[hhynmtrxcp]

yesterday (memorial day) I took a drive up to lake bonaparte to try and find a nature conservancy holding that has lots of native orchids on it. I didn't find it, but when I was walking along the tracks to the south of the lake (which goes through the swampy area where there can be arethusa (dragon's mouth orchid) I was stymied by the hundreds of train cars parked along the tracks in both directions. the tracks are just a little higher than the wet area, so I had to walk on the thin strip of 'land' to the north, or opposite side of the tracks where I thought I might see orchids. much to my surprise when I decided to peek between rail cars to the other side, I found someone(thing) peeking back at me from underneath one of the cars!









I think they were robin chicks; the closest one had some orange on it's breast, and they had that 'look' to the eyes that I often associate with robins. It was quite warm, and they didn't seem to be too worried about me. The one in front in the last picture was so sleepy I had to wake it up to get pics with open eyes, and finally it dozed off with it's head hanging low (it was pretty warm that afternoon, even that far up north)

I walked along the tracks a bit further, trying to get to where the land reached fairly close to the tracks hoping to see nature conservancy signs indicating a property boundary. When I got to some real soil I noticed a fair number of what I've been told is a parasitic plant called one-flowered cancer root. Each stem has one flower, there is no chlorophyll and either the plant gets it's nutrients from another plant or saprophytically like mushrooms.







many of the box cars had old spiderwebs on them, so I took a pic of one near the bird nest. the cars had been there quite a while obviously for the parent birds to think that the cars were safe to build a nest under