Signs of Spring

This week's Sunday stroll took me back down to Ballard Park and Gooseneck Cove. Spring is a little more evident this week, as you'll see. There's more green, the birds are more active, and butterflies have started to show up. There was even somebody sailing in the Bay outside Newport Harbor today!

One of the first things I saw when I got to Ballard Park this morning was this Spring Azure butterfly:


A little farther on this Mourning Dove kept a wary eye on me:


As I was leaving the park at the Hazard Rd. entrance I heard a hullabaloo behind me - a Carolina Wren singing his heart out:


When he saw that he had my full attention he stopped singing and posed for his formal portrait:


Down Hazard Rd. by Gooseneck Cove I ran into a Black-capped Chickadee. What a little acrobat this one was, hopping all around in the reeds and rose bushes:





Looking across the Cove from where the Chickadee was doing his acrobatics, you can see the colorful fuzz sprouting on the trees along the shore:


Just down from that scene was this Red-winged Blackbird keeping an eye on me and warning others in the area that I was around:


On the "country lane" leg of my usual loop, I discovered that the Ground Ivy has started to bloom:




And we end our Sunday stroll at King Park at the south end of Newport Harbor. As luck would have it, this ambitious sailor was out getting a jump on the season in Narragansett Bay just outside the entrance to the Harbor:


And that's this week's Sunday stroll!