Boat people

I gave Lorelei a special surprise today. She gets cranky when I drag her out with me while birding, so I thought I would give her something cool to do while I looked for birds.

I took her out on a boat.

Miami-Whitewater park has boats you can take out onto the lake, and Julie's recent excursions in her canoe got me thinking. But I also know my own limitations, and rowing a boat with my own two arms wasn't going to go over well, especially with a jumpy almost-four-year old.
So we got a pontoon.

Lorelei was so cute in her awe that I could drive a boat. (I come from a long line of boat people)

"It's like a floating car!"
She kept saying, "Oh, Mommy...I'm so happy..."

The happness lasted about 30 minutes. Half the time we had the boat. The other half was whining and bitching. Oh, well. We saw coots, mallards, a sharp-shinned hawk (lifer! How could I have missed ever seeing a sharpie?) being chased by a mob of angry little somethings. Easy to ID a sharpie when it flies about 3 feet above your head. I have never been birding on a boat, at least like this. I liked it. When we would get near a cove, I would cut the engine and gently float and bob closer to shore.

We got very, very close to this great blue heron:


I love this photo...that jaunty reddish patch goes so well with the red leaves over his shoulder. So saucy.


We were even able to float close enough to shore to watch a yellow-rumped warbler about 5 feet from us. It flew away as the whining and bitching rose in volume.


Her Royal Highness was appeased when I let her get onto the swings.


Forgot to mention the white-throated sparrow we saw at Indian Creek yesterday.



And a camera-shy phoebe.

The birds really know that the season has changed.
Our first-of-season white-crowned sparrow showed up today.


Possibly my favorite sparrow.
1. Because they are easy to ID.
2. They are big and bold and beautiful. Look at those stripes!
I usually notice them later in the season when their plumage is a bit more ragged. This guy looked freshly minted.

Some advice from KatDoc on how to confound and soothe the Science Chimp:
Pictures of horses.
And I quote:
"How to avoid being chimped: Put up photos of gorgeous horses. Julie goes all ga-ga, and doesn't try to distinguish the various European warmblood species. I'll bet I could tell her a Holsteiner was a Trakehner or an Oldenburg and she wouldn't argue."

Oooooo. Look, Julie. Horses....
Look at those rumps. Those tails. Maybe a Paint, an Anglo Norman, and a dark-morph Missouri Fox Trotter?

(You know, I am full of it here, but Julie will be too smitten by the sight of horse flesh to care.)