A day in the woods

This time at Binghamton U's nature preserve, which has the problem  of having too many deer to be supported on the preserve itself , so the deer forage in the surrounding suburbs . Everyone complains about the deer eating their shrubs and flowers  but when the University decided to cull the herd a few years ago there was a court injunction against it placed by some of the U's neighbors. I am not sure in the absence of natural predators letting the deer starve to death in harsh winters is a better option.In any event , it was a pleasant surprise to find a 6 point buck and his ladies ( total 5) on the trail. Not wanting to disturb their foraging we backed out the trail we were on and took the Marsh and Pond trail. We saw a few cardinals, some chickadees , mallards and a hooded merganser.  And the surprise of the day was really the dragonfly ( actually I am not sure if it is more appropriately called a darner or possibly a damselfly). There were several of them hanging around the pond. But it has been a gorgeous 50-60 degree day , after a few days in the  30-40  degree range.