My owl friends: Happy Memorial Day!

If you live in Colorado, especially the Boulder area, Memorial day means running the Bolder Boulder and going to the Boulder creek festival. I've done both in years past, so I thought a better idea would be to go photographing. I decided to go to Walden Ponds. It's a beautiful wildlife habitat in east Boulder.

I had barely started down the trail when this handsome goldfinch said hi! They also have a beautiful song! Sweet! My day was starting off nicely.

Here's a nice map of the area.....

I continued on and spotted this robin with breakfast. Yum!

As I was taking pics of the robin, I heard the bullocks orioles. I looked up and there they were. This is the female....

And here is the male. He was moving quite fast as he ate his breakfast. Finally I got a few pics.....

Just like at my favorite place, there were quite a few families of canada geese.....

These goslings are quite big!

Look closely and you can see momma goose is not happy I am walking by....

I made it past without getting charged...whew! I turned down a path and spotted this little guy. Hmmm I was not sure who this was.

His mom was sitting nearby.....

Then she flew down and into a hole in the bank of the pond. When I got home, I did some research and realized that was a northern rough-winged swallow. Cool!

I continued on when this white-tailed deer appeared. I wondered if she would run but after checking me out, she seemed relaxed. Then her friend appeared......

And they walked right towards me. Obviously they are used to people and they know there is no hunting here. So I stepped off the trail and they just cruised on by......

I walked over to the osprey nest but not much was going on. So I circled back to where I had seen the deer. A flock of birds flew into a nearby tree. At first I was not even going to check it out. I figured they were starlings but something made me look and I realized they were cedar wax wings!

I love these birds! I was hoping to get closer to get better pics but there was a drainage ditch with rushing water, so it was not possible......

This is an eastern kingbird. They were all over the place eating tons of insects!

And there were some turtles enjoying the beautiful day!

I was almost back to the trailhead when I spotted another bullocks oriole. The colors are just spectacular!

So I headed home to get Hazel dog out for a swim. But since I was driving by the open space offices, I stopped to see what was going on.
Sweet! the bobolinks are back! The light was getting a bit harsh, so I will head back for better pics......

I got a sweet new camera lens for my birthday. It's perfect for landscape and closeup flower pics. Here is a sampling of my pics from this morning.....