Waterfront Park

This will be a many varied post. The pictures at the beginning are ones that Mike and Sam have taken while Mike has brought the kids on a couple of impromptu hikes down there during the last couple of weeks. The rest are pictures that were taken when we went on a weekly hike with another homeschool family from the area and her 3 eldest children. I hope you enjoy the photos as much as we enjoyed the hikes!

I just had to post these. On September 22nd our local library had it's 140th birthday. There was all sorts of fun things there to do including (but not limited to) face painting! The face painting artist was amazing. Eva decided to be Wolverine, don't ask me why, I think she just liked the blue and yellow to be honest. She had a choice of TONS of rainbow things, but no, she wanted to be Wolverine. Caleigh however, wanted to be a purple and pink butterfly. They were just too cute not to put on here!
Now back to our regularly scheduled nature hikes. All of the following pictures were taken at the Waterfront Park, however, they were not all taken on the same day. On the contrary, they were taken over the course of several days. Mike likes going down there because you have a better chance of seeing birds of prey there and he and Sam LOVE seeing birds of prey!

This picture (an all pictures taken from above) were taken from a bridge overlooking the park.

I LOVE this picture, it is just so pretty!

This is part of the bridge. Pretty isn't it?

A view through the trees.

See those brown specs on the tree? Those are a Kestrel on the right and a Cooper's Hawk (we think) on the bottom picture on the right. You really have to enlarge the picture to see that there's something there, but trust me, there's something there.

Pigeons on the roof of our house.

See the bird?! It in a pine tree outside our house. It's a Pine Warbler.

Now were' back to Waterfront Park again. This is the next day. That is a Belted Kingfisher in the tree. We'll see him or some of his friends again.

Ducks!

Another kingfisher! Or perhaps the same one in a different tree. I can't be sure, they all have the same hair-do. :-)

This is a swan eves dropping on the conversation of a bunch of cormorants.

This begins the hike for the FOLLOWING day! Also from the bridge. This is a Great Blue Heron I believe. Here is a close up.

This is a different one taken later in the trip. But it's the same type of bird, just closer. :-)

There is a lookout close to the bridge, this is the view from there.

Here is a cormorant.

Here is a grey swan and a white swan. It's not the lighting, it is indeed a gray swan.

Sam and Caleigh very interested in taking photos of the cormorant.

See, I'm not the only one who likes to take photos of flowers and insects!

This shot is taken from the actual trail on Waterfront Park. It's beautiful down there!

A Brown Vulture.

Same vulture, cooler picture.

It's just a lovely sunny day.

This is the official beginning of our Waterfront Park walk for our official walk for the week. And here it all begins, at the sign. There photos are all taken by Mike, I spent most of my time gabbing with a fellow homeschooler, the few I took and some from Sam will follow Mike's.

There's not a whole lot to say at this point. We saw lots of duck, geese and swans at the beginning, so here's several pictures of those things (and water and trees).

This is a 2500 meter walk in one direction. 1000 meters = 1Km. 5 clicks = 3.10686 miles. Just so ya know. :-) 3 miles with 3 adults and 7 children. 7 children who LOVED to explore! It was an adventure.

Sam found bones on the beach. So, he had to take a picture of himself holding the bones, you'll see the picture when you scroll down to his photos. He's pretty impressed with himself.

Sea Gull

Rora met this Newfoundlander dog named Charlie. On all fours he's as tall as she is very nearly. She loved him. He was beautiful!

One of the boys found a bug, they were quite impressed with it, especially after it purportedly peed on him.

Pine Warbler, beautiful isn't it?

This is an immature Cormorant. I don't mean to imply that he wasn't as mature as the other cormorants, but he certainly wasn't as old. He did like following us around though.

For some reason Caleigh likes prickly things. She's not happy unless she comes home with a burr of some kind or another attached to her somewhere after a hike.
I hope this isn't what we measure the success of all of our hikes against. However, on our last hike, I think Mike won for the most burred of us all. He easily had dozens upon dozens attached to him. So many in fact, that we have not yet been able to free his fleece pull over of them. They are so little and so well imbedded, I do believe it is a lost cause.

If you look very closely, you can see a reddish shadow. That is a Scarlet Tanager. The camera decided it was more interesting to focus on the grass in front of it rather than the reddish beauty of the bird itself. So I'm afraid you'll have to use your imagination and trust me.

Another cormorant.

Here is another Kingfisher. They seem prevalent in the area. Mike enjoys getting pictures of them.

This is a Cedar Waxwing.

Here we are back at the beginning again. This picture and the next one are my most favorite of the entire trip. The color of the sky and the water is just amazing. I do believe I'm going to blow these up and keep them.

This mast is part of the Waterfront Park. It's pretty impressive to look at. You can't climb it, much to the chagrin of a male child I know, but it is nice to look at!

The parking lot with Sam and his little friend, on their way to the lookout.

View from the top of the lookout.

Here are Sam's photos. I'll just post them in the order he took them and write commentary where they differ too much from what you've seen so far.

Wooly Bear

You remember the photo that Mike took of Sam taking a photo of himself holding bones he found on the beach? This is it! Just an FYI, Mike, man that he is, decided to bring them home with us! AAAHHHHH!!!! They went into the compost bin after I found out.

All the pictures you see of the bridge are at the halfway point of our hike where we turn around and go back. We let the kids have a rest here.

Someone enjoys self portraits and he's not too bad at taking them either!

This is from the lookout at the end of our hike. Beautiful sky huh?

This is Eva. She got lost on the way up to the lookout. She decided to go off roading and got lost. Sam decided that before going to rescue her and help her find her way up, he needed to get a photo first.

Here are my pictures. Again, unless something needs explaining, I'll just be putting down a whole host of photos.

Just to warn you, I LOVE taking photos of flowers. Don't know why, I just do. Be prepared, there are a lot of them!

Eva was a pretty happy camper so long as she was eating her Crasins and raisins.

She's going to be a reporter some day. Aurora will be our artist, Sam our sports hero and Caleigh, well, Caleigh will be bossing them all around.

See the bones in his hands?! Everyone seems to need a picture of them.

Caleigh is a magnet for finding feathers and coins, mostly feathers though. She LOVES to find feathers. It doesn't matter what size they are or what color they are, she loves all feathers, great and small, and she thinks we need to keep all of them!

Don't know why, but she thought it was a good idea to color under there. Perhaps it was because she didn't have just her colored pencils. You see, her pencil box has 12 pencils in it. Some of the others have 24. No flies on this kid.

Notice the name on the pink box. It's not Eva.

There's Aurora and Charlie again!

And there you have it folks! A rather lengthy presentation of our walk at Waterfront Park. Tune in next time when I post photos of our most recent walk at Cherry Hill Gate. We're supposed to be going there next Friday, the 5th of October. We already have families who would like to come with us!