Morning walk around the Woodland Hills Preserve. Love coming here before work. It’s a great place for birding! The tree swallows are coupled up and they are taking advantage of the nesting boxes. The cherry blossoms are in bloom and the preserve is full of birdsong. Woodland Hills Preserve was once a golf course and it’s so wonderful to see nature taking over. Other birds I observed here today were: Brown Thrasher, Red-winged Blackbirds, Mockingbird, Northern Flicker, Eastern Towhee and a few others I still need to identify. Very enjoyable morning.
Quick walk at Lake Towhee this evening. This is a 50-acre lake in Bucks Count Pennsylvania. I was here one time last summer for a short visit. Next time I’ll be sure to bring my binoculars because it seems to be a great place for birdwatching. I saw lots of waterfowl and plenty of red-winged black birds. There are some very short trails in the surrounding woods and we walked the short paths searching for spring wildflowers. First to be spotted was Blood root (Sanguinaria canadensis). Native to Pennsylvania, its name refers to the red-orange sap that comes from its broken stem and root. Native Americans used this plant as a dye and an insect repellent. (I really should try the latter, as the east coast is full of bugs.) Blood root is a spring ephemeral and grows in woodlands throughout the Northeast. It blooms in April and its flowers open in full sun and close at night. I've been seeing a lot of these on the trails.
Next up I saw Rue Anemone, (Thalictrum thalictroides). Another native to Northeastern Pennsylvania. The flowers are found in spring woodlands and I observed some with white petals while others were a light pink to lavender color. These little flowers bloom for a short time from April to May.
The yellow flowers posted here are Lesser celandine or pilewort and not native to Pennsylvania. They come from the buttercup family Ranunculaceae and are native to Europe and Western Asia. I believe they are marked as an invasive species to the area.
This is a nice place to stop for a quick walk or a quiet meditation by the water.
