A Morning Walk and Ride in Forest Park
It’s not the Grand Tetons, but it’s not bad.
I was cycling to work through Forest Park this morning thinking about what to write for my turn on the Forest Park Living Lab Blog. Shall I do one on the undergraduate/graduate course in Field Ecology Techniques (good old BIOL4115) we run every year through Saint Louis University (the destination of my bike ride). Or shall I write one on what Forest Park might have been like 500 years ago, before the first European footprint fell on the soil, and when there were bison roaming over what is now Art Hill? How about a page or so on the latest movements of the Forest Park box turtles we have been studying for over a decade?
It was such a beautiful morning, the ride was great, and suddenly it got even better when I looked up and saw a pair of red-tailed hawks circling high in the sky near Round Lake.
Immediately, I knew the theme for the blog – A Morning Walk and Ride in Forest Park – based on this very morning. So here goes.
The morning started with the habitual walk in Forest Park with our little brown dog, Dixie. We walked past the Zoo to the World’s Fair Pavilion to check in on the two red-tailed hawks, Bonnie and Clyde, who we recently fitted with GPS telemetry tags. There was Bonnie sitting in a Sycamore tree by the car park.
I rattled off a couple of photographs hoping she would fly; lo and behold she did, but the photos weren’t in focus, until she was well into her flight over to the Nature Playscape area.
With Dixie back home gnawing on a snack, I jumped on my bike and started heading for work. On the way, I thought I’d check in on Astrid, the female great-horned owl who lives near Kingshighway. She has been sitting on a nest in the same crevice of an old cottonwood tree she used last year.
The hole is so small, Astrid hardly fits, and I don’t know what she will do with a couple of chicks. Same as last year I suppose, be squashed tighter and tighter as the chicks grow, thanks to the regular supply of food Dad brings in. No chicks were visible, though they had already hatched, but I took a couple of photos anyway and pushed my bike back to the Victorian Bridge only to see a belted kingfisher on a branch over the water searching for some breakfast.
I braced myself against the cold iron of the bridge, pushed the shutter on rapid motor drive and hoped for the best. I was happy to see that one or two shots turned out not too badly.
Jumped on my bike, over the bridge to the bike trail, and wallop, there was a red shouldered hawk staring at me.
After a few minutes, this gorgeous bird also flew, and as luck would have it, the camera’s focus and my aim were for once working together.
That photo isn’t the stuff of the National Geographic, but it’s not bad.
Forest Park isn’t the Grand Tetons, but it’s not bad, I thought as I jumped on my bike heading for West Pine and the City.
By: Stephen Blake and the FPLL team