Wasp Sex

After a slow start on Sunday, we launched by car, first to REI, where Anne used our soon to expire 20% off coupon and got herself a new pair of shoes. Then next we headed north to the Riverlands. Anne had a Jones going for some nature. The water was high, in spring flood and at first there didn’t seem to be that many birds around, but we walked and drove around and had a pretty good species list by the end of the day. Our haul included, coots, shovelers, grebes, hawks, cormorants, egrets, herons and pelicans, there were lots of pelicans. We bumped into a pair of real birders there, a father and his son. They were quite the avid birders. They had called us over to them, because they had seen a snipe and wanted to show it to us, but by the time that we arrived it had melted into the bush. They are very good at that. The boy proceeded to enumerate all of the birds that they had already seen that day. It was quite an impressive list and certainly didn’t require the few embellishments that the father thought had been added. The kid was really quite precocious, as only children of that age can be. Unfortunately, none of our bird sightings were at a sufficiently close range that would have yielded a nice photo. The wasps were another matter. I had to back up to get this shot.