Herons and more

I have seen my "spirit animal", the great blue heron, a great deal recently.

It makes me feel like my life is on the right track, even if so much else isn't.

Wildlife adventure before even putting in the boats

Besides a heron that didn't stay around for a photo, and a great egret, on Cane Bayou May 18 we saw a diamondback watersnake eating a catfish, eyes of several alligators, a gray snake in a tree, a cricket toe in the kayak smaller than the Mister's toe, a green tree frog, several red eared sliders and possibly some other turtles, a squirrel that didn't move (in a tree, mid-day.  We stayed away from that squirrel), a parent osprey feeding two chicks, and a dragonfly that ate a damselfly while I was explaining the difference to the other groups.  While out with the excellent Canoe and Trail Adventures (Canoeandtrail.com-- source of these photos) we also heard bronze frogs and pig frogs that we did not see.  Our guide told us we might see a Mississippi Kite soaring if we were lucky, but we certainly wouldn't be so lucky as to see one perched.  And in Louisiana we didn't see any, but we must be really lucky in our small town in Oklahoma, for there seem to be even more patrolling our skies this summer.

Cricket Frog. Not The Mister's foot.
Canoeandtrail.com photo

While I'm listing birds, I should add that on the recent trip to Kansas, besides the herons, we saw eastern kingbirds (lots of westerns here in Oklahoma, along with scissortailed flycatchers), large families of Canada geese with goslings of different ages, shrikes, hummingbirds, cardinals, blue jays, hawks (mostly red-tailed), cattle egrets, nighthawks, bluebirds, house finches, gold finches and oriels.

My shins (only) sunburned.  They are peeling now.

OSPREY BABIES!

Witty watching caption goes here.
Photo also by Canoe and Trail Adventures.