A Banner Day for Birds

The cold, windy, almost wintry weather for the past two days completely discouraged me from my photowalk in the park. If that gives you the idea that I’m one of those people who wimps out when the weather turns nasty, you would be wrong…well, sort of wrong. For years I have been a year round, all weather walker until this winter when day after day of single digit temperatures and snow and ice covered trails changed my inclinations and turned me into a couch potato. In January and February, the cold was so extreme we were beginning to think the Arctic Circle had relocated to south of the Ohio River, and March wasn’t much of an improvement. Walking the icy trails was treacherous, and since I fell in the park a few years ago and dislocated my shoulder, I have become much more reticent about hitting the trail when the trail is frozen. You can call it wimpy if you want to, but I call it exercising extreme caution! So I stayed home a lot of days this winter, and don’t want to mention how many pounds I put on as a result of my new sedentary habits.

When April rolled around…FINALLY…I was ready to hit the trail, get some exercise, and lose that weight! For motivation, I created a new blog. Dreaming BIG I named it 7500 steps and made that my daily walking goal. I haven’t hit it yet, but goals should be huge, something to strive for, and this one is. Reaching 7500 steps will take a lot of striving, and that’s okay with me. I can just imagine the fun I will have exploring my new blog and watching the weight registering on my scale go down-down-down…back to where it was at the beginning of this cold, cold winter. The new blog is a work-in-progress, just as achieving 7500 steps will be. Meanwhile I have this blog to consider. Seen Along the Trail is a photoblog, my place to post the photos I capture on my regular walks in the park. It is my way to share the wonders of creation…the landscapes, birds, deer, and other critters and their interactions with each other.

Today the thermometer gradually began to inch upward again. Degree by degree, it climbed higher and higher until it topped out at a balmy 49 degrees Fahrenheit. Okay, that’s a little sarcasm there! It really didn’t get very warm today, but I hit the trail anyway, and, this being spring migration time, it turned out to be a banner day for birds. Take a look at the photo gallery and remember you can click on any picture to see the larger version of the gallery, and if you want to see captions just click on the little “i” in the upper left corner.

So that’s it for today. If you happen to know the identity of that as-yet-unnamed bird, please leave it in the comments section. And if you live in the northern hemisphere and resonate with what I have said about the cold winter, I would love to hear how it affected you. Just tell us in the comments.

Thanks for stopping by! I hope to see you again soon.

PS: Thanks to blogger Back Yard Bird Nerd for providing the unnamed bird’s identity. It’s a brown thrasher, and I found it in this post.
Carolyn aka Skip