Happy Memorial Day!

The wood ducks, who had been thick on the pond a month ago, have really cut back on that, and I only found this one sleepy fellow there this morning as the sun started to shine through the trees from the east.

There were only a couple of blue herons on the river, but none were fishing this morning when I arrived.

I was thrilled to find the eagle back again right where I had spotted it yesterday, and this time I did a better job of sneaking close enough for a decent picture, or the eagle has simply decided that there is no way a creature so clumsy as me could possibly pose a threat.

At the north end, the killdeer, sandpipers, swallows, swifts, and even a kingbird were all filling up on the veritable eruption of flying insects from the water, but the best picture I got is of this darling eastern wood pewee.

On my way back south, I found that the eagle had moved to a sunnier perch, above the southern tip of the southern island, where it had nine mallard drakes to choose from.

I’m not sure if the eagle was after mallards, but sure they reacted as if it was and were doing their somewhat counter-intuitive “circle the wagons in plain sight” maneuver, which I’ve seen them employ before. First with the great horned owl just around the corner, and then with a Cooper’s hawk on the pond.

Finally, a few ring-billed gulls were fishing over the falls, and here’s one keeping one eye on the sky as well. The eagle was just upriver, and a murder of crows was mobbing something up in a tree on the far shore, so there were plenty of threats around to keep an eye on.

Lastly, when Jordan and I were walking around his great grandparents’ farm in Waterford on Saturday, where I also saw the sandhill crane, we came across a painted turtle laying her eggs right in the lawn. How exciting is that? We left her alone, and when she was done, we marked the spot with some stakes to keep it safe from lawnmowers and such. I read that they take 72 to 80 days to hatch, so we’ll have to plan some visits in early to mid-August. Wish us luck!