Ever since we moved to Missouri we have subscribed to “The Missouri Conservationist”, a lovely nature magazine created for Missouri nature lovers by the Missouri Department of Conservation.
Last Sunday my husband suddenly asked me if I would like to check out a nearby natural area that had been featured in this month’s magazine. We had never heard of Tingler Prairie before but it was no more than an hour’s drive away, so I looked up the directions and off we went.
After parking, the first stop along the trail was a landing that overlooks this small marshy area which is otherwise known as Tingler Lake:
After walking a little further along the trail I realized that the lake is the only part of this hiking trail that has trees! The rest of the trail winds through (as the name suggested) a prairie! I really do prefer hills and trees, but let’s see what else there is along this trail.
We came to the second turn and I thought that it would take us to the river, so we took the turn and kept walking. We soon discovered that we had instead taken the south loop, which passed by a couple of small ponds, but was not going anywhere near the Spring River. We saw a bird fly by and land on one of the small brushy trees. He was mostly black with a flash of red and yellow. We couldn’t get close enough to tell for sure, but I figured it had to be a red winged blackbird.
We noticed that at a couple of shaded spots there were beautiful natural stone benches. This would have been a very inviting place to sit and rest except for one thing — the grasses around the bench had not been mowed and had grown up to be as high as the bench. In this season of chiggers and ticks and spiders we decided we did not need to sit and rest!
I noticed that there were quite a few different types of wildflowers growing. One of these is quite familiar because it grows along my county road. But I had not previously seen white spiderwort — just the purple.
Another bird flew by and landed too far away for a clear shot, but later I identified it as a Dickcissel using iNaturalist.
And speaking of finding two different colors of the same species of wildflower, how about wild indigo? At home I had only seen the cream colored flowers, but here the blue wild indigo was everywhere:
and I saw only one small example of the cream:
We finally arrived back at our starting point — near the parking area. I wanted to continue on and go to the river and also around the lake, but other people were starting to arrive! Two vehicles full of adults and children, so we decided it was time to practise social distancing and head back home.