I decided to stay local for today's photographic adventure. The main reason was I have been wanting to check on my owl friends. The two best times to possibly see them being active is early morning or as it's getting dark. I'm much more of a morning person, so I opted for an early morning visit.
Twin Lakes, where the owls live is only ten minutes from my house. So I hardly had time to drink my coffee as I drove over. There are two places to park at Twin Lakes. I normally park on Twin Lakes road and walk down the trail by the nest or up the stairs to the east lake.
The other option is to park at the end of the cup de sac and walk the trail between the lakes.
Today I chose to park at the cup de sac and I quickly realized why! I had barely walked down the trail and there was this beautiful owl feather laying right in the middle of the trail! As you can see from the pic, it's pretty big! I have a few small feathers from the owls but this is the best one yet! By the looks of it, it is from one of the youngsters. What a gift! I looked up in the tree to see if the owlets were there but did not see them. But obviously they have been expanding their territory!
So I continued down the trail between the lakes hoping to see the owlets. As I got to the southwest corner of the east lake, I heard this robin making quite a fuss. Hmmmm, I looked up and there was one of the owlets!
And then I spotted the other one close by....
Here's the robin who was making all the racket! I thanked the robin as I probably would not have spotted them in the thick foliage.
My guess is the robin's nest was close by and he/she was not happy about the owlets being so close!
I did not see Sonny or Cher but I'm sure one of them was around to supervise.
So after enjoying the owlets, I drove over to 75th St to see if the dipper was around.
No luck so I continued on to Walden Ponds. I was barely out of the car and I spotted this bird perched on the fence in the parking area. My best guess is it's a juvenile northern rough-winged swallow.
Seems a new batch of baby bunnies were born recently. This one was so tiny!
I started down the main trail and saw all these canada geese. Oh crap! I was pretty sure they were not gonna be happy that I wanted to get by. And I was right! I got hissed at but made it through safely....
I had just recovered from the goose gauntlet when I spotted a bird it the tree. I have learned long ago to shoot first and ask questions later. Lucky for me cause it was a cedar wax wing!
Next I spotted this eastern kingbird.....
Walden Ponds is a beautiful oasis in east Boulder. There are lots of ponds and lots of wildlife. There are also plenty of mosquitoes! Great for the birds to eat but they were also eating me! So I had to keep moving if I didn't want to get eaten alive!
I came upon a family of wrens. They were zipping around, so I waited for them to stay in one place long enough to get some pics. The mosquitoes took advantage and attacked!
I went to see if the ospreys were available for pics but no luck. So I circled back past the wrens and spotted a dragonfly! How cool, it looks like a stick!
It got pretty quiet as I walked back to the parking lot. Then I spotted this young house finch....
I decided to go back over to 75th St and see what was going on. I took a quick look for the dipper...no luck. There was a bird sitting on the cement piling above the creek but I figured it was an eastern kingbird, so I continued on.
Here's an eastern phoebe. So damn cute!
The creek was raging so there were no ducks except for these mallards....
It was pretty quiet on this trail so I turned back and made one more attempt to see the dipper. Nope but I quickly realized what I thought was a kingbird was a black phoebe! They are not common around here, so I was excited to see him!
It was fun to watch him. He was perched above the creek and would leap up to grab some insects and then settle down before repeating it......
Just above where the phoebe was perched were these nests. I think these are old cliff swallow nests but there were no swallows around. This house sparrow took advantage and was moving in.....
Well, what a fun morning that was. It was time to head home and get Hazel dog out for some play time. I decided to take her over to Twin lakes. She could go swimming and I could check on the owlets again.
The robin was still making a fuss and the owlets were ignoring him/her.
Hazel and I did a lap around the west lake and then we checked on the flicker nest but it was very quiet. I wonder if they abandoned it and moved somewhere else. Bummer, I wanted to see baby flickers!
We walked past the owlets once more and the robin was still having a fit! That's one protective parent!
We were almost back to the car and this blue jay posed so I had to grab a few pics...
It was a fun day! Thanks to everyone for responding! I'm so glad you all enjoy my blog! Please feel free to share with anyone who you think may enjoy it!
Thanks for reading!
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