The Bridge to Terabithia-Greenfield Lake revisited

This hike was inspired by an article in today's Wilmington Star News (a subsidiary of the New York Times, more colorfully known by some local conservatives as the "Red Star"). The author refers to the above bridge as "The Bridge to Terabithia", because it leads to an enchanted trail which few visit in Greenfield Lake Park.

You may remember I wrote previously about visiting this park, which is a heavily used inner city park in Wilmington. At that time, I stuck to the apparently open, well travelled part of the park. After a couple of days barely leaving the house, I had it in my mind to do some hiking today and when I saw the article I decided it was time for another visit.

It turned out to be a good time for a visit, since the park is obviously signalling the arrival of spring with azaleas, daffodils and other plants beginning to blossom. While the annual azalea festival is a few weeks away, and it still seems cold to me, spring is near!

I also snapped this picture of 4 wood storks, which a kindly gentleman with a huge telephoto lens later informed me are an endangered species that rarely visits this far north.

And finally, I found the gate to Terabithia. Obviously, it is closed, I'm told because of a problem with squatters and drug dealers and inadequate funds for security. However, as the author pointed out, there is a well worn trail around the gate, leading to the rather tenuous bridge pictured at the top. The relatively short detour from the well used Loop trail is now poorly maintained, but it's disuse by humans contributes to its use by shy forest creatures. I scared up a few woodpeckers as well as a screech owl as I entered the cypress swamp shown above.

Oh, and I found out the name of the mysterious birds I showed in my post about hiking the neighborhood. They are cedar waxwings. They travel in flocks hereabouts, and I found out about them from another article in the Red Star a few days ago.