My owl friends: A Beautiful Day!

Holy crap! It has been over 3 weeks since I got out to photograph. Life got a little
too busy, so I made some changes and now I have my life back....whew!

So to celebrate my new found freedom, I decided to start at a new place for me. Bear Creek State Park is a big park just south of Golden, Colorado. There's very nice hiking and mountain bike trails plus a big lake for boating. I had seen a report of 3 pairs of great horned owls there. So figured I'd go check it out and look for the owls.

The weather could not have been better! It was already 50' when I got to the trail at 8:30am.
The trails were beautiful but no owls were found. Bummer! I saw 3 deer, a few magpies and plenty of chickadees. Other than that, it was pretty quiet. Oh well, I'll be back to check it out.

As I was driving out, I spotted a very large red tailed hawk sitting in a tree. Finally! Something to photograph!

I decided to head over to my favorite spot in Lakewood for more photographing fun!
It was only a 20 minute drive and very scenic on this very beautiful day!
I had not been to my " favorite spot" in a while so it was like seeing an old friend. I started
around the lake doing a quick scan to see who was here. The northern shovelers were quite plentiful! They'll be heading north soon, so it was nice to see them.

If you look close at this pic, you can see one female surrounded by the males. The boys were doing their best to get her attention.

After watching the shovelers, I noticed one male pintail hangong out. I have never seen a pintail at this lake, so that was fun!

I also saw this handsome hooded merganser. If the water had been a bit more calm, this would have been a great "reflection" shot!

After enjoying my "favorite spot" I decided to stop by Prospect park where the mandarin duck hangs out. No mandarin duck today but it was still fun. There are 4 lakes plus the creek so you never know what you'll see. It was pretty quiet today but I did see the great blue herons have started their nest.

Here is what the island looks like. The trees are dead but both the herons and the cormorants love this island. The black specks are the cormorants. They headed south for the winter and have just arrived here to start their families.