Toupees for eagles! Think about it. There are more than 400,000 Bald Eagles in North America alone. It is an untapped market. We will be setting up a go-fund-me site to start this up. Premium early donors will get a free toupee for their eagle! And now, back to our regularly scheduled program.

Kate has been looking for a Bald Eagle close enough for a reasonable photo. We went back to the bridge on the far side of the park to check for eagles. This is the end of the lake that the office marked as having Bald Eagle nests. When we got there, there were only turtles and Great Blue Herons. The turtles were a bit far away to identify, but statistically, they are probably a Red-eared Slider.

One of the herons was slowly moving through the water hunting, and the reflection in the mostly still water was great. Just before we left, a heron was near the shore for a closeup. These are the best pictures of the Great Blue Herons.

We are about 90% sure that the Bald Eagle we saw today was not there when we arrived because we looked for the Osprey that was previously on that side of the lake. While it was vastly closer than the eagle at Lakeview, it was not exactly close. This time the eagle was maybe 250+ feet away, which is better than a quarter mile away. (For those that think math is hard, that is about five times closer; around 0.05 miles instead of 0.25 miles.)

There were also some thistles blooming on the side. These were actually thistles, and not the teasel we saw previously. There are a lot of native and invasive thistles along with things that look like thistle and are not, so identifying them is not a sure thing for us. This is probably Field (Pasture) Thistle (Cirsuim Discolor). They are edible, more so once the spines are removed. You can peel the outer layer from young stalks to eat raw or cook like celery. The immature flower heads can be peeled and prepared like globe artichokes. The young leaves are edible raw or boiled, after trimming the spines. Between you and us, none of that sounds good.

The Great Blue Herons were pretty close today, so we ended up with a lot of extra pictures. Here are the other ones that turned out good, but the reflection, pose, or background was not as good.