First Day - and a lovely one!

I've created this blog for me, mostly, to help me pay attention to nature and to keep a location to post seasonal musings, photos, etc. I'm a former science teacher, and still a teacher educator. Now that I'm not in the classroom on a daily basis, I suddenly have time and space to look even more closely at nature than I used to when I worked a long teaching week. Today was the first day of school -- but not for me! This is the first time I've had that "first day of school" morning to myself in sixteen years! So I took advantage of the newfound time and took a walk to the park.







Stopped first at Laurel Street Bakery and enjoyed watching the house sparrows. I think that some of them are juveniles, but it's hard to tell, and I'm not an expert. Either that or they are molting, especially the males, not pictured here. They were relatively bold, willing to take crumbs directly from my table.

Then continued on to the wading pool at Audubon Park -- saw a brown anole doing his dewlap thing, and a flock of ring necked doves drinking from shallow puddles and maybe eating little insects in the mud??? Stayed and drew one of the gorgeous moss draped live oaks. Their giant twisting trunks are amazing.