bird, but one I have only seen 2-3 times since I first started noticing birds. I grabbed the best camera I had , my cell phone, and hoped the quality wouldn't be too bad. I settled for calling it a record shot🙄 The video is slightly better
"Merlin" heard many more birds than we saw, let alone knowingly heard.
I came back in the afternoon with camera gear, but no grosbeaks. So I settled for checking out the many wildflowers I had seen in the morning. I started up in the woods and slowly made my way to the Garden.
The bloodroot had finished blooming, at which point the leaves get quite large and seem to be adept at holding rain drops
The trilliums were blooming, lots of reds and many more whites
Both solomon seal and false solomon seal in bud
Various specie of fern were growing profusely, one of the younger one had a ladybug visiting
Wild ginger in bloom. The bloom lies on the ground under the leaves
There were several batches of flowering bellewort
Elder and red baneberry blooming, a sprouting hickory
A plum tree in bud
Down low: : ground ivy, strawberry and lots of Siberian barren strawberries
Violets came in blue, or blue and white varieties. Note the boxelder bug with the blue and white violet
Up in the Garden, tiny dwarf lake iris in bloom, forget-me-nots growing "wild"
Wild columbine in bloom and bud, prairie smoke in flower
Early saxifrage and red baneberry blooming, white baneberry still in bud
There used to be a number of large jack-in-the-pulpit plants in the Garden, but they seem to be gone, I did find one in amongst a ginger plant and a young one, growing with a few youngsters, in another bed with a label for jack-in-the-pulpits
I couldn't find any buds on the mayapples in the woods, but in the garden there were buds galore. The buds are hidden under the leaves
The wood poppies and marsh marigolds are gorgeous
On my way out I spotted 3-4 foam flower plants in bud. A very nice small spring flower when it blooms
