Spring Walkabouts

As our options for social outings dwindle in the face of Covid-19, we often hear it said: "You can always go out for a walk."

This is true. Days are warmer, snow is vanishing, and as an added bonus, birds are migrating up the river and across the countryside. The goldfinches are turning yellow again, and the returning robins are clucking away in absurd numbers as they flock through the neighborhood.

For anyone thinking of making an excursion farther afield, here are a few locales Hilary and I have visited in the last couple of weeks that are less than an hour from town.

Old Cedar Avenue Bridge. Less than a mile south of the Megamall and IKEA, this old highway bridge has been totally rebuilt as a pedestrian bridge. It has a large asphalt parking lot, and the low hills roundabout have been tastefully landscaped. You'll get wonderful views of the river and the various waterfowl that make use of it from the bridge, of course, and just to the west there is a long boardwalk extending out into the river. On a recent visit we saw wood ducks and shovelers at fairly close range, and sixty-odd trumpeter swans out on the ice on the far side of the river.

Trails leads in both directions along the riverbank. The one that goes east, downstream, crosses under Cedar Avenue (a bit noisy, but the birds don't seem to mind) and soon arrives at the Bass Ponds, another great location for birding and a stroll. (You can also access the Bass Ponds more directly via a parking lot on Old Shakopee Road.)

Goldfinch turning yellow

William O'Brien State Park. Located a few miles north of the quaint village of Marine-on-the-St. Croix, this park has some of the most varied terrain and vegetation, and also some of the finest hiking trails in the region. My recommendation would be to approach the park from Washington County 4, which heads east a few miles north of Hugo. It's a nice drive through the countryside, and just before you reach Marine, as the road starts to descend (and before you pass through a short concrete tunnel at a bend in the road) you'll see a gravel parking lot on the north side of the road. Park here and take the trail up the hill through the oak-and-sumac woods. Within five minutes you'll be at the highest point in the park, with spectacular views across the countryside. From here there are several nice loop-hike options, all of them well-marked on maps posted along the way, through open fields and patches of woods.

We pulled into that lot a week ago on a sunny morning. I stepped out of the car and looked up to see seven raptors kettling in the bright sun above my head. A joyous sight. Two were mature bald eagles and one was an immature red-tailed hawk. The others, I'm not so sure.

When we reached the top of the hill a few minutes later we came upon four sparkling bright bluebirds—the first of the year for us.

If you can't find this little lot, you might just as well go to the main entrance on Highway 95. The hikes are also nice from the trailhead here, though you'll be walking through a broad flat marsh for quite a while before you get to the upland loops.

Highland Park Reserve. Right in West Bloomington, the trails at this park can give you a quick sense of getting away from it all. Head east and north from the Richardson Nature Center out into the grassy fields. The trail circles around clockwise into the woods and continues on to a small nameless lake, where you might see ducks and muscrat. Take a look at the platform on the telephone pole across the lake to the south. Maybe the resident osprey has arrived again for the summer. After circling around the north side of the lake, you can climb the hill west out into another nice set of fields or swing north again through the hardwoods to the nature center and the parking lot.

Hilly terrain at Lake Maria S.P.

Lake Maria State Park. This out-of-the-way backpacking park an hour NW of town is mostly just a bunch of trails through the hilly woods, but you'll certainly escape most of the weekend dogwalkers here. And after twenty minutes in the woods (trails are well-indicated on maps and posts throughout), it might occur to you that this is why you came out here in the first place: to stretch your legs in peace and quiet. You'll begin to admire the rugged oaks and the delicate ironwood trees, whose pale, crinkling leaves fill the middle story of the woods like notes on a musical staff. Maybe you'll take a dead-end branch of the trail to example one of the three wood-heated pond-side cabins you can rent by the night.

Two cranes. Can you spot them?

Sherburne National Wildlife Area. Due west of Zimmerman on Highway 169, Sherburne covers a vast area (30,000acres) of mostly open grassland and marshes. The best hike is the Blue Hill Trail, but we usually just take the six-mile Wildlife Drive. It goes past marshes, clumps of hardwoods, aspen thickets, and open grasslands. Lots of birds to be seen here, though sandhill cranes top the list for many visitors. We took the loop two days ago and saw sixty-odd cranes, most of them flying by in flocks of eight or twelve, but others standing in the tall grass twenty feet off the road, bellowing their strange, harsh, throaty gurgle.

Carver Park. Forty minutes west of Minneapolis, Carver is a sprawling park with a variety of habitats. Our preferred starting point is at the end of Springview Drive. From here a paved walking (and biking) trail heads east past Lundsten Lake and through open fields to a nice lookout tower across the countryside. (The fields along this trail are probably the best place in the Cities for seeing bobolinks—though they haven't arrived yet.) The easy loop continues around another lake counterclockwise back to the parking lot.  Other trails head off in all directions from Lowry Nature Center. Print out a map and spend the day.

I have tried to keep the bird reports that might have accompanied this little blog to a minimum. I realize most people aren't too interested in such things. But I might mention as an aside how excited I was to see a northern shrike on the path down at Tornado Alley, just a few blocks from our house the other day, and a beautiful meadowlark at Afton State Park, singing from the top of a willow shrub.

Only birding connoisseurs would be interested to hear about the rusty blackbird we saw down at the 180th Street Slough on Thursday. You don't see one of those every day!