Day 85

March 26, 2021

Happy Birthday, Gregg

There were quite a few weather patterns today starting off this morning with rain and switching between foggy and rainy all the way through nap time.

Do you know the difference between a crow, raven and blackbird?  Crows dominated my visual array this morning  I got curious about differentiating between them because there was one larger bird that seemed to be causing most of the raucous that woke me up from my nap.

 

The rookery was filled with activity today.  It was 66 degrees at 4:10 this afternoon.  There were common mergansers, hooded mergansers, mallards, Canada geese, red winged blackbirds, and I counted 6 heron by the time I left.   One actually looked as though it had claimed next two and was sitting on it.  That would mean baby birds by May 25th.  

At first I just thought there were a lot of male common mergansers around, but once I got the photos home and I could see closer I realized there were several hooded males and females, too.

One of the common merganser couples was daring and would come to the ice's edge and as the hour progressed and rain and sun alternated, the ice melted and the birds got closer.  Steam would rise up when the sun beamed and you could see the melting taking effect.

Then after I'd gone home for good, Edite messaged me and said go look at the sky.  I couldn't resist and I knew somewhere was an almost full moon.  The wind gusts were strong and branches were falling but the sky was stunning.  I took 100 more photographs.  Here are just a few.  Great day for pics.