Birds! And more birds!

 I had a birdy week, or at least, two days were very full of birds.  Thousands of birds, in fact.

Every year thousands of Snow Geese migrate this way from Alaska and northern Canada, and they spend November through March in various places throughout the northern U.S.

One place they like is the McNary National Wildlife Refuge in Burbank, just a short drive away.

We had several days of 60-65 degree weather, so on one of them I headed over there, and found the geese right away (sometimes they like to hide farther from the refuge where it's hard to see them).

I got lots of great views of the birds, and then Truman and Pippin and I walked the 3-mile trail at the Refuge.

Then we returned to the nearby field where the Snow Geese were flying in and out for a little more viewing of these wonderful birds.

It was quite a lovely outing all round.

The next day I made an utterly impromptu drive over to Columbia Park to see what the road looked like now -- it has had construction going on for a year or more, making it hard to visit.  The grand opening of the road happened recently and as far as I could tell, it mostly involved putting in a turning lane in spots and adding some sidewalks.  Nothing terribly exciting or different.

So after checking out all this unexciting roadwork, I stopped at the marina to see if any interesting gulls were about, which there weren't, but there were two Belted Kingfishers having an aerial altercation of some import.  Apparently they did not care for each other much, as they spent a good half hour chasing each other about and dive-bombing each other until one finally gave up and flew away.  

While I don't have the sort of camera that can take pictures of small birds zooming fast in complex flight patterns, I do have one that can snap photos of birds who finally land, as the victor did:

This is a female kingfisher, denoted by the rusty breast/chest coloring.  

She was being quite vocal about her disapproval of the interloper.

And then I got the standard "What are you looking at?"  pose:

A fun time indeed, and not something I'd planned on at all -- sometimes the bird magic just happens!

As for art, our Wednesday sketch session proved disastrous.  We chose an extremely colorful view of a Japanese building and garden -- WAY too colorful, and not only was my effort so awful that I refuse to share it, but was so incredibly bad that I threw it away.  Ptui.

Thankfully, for the Friday session we chose a much saner picture to work from, and I loved every minute of it, and really like the result, too!  This is a landscape in Namibia, rendered in watercolor:

Whew.  I'm always happy when at least one of my efforts turns out all right.

And that's all the excitement from here for now.   Have a great week and stay safe out there!