{"id":1128,"date":"2007-04-06T02:04:00","date_gmt":"2007-04-06T02:04:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.somewhereinnj.com\/?p=1128"},"modified":"2014-10-01T03:34:55","modified_gmt":"2014-10-01T03:34:55","slug":"spring-surprises","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.somewhereinnj.com\/?p=1128","title":{"rendered":"Spring surprises"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Two weeks or so ago, back when it felt like spring and I was inspired by the sunshine and its gentle warmth, I spent a Saturday afternoon wandering down some of the back roads that surround one of my favorite parks. There’s a few scenic farms and some great trees that I like to keep track of. There are also some beautiful horse farms and ridiculously large estate homes, but these are tucked away at the end of wooded roads that are marked *Dead End* even though they may go on for miles. Clearly, they don’t want visitors. I sort of appreciate that those folks aren’t flaunting their wealth the way some do.<\/span>
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I ended up back at the park with the idea that I might find a few phoebes or some bluebirds and I was hoping for my first mourning cloak butterfly of the season. I visit this park pretty often, so know what to expect there, but it\u2019s large and there are many trails and different habitats. Usually a surprise or two somewhere if I walk far enough. I walked through the wet bottomlands near the lake, drawn by the screaming of the peepers and flushed a few woodcock along the way. Not so much a surprise because I go there to see their courtship displays, but I was surprised with how easily they flushed! Each few steps flushed a new bird, who would fly just a bit further ahead, only to be flushed again as I walked along the wet trail. Woodcock are very colorful birds when you see them in the light of day. I also managed to flush a deer without realizing it until I saw it bounding across the cornfield uphill and towards the road.<\/p>\n

The peepers that I went looking for went silent with my approach.<\/p>\n

I visited a favorite tree and walked along the grass pathways that surround the farm fields here. There were no bluebirds, but I did hear a familiar song that I couldn\u2019t put a name to right away. The song seemed to be drifting from every direction, but I wasn\u2019t able to spot the birds singing. I\u2019ve become very lazy lately and head out with just my camera and without binoculars. My ears are much better than my eyes, anyway. After listening for a while the words to the song I was hearing finally popped into my head, \u201cspring of the year\u201d and I realized there were meadowlarks in the fields surrounding me. I couldn\u2019t s\"\"<\/a>ee them, of course, but I knew they were out there because I recognized their song.<\/p>\n

A hawk caught my eye drifting low and lazy over the fields and the meadowlarks flushed ahead of it. If I\u2019d had my binoculars I might have been able to appreciate their lemon yellow and black markings as they finally made themselves visible above the stubble. Instead I watched the harrier as it flew gracefully over the field, pausing briefly and hovering for a longer look here and there, or whirling on a dipped wing to backtrack. I didn\u2019t see it land, so guess it didn\u2019t catch anything and finally it roamed out of my view. Before very long the meadowlarks were singing again and I went on to look for other surprises.<\/p>\n

I think there\u2019s a lot to be learned from visiting a place repeatedly and at different times of year. We might think we\u2019ve seen all a place has to offer, but really, one or two visits give just a snapshot of what may be. The same can be said for our own backyards, because only by knowing what\u2019s usual and normal can we get a sense for how special the unexpected is. Of course, the usual may be special too, but it\u2019s nice to be surprised once in a while.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Two weeks or so ago, back when it felt like spring and I was inspired by the sunshine and its gentle warmth, I spent a Saturday afternoon wandering down some of the back roads that surround one of my favorite parks. There’s a few scenic farms and some great trees that I like to keep … Continue reading Spring surprises<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3642,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7,27],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.somewhereinnj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1128"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.somewhereinnj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.somewhereinnj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somewhereinnj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somewhereinnj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1128"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.somewhereinnj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1128\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somewhereinnj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3642"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.somewhereinnj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1128"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somewhereinnj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1128"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somewhereinnj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1128"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}