Hello! I hope you’ve been having a great week! Today I went out for a different type of wandering… along with Mark and our friend Judy, I participated in a Prairie bird survey, or point count. We wandered over a fairly vast area of newly restored prairie, but did not follow any trails. In all, we were out for about 2.5 hours. We tallied 154 birds of 27 species, and even discovered this little Grasshopper Sparrow’s nest.
It was a cool-ish day, in the low 60’s, which made for pleasant walking… although I have to admit it was almost like bushwhacking in a few places! We had to be very careful of where we placed our feet at every step, since there are many birds that nest on the ground in grassland areas, for obvious reasons. The nest above was hidden under some thatched dried grasses which had been made into a kind of little cave, and I would never have seen it if the female hadn’t flown off right in front of me, only a single step away!
The prairie was beautifully green and lush, and the grasses swayed gently in the light breeze. The sky was overcast, which meant the sun wasn’t beating down on us – we were all thankful for that, as there is precious little shade out there, as you can see!
Because we were being so careful about where our feet landed, we noticed a number of things on or near the ground that we might not have noticed otherwise. We watched a large bumblebee hum from flower to flower, and we narrowly avoided several deep ditches and holes in the ground as well, thankfully! Mark also spotted these Fall Webworm Moths clinging to a slender blade of grass. It seemed love was in the air (or the grass) everywhere we looked…
Aside from moths, bees, and birds, the prairie is a popular place and there were others sharing it with us as well this morning… 
Overall it was a lovely walk, and to be able to wander without a path underfoot is very liberating once in a while. All three of us are very happy with our point count results, as well as the supplemental discoveries we made, small and large, along the way!
(As a side note, we do have authorization to be off-trail in that area. Please don’t wander off provided paths unless you have permission from the park or landowner.)