The Sun Came Out Today!

We have had some crazy weather in Colorado this week. It has been rainy and cloudy all week! For all of you that do not live in Colorado, this is not normal! In fact, the locals have been freaking out! Personally I was enjoying the rain and the cool temps. It did play havoc with our daily hike but Hazel did great with the small amounts of time we did get outdoors.

Sunday is one of my favorite days to go out photographing. And lucky for me the weather looked good! The forecast was for sun in the morning followed by afternoon thunderstorms.

Perfect! 

I decided to head down to my favorite place to see what was going on........

Here's what a sunny day looks like. We almost forgot what the sun looked like!

Baby ducks and geese were everywhere........

And all four GBH nests looked good too.....

I started my walk around the main pond and I saw this phoebe.....

And the violet green swallows put on quite the show......

And the red winged blackbird flew in and posed. I loved the blue background...

the yellow rumped warbler made an appearance.....

And the barn swallow posed so nicely for me while it was sunny...

and here's when the clouds returned...

 That was all I saw on my first lap, so I decided to go for lap two. By now the turtles were up and about. This one guy was trying to get up on the log with his buddies.

He fell back in the water but his persistence paid off and he made it......

I headed to the back pond for a second look. Hmmmm.... this duck flew in and put on quite a show by diving for food and taking a bath too. I was not sure who she was, so when I got home I looked her up and realized she was a female red head duck!

Just as the duck flew off, there was commotion above me. Seems one of the swainson's hawks had some food in her talons and was being mobbed by the redwing blackbirds.

She flew to a pole near her nest and enjoyed her breakfast. Best I could tell is that it looked like a mouse....yum!

As she was enjoying her food, the male flew in. I'm not sure if he was mating with her or trying to steal her food......

Either way she was not sharing!

After she got done eating, she flew to a nearby tree and grabbed some nesting material for her nest. That was a great show! The day had started off slow but now I was getting some action! Yea!

After enjoying the hawks, I walked by the back pond as a GBH flew in and got some breakfast too.....

The GBH was so close to me, I decided to do a close up of him walking in the pond......

I headed for the main pond but ran into a feisty momma goose. She gave me the hairy eyeball as I tried to pass the family. I waited a minute until she decided it was okay for me to walk by.....

She and her mate had two goslings. Here's one of them......

I got back to the main pond and saw this cormorant drying his/her wings....

Cute and tiny mallard duckling!

I talked with a fellow photographer that had seen a momma wood duck and her ducklings. So I did a third lap to see if I could find her.

First I found the snowy egret!

And then I spotted the wood ducks in the main pond.....how cute! Looks like she has 7 ducklings!

I was just about done as the clouds were rolling in fast. Then one of the swainsons was circling around and getting bombarded again....

those black specks are all the birds dive bombing the hawk. The hawk did not seem worried....

And finally there were sand pipers all over the place. Finally one posed for me.....

What a fun morning! It started slow but picked up steam big time! I hustled home to get Hazel out for play time. We made it home just before the storms rolled in.....

Thanks for reading!