Myrtle Beach State Park in the Spring

Sunday was a lovely day to take a walk through parts of Myrtle Beach State Park here in South Carolina.  The summer gets too hot to take a walk and the Spring shows all the new life among the decay left from winter.  We were lucky enough to see the many different colors of azalea bushes, some very pretty wild flowers, bees, birds and even a chickadee nest.  Maybe you saw some of the photos I've posted recently.  Most of these I haven't posted yet because I wanted to save them for my article. 

First we parked near the pine oak trails so we could take a short hike through the woods and explore what was new for Spring.

There was a lot of decayed wood from our harsh winter.  This will all feed back into the earth to nurture the new saplings and feed the trees strong enough to survive.

This tree below is still standing, I don't know how.  Looks like a lot of insects and woodpeckers have done a job on it.

A bridge crossing a stream that runs through the woods.  This is DH leading the way.

Cold, clear water runs through the woods.

The stream feeds into a pond with snakes and ducks.  New life is forming on the bushes and trees.

 We only saw two ducks.

We came back out to the road and walked up to the entrance booth to take pictures of some wild flowers, azaleas, dogwoods and bees.

See the bee?  There were many of them, all having a feast.

Down the road a bit there is a nature center which is near the camping facilities. 

The walls are decorated so cute.

And there were more pretty flowers planted.

A pretty tree that was starting to bloom but it had very few leaves.

One of the best finds of the day were the bird houses.  I haven't seen these before, maybe they come down when the birds are finished with the nesting and all the baby birds fly off on their own.  Around another part of the park, near the park rangers home, there are all these little bird houses which have little front doors you can unlatch and peek into the house, or the roof lifts up for viewing.  As I approached the second one I found, (the first one was empty) a chickadee flew out just as I approached.  She scared the heck out of me and went up into a nearby tree.  I was hesitant at first, but what the heck, I walked over and opened the door.  Here is what I found.

You can see the black latch you turn to open the door on the right.  This is the nest inside.  The eggs are pretty well hidden in this photo.

I pulled back a little bit of the white fluff and discovered an egg.  See the little pink egg in there?

One other very interesting photo before we left was this tree.  I love the coloring and pattern on the bark.  I named it the camouflage tree.

So there you have a peek into my piece of the world.  I hope you enjoyed it.