Even on an urban walking path, feet from a main, heavily traveled parkway, you can find wildlife if you only look.
Today seemed to be a special day. As we were getting into our car to go to the Vestal Rail Trail to exercise, we heard a bird call and looked up. It was flying like a raptor.
You can't see it that well but it's in the upper third of the photo between the power line on top and the second to the top. Spouse ID'd it from the body as an osprey and spouse's Merlin app identified its call with the same bird. We don't live that far from a river.
Sightings on the Vestal Rail Trail at noontime today:
Not wildlife, but I've seen goldenrod in bloom the last couple of days. I don't think I've ever seen goldenrod in bloom in July before where I live in New York State.
An American robin exhibiting a behavior I have rarely seen.
This behavior is called sunning. The robin spent some time, as we watched, stretching out its wings, one at a time, and finally settling on the ground. Apparently, this is done to bake lice and other parasites out of the feathers. It was a sunny day.
I wish I had a scale to show the size of this small turtle. This turtle was literally in the middle of the trail. I'm not good at estimating sizes but my spouse thinks it was about three inches (7.6 cm) long. Not visible in the picture, but I could see red dots lining the bottom of its carapace I couldn't seem to find a turtle looking exactly like this on this document showing various New York turtles.
I think the closest we could get was this being a relatively young painted turtle.
I have to admit, I don't know much about turtles. Part of me wanted to rescue it and at least put it on the grass (not sure if someone speeding along on a bicycle would even have seen it) but I decided not to try to touch it.
Groundhog. No mystery there. We've been seeing a lot of them this year.
It's always interesting to see what we can observe when we walk and now that my spouse has a new iPhone SE 3rd edition and has installed the wonderful free Merlin app for bird ID, I'm sure we will have many further adventures.
That's a good website on the raptors. Birds are cool. We have a broad-winged hawk living in the trees behind our house, and I've seen turkey vultures around, because we live near Sweat Mountain (saw one wrestling a dead squirrel off the street onto the sidewalk once...)
ReplyDelete...I haven't seen goldenrod yet and turtles seem scarce around here.
ReplyDeleteAre you now tempted to update your own phone? Funny you're writing about wildlife nearby. I just wrote my posts for next week, and I have the very same theme for next Thursday.
ReplyDeleteWhat a lot of nice flora and fauna you have been seeing! I have dwarf goldenrod, but it's not blooming yet.
ReplyDeleteNow that a little turtle.
ReplyDeleteCoffee is on and stay safe
I’m hoping that turtle survived. The Robin’s actions are interesting.
ReplyDeleteAn Osprey is a great sighting and we should all rejoice that their numbers have rebounded since the dark days of organo-chlorine pesticide use when so many species came perilously close to extinction. The world will never be able to repay its debt of gratitude to Rachel Carson.
ReplyDeleteIt seems very early for goldenrod but the times they are a changin'.
ReplyDelete