It was one of the first truly warm days of the year so far and I wanted to find dragonflies. After dropping my daughter off at her forest preschool I walked down to the pond which I’d spent so much time at during my 365 Nature Project. Although it was fairly early in the day I had hopes of finding some odes. When I first arrived there wasn’t much flying over the pond so I had my lunch and waited for the sun to warm the air. I then surveyed the pond and discovered a few Pacific Forktail damselflies on the water’s edge. Then a large dragonfly zoomed by and it was easy to see it was a Common Green Darner, my first dragon of the year. It was the only one I saw but satisfying.
As I watched for odes I noticed a trio of crows having a slight tussle. A short time later a pair of crows walked along the small creek, one making a whiny begging call and fluttering its wings. The other doing a pretty good job at ignoring it. The begging crows was not a juvenile so I assume it was the female half of a pair and she was begging for food. They do this during the nesting season and I have often heard the whining call from a tree behind our house.
Later on my walk I heard some loud wing flapping in the trees overhead and looked up to see several Band-tailed Pigeons. Twice last year during my 365 Nature Project I found feathers from Band-tailed Pigeons and once thought I saw the birds themselves, but they were gone quickly. This was the first time I was able to get a good look at the pigeons in the arboretum.
