I still have lots of birds to share from my trip to The Biggest Week in American Birding, but I feel compelled to celebrate the late but inevitable arrival of spring in Southern Maine. My wife has been working in the yard, planting and transplanting flowers, but I was mostly interested in the volunteers…the wildflowers of my mossy yard. Spring Beauty is always there, but the clumps this year seem bigger. And I caught a bonus Hoverfly at work in this clump.

The Dog-tooth Violets are blooming in every woodlot, and are even more lush in our sunny yard.

Then you have the Wild Strawberry, another widely abundant plant in Southern Maine, that has made a home in the margin of our lawn.

And finally Cinquefoil, which might be new this year, creeping in from the woods across the road. Both this, and the Strawberry image are littered with fallen petals from our Ornamental Plum.

So, pretty tame by true wild-land standards, but not bad for a yard at the edge of town. And, just so you don’t feel deprived of wild, I will finish with a true wildflower, a Painted Trillium from a lunch-time walk around the trail loop at Rachel Carson NWR Headquarters yesterday noon.

Canon SX50HS. Program with iContrast and Auto Shadow Control. A mix of tel-macros at 1200mm and wide-macros at 24mm plus 1.5x digital tel-converter. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.