Kensington Metropark

In Michigan, you don't really know when winter ends and spring starts. But Ping managed to get her first spring outing two weeks ago. Went out to Kensington Metropark Nature Center. The Kensington Metropark is actually a reall
y huge park with a farm house, man-made beaches, boat rental, waterpark and lots of hiking trails in addition to the nature center.

The nature center is basically a combination of trails that run through the woods with a variety of birds. Most of the large birds like the heron and the swan can be seen from the Boardwalk along the Wildwing Lake. Right in the middle of the lake is a little island where most of the herons build their nests. Ping got the chance to look through a zoom lens to see the birds building their nests. There was also a swan who displayed itself not too far from the Boardwalk.

The most surprising thing this trip is we found a coot! Yes, just one. But am pretty sure it is not 小黑 because it looks smaller. John got a really nice picture of it that looks like it is smiling after eating some weed. Hehe, as you all can tell here, Ping didn't take that many photos this trip since it is pretty hard to capture all those birds from far and with the sun so bright, Ping don't really know how to take a nice picture so Ping will just link to John's photos which are way better photos to look at anyway. Wish we could have just brought the coot back to the Red Cedar River! It has been a little quiet at the river lately...maybe because of the flood from the crazy amount of rain we got recently.
Ping also brought some bird seeds for the birds. The birds that came by to eat it by the Boardwalk were mostly this black ones with red wings.
Ping had the most fun when the chikadees came to feed on Ping's hand! It was a little freaky initially because their little legs are quite sharp but after a while, it was fun! Ping felt like laughing out loud because they were ticklish! It was funny watching them watch us first before they land on our hand, pick out their favorite seed and fly away to eat them.

The other fun one is trying to get a picture of a cute little squirrel and a chipmunk. It took us a while before we finally got this close to it. Ping brought a peanut for the squirrel too. It was funny how it would go in a zig-zag to avoid us to get to the peanut instead of darting straight for it. It was so mean though! It took the peanut away and didn't bother to pose for a photo as a token of thank you!!
Ping was reading about Steven Morello's work and came across this quote - "The key to shooting powerful nature photography is to first be a good naturalist". This is so true because there really is a difference between someone who wants to take a photo just because they want to and someone who wants to take a photo to capture the nature with a non-bias point of view.