Though we will take advantage of local trails and pop into the woods on the occasional winter day, mud is a general deterrent for me, and we reserve most of our hiking for the summer and fall. But during what I call hiking season we do our best to make the most of the cooperative weather and we'll often be out and about multiple days of the week.
This year we are hiking with a couple of goals in mind. First, Calvin has signed up to produce several different projects for our county's 4H fair at the end of July. One is a collection of information pages on at least five different critters he espies while out and about, another is the same but regarding wildflowers, and a third is a collection of leaves from at least 15 native trees he has seen and identified. Plus we have a longer term goal as well, of hiking all the county parks at least once this year.
So far we've been successful on multiple fronts. This week we started our tour of the county parks with a stop at one of our favorites—the Scio Preserved Open Space, with about 2 miles of hiking trail through woods and open meadow, over some small streams, and alongside a pond. We took lunch and ate by the pond, which was pretty, but the best part of the trip was the hike itself, and Calvin found lots of things to add to his wild lists, including three bird species that were new to both of us.
Oxeye Daisy (not technically native, but an "introduced wildflower")
It's a slug race, with a green beetle spectator
snail
Five minutes of quiet often produces an array of creatures that were just waiting for us to be gone...
Song Sparrow (common in wet areas, but not a typical feeder sparrow)