OK folks, let’s be truthful with ourselves, I have become a birder.  What is worst, I think that I have gotten my wife hooked too.  Well maybe she was one all along.  Anyway, she seems to know the bird’s names better then I do.

The two new birds, at least new to this blog are the Little Blue Heron, pictured to the left and some kind of Warbler, pictured to the right.  Hey GG, any idea what kind of Warbler?  Unfortunately, neither picture is as nice as I would prefer, but since they are newbies we’ll just have to take what we can.  We saw both of these birds when we went to the Columbia Bottoms Conservation Area on Sunday.  We saw lots of egrets, both Great White Egrets and Snowy Egrets.  We also saw the Killdeer pictured below.  Not pictured were Red Winged Black Birds, which were numerous.  Also not pictured were some birds that were too quick to identify, let alone photograph.  Something to save for next time.

On Saturday, I spent a fair amount of time in the Park.  This was time spent in between trips downtown to photograph the Komen Race and to go to the Fountain on Locust.  I spooked the little Green Heron to the left, without seeing him.  He flew up into a Willow, on the far bank and patiently waited for my departure.  I had stopped to photograph a waterfall.  Looking at the results, I was surprised to discover that I had caught a Grackle that had landed to drink from the waterfall.

On Saturday, I later saw a robin taking a dust bath, see below.  What I found even funnier was what I saw on Sunday.  I saw a young boy at Columbia Bottoms taking a dust bath too.  He was riding his bike, without a shirt on.  He stopped and then proceeded to throw dirt on to his chest and back.  I don’t know if it was his idea of bug repellent or maybe sun screen.  I do know that his mother was not pleased and would not let him into the car until he cleaned off some.

On Sunday, we met an older gentleman.  We were biking on a closed due to flood damage portion of the bike trail.  He was walking the other way.  He assured us that we were through the worst of it and that it was cool sailing beyond.  It soon became clear that he was a birder too.  His aspiration was to catch in flight one of the many birds, that I have photographed on the ground.  His goal was a perfect picture.  A difficult task with a less than a top flight digital camera, such as his and my own, but a man has to dream … 

Today’s header shows a Great Blue Heron that we saw while floating on Friday.  We got quite a few good pictures of this bird, so you will probably be seeing it again.  The picture at the top of this post shows thistles from Sunday.

Monday morning, I biked in the Park.  I got fifteen miles.  I just manage to beat an all day rain storm.  Monday night, Anne and I went to see the opening night of this summer’s Muny season.  The show was 42nd Street.  It was almost like being back in New York City again …