My last TDSB walk was on March 12th.

Since then, I have gone by myself to 180 different locations and made posts of each. It was good to walk once again with others today though, as you can see, group members now look a little different.

Thomson Memorial Park is the site of the Scarborough Historical Museum and includes historical houses of the founding family as well as the adjacent St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church (1818) and Cemetery.

It also includes woods and meadow lining a section of Highland Creek.

If you have a birdfeeder and look at it often enough, you will eventually spot a Cooper’s Hawk.

They are bold and aggressive predators of other birds.

The species was named in 1828 by Charles Lucien Bonaparte in honor of his friend and fellow ornithologist, William Cooper.

Today we spotted one high in the sky. The crow-size and rectangular tail are diagnostic.

We also saw a far off Red-tailed Hawk.

Species list: great blue heron, red-tailed hawk, Cooper’s hawk, mourning dove, belted kingfisher, common flicker, downy woodpecker, blue jay, American crow, black-capped chickadee, red-breasted nuthatch, gray catbird, black-throated blue warbler, northern cardinal, American goldfinch. (15 species)

Some insects:

Some botany:

Hercules Club can be a small tree  or an unbranched shrubby cluster of shoots from underground stems. They can grow from 6 – 16 feet high in a season which earn them their name. Hercules Club is being cultivated in a garden here.

NATURE POETRY

From the charm of radiant faces,
From the days we took to dream,
From the joy of open spaces,
From the mountain and the stream,
Bronzed of sunlight, nerves a-tingle,
Speed we back again to mingle
In the battle for our bread.                                – Leslie Pinckney Hill (1880–1960) 

Miles Hearn