The Blue Dicks are Up!

First Blue Dicks/Cluster Lillies of the year

Aw, come on - would you have bothered to look if I wrote, "The Cluster Lillies are Up?" that flower goes by both names. It's spring and the vernal pools are beginning to bloom. So far this year doesn't have the punch of 2009, but there are still a lot of wildflowers out, waiting for their due in admiration.

I went for a drive today, stopping by Mather Field to see if there were any particularly large spreads of flowers, but the pickings are beautiful as usual, but sparse. I'm sure the flowers were annoyed that I didn't even bother to take a good camera with me, and just used my iPhone for pix.

Meadow Foam, sparsely scattered at Mather

Love the pink centers of a Meadow Foam flower

See? Sparse sprinkling of those lovely little Frying Pan Poppies

After Mather Field, I headed over to Meiss Road. There the wildflowers were a bit more profuse. There were spots adrift with white Popcorn flowers, Frying Pan Poppies, Tidy Tips and Meadow Gold.

The birding on Meiss Road was so-so, but I did enjoy watching a Ferruginous Hawk sailing on the up drafts and I found a nice big flock of the somewhat rare, Tri-colored Blackbirds. I'm sure I saw them all because I didn't take my big lens camera with me. Oh well!

Frying Pan Poppies

small patch of Meadow Gold

The pale yellow patches are Tidy Tips

Fiddleneck

I also took a drive down Michigan Bar Road, but didn't get any pix of the lush showing of blue lupin and California Poppies on the drive in; that's another day.