June 21, 2020

Happy Father's Day 2020


Happy Father's Day 2020
Todd Swank's Diary Entry for June 21, 2020


Summer is just flying by in Minnesota.  Hard to believe the 4th of July is only 2 weeks away.  We have been enjoying ourselves getting out on the lake as much as we can and taking lots of hikes through the neighborhood and surrounding areas.


We're still being pretty cautious with Grandma Linda.  She still won't come in our house, but we do enjoy her visits on our porch where we sit apart from each other and tell stories to one another.  The stories mostly don't make any sense.


On Tuesday, we went on a boat ride with our good friends, the Korkowskis.  The temperatures were in the nineties so it was a pleasant time to go jump in the lake.


We saw a lot of unique wildlife this week which we're always excited to photograph.  This is a spiny soft-shell turtle which is somewhat common in Minnesota, but we still don't get to see them very often.  Which is why I went out of my way to see this one up close even though not everyone thought that was a great idea.


I thought babies were more of a springtime thing, but we saw a bunch of baby animals this week including one of our favorites, an albino squirrel baby.  I have no idea why they keep reproducing in our neighborhood, but I guess here's proof of another generation to entertain us.


These two little fellas surprised us while we were on our regular walk several times this week.  It seemed like they fell from their nest, but we saw them repeatedly near the same tree so they must be ready to move out on their own.  The gentleman who owned the house where we saw them said they were baby green herons and this is the 4th summer they've been in his tree so the family must like that neighborhood.  In any case, we found them to be pretty cute little scamps.

  
We also saw plenty of baby birds getting ready to leave the nest on the big nesting tree in mud bay on Prior Lake.  I always screw up my identifications, but I'm pretty certain these are great white egrets.


I'm also pretty confident these are baby blue herons.  Miss Sheri and I really like their fuzzy black hair.  They look like little toupees.


I'm not quite as confident on what these are, but my best guess is some kind of cormorant.  I'm sure one of you bird geniuses will correct me if I'm wrong.


This one has me stuck, though.  I find him to be very cute and my first thought was a wood-duck, but my google searching doesn't seem to match and I'm not finding anything similar by searching for his various colors.  I'm going to just say he's a black beaked, white faced, brown duck and call it good.

Happy Father's Day to all you great dads out there!

No comments:

Post a Comment