We drove to Farmington Bay and immediately were bombarded by male yellow-headed blackbirds, which are so striking. Plus, fun fact: they only turn their heads to the left when they call.
We walked around one of the ponds and I saw, for the first time, a killdeer playing the broken wing game. When you get too near to a killdeer's nest, the parent incubating the eggs will try to draw you or another predator away from the nest by flying a little bit away and pretending to have a broken wing. I thought it was really fascinating. We also saw common terns (new bird!), avocets, red-winged blackbirds, cinnamon teals, some sort of scaup (it was too far away), a cattle egret, a great blue heron, a marsh wren (also a new bird!), killdeer, and black-necked stilts. It was a good time! We also saw that some poor killdeer had built his nest in a gravel parking lot.
I love bird watching. A couple of days later I was invited to go to the ZOO with Clioh and Olivia! While I was waiting for them to arrive, I practiced making silky water with slow shutter speed.
Here is a smattering of pictures.
Something really cool happened too! We were standing outside the mara's exhibit (fifth picture from the bottom, it looks like a rodent deer) when a keeper placed a small, fake hedgehog into the exhibit. I figured it was for enrichment, but Clioh wanted to know why it was specifically a hedgehog, so we asked him. He told us it was for the small birds, like the saffron finches that were in the exhibit with the mara, to peck at and investigate. It simply provides a different environment for them, thus enriching their MINDS. He then said that he was going to give the mara a treat if we wanted to stick around. We did and he then invited us into the exhibit to give the mara a treat! We each took turns going into the exhibit and offering the mara pieces of treats. It was so cool! We also got to see a trainer doing work with a giraffe, like target training and whistle training. We saw an adorable sand cat kitten and a baby siamese crocodile, we watched fruit bats without a wing climbing easily around their exhibit and chewing fruit with gusto, we indulged in homemade macaroni and cheese, we watched an ostrich attack the lock on the gate to his exhibit angrily, we spotted grammatical errors on the zoo signs, we saw an awesome bird show (where I saw Matt, who I used to work with at the aviary!), we fed ducks, and we watched a torrid love affair unfold as a wood duck stared lovingly at a female swan incubating her eggs while her husband swan worked hard to add more things to their nest. It was a good time.
The rest of this weekend has basically been hanging out, getting drunk and watching Indiana Jones, going to Michael's and brunch with Natal, and painting with watercolors! The bats at the zoo made me really want to paint bats, so I painted bats (LOGIC).
There were owls to be painted.
(owls in order from left to right: row 1 - barn owl, great horned owl, great grey owl, row 2 - saw whet owl, long eared owl, eastern screech owl, row 3 - whiskered screech owl, burrowing owl, snowy owl, row 4 - scops owl, hawk owl, elf owl)
And then I just wanted to paint with turquoise, so I painted a whale.
That was my weekend. Now I'm going to top it off with watching How I Met Your Mother and either more watercolor painting or writing. Or maybe I'll dance. SO MANY OPTIONS! (what I really should be doing is applying for jobs, but that's not gonna happen tonight).
Wow you got some pretty damn sweet pictures at the zoo.
ReplyDeleteThank yoooou!!! The new polar bear/otter/sea lion exhibit is opening next week and I plan on going and taking ALL THE PICTURES!!
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