Way Too Hot!

Well, we are having a bit of a heat wave here in Colorado. So in an attempt to beat the heat I was out of the house by 5:15am. Bummer, it was already hot- 68' at 5am!

I headed down to my favorite spot. It is almost time for baby avocets, so I was on the lookout but no luck. Oh well, the first thing I did see was 7 snowy egrets as I approached the main lake. There are 6 in the photo and one was just to the left. That was cool. It has been hit and miss seeing these beauties this spring, so it seems they are settled in and will be here until the fall.

I headed over to check on my swallow friends. I was able to see at least 3 youngsters in the nest. Here's mom delivering breakfast.......

And here's mom cleaning house by taking away a sack of poop! Yup, I said a sack of poop. A pretty ingenius way of keeping the nest clean,huh? After the baby bird eats, they turn their back to mom or dad and poop out a white sack of fecal matter. The parent takes it and drops it away from the nest. Pretty cool!

The baby mallards are everywhere! But they are amazingly fast...darting around eating everything in sight. I was lucky to grab this pic.....

Not much else was going on, so I drove up to Prospect Park. I checked on the cedar waxwing nest but no one was around. I was watching the island where the herons and cormorants nest when a black crown night heron flew by.......

There were also a couple of male mallards known as drakes hanging around. A very interesting thing happens to mallards and other ducks too. Once breeding season is over the males lose their flight feathers and the ability to fly for about 3-4 weeks. So they lose their bright coloring to blend into their surroundings. If you want to learn more about ducks, check out "Duckumentary". You can find it at www.pbs.org and it was on the TV show called Nature.

The other day when I was here, a photographer was photographing something from the bridge over the creek. I did not want to disturb him, so I continued walking by. He caught up with me later on and we got to chatting. I asked him what was he photographing and he said rock squirrels. Hmmmm..... rock squirrels? I wasn't sure what they were so I looked for them today and there they were. Very cute! There were 3 of them. The light was not good but I had to grab a few pics for the blog.

Song sparrows are quite plentiful, so I do not usually feel the need to grab a pic. This guy was singing his heart out, so I had to get some pics.....

I love seeing butterflies. Got an okay pic of this beauty!

I'm not sure what kind of flowers these are but they are spectacular! They were growing right near the creek.....

I took a quick look for the owls but no one was around. I bet they found some nice cool shade and were chillin.......

It was already way too hot and it was only 8:30am, so I headed home to try and stay cool......

Enjoy!