It's Not an Eagle, It's Just a Seagull

The kids and parents alike have been having fun out on the trails this past week. I'm hearing a lot of great feedback from parents on our hikes, especially along the lines of what this mom said to me on Saturday, "we would have just been at home this morning, kids in front of a video game, while we wished for something good to do." We've all been in those situations, though I find that if I have a set plan, the day doesn't loom so large ahead of me. Moreover, when the plan involves getting the kids out, it sets the tone for the rest of the day and makes it easier to get out the next time. The fresh air and physical activity work their magic on the whole family; parents more patient, kids calmer, all of us more centered after a morning spent in nature. I'm hoping that more of you will hit the trails with us in the near future.


On Saturday we visited the Lenoir Preserve in Yonkers. Now here's a place I bet many folks didn't know existed. It's a 40-acre nature preserve with forest trails, a dragonfly pond, a butterfly garden, and an expansive lawn overlooking the Hudson River and the Palisades where folks gather in the fall to watch the hawk migration. It is also home to the historic Lenoir mansion which is now the Yonkers Education and Cultural Center, and a nature center where the Hudson River Audubon conducts part of it's Feeder Watch program.

We went for a walk with a young woman named Venisha, a graduate of Pace University, and an educator at both Lenoir and Croton Point Park. She taught us a bit about weeds in the preserve and surrounding county. The kids helped tame a bit of the invasive mugwort, tramped through the now dormant butterfly garden, explored the edges of the thawing dragonfly pond, spotted deer tracks and other scatalogical traces of their existence, and searched for moleholes along a bumpy ridge they followed through the lawn. They trecked around with armfuls of mugwort for a "weed bouquet" project in the nature center, stuffing their pockets with small stones and fallen pinecones, and carefully trying to carry the prickly, cast-aside outer shells of the American Chestnut. With these treasures in hand we returned to the nature center where Venisha provided us with a few other weedy specimens and lengths of raffia to create our masterpieces.
This morning we found another lesser-known (to myself, anyway!) county park called George's Island. The park is comprised of 208-acres of tidal wetlands, a pond, wooded trails and shoreline along the Hudson. Our group, with kids ranging in age from 7 to 2 1/2, saw probably 2-acres of that over the course of two hours and had a great time.

On our way to the park, driving up Route 9 near the Croton train station I spotted an eagle soaring above, it's big white head and fan of white tail feathers clearly visible from the car. I shouted and pointed to my girls who were hoping to spot more at the park. When we arrived, binoculars in hand, we saw many seagulls, ducks, hawks and Canadian geese (hence, it's not an eagle, it's just a seagull), the ditty my girls sang for the rest of the day). There were two eagles perched one above the other in a tree across the inlet, but the kids had a hard time spotting them in the binos. They stayed put in their tree the whole time we were there.

Our visit was almost cut short when my 4 1/2 year old decided to test the strength of the paper thin ice covering a tiny creek in the park by walking across it. Her boot stuck and she belly flopped down. This child cannot, no matter what, keep her little-self out of the water even when she knows she's going to be cold and wet after the fact. Seriously, she's becoming notorious. Luckily, her sopping jeans dried quickly lying on the high-blowing defroster on the dash of the car while she ate a granola bar in her carseat and waited while the rest of us tried to get a good view of the national birds in the trees.

All dried and warm, it was then off for a walk through a small wood and down a narrow dirt, slide-like path to the river below. The kids spent a long time gathering oyster shells and tossing rocks in to the water, scaling rock bridges, sploshing along the shore and collecting bits of colorful, soft riverglass.

We left, pretty dirty, not too wet, pockets stuffed and jingling, looking forward to tomorrow's trip to Teatown, and definitely planning to return to these places in the spring and summer.