KILLDEER BABIES

A little over three weeks ago (about March 2) Dickie and I spotted killdeer eggs in a rocky area near the local gradeschool parking lot. If you've been reading my weblog, you may recall that there are some pictures of that scene on March 6 below.

We've been monitoring the nest ever since. Today was the day! All four eggs hatched. One of the babies looked a little weak, but it seems to be surviving. What's amazing is how quickly these baby birds have begun moving around. Three of the four are moving around like gangbusters and they can't have been out of the shell more than a day or so. Here's what they look like. I could only catch two of them with their mother:

It was a glorious day today after all the rain, so Dickie and I drove up to Lake Sonoma, a few miles up Highway 101 from Windsor. We took our lunch and had a picnic on the grounds of the fish hatchery below the dam. Later we drove up to the overlook where I took the picture below:

Like I said, it was a glorious day!

LITTLE DROPS OF WATER

I've been playing around with my digital camera lately, trying to duplicate pictures I've seen in one place or another. With a fast shutter speed, you can catch a drop of water as it bounces "up" from a glass. Here's just such a picture. This happens almost too fast for the human eye to register, but the camera makes the catch:

How about that?

I have a number of parrot pictures that I think are cute. I snapped these two love-birds in a pet shop several moons ago. Don't know what the one is trying to tell the other, something like "I'm your humble servant" or "What's that under your bill?", I guess.

Would you believe that I'm still struggling with the writings of Ben Franklin? I started this book last December and I'm finally coming to the end. Lately I've been reading through his Poor Richard's Almanac material. Here's a tidbit from his wise sayings:

"One good Husband is worth two good Wives; for the scarcer things are the more they're valued".

That's enough for today. Have a good one!

POINT REYES

Dickie and I drove down to Point Reyes yesterday. It was kind of a whim on a nice afternoon. We weren't alone. There were quite a few people taking advantage of the glorious weather. We went all the way out to the lighthouse on the point where I took the picture below. The surf was up, too, because of the storm that originated in Alaska.

We didn't see any whales, although people were looking. Someone told me that fifteen of them had been spotted in one day a couple weeks ago. The ranger I talked to said that the peak of the season will come at the end of March and the beginning of April. He mentioned that he had seen as many as fifty in a day. In all our trips out to the coast over the years, I think Dickie and I have only seen one! That was a youngster that came into the Bodega Bay boat channel a couple weeks ago. He sufaced every few minutes while we were there, but never enough for me to get a good picture. This was the best I could do. I know, it looks mor like a rock than a whale:

Anyway, it was a fun trip yesterday. Those huge smooth-topped hills and mountains down that way are all green now from the winter rains. Of course, in a few weeks they'll turn to gold under the warmth of the sun. This is a great time of year!

PLOVERS

For three years running now, Dickie and I have been observing some beautiful birds that keep returning to the same place to raise their young. Plovers, also called killdeers, nest on the ground. In fact, they don't really have a "nest" in the usual sense. They just lay their eggs in a convenient depression, without even lining it with twigs, as most other birds seem to do.

Our visitors to this same spot have chosen a location on the edge of a grade school parking lot where they lay their eggs among the rocks. The eggs look deceptively like the rocks. You can look right at them and not see them. In fact, I'm sure most people who walk by that plover nest never realize that it's there, although they will probably see the parent bird, pretending to be hobbled and fluttering off to lead any unwelcome visitors away from the nest. The bird still goes through that act for us every time we come by, although by this time it should know that we know and can see where the nest is.

Here below are a couple of pictures of the nest. The first shows just the eggs. The second is with the plover sitting on the eggs. I think you can tell that both pictures are from the same area, although the one takes in a little larger view than the other. Notice the three large rocks just above the bird in the second picture. Now look at the same three (slightly enlarged) rocks in the first picture and, just in front of them, you will see the four eggs that the parent bird is hatching:

If you want to see an enlargement of the picture above, click here.

Here's and even better view: Plover Eggs

This is just one of the little joys of life I'd like to share. Hope you find it interesting, too.