Spring Nature Walk

Today was such a delicious day.  Even though it's early spring and the trees are still bare, there are plenty of awesome things to find outside.  It's all about really looking to see what things there are.

Like violets!  They're some of the first spring flowers.  They have heart-shaped leaves and most violets are this really pretty shade of... you guessed it, violet!!

Violets

 These guys are some of the earliest bloomers in spring.  They're also edible.  I didn't eat any because I didn't want to accidentally ingest some kind of deer fecal strain.  Also, I wasn't sure if the field used any kinds of pesticides.  It's always a good idea to check out an area before you go so that you know if you can eat your finds or not!

As we walked along, we had a visitor.  A turkey vulture hopped across some tree branches and eyeballed us, but he must have thought that we weren't dead enough.

Hello, turkey vulture!

Part of me was scared that he'd get scared and puke on us, but that didn't happen.  They're a lot bigger in person than you think!

The whole field was covered in purple flowers.  It was as though nature laid out a carpet of welcome for us to squish across.  I did get muddy, but that's half the fun of going out.

Not a cloud in sight!

 Then there were hundreds of spring beauties in a clearing.  They didn't stand out well against the sunlight so I had to get up close with them in the shadows to avoid all the contrast.

Spring beauties

 There were also wild onion everywhere.  I like to pull them up and smell them.  I didn't eat any because I didn't want any accidental deer poop in my mouth.  (Side note.  Accidental Deer Poop would make an awesome band name.)

I always called these bad boys chives.

I'm sure that deer love these things and eat them every chance they get.

Sometimes, you can tell trees apart by their bark.  I'm usually terrible at this, but I'm pretty sure this is a dogwood tree.

I can tell by its bark.

Cherry bark... I think

Ha!  Kidding, I think it's a cherry tree.  I vaguely remember from my naturalist courses that some kind of tree has bark like charred wood, and I'm pretty sure it's cherry.  It could be persimmon too, but I am thinking that persimmon is more like fish scales.

 We heard lots of calls from downy woodpeckers.  I'm sure they love the area, probably because of all the old trees.  Perfect places for beetles to lay their eggs and for the woodpeckers to find them.  Look at this tree; it no longer has its bark, but you can see from the holes that some kind of animal loves this spot.  Sometimes looking for clues of animal presence is even more fun than seeing an animal.  Sometimes!

A bird buffet.

 Then we came across the magic.  May apples are popping up like a carpet of mini palm trees.  I love it!  I like to refer to may apples as fairy umbrellas.  I can just see some fairies dancing across these at night, sheltering under them when it's raining.  I love may apples.  They stretched down both sides of the hill as well, which was super cool.  It was like a carpet of tiny trees!

I want to shrink myself down and play in this tiny forest!

 There were some white flowers too.  I think this is some sort of vine.  The flowers were so tiny that I didn't immediately notice them.

I have no idea what the white flowers are.

 The purple flowers that carpet the fields as seen above; they're actually an invasive species from Eurasia.  So that means that someone thought they were pretty and planted them in a yard, and now the flowers are taking over, potentially blocking out the native plants.  I thought that they looked pretty awesome, though, and I like that they're purple!

Purple dead nettle.

 Again, signs that an animal came around.  These prints are perfect!  They're definitely not dog prints, as you can see dog's claws when the print is made.  I like to think that these are bobcat prints, but they could just as easily be a stray or feral cat.  I wonder what the kitty was thinking when he stopped here?  Perhaps he was chasing a bird, or listening to deer crash through the woods. 

Tracks are way cooler than poop!

 Here's another example of a violet.  I love it when they're not all purple.  Sometimes they grow in white as well.  I love the streaky purple of this flower!

Violet!

 Here were some yellow flowers.  Again, I'm not sure what they are.  I'm pretty sure they belong to the daisy family.  There weren't many of them, and I really had to pay attention to what was around me!

Daisy?

 This plant makes me think of the movie Labyrinth.  It's actually red trillium, not quite open yet.  There were other leaves around, but they weren't flowering yet.  This plant feels magical to me.  Again, I could totally see fairies dancing around it and having fun.  Silly fairies!

Trillium

 And finally.  No, it's not what you're thinking it is; this is cut leaf toothwort.  It's super awesome, and it took me forever to remember the name!  It's been ten years since I had any kind of field biology class, after all!  I love the white flowers, they look like bells.  It's another early bloomer.  Just in time for Easter.

Cut-leaf toothwort

So there you have it; lots of super cool things that I found while out walking today!  We didn't even walk very far, probably not more than a mile all told.  Most of that was across squishy ground though, which was a great workout.  If you ever get sick of running on an indoor track, try walking across marshy ground because that is a great workout for your butt!

Happy hiking!