19 April 2020 Egrets Everywhere

Mentor Lagoons is a nearby visit we don't seem to make often.  A Sunday afternoon with no travel allowed seemed a great time to make a visit.  As we left the car we could spot mergansars on the water.

On the way in we had spotted a few egrets so we walked that way and soon realized there were many of them along the shore and in the shallower water.

Ali spotted an eagle along the distant shore before we headed into the woods for a few geocaches.

We enjoyed the wildflowers and made a stop by the lonely grave site remaining in the park.

When we reached Lake Erie there were more mergansers on the water.

We left the Lake Erie side of the park and returned to the inland area.  We stopped for a few more ducks and some great blues.

18 April 2020 Back to Burton Wetlands

 The ducks were closer today than last week.  Two pair of ring-necked ducks were on the water.

We gave another look to see if the osprey nest was occupied.  There won't be any nesting this season for local ospreys at the kettle lake.  We took a short woods walk to enjoy the spring wildflowers before heading to the trail through the fields.

The wildlife sightings were light for the walk, but the walk was enough to tire Lizzie.

12 April 2020 A Holiday in South Chagrin

 It is rare for us to not be in Pennsylvania for the weekend of Easter.  This year everything is different.  We decided to wrap up the long weekend with a visit to South Chagrin for geocache maintenance.  Our first sighting of the day was this blue jay.

We had a cache at a small pond/wetland area where we often see frogs and turtles.  It was our first stop on the trail.  The cache was missing, but there were frogs and turtles there for us to see.

A pair of perfect mallards looking like decoys rounded out the sightings at this first stop.

This park is one of the few locations where we have spotted white trout lilies.  They aren't common here, but can be spotted with a little diligence.  Today they were very close to the pond.

Yellow trout lilies are very common in South Chagrin.  They create large carpets in areas.

It was early in the season for white trillium blooms.

Bloodroot is plentiful in the park.

Painted rocks have been around for years now.  Many of them are pleasant to spot on a trail,  This one was a fun sighting.  Someone put a lot of effort and heart into this one.

Marsh Marigolds carpet the ground off the trails.

11 April 2020 Burton Wetlands

We visited Burton Wetlands on the hope that we might see ospreys in the nest or spot the eagles that are nesting in the area.  We missed both today on the quiet water of the kettle lake.

Distant Ducks

We fared better on the trails in the open fields with a spotting of this tree swallow acting very territorial while at a nesting box.

A couple bluebirds rounded out our afternoon at Burton Wetlands.

10 April 2020 Half Day

 It was a half working day for me.Normally we would have been out the door and headed to Pennsylvania, but the quarantine was not going to allow that to happen.  Instead we decided to spend the day around the Lake Erie waterfront to look for birds and other wildlife while finding a few geocaches.

By most standards, Cleveland has a small skyline.  Wendy Park offers a great view of the town with the Terminal Tower still being a focal point.

We had to time our walk back to the old coast guard station.  Waves were steadily breaking over the walkway.  The gulls were feasting on large numbers of shad in the mouth of the river.

It was wet and windy by the old station.  We had given a long look for birds other than gulls and decided it was time to head east.

We did our part and gave everyone a wide berth.

One of the pie billed grebes diving for dinner.

Belted kingfishers are usually skittish and move off quickly.  A male and female pair stayed close by offering image opportunities.  Maybe they were thinking of nesting nearby.

Female Belted Kingfisher

Male Belted Kingfisher

Socially distanced...

Not all of our day's wildlife sightings had feathers.

8 April 2020 Beartown Lakes

 We decided to visit another Geauga Park that is not often on our list this evening.  There was a geocache here and the park has good wildflowers.  Unfortunately, it had little mask wearing and was crowded.  We made our way to the cache and enjoyed a few wildflowers before deciding to be cautious.  Purple cress and trout lilies were the main wildflower sightings for the walk.

7 April 2020 Visiting Sunnybrook

 Sunnybrook is an interesting park in Geauga.  It offers a nice trails through the park and a good walk.  During the spring it also has good quantities of wildflowers.  It's never been a good birding park for us.  This evening we stopped hoping to see some of the many bloodroot in bloom.  The blooms were closing for the evening, but still pleasant to see and very plentiful.  We were also happy to spot blue cohash alongside the trail.