Rouge Park in Toronto Treated to First Sighting!

A couple weekends ago, we did a hike through the Rouge Park, a city owned camp ground area and city of Toronto park lands combination, which is on the Toronto (Scarborough) and Pickering border. I've driven past this place millions of times on the 401 highway, back and forth from Ajax, but I've never stopped into it as I thought it was just a camp ground. John mentioned it and we decided to go there for a 3 hr or so walk. It was gorgeous out, late hazy afternoon light, gorgeous terrain, lots of stunning dried, decorative last season's foliage and beautiful trees. it was Spring being born indeed.

Sure signs of Spring were spotted, amazingly enough, we saw butterflies! We also saw a red tailed hawk soaring just above us, and the treat of the day, we had a first viewing of a bird we had been hoping to see at some point. John had joked about seeing it on our hike, which added to the amazing thrill of it lol! Having heard what we thought was a northern flicker, a loud piercing repetitive sound, we were soon proven wrong when he spotted a pileated woodpecker! It remained in a circular sort of vicinity for a bit and we were able to kind of follow it around, as it flew from tree to tree, knocking and looking for bugs, before finally flying a longer distance to another area. I managed to get a couple ok shots of it. It was just such an exciting thrill to actually finally see one!

Such a beautiful park and we hope to get back to it in the late Spring early Summer time that is fast approaching.