The End?

Signs of spring are everywhere!

All good things must come to an end. Here I am at the end of spring break.  I'm happy to say that it did have a good end. A spectacular end!  The end of a warbler kind of end...which can only mean we are at the beginning of something else.  Something spectacular is beginning. Something good has begun!  It's warbler migration time!

Can you find the woodpeckers?  I felt dizzy trying to get this picture.

This yellow- rumped warbler is one in a group of most the abundant warblers
 in NorthAmerica

My husband and I were standing watching a pair of downy woodpeckers do a little ritualistic dance around each other.  It was hard to get a picture because they kept taking turns flying over each other to go a little higher in the tree until one would fly to the next tree and repeat this dance from the base of that tree.   All of a sudden flying straight at our heads was this little gem of a warbler.  He seemed as surprised as we were and made a quick U-turn and landed with his butter-butt in clear view.  I could have gone home right then and

there, but I kept pretending I was spending time with my family and ignoring all birds...My family didn't believe it for a minute.  I even took pictures of them to drive the point home!

He turned around and posed before quickly flying back the way
he had come.

No one in our party had ever seen such a small turtle in
the wild.

On down the path we found the smallest turtle I have ever seen in the wild.  Our children had wheels on and were ahead of us on the bike path that winds its way through the Muskegon Lake Nature Preserve.  I had to show them this and I correctly predicted my youngest would want to take him home.  I denied the request, of course.  We can't throw off the balance of nature. Because she is a Dr. Who fan, she understood keeping him could have thrown off the whole space-time continuum.  We returned him close to the place we had found him, but off the trail and a little closer to the water. I hope he makes it.  I hope this is his beginning and not his end.

I'm ready to get back into a routine tomorrow and give these last few months my best. I get to spend my days with some of the most wonderful people I've ever met.  I'll be sorry to see them move on to second grade.  At the end of the day tomorrow when I have to come home and make dinner you can bet, I'd rather be birding!

Jenny