Today was the second of 9 nature walks in the GTA with Miles Hearn. I’ve signed up for these via the Toronto District School Board. The group met at the James Gardens parking lot. We walked along the Humber to about Dundas St then back through Lambton Woods. This is a really lovely spot. Miles has posted a report on the walk on his site. We saw 26 species of birds and as well I learned a lot about identifying various trees and plants.

There was quite a bit of eastern Skunk-cabbage on this walk. This remarkable plant grows fine in early spring icy conditions. Here are some photos I snapped:

Then there was this cutie, hanging out in a tree…

We heard a killdeer coming from the river and started looking around until we spotted it. I was able to catch a decent shot of it….

There are quite a number of different trees in this area and our leader identified many of them for us. Here are a few….the individual photos are captioned.

Black cherry

Looking at a Bur Oak

Hawthorn

White spruce with open cones

Some of the birds we saw today were at the edge of the range of my little point and shoot camera, but a caught a few shots of some of them.

male red-winged blackbird

Blue jay

male cardinal

2 red-tailed hawks

black duck with mallards

Hairy woodpecker

It was a treat to reaquaint myself with this area. When I was a kid I used to ride my bike there (I didn’t tell Mom and Dad I went so far) and look under the rocks in the creek for crayfish. I had forgotten what a nice stretch of woods there is along the river.