This post’s title is based upon the old saying, if you expect to soar with the eagles during the day, you can’t hoot with the owls at night.  Well Thursday night we slept with the bedroom window open and waking around five, I lay awake until six and listened to an owl in the backyard that was hooting.  Now does listening to an owl while in bed still count as hooting?

Friday night Anne and I had theater tickets and Rey went to the ball game.  Amadeus was the show.  It was both a big (twenty plus cast members) and long production.  We didn’t get home until after eleven.  The Cards-Brewers game was an eighteen run affair, so Rey didn’t get home until almost midnight.  This definitely counts as hooting.

I went biking in the Park early on Saturday morning.  There was a meeting of the Wilderness Society going on at seven in the morning, near Deer Lake.  I think that they were birding.  Near their group, but out of their sight, I saw a pair of Pileated Woodpeckers squabbling with each other, probably over territory.  Their fight was conducted while they were in flight, so I was unable to get a picture of them.  Later, as I was biking along the fish ponds, I saw a Belted Kingfisher dive from a tree into the water, like a rock that had been thrown, kerplunk!  This bird teased me long enough for me to get the camera out and ready, and then flew off.  I did manage to get a picture of the Great White Egret that accompanies this post, and a very nice one at that, I just might say.  I got twenty miles.

Later on Saturday, about the butt-crack of noon Rey, Anne and I launch for the Botanical Gardens and the Best of Missouri.  The Best of Missouri is an annual event and is sort of a upscale farmers market.  We went through the tents sampling various meats, sweets and wines.  Not exactly a balance diet, but hey.  We did some shopping and afterwards we toured the gardens.  There we bumped into some Team Kaldi’s mates: Mark & Merri and Rob & Edie.