Robins

I'd say the bird I most see at Willow is a robin. 

I wake up to a robin's song before sunrise.

American robin is the most abundant landbird in North America (with 370 million individuals), ahead of red-winged blackbirds, including European starlings, mourning doves and house finches. It has seven subspecies. (Wikipedia)

An American Robin can produce three successful broods in one year. (All About Birds) Robins eat a lot of fruit in fall and winter. When they eat honeysuckle berries exclusively, they sometimes become intoxicated.

The oldest recorded American Robin was 13 years and 11 months old.

Skeet

Geese

 

Mallards

You can't really see the green headed mallards, but when I opened by BirdNET app, that's what it heard.

Wikipedia: Males (drakes) have green heads, while the females (hens) have mainly brown-speckled plumage. Mallards live in wetlands, eat water plants and small animals, and are social animals preferring to congregate in groups or flocks of varying sizes. The mallard is considered to be a species of least concern by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), and, unlike many waterfowl, are considered an invasive species in some regions. It is a very adaptable species, being able to live and even thrive in urban areas which may have supported more localised, sensitive species of waterfowl before development.

I've seen a lot of spring flowers on social media, but these were the first I saw in the real.

Downy Woodpecker

 

We planted wildflowers on our walk to school today and then after I dropped Ruby off, I went down to the lake and planted some wildflowers by the lake: Cosmos, Crimson Clover, Blue Lupine, Baby Snapdragon, Lemon Mint, Purple Coneflower (Echinacea), and Perennials. I turned on my BirdNET app, and got something else besides a red wing blackbird, I got a Downy Woodpecker. I didn't see it. I meditated for 10 minutes, but it's not good with my shoes on and it's too muddy and wet for me to take off my shoes. 

Open!

I was really revving myself up to get angry to break the sign and tug at the chain and look at the fence to see if there were weaknesses I could break.

Instead I told the worker about the joy of being able to walk down to the lake.

I meditated for 17 minutes. I heard a bird, and I opened my BirdNET app and found out it was a red winged blackbird, from the passerine family. 

So many projects, I was going to read all of Thoreau's essays. And I see I've only read one. Next one is The Service, which wasn't published by Dial. 

I listened to the essay. It's so complicated, and doesn't flow easily. He's a contrarian, who sought the military model when others are pacifists. 

Still closed

Park still closed

So I talked to some workmen and they were saying that the pipes are gonna be sending drainage waste water to Whitestone where it’s processed and then released into the sound. The pollutants are taken out, and I asked him where they sent the pollutants and they said somewhere in Pennsylvania maybe.

I don’t think that’s why the park is closed. I didn’t even go and rattle the gate, it looked closed from a distance but now I’m thinking I need to go look again, make sure. When I write for the public, however unread this blog is, I feel an extra need to be truthful and right. Additionally I've been thinking truth is dead during the Trump years, so it's revolutionary to tell the truth in such an era. 

They said the project was for 2 years, so that's probably not why the park is closed.