From Ball Parks to Powerline Parks

My walk from the shopping center to work this morning was grey and very wet. Actually I've been lucky. This was the first day that it had been actively raining on me since I started the walk a couple weeks ago. Anyway, it was raining and although there were lots of birds out eating crabapples, it was too dark and foggy to identify any of them. Fortunately the walk back was beautiful and sunny.


First I walked from the library to the new Rec Center built next door to the campus.

Even though it's very new and some of the ball fields are not even completed yet, there's already a geocache there, so I stopped by to find it.

Near the ball fields there were trees with beautiful red apples, but all the ones close to the ground were already picked.

There were also lots of new trees planted including one of my favorites, the Tulip Poplar - Liriodendron tulipifera. (Not native to Oregon)

After leaving the rec center I started south though a different neighborhood than I usually walk though.

I saw a whole orchard of unpicked apple trees, an old house, with a wrap-around porch (first one I've seen in Oregon), a bunch of ducks flying in formation, and this amazing pink Dahlia. Oh, and I saw some kind of hawk, but couldn't get a decent picture of it.

As I was walking though the neighborhood I happened to see the entrance to this powerline park.

These parks are pretty cool, they're usually full of birds and native plants and some of them are miles long and have nice paths for walking or biking.

Everywhere around me there were birds chirping, but I couldn't even begin to locate them with all the grasses surrounding me. The birds were almost completely camouflaged .

I thought this dry head of Queen Anne's Lace - Daucus carota was really pretty.

Red Winged Blackbird - Agelaius phoeniceus

I knew there were a bunch of these birds around because I could hear them whistling. Their song is one of the few bird calls I recognize. Finally I spotted one, up on the powerlines.

This dried plant had a very interesting form too, but I haven't been able to identify it easily.

After I left the park, I saw some kids having a "plant sale". I went up to see what they had, but the kids only seemed to have pine seedlings, mint and one lonely pea seedling, so I didn't end up buying anything from them.