Biking to Paulik and Garden City Parks

It was not as sunny as yesterday but still good enough for a bike ride after lunch.

I had to pay some bills today, so I went to Garden City and visited Paulik Park and Garden City Park afterwards.

Paulik Park

A very quiet area where you can just stand still and listen to birds sing.


Looking and poking the ready-to-disperse catkins.


Holly

A very bendy tree.

Within the "forest", a small bird was hopping and gleaning between the branches. Using my binocular, I realized it is a Golden-crowned Kinglet (Regulus satrapa)! It's not very common for me to see this bird, so you can imagine how excited I was. Unfortunately, it kept moving and stayed in shadowed areas. So this was the only decent image I got (high ISO and sharpened way too much). Anyways, definitely made today's trip worthwhile.


The temperature these past two days is below zero, so water surfaces are all frozen, including this pond with the Duckweeds.

The "forest".

Garden City Park.

Quiet and chilly as well.

Saw this male Common Merganser, as well as a male Hooded Merganser. The rest are Mallards and Green-winged Teals.

The pond/lake is quite low nowadays. I wonder where the muskrats are?

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