If you are a Golden-crowned Kinglet aficionado (and I am), today was your day. I have never seen so many of these lovely little creatures in one place in my life. Everywhere we looked they appeared; high in trees, close-up in nearby shrubs, on the ground, on rocks and flying by with their super high pitched “see-see-see” calls.

I was able to get reasonable photos of 10 of them:

We also had a surprising number of Brown Creepers:

This morning’s walk was my first of 2019 with 30 or more bird species:

Species list: double-crested cormorant, trumpeter swan, mute swan, Canada goose, mallard, gadwall, redhead, bufflehead, long-tailed duck, lesser scaup, red-breasted merganser, herring gull, ring-billed gull, mourning dove, northern flicker, eastern phoebe, black-capped chickadee, white-breasted nuthatch, winter wren, American robin, hermit thrush, golden-crowned kinglet, house sparrow, red-winged blackbird, common grackle, brown-headed cowbird, northern cardinal, house finch, dark-eyed junco, song sparrow.  (30 species)

In February, parts of the shore here were covered in ice as you can see in this photo:

Here is the same scene today:

Other park views:

Today’s group:

NATURE POETRY

April is here!
Blithest season of the year,
The little brook laughs as it leaps away;
The lambs are out on the hills at play.          – Eben E. Rexford (1848–1916)

Miles Hearn