We planned to rent paddle boards to putter around the lake today. John had been planning to hike the Otter Stream trail with the tripod to try to get better pictures of some of the subjects from the last hike. Since it was still early, he decided to try today. By the time we made it out, it was close to noon, and it was going to rain in 45 minutes. (Spoiler Alert: It never rained.) We just did the loop around our camp area instead of the entire figure of 8 trail. Here is a view of the Sunny day we were supposed to have…

About a quarter mile into the hike, we heard birds. Kate whipped out the Merlin App, and she found it was Goldfinch, Field Sparrow, and Blue Grosbeak. John had seen pictures of those while trying to identify a different blue bird. Kate played the song, so we could identify it. Right after the song, one of them fly to a nearby tree.

The sky was hazy, cloudy, and gross for pictures, which is why it looks kind of grey in the photos above. On the positive side, pictures taken of subject without the sky tend to come out much better, such as a Black Saddlebags Dragonfly.

We also saw a small flock of white birds fly over pretty high up and far away. It turned out to be five American Pelicans. Shortly after than, a bird of prey circled around about equally far. We can not tell whether this is a Golden Eagle or an immature Bald Eagle. John is leaning towards the latter because there is no gold on the back of the head.

At the corner of the campground, there is a place that has abundant Goldfinches, but they do not hang around for pictures. We saw at least six of them. Near the end of the hiking path, we ran across third pollinator plot. This one had Purple Coneflowers hear the trail. One had an elder bug on it, and another had an inch worm on it.

As we turned the corner in the camp loop, we saw a pair of Goldfinches fly down to a puddle. We did not get a picture of the male, but we did get one of the female.

And, it did not rain. Technically, John and Kate did feel one or two drops at the end of the hike, but it might have just been an incontinent squirrel.