What a nature walk it was today

[Generic Brad]

My family took advantage of the President's Day holiday this afternoon and went hiking around Pike Island in St Paul's Fort Snelling State Park. We encountered a wood pecker, our first robin of the season, two bald eagles, a fox, and three large herds of deer. We saw at least 50 deer today.

On our way to the park the Mississippi was mainly covered in ice. On our way home the 40 degree temperature completely melted the river ice in the main channel. Within three hours it was gone.

What a glorious late winter day!

[marzipanni]

1. That sounds like a nice walk

Lately I've enjoyed watching flickers, cedar waxwings, and robins who migrate through this area, near Sacramento, California.
I grew up in eastern Massachusetts in the 50s and 60s, and occasionally early in the morning we'd see deer that had come down the hill from the woods, perhaps when the ponds in the woods dried up in the summer and they sought water in the pond near our house.
Now my mom and brothers see many more deer in that area as well as foxes, and coyotes, whose range has moved eastward across the state between 1950 and 1970.