Wind, Wind and More wind!

   I do not like the wind! Back in my bike racing days, I would much prefer a very big hill to ride up over dealing with a head wind. At least you knew the hill would end eventually. We have had lots of wind over the last few days but the weather report seemed to indicate that there would be less wind on the plains today. So that made it an easy decision to head towards Barr lake this morning. No wind and eagles sounded like fun. First I headed over to do the DIA loop in a vain attempt to see the short earred owl. No owl. In fact there was nothing except a few prairie dogs. So I drove over to Barr lake to see what was going on. Bummer! There was no wind but there also nothing to photograph. I could make out some golden eye ducks and some eagles but they were to far away to get some pics. The barn owl was in the nesting box but no amount of coaxing would get them to peek out.

   So now I have been out photographing for 2 hours and have not taken a single pic! I think that's a new world's record! I really wanted to get some pics so I headed for my favorite spot. I knew it would be windy as it is close to the foothills but I had to do it.

   It's only about a 1/2 hr drive to my favorite spot so I was there in no time. Yup it was windy but I could also see there were ducks on the main lake...Yeah! I got closer and could see it was mainly shovelers.

Here's a female shoveler.....

 Here are two male shovelers...

Here are two of them trying to getting the attention of the females......

I continued over to the west side gazebo area. Met a nice older gentleman who was just getting into bird watching. So I helped him with the I.D. of a few of the ducks and we had a nice chat. Then I continued on to see what else was around.

Spotted a couple of pairs of green winged teals. Here is the male.....

Then I spotted a great blue heron enjoying the sunshine......

I walked back to the east side gazebo just as a huge flock of geese came in. Then this hooded merganser flew by and landed with a crayfish in his mouth!

Mixed in with the geese were a couple of redhead ducks! 

And then a shoveler flew in to say hi.....

Well that was a wonky morning! But it's always fun to get out into Nature! So I headed home to get Hazel out for a bit of swimming.....

Thanks for reading!