Willow male catkins

One of the great joys in my life is learning a new refuge, either as part of a biological survey or in advance of leading natural history walks on the land. (This is all the more true these days, given the desecration of the area across the street from my home turf, a situation that makes it hard to walk my old route by that God-awful proto-development and now impossible to walk through the former forest, which has been utterly destroyed.) So for the past couple of weeks, I've been driving over to an exquisite conservation easement area in Stonington and going for journeys of discovery. It was hard to come up with the best highlight of this afternoon's trek, what with the blooming of Trout Lilies, Marsh Marigolds, Wood Anemones, and horsetails, to say nothing of spotting the first of this year's Yellow Warblers, but after I looked through the photographic collection, I opted for something different: a shot of the exquisite male flowers, or "catkins," now on display in one of the easement's wet areas. These belong to a willow, but I'm not sure of which species. It could be the common Pussy Willow, but there are numerous other possibilities, some native, some introduced. I'll just have to come back to do more research. That shouldn't be too much of an ordeal.