Saturday morning was clear and sunny and very, very cold. A group of us met over at the Skunknett River conservation area where Ian Ives from Audubon was having a program about otters and owls.
The pond was very quiet and mostly iced over. A few raggedy cattails were still standing and chickadees called from the bushes nearby but no otters....
We stopped at various spots along the river but no otters....
Though we did see lots of otter scat (droppings) at several "pull out" spots along the way...
Otter scat has a lot of fish scales in it so it is easy to identify. You can see it here as the gray stuff against the brown leaves. Who knew you'd be looking at a picture of scat instead of an ottter?
Oh well! That's the way it is a lot when you go out looking for animals in the wild. You find signs of where they've been and what they leave behind them but often they themselves are in hiding. I often like to think of them watching me from behind a bush, laughing at me. Who knows? Maybe they are.
It was so cold on this day I think the otters were home snug in their dens.
Most of the Canada mayflower has gone by but these fuzzy blossoms were still pretty fresh looking.
Star flowers are everywhere....
These are hard to see but area woodlands are full of blooming sarsparilla plants. Can you see the puffy little ball shaped blossoms hiding under the leaves?
Fern flowers are different....and I'm not sure they technically count as flowers but here are their spokes anyway....
And here is Jack and his friends all hanging out in their pulpits....another wildflower that is hard to see and find unless you know where to look....hint....check out damp and soggy areas and look for a triplicate of large green leaves that are NOT poison ivy!
Yesterday we went walking in the Skunknett conservation area in Osterville and although there weren't too many blooming, we did find some of these lovely little signs of early spring. Personally I've always thought it was sort of amusing that mayflowers bloom in April, not May...