A fun and busy morning in the park

LOL! I wrote this up yesterday morning and thought I posted it, but it seems that somehow I forgot. Sorry about that. Better late than never, I hope.

Wow, what a beautiful change in the weather, and it seems that the cool, crisp air brought everyone out to play. I could hear a chorus of crows excitedly discussion something just to the north as I picked up a few items in the parking lot, but it wasn’t until I headed that way that I learned what they were discussing with such fervor.

Yup, a pretty red-tailed hawk, whom we haven’t seen much of in a while, was checking out the breakfast situation, and the crows were urging it to do that elsewhere. The hawk didn’t seem to mind the crows, but it sure did mind me looking at it, so it headed north, one light pole at a time, much to the vocal annoyance of several squirrels along the way, before it finally headed east just before it reached the middle parking lot.

From there, I only had a short walk to the pond, where it appears that the wood ducks have returned from their river cruise. I counted seven, and here are three of them showing us a new trick.

I’ve never seen them switch it up like that before. Have you?

Meanwhile, there were four mallards, and each one was taking in the morning sun on its own.

Even Ol’ Snappy was up from the abyss and soaking in about as much light as I’ve even seen it get. You can see a patch of its back to the left of its nose and one eye peaking out of the water. That gives a sense of just how big it is.

The main attractions, however, were the herons. There was one blue heron fishing.

One green heron who caught a relatively good-sized fish and which seemed to attracted the attention of a squirrel, for reasons that defy my powers of explanation.

Best of all, our one young yellow-crowned night heron was back again.

It seemed perfectly content to sharing that tree with the green heron.

And even seemed unperturbed when the squirrel stopped in. I wonder what the heck has gotten into that squirrel today.

From there I eventually headed to the river, were the air was so thick with mosquitoes this morning, that they still bumped into me even after I doused myself with bug spray, so I decided that six birds and one curious squirrel were enough, and I came home early to finish my coffee.