April 24th, 2023

Are you ready for another Photo Safari Report?  I hope so because I have one for you.  And I'm calling this one, the Last Perfect Weather of the Season Hike.  A long title to be sure, but accurate.  I do not honestly know if that was the actual literal last perfect weather of the season, but this time of year it starts to get iffy.  Mixed in with the very nice days are a few not so nice days.  We have occasional rainy days, gloomy days and the worst of the worst, the humidity begins to make a reappearance.  

It's not August horrible yet by any stretch of the imagination and the temperatures are not spiking into the high 80's or 90's yet.  But as the weeks of April begin to lean toward May and May stretches her little arms out to June the nice days are fewer and the hotter, more humid days increase until suddenly it's July and every single day is hothothot and humidhumidhumid and there is the strong possibility of some sort of precipitation.

This was NONE of those days. It was, as I said, not merely a nice day.  It was absolutely perfection. It wasn't too hot or too cold. There was a lovely gentle breeze the entire time. And the fragrance in the air was almost too good to be true.  Heaven on a hiking trail.  We were gone for many miles and many hours and if it wasn't that we both had other things that needed to be done that day, we would probably have stayed a lot longer.  

Also saw some very cool stuff.  I nearly called this the Woodpecker hike because we saw so many of them.  Mostly we saw Red-Bellied Woodpeckers which is the sort that used to live in our courtyard so I'm sure you are familiar with those.

But to our delight and surprise we also saw a red-headed woodpecker, our first this year. (To be fair I think Joy may have seen one or two when she hikes in other places on her own but it was our first seen in any of our usual hiking spots). Such a pretty little birdie

There were other birds to be sure, lots of crows and vultures and cute little warblers of one sort or another

But the biggest surprise was near the end of our hike.  We were very near the entrance when we found our first Bluebird of the season (once again, probably not Joy's first of the season, but definitely mine)  Bluebirds make me smile. Probably because of the old fashioned associations that go along with it.  You know the one, the Bluebird of Happiness!  What a cutie

Enough with the birds already, I can hear you thinking.  So okeydokey, we will move on to maybe some pretty botanicals?  Sure why not?

We are starting to see more and more butterflies and dragonflies but I haven't quite gotten the hang of capturing them. (They move so fast!) I managed to get one, which was a surprised because it was a very Green Dragonfly who was in a very Green area. So the result was a surprise - a happy one to be sure!

I suppose the rest of the photos are just rando's though as we all know, those are always my favourites.  And now that I'm sorting through the rando's, well, it's mostly trees and photos of the trails.  So here are mostly photos of trees and trails!

And there you have it.  The Last Perfect Weather of the Season  Hike.  You know, since Joy and are are currently limited in where we can hike, you would think that every time we went out, we would see the exact same things.  I admit there is some repetition, after all it's hard to tell one crow from another or one palm tree from another, but I am continually surprised and pleased  at how much difference we find from one Photo Safari to another.

I sincerely hope you aren't weary of seeing my Photo Safari Reports because I am absolutely not tired of doing them.  :)


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