Nature Walk on April 1st

We went to a different trail today. We went around 8am, which was pretty early to get out for us. We went to an old "exercise trail" near our house. It is in front of the Montclair Hospital, and I am sure it was built in the 80s for the hospital employees. It is a great little trail, and friendly for my 3 year olds. It has a small creek and 2 ponds, tons of trees, and a huge field across the street.
Before we even got to the trail, they saw about 10 worms in the gutter all traveling up the street, so we had to stop and inspect them, of course!

Once we started on the trail, we immediately noticed birds. We do not have any jays at our house, and they noticed 4 blue jays pretty quickly. We even ended up identifying their call, and pointing it out to each other every time we heard it afterwards. Joshua saw a hawk, that we guess was a red-tailed hawk, and the boys saw 2 different woodpeckers. One was a red-bellied, and the other was either a downy or a hairy... we are not sure which because it was so high up in the tree, and alas, no binoculars! When we made it to the pond, we saw a mallard duck, which the twins thought was amazing.


Noah noticed a magnolia, but did not know the name of it; just that it was like the one at Mimi's- and we later identified it. We also identified dogwoods which are in full bloom- we saw white and pink ones. We also saw the ever present oakleaf hydrangea; they are everywhere!




We also noticed a wildflower, but my pic was kinda blurry. We are going to try and figure out what it is this week.