No camera for birds? No problem – switch to wildflowers!

A couple of times a year, I forget to stick the SD card back into my camera and discover the problem only when I reach the Pole Farm parking lot. It happened again today, and I was even more irritated to discover my backup card wasn’t in the car.

Rather than head back home, I decided to hit the trail with just binoculars and my iPhone. Without the heavy camera and lens, I found myself walking much more freely and quickly, a mild consolation for not having my trusty Canon on my shoulder.

In such situations, I worry that some rare bird or birds — a flock of extinct passenger pigeons come back to life, perhaps — will appear directly overhead or in front of me, and I’ll miss what would have been an Audubon magazine cover shot.

That didn’t happen this morning. I saw few birds that would have been in range to shoot with my long Sigma zoom lens. With few birds about, I turned my attention to the wildflowers poking up out of the grasses on each side of the trail.

They made for a cornucopia of color: pink wild bergamot, black-eyed Susans, yellow false sunflowers and white wild carrot. I especially liked the vivid red Allegany blackberries on the edge of the Lawrence Hopewell Trail. That photo tops this post, and the one ripe berry is no longer on the bramble branch. I ate that one! 🦅