Sandhill in Flight

Louisiana Water Thrush

This type of bird is at the northern extreme of its range.  Here to breed, they will raise their young and migrate south.

Whitetail Deer: Doe With Yearling

The deer haven’t shed their Winter coats yet.  Maybe they know something the rest of the animals don’t.  We had unseasonably warm weather in Wisconsin last month, which led to the early return and early nesting of many birds.  The whitetails, however, have not shed their Winter coats, so when the temperatures became more seasonable this month they were still comfortable.

Male Cardinal

While watching the lake the other night, a pair of Cardinals, male and female, flew around behind me.  I heard them flitting through the bushes before I saw them, and then only saw the female after they decided to fly away.  The female is better camouflaged then the male and the male tends to make himself more visible, sitting on branches out in the open while the female stayed lower and in deeper cover.

The result was I got a few nice shots of the male.

Born to be Wild

Like the song by Steppenwolf.

To Sit and to Watch

I guess it could be considered part of my American upbringing, but it seems natural to sit and watch.  We spend an incredible amount of time sitting and watching television in this country, but I always preferred being outside.  So, now, I take a folding chair that I use during the Summers for camping and carry it out to a spot at the lake or in a park and sit and watch.  The drama slowly unfolds around me as the animals accept the human sitting there.  If I spend enough time in a place they will actually begin to move around me as if I’m not even there, like the chipmunk who seated himself a meter behind me on a log, watching what I watched, or maybe just watching me.  Together we watched the drama unfold on the lake in front of us.  Here are some pictures so you can see what we saw.

Geese with goslings and a muskrat in the lower left corner.  Didn’t see the Muskrat when I took the shot.

While I watched the Geese swim through the algae and out onto the lake…

both of the adult eagles flew off the nest, less than a minute behind each other.

They headed in the direction the geese had gone.