Happy Earth Day

Happy Earth Day! It was a very fun day but let's back up and let me share with you what I saw yesterday. Maybe we can call it Earth Day eve......
Sunday looked like it was gonna be a beautiful day, so I was out the door by 6am. First I headed over to check on my owl friends. Everyone was snoozing, so I headed down to Prospect park. I was hoping to see the osprey circling the first lake looking for breakfast but no luck. Oh well, I decided to head over to see if I could find my new owl friend. On the way, I met a fellow photographer. We got to chatting and she was kind enough to share where the owl nest was. Nice! I hiked over to the nest area but wasn't able to see anybody. So I continued down the trail and stumbled onto a pair of cooper's hawks. They were busy putting the finishing touches on their nest......

What beautiful birds they are! Now that I know where their nest is, I'll check back on them. I wonder what baby cooper's hawks look like.

I decided to head back toward the GHO nest. As I was walking along, I caught some movement to my left. Sweet! It was the male GHO. So very handsome!

By the time I got back to the nest area, there were a couple of other photographers and the baby owls were in sight. As you can see the nest area is behind lots of branches. Once the owlets are a bit bigger, I should be able to get some great pics. There are at least 2 chicks and maybe 3 in this nest.

Mom was very close by and not a bit concerned that we were admiring her chicks.

Here is a side view of mom. Look how well she blends in to her surroundings! She looks just like she's part of the tree......

The owlets look around 3-4 weeks old. They usually start to leave the nest around 6 weeks old, so stay tuned!
I finally pulled myself away from the owls and headed back to the parking lot. I was planning to head home for lunch. I met the same gal that had told me about the owl nest. I thanked her and then she mentioned someone had told her there was a loon in Tabor Lake. Well, lunch could wait. I wanted to see the loon. Sure enough, we spotted him. He was a bit far out but I grabbed a decent pic. They have the most amazing call. You can google loon sounds and hear it for yourself.

Finally I headed home for lunch and a nap. Around 6pm I headed over to see my owl friends. The owlet is getting bigger by the day, so I didn't want to miss anything. And we finally came up with a good name for her.....Athena. Athena is known as the goddess of wisdom and owls are known as wise ones. So it seemed like a fitting name for her.

Oh yeah! I also found another GHO nest located in a cavity in a large rock wall near my house. Very cool! I thought there were only 2 chicks but if you look close there is a third one tucked behind....These guys are almost ready to leave the nest. So I'm gonna be a busy gal watching all these owl nests.

So Earth Day eve was excellent! Now to celebrate Earth Day! I decided to head down to my favorite spot. Snow was expected around noon time, so I only had a small window of time to get some pics. The avocets and snowy egrets had not shown up yet. So I was hoping they might make an appearance today.
I had barely started to hike aroud the lake when I heard a familiar sound. Yahoo! There were the avocets! There was a pair roaming around eating their breakfast. They have the cutest babies ever. So I'm excited to enjoy them all summer.

I continued on and saw this cute yellow rumped warbler flitting around.

I was about halfway around the lake when I spotted my first snowy egreat of the year! Beautiful birds! I never get tired of seeing them. I only spotted one but I'm sure his friends will show up soon. Last summer there were at least 6 of them.

I was not expecting to see some turtles yet, but this guy was out and about. 

I was planning to do another lap around the lake but the wind came up and the skies went from sunny to dark in the blink of an eye! So I decided to call it a day and headed home. It's now snowing as I'm writing this. I'm not complaining as we can use all the moisture we can get. And it will by 50' by Wednesday. So the snow will not last long at all.

Happy Earth Day everyone!