Norman Bird Sanctuary & Third Beach

I went on a good, long hike Tuesday, which shows you how tired I was, since it's two days later and I'm only just getting around to posting the shots and photo essay. This time I'm not doing a travelogue but just picking the most interesting shots of the day. If you want to read about the Norman Bird Sanctuary and see more photos of the place, I did a two-parter last year: Part I and Part II. This time I didn't even walk all of the trails. There was a geocache in the Bird Sanctuary and one at Third Beach as well, and that was my main purpose for the day's outing.

Just behind the barn and visitor's center at NBS is this little lily pond:


And in that lily pond grow Water-Lilies:

Just down the main access trail from the lily pond there's a whole meadow full of Lupines:



Down to the Red Maple Pond. On the shore of the pond there's a wooden bench where I ate my lunch. This is the view from the bench:


And out on the pond itself there was a Green Heron fishing:

The geocache was up on Gray Craig Trail. Naturally BBWolf and his Three Little Pigs put this one way up on top of a lung-buster climb that only a cardiologist could love. Here's the spot:

Going back down the trail on the other side of the crest the trail looks like this:



And down in the lowlands near where the Gray Craig Trail meests up with the main access there's this huge, ancient Maple:


From there I bugged over to the Shady Glade Trail, where this bridge crosses over Paradise Brook:


From the Shady Glade Trail we hook up with the Quarry Trail. I stopped for a bit to sit on Walt's Bench, which is located near where the trail emerges from the woods into a stretch of meadows:


And out in those meadows the first of the Summer's Daisies are starting to appear:


This Eastern Cottontail was nibbling the grass in the middle of the trail, and he didn't appreciate my appearance at all:


Butterflies were out in force in the meadow. This is a Clouded Sulphur sipping from some Red Clover:


So, out the entrance of the NBS onto Third Beach Rd., and down to the beach to find the day's other geocache. In the dunes at the beach are bunches of Beach Pea:


Just past where the Beach Pea shot was taken was where the cache was hidden, by a bridge over Maidenford Brook, but it's not very scenic so I'll just pause to say that I found the cache with no real trouble and signed the log. I decided to peek around in the salt marsh just beyond, and as luck would have it there was a Glossy Ibis fishing:


And that's Tuesday's hike.