Floral Trip Around the Valley

 

I've found some flowers blooming in a variety of places recently so lets take a trip around different parts of the valley of the sun to see what I've found.  Here we have some very pretty roses blooming next to the fountain at the Scottsdale Civic Center.

Some Globe Mallow blooming in Gilbert.

Pretty yellow poppies blooming over in my old neighborhood.

And finally, some Texas sage blooming along side the road in Paradise Valley.  

Lot's of pretty things to see!

Birds, Birds, Birds

Last night I watched a program on our local PBS station about all the places in Arizona where one can bird watch.  They talked about all those I know about but they also listed several places I didn't know about.  When this pandemic business is under control, I may have a visit a few of them.  One of the places they talked about was the Gilbert Riparian Preserve in Gilbert Arizona.  It's been a little over a year since I last visited this place so I decided to check my photos and see if I had any that I hadn't posted.  It turns out I had several so here are a few I picked.  Above are two American Avocet.

Here's a snowy egret admiring his reflection.

A hummingbird sitting on a twig.

A Blue Heron posing quite nicely.

A ring-necked duck.

A black-necked stilt.  Another one with a good reflection.

And, lastly a female ring-necked pheasant.

They had signs all around the area to help with bird identification.  Otherwise I don't think I could have named all of these.  

I have a new post on Sharon's Sojourns today.  I'm taking a look at one of my favorite Italian villas.

Viewing the Birds

I took a drive out to Gilbert to the Riparian Reserve to see if I could see any interesting birds.  I saw quite a lot of ducks.

Including this one called a Northern Shoveler.  It gets that name from the shovel shaped bill.

There were quite a few geese roaming about and occasionally squawking quite loudly.

And, I saw this snowy egret who was doing the Hokey-Pokey!

I have a new post on Sharon's Sojourns today.  I visiting another beautiful library in New York.

A Wilderness in an Urban Area

Gilbert Arizona is located southeast of Phoenix and is home to the Riparian Preserve & Water Park, a wonderful place to hike and bird watch.  The park is full of trails, lakes and streams.

On a visit there you will see all kinds of birds that are attracted to the water like this beautiful snowy egret.

Or this black necked stilt.

And you will most likely run into a few ground animals too.  Like this cute rabbit who was kind enough to pose for me.  It's a great place to experience nature without leaving the valley.  

A Special Learning Event

My "Art Challenge" group had a very special event last Friday night.  One of our members, Ted Wolter is an art teacher at the Chandler-Gilbert Community College and he treated us to a very special ceramics class.  That's Ted above showing us how apply the glazes to our chosen pieces.  Ted created a variety of pieces for us and we each chose as many as we wanted to tackle and learned to apply the glaze.  Those blue, barrel-like containers contained the different glazes and the sample pieces on the wall gave us an idea of what they would look like when fired.

These are my three pieces with the glaze applied.  What was interesting is that once they have been fired they won't look anything like they look right now.  My vase should turn out blue.  I promise I'll show you the end result once I get them back.  I can't wait to see how they turn out.

Jim Lowman has had some previous experience working with ceramics so he took this opportunity to try something new for his pieces.  He was burning strands of horse hair into his pieces.  It creates black, spidery lines.

I have a new post on Sharon's Sojourns today.  I'm visiting the oldest neighborhood in California.

What's good for the goose....

I drove out to Gilbert yesterday to visit the Riparian Preserve at Water Park.  I hadn't been there in over a year so I thought I'd see what kind of birds I could spot out there.  We are experiencing some unusually warm weather for this time of year so it was a bit of hot walk (83f/23c) and the place was packed with people so the wildlife weren't very cooperative.  Well, except for this goose.  He was not the least bit camera shy.

And, these two were quite happy to swim around in front of my camera.

I did get a rather good shot of this black necked stilt who was prodding around in the water for bits to eat.  The Riparian park wasn't my only stop in the east valley.  I'll show you some more photos from other stops in a future post. 

Snowy Egret

I had to drive to Gilbert (a city on the far southeast side of the Phoenix metropolitan area) on Friday for an appointment so I took the opportunity to visit a park I've been hearing about.  The Riparian Preserve at Water Ranch is so much more that a park.  There are a total of 8 wetlands areas, many bird blinds, an  observatory, picnic areas, walking and running paths, fishing spots, playground and probably a lot more that I missed.  I walked around at least 4 of the wetlands and I saw many birds including this gorgeous snowy egret.  In the photo above he's beautifully reflected in the water.

In this photo, he strolled over closer to me giving me a chance to get an up-close shot.  I'll have to make a trip out there again one of these days even if it is some 30 miles away across city traffic.