Beth Graham: Parvin on Mother's Day

Sunday, May 17, 2009

Parvin on Mother's Day

Last Sunday morning I woke up bright and early, to spend the morning at Parvin State Park.

I started off my walk around 7:30 at the beach and walked to the bridge at Second Landing. There was a lot of movement and songs, and just a beautiful morning to take a walk in the woods. Everything was still a little wet and bright and very clean and clear.

One interesting thing I noticed as I got deeper along the trail, is that the bird songs changed. Closest to the beach were the flycatchers, phoebes and Great Crested. Then farther along came the wood thrushes and the ovenbirds, then the vireos and warblers and then came chickadees and titmice.

I circled around on the trail and headed back to the beach. And there came the songs, in reverse. Very cool.

I spent a good 1 1/2 to 2 hours on that trail.

From there, I drove over to Fisherman's Landing and walked the trail that leads to the beach, but stopped before I came that far. I came across more [different] warblers and wrens and sparrows and orioles. Not to forget the Brown Thrashers and Scarlet Tanagers.

I think I took more pictures of the fauna than of the birds. But one of the highlights for me was on this little trail off of the main trail which lead to an area with some water. There was a Canada Goose along the shoreline and it was surrounded by purple flowers and green leaves and moss. Unfortunately because of lighting I wasn't able to capture it the way I saw it, but you might get the idea.

Also, I need to stop trying to photograph swallows in flight. I just ain't gonna happen.

Here are some photos and below them, a list of birds I saw.