Saturday ended up being a little on the spotty weather side, so we chose to do a shorter hike. I also got a text before we left that my bike wheel was ready, so we picked that up on way to the preserve. The gears need to be adjusted on the bike, but otherwise the wheel seems as good as new!

On to the Nature Preserve!

This goes along the Hudson river. You start up at a higher elevation and then drop down to the banks. It was nice and shady.

You could definitely feel a breeze up here.  This is a nice preserve with informative signs sprinkled around:

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The path is very clearly marked and pretty walkable. Not too many tree roots or things to trip on.  The downhill path is a little more loose and rocky. I wouldn’t want to do this when it’s wet.

Down to the banks of the Hudson.

Home of the PCBs. Ick.

We headed towards the marsh area and we saw several new-to-us species of plants and animals!  It’s been dry here lately, so the trail was only mildly damp, but having the wooden walkways is still nice.

The air was very still here and the mosquitoes started attacking. They love me more than John. Not sure why, but it’s annoying LOL. Time for the bug spray!

New plant:  This is a pickerel.

It’s a native plant, but apparently pretty aggressive, which I would agree with because it was around in abundance.

Buttonbush (aka Cephalanthus):

I was pretty excited to see this one in bloom. It’s a native plant and I actually have one in our back yard. It’s only 18 inches tall and hasn’t bloomed yet, so to see what it will eventually look like was pretty cool!  Or sort of like. My buttonbush is the home garden variety and not the wild and wooly one. This also was in abundance along with the pickerel:

Down to the marsh where we saw some new birds:

Okay, a little closer:

These are Eastern Kingbirds. Confirmed by my sister – the bird expert – after I sent her this pic.

Also seen was a not new-to-us bird, but the common red winged blackbird:

There are tons of these around here. It’s one of my favorites to see flying by when we bike.

Some waterlilies were in bloom and this is one I’ve never seen before:

It’s a Nuphar or common name of brandy bottle.  Very neat looking.

Closeup of the pickerel:

Leaving the swampy area and back into the buttonbush, I spied a new butterfly:

After much searching, this is a silver spotted skipper. I seem to have lost my butterfly ID book somewhere in the house (how does this happen??), so there was a lot of googling trying to figure it out.

This was a great hike for seeing new stuff!

Time to trudge back up:

The sun finally came out and it was feeling pretty warm. Interestingly enough, when we got back to the top you could feel the breeze again – which was very welcome.

All and all, this is a gem of a small preserve.