Despite the many excellent reasons that exist to leave New York State, during the few months when the sun shines it’s hard to beat for its beauty and variety.

Today my younger daughter and I walked in one of our favorite places and saw all manner of wildflowers, heard many birds, and were chased by skippers and yellow swallowtails who managed to escape my efforts to photograph them every time.

Pulling into the parking area, we were greeted by several indigo buntings who proceeded to vanish into the trees, taunting us with their songs but refusing to show themselves. A redtail sailed over a field across the road, and as we started down the trail, another one sailed over the treetops above us as a young hawk called from the woods.

The flowers were friendlier. They couldn’t fly away, and we feasted on the color and diversity.

First came wild geranium.

I’m not sure, but after consulting our wildflower book, I think these are lance-leaved goldenrod.

Some of the trail was lined with phlox…

…and other segments with bird’s-eye speedwell.

I’m not sure what these are.

That’s just a sample. As we turned into deeper woods descending to the stream, I saw a new-to-me red flower — moccasin flower.

Other than that, it was a mixed-tree forest, some of the trees very large.

We crossed the creek near a small waterfall.

It was tempting to keep looking back as we walked down the streambed, because the waterfall seemed to grow.

…and grow.

But looking ahead gave us plenty of visual feasting as well, from mossy and enchanted banks…

…to picturesque trails…

…to rocks crawling with greenery of all kinds…

…to unwary chipmunks.

When we reached our destination — a stone bridge left over from some long-ago inhabitant — the water level was low enough to allow us into the stream. We’d never been there before — only on the bridge, looking down at the tumbling falls.

There was a winter wren singing almost directly overhead, but I never did get my eye on him. I’ve only ever seen winter wrens in pictures. It would be neat to see one, even though they are fairly ordinary looking little brown birds. Their real charm is their intricate, silvery song, and we got to hear it the whole time we lingered there.

On the way out, we saw still more flowers… forget-me-nots in blue and pink,

honeysuckle and Japanese honeysuckle,

and seed galls of some kind. We weren’t sure what this was, but we christened it the green-eyed monster gall.

I’m not sure what these tiny white flowers are either. I couldn’t find them in our guide.

It’s not a bad thing to be reminded that there are all kinds of things underfoot and overhead that I rarely notice and can’t identify… There is an excess of beauty in the world. Who would ever know it simply by reading the headlines?

All in all it was a pretty great way to spend a Saturday morning!