Yesterday was chore day.  Anne and I cleaned the the house, the back porch and mowed the lawn.  Afterwards I still had enough energy to go for a bike ride in the Park.  I got fifteen miles.

Today Anne and I went for a bike ride together.  We had planned to do a float trip today, but Friday’s paper had a front page article singing the praise of floating Missouri’s streams.  The thought of way too many Memorial Day weekend floaters, was enough to dissuade us from that activity.  Our backup plan was to bike the Katy Trail, but today’s rainy forecast made us decide to stay closer to home.  So we launched for the Park and the promise of brunch and ended with another fifteen miles today.

As the title of today’s post might suggest not only did we go biking, but we also went birding.  As itinerant peddlers we perused most if not all of the Park’s many watering holes looking for birds.  Now I have been engaged in this activity all week.  The diversity of water fowl in the Park is such that I haven’t been able to keep up.  So today I plan on doing sort of a data dump and will share the best of what I have found this week.

In the new bird category we have the Green Heron.  This little green guy has only this week arrived, but has arrived in sufficient numbers that I see pairs of them scuffling over turf.  He is pictured at the top of this post.

Also in the new bird category are Wood ducklings.  They are not to be confused with the Mallard duckings that appear in today’s header.  They differ not only in appearance from Mallard ducklings, but also in temperament.  Where as the Mallard’s always travel cheek by jowl, the Wood ducklings are always wandering apart and are also wandering far from mom.  It was a chore to get three of the six ducklings in this one picture.

After riding a bit we decamped to the Boat House for brunch.  Sitting outside, lakeside we viewed the intricate choreography of Great Egrets and paddle boaters on Post-Dispatch Lake.  We also saw a Barn Swallow (new) that was quite content with humans.

After brunch we logged the rest of our miles.  By the end of the ride, the rising heat and humidity caused Anne to remarked about  Pooh Dew, as we were sweating up our last hill.  The final picture with this post is of a Yellow Crowned Night Heron, on the wing.  It was a pretty good day for biking and we had a pretty good day of birding.