High Park is such a Toronto treasure! Our group enjoyed a wonderful nature walk today with naturalist Miles Hearn. There were a lot of birds around today – Miles listed 41 species on his nature walk report today: double-crested cormorant, mute swan, Canada goose, mallard, gadwall, wood duck, red-tailed hawk, ring-billed gull, rock pigeon, northern flicker, red-bellied woodpecker, downy woodpecker, great crested flycatcher, eastern pewee, eastern kingbird, blue jay, black-capped chickadee, white-breasted nuthatch, American robin, veery, blue-gray gnatcatcher, European starling, blue-headed vireo, red-eyed vireo, warbling vireo, tennessee warbler, nashville warbler, northern parula warbler, yellow warbler, yellow-rumped warbler, American redstart, house sparrow, red-winged blackbird, Baltimore oriole, common grackle, brown-headed cowbird, northern cardinal, house finch, American goldfinch, chipping sparrow, song sparrow.
I found it impossible to photograph some of the little warblers in particular today, with my point and shoot camera. By the time I’d locate the bird on the screen and zoom in as tight as possible, my target bird would fly off. My best bird picture was of a Northern flicker, which was happily shopping for a meal in the grass right near us.
Northern flicker
I also snapped a nice shot of a pair of wood ducks up at the top end of Grenadier Pond.
wood ducks
Here’s a few of the other birds we saw….
There is a lot of poison ivy in High Park. This time of year the leaves have a reddish tint about them.
Speaking of nasty plants, we came across a huge patch of stinging nettle.
stinging nettle
This next shot is a nice comparison between black oak and white oak.
black oak vs white oak
Here’s a selection of other plants we talked about today. Some of these I was previously familiar with, but others we new to me in terms of identification.
27th Street 