March 19, 2010; Bird Refuge

Wild currant! One of my favorite spring blooms. Aren't these gorgeous? This was in the parking lot at the Nisqually Bird Refuge. It was 37 degrees when we left our house, but at Nisqually, the temperature was 44 (warm!). We had a beautiful hike and saw many more birds than last time.

The Mountains are always very pretty and even thought it seems like I keep taking the same photo over and over, to me each one is unique and special. We were out there with all the "hard core" photographers. This is an example of one of the smaller spotting scopes we saw. EVERYONE was lugging HUGE equipment around! My little digital hanging around my neck looked very undersized. Phil brought binoculars that really brought stuff up close - I wonder what they could see with these huge scopes! Probably individual feathers!

This is an unidentified hawk we watched for a while, then it flew away. This was taken at full zoom, but on my computer with additional zoom I can see a pretty close up shot of this guy.

We also saw a bald eagle (flying); two Great Blue Herons (flying); Lots of very noisy Canada Geese, hundreds of ducks, swallows, starlings, red winged blackbirds, many little unidentified birds (after going on a field trip here, Alan always called every bird he heard a "Wilson's Warbler". I'm sure there were some of those too! It was very noisy in a beautiful way, with lots of birds, woodpeckers, frogs, geese and ducks.

And if you look right in the center of this picture, you will see an owl! A Great Horned Owl to be specific (the people with the scopes told us so!). Apparently there is a next nearby and sometimes you see little horned babies occasionally! Momma is sitting nearby, but we couldn't spot the nest.

Afterwards we went out to lunch at Panda Express. That was delicious and way more food than I am used to eating at one sitting. Orange chicken, chow mien, Beijing Beef. I don't think I'll have to cook dinner tonight (Score!).

Phil is outside washing our cars (score! score!). A great day to be outside. I looked on line and even Hillsdale Michigan is warm - 63 degrees! I bet Minneapolis is toasty too!