Coker Arboretum, Chapel Hill, North Carolina
This post is my contribution to Karma’s Signs of Spring Photo Hunt. I don’t have a prime lens, but the photos, except for the birds, were taken at about the same focal length with my zoom lens. (There was a lot of squatting involved to get the pictures.) Visit Karma’s post here if you’d like to participate.
It was spring break at UNC and we learned that we could easily find a parking space on campus when the students are out of town. And that meant we could finally visit the lovely Coker Arboretum, 5 wooded acres in the middle of a college campus. I came home with more than 300 photographs! What follows is a small sample of the birds and blooms we saw. Some of the plants were from other parts of the world.
I was especially attracted to the tiny South American spring starflowers which carpeted some of the garden plots. Something about those little purple lines on the petals. And the European spring snowflakes captivated me. They were a little bigger than our snowdrops. When I got home I learned they were native to southern Europe, all the way east to Ukraine, so I wondered if any of my ancestors had them in their gardens to welcome spring over there.
I am deeply in love with the American Robbin ♥
Of all the pictures of robins I’ve got over the years, this one is my favorite. 💕
One thing for sure, a spring flower hunt this time of year isn’t challenging 😉 … but your collection made me smile and I like your variety.
Thank you, Frank. At least down south here it’s not challenging at all to find spring flowers! A lot of the ones I’m seeing now we didn’t see up north until April or May.
A lovely representation of spring, Barbara! I am enchanted by the Carolina silverbell and the Alabama snow-wreath, so pretty!
Thank you, Eliza! I might have a picture of the whole Alabama snow-wreath for you in the next post. There were so many pretty shrubs between the trees in this arboretum.
Such lovely photographs, Barbara! Almost as good an experience as walking the spring woods. Thank you for sharing that beauty!
Thank you, Liz! I’m so glad you enjoyed these photos. I was thinking how much you would appreciate a stroll through this lovely arboretum. 🌸
The magnolia is beautiful. We had a bush in our yard but it was overcome with mold, so it had to be removed. Still miss those flowers.
You have my sympathy about your magnolia. 🙁 It’s amazing how attached we get to certain plant beings and how much we feel their loss when they die.
Beautiful birds and blooms! Those spring snowflake blooms are adorable, I love their pattern. Wonderful sightings, and I love that you took 300 photos! 🙂
Thank you, Donna! I fell so in love with those little green dots on the spring snowflakes. It all felt so magical that day, and we tried the Merlin app, which told us about that hermit thrush nearby. 😉
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This selection of photos is gorgeous, Barbara! I kept thinking of O’Keefe with a camera.
My favorite photo is the Robin. I love the symmetrical backside, then slipping to see its face with the details on its beak. The gray blurred background emphasizes the detail of the bird, tree bark and flowers. I just love it!
The snowflake flowers are sweet as can be!
300 photos taken tells me that you were having so much fun in the moment with this challenge. I’m glad that you participated and shared some words with your experience. 😄
Thank you so much, TD! I’ve taken so many pictures of robins over the years and this one is definitely my favorite one ever. It was such an unusual, interesting pose and he was in a perfect setting and the camera cooperated with focusing — I couldn’t believe my luck! The whole morning there was so magical with the birds singing and perching down low in all the lovely shrubs. Most of the year there is no way to find a parking space anywhere near the place so I’m glad we were told that the time to go is when the students are gone off campus. Maybe there will be a low humidity day in the summer we can go back there and see what it’s like in that season. (And there were plenty of benches for Tim!)
I’m so thrilled to hear your excitement with exploring your new home!
My tiny hummingbird,Ruby, is at the feeders all day long now. She is the only one and must live close by. Hummingbird season is May – November. So she is very early but will have more friends soon. I just love her and enjoy watching her from inside from my window. It’s typical spring here!
Ruby is lucky to have your feeder to sustain her until her friends arrive for the season! We’ve still got cardinals and juncos visiting the branches outside our windows and, like with your hummingbird, it gives us so much pleasure to see them every day. Even the crows up high in the trees seem to be friends, announcing to the neighborhood every time we leave or return to the house.
I noticed a crow pulling grass vines then flying up into my oak tree. It’s building a nest! This is the first year that a crow decided to build a nest and I’m not quite sure how I feel about that!
Maybe you will get to see the establishment of an extended crow family! I understand they are very good parents to 2-4 hatchlings and that sometimes the older siblings hang around for a few years to help their parents raise another batch. It could be interesting…
Unfortunately for the busy working crow, the wind gusts took it down overnight. I kind of glad because I love all the mourning doves nesting and I really don’t want to attract blackbirds or crows.
Yesterday I noticed the first of the redwing blackbirds which migrate through during spring.
Funny I haven’t seen any red-winged blackbirds here. And only rarely a mourning dove. I miss all the mourning doves I had in Connecticut, but here I have many more juncos. We can’t have everything, no matter where we are, I guess!
Barbara, these are simply lovely! So much beauty in your world, and I’m grateful you’ve shared it with us.
Thank you, Debbie! I’m so happy to share all this fleeting spring beauty with you. 🌸
How lucky for you that the weather cooperated to go visit another botanical wonder. The Arboretum has some beautiful flowers, most, if not all, which I’ve never seen before. Barbara, I could see coming away with 300 photographs, without batting an eyelash. You have captured some beautiful flower and bird images here.
Thank you, Linda. A lot of the flowers were new to me, too, and I was so grateful for the little signs that told me what they are and what part of the world they came from. We might try coming on more Sunday mornings when city parking is free and the people are few, to see what changes the seasons will bring. 🌸
I wish our botanical gardens had names/origins. They do have a Facebook page and in the Summer they feature one of their flowers for “Flower Friday” so then I can get the name. If I get any info it’s from Google Image Search. That sounds like a good idea – less people, free parking sounds like a good plan to me!
I do love all the information you can get from the Facebook posts of local botanical gardens and even the state park posts. I’ve been using google image, too, since you told me about it. There’s an iNaturalist app that’s also supposed to be very good. Yesterday I finally identified (I think) one of those dried up seedpods I love to photograph, cinquefoil.
Yes, lots of info Barbara. I get info about plants and waterfowl from the Wildlife Refuge too. In fact, they had an excursion there today and one of the guys from the plein air painting group posted about it with a lot of pics from inside the museum (which I’ve never been to yet) and the hike they went on. He saw several kinds of ducks that only go there in Winter. I have a few friends who kind of frown on Facebook – I sometimes feel I have to defend being on there, though it is primarily nature sites and news that I follow. There is a wealth of info out there. I follow the National Park Systems and Michigan DNR on Twitter – most everything else on Twitter is questionable, political, or nonsense most of the time, but I learn something from them as well. I have to read about that iNaturalist app. I had heard it on a feature of interesting internet sites that is on my radio station. I looked at a cinquefoil image – it reminds me of the tiny yellow flowers that come out in Spring. Did you find a herb farm like the one in Connecticut yet?
There are 10 national wildlife refuges here in North Carolina — it would be fun to visit as many of them as possible. Facebook is like any other tool, in my opinion, it depends on what you use it for! I think I may have found an herb farm about half an hour away from here, with limited hours. I’m trying to find a good time to go!
That is a lot of wildlife refuges Barbara. I hope you get to as many as possible and I’m sure they each have a Facebook page. That is right as to Facebook. It’s a great resource and I am on Twitter which has really become a place where people argue or give opinions on everything. I’m there for news and weather forecasts only. I used to follow Jocelyn Anderson there but I’d get a flood of other birders in my feed, so I had to quit her and follow here on Facebook instead. That’s great news about the herb farm – you were hoping to find one herb farm, so that’s promising!
Most of them are on the shoreline, at least 3½ hours away. The closest one is on a river two hours away. Sigh… It would involve overnight stays, which is difficult for me. But one can dream… I love following Jocelyn Anderson on Facebook, too. She must have a very expensive camera and lenses to get those sharp, beautiful photos! It’s so generous of her to share them so we can all enjoy them. I wonder how many hours a day she spends birdwatching.
Yes, that is far and not convenient for you health-wise. And for me, a longer trip nature trip would involve the expressway, so I shy away from that. I hope one day to get to Kensington Park where Jocelyn Anderson goes. I follow that Facebook group of Metropark photographers and most of the photos are taken there. Lots of deer and lots of different ducks. Such a diverse nature setting. I wonder how long she birdwatches daily too Barbara. She takes the video which takes time, plus the still shots. She must have a very long lens to capture those amazing photos!
I know you’d be thrilled to see the different kinds of ducks if you do make it to Kensington Park one of these days. Keeping my fingers crossed that you find a way, especially now that you have a little more time on your hands. 😉
Yes, I’m hoping so too Barbara. I don’t like to drive on the expressway and there is one expressway that everyone speeds on, way over the speed limit – it’s that one, so that is one thing holding me back. I’m not a fan of expressway driving to begin with, l even thought I’d take surface streets, but that won’t work either. Someday, I will get there.
I’m quite jealous of your beautiful variety of photos here! Spring has most definitely sprung for you! I fear my own hunt will be made quite difficult by the weather we are getting right now- lots of cold wind, rain and even some snow flurries. **sigh**
It sounds like old man winter doesn’t want to leave you alone up north there! I went to a nature workshop yesterday at the botanical garden and the locals I met said that they thought spring had arrived here a week or two earlier than usual. Hope that doesn’t mean summer will also come too soon!
Oh Barbara, it looks like you had a brilliant time taking spring photos! And 300?! That’s a lot, but I can imagine you felt like a child in a candy shop/
The American robin, from the back view, looks similar to an Australian native bird, the noisy miner. So sweet. ♡
I was having the time of my life, Joanne! I googled your noisy miner and can see the similarities with our robin. I couldn’t believe how long and thorough the Wikipedia article about them was! It was so much fun getting pictures of the birds surrounded by so many flowers. ♡
Lovely photos of the flowers and the birds. Thank you for sharing!
Thank you, Carol! I’m so pleased that you enjoyed them! 🙂
Lovely photos of the spring flowers and the birds! Thank you!
Thank you, Carol! So nice of you to stop by again! 😉