April 02nd, 2021

Oh my gosh, it's Friday already!  Where did the week go?  I still have two photo safari reports with Joy to write up. Well I think I will at least attempt to squish both of those hikes into one post today so I don't fall any further behind, ok?

All righty then.  Last week, during Tim's staycation/vacation Joy and I still hiked on Wednesday just as we always do.  Tim appreciated having a morning all to himself ;)   Joy and I headed to 
Oscar Scherer State Park.  Of course we've been there before, many times, but it has lots of different trails and naturally we see different things at each visit.

It was definitely a good hike.  We tried to hit some trails we didn't normally do which really panned out right away because of that first photo.

The bright blue bird at the top of the page is called a scrub Jay.  I suspect that it's in the same neighborhood, if not family as Blue Jays but of course I don't know all that much about birds so I'm just guessing here. Do not take that as fact.  It was a very bold bird, completely unbothered by our presence and hopping right along the sandy trail beside us. I actually had a hard time getting an unblurry shot for a few frames because the bird was so close, and I didn't want to move and possibly scare him away.  Wildlife, up close and personal :)

Lots of other birds too:

A few  other things that fly:

And some other pretty things:

All righty then.   We were feeling pretty darned good about that hike. Got lots of good photos.  It would be hard to top that, or so we thought.  And then this week, once again, Joy and I headed out on Wednesday for our weekly photo safari.  We drove south to Port Charlotte to visit  Ollie's Pond, a place we haven't been in quite some time.  Mostly because the past few visits were kind of Meh.  We did have a back up plan in case things were still in the blah-zone.  

We will just say that we did not have to use the back up plan.  Let's call this the Wings Hike.  (Not the Paul McCartney band, though that would have been cool too)

I think I took more photos on this past hike to Ollie's than I have, maybe ever!  But I will try to just hit the highlights for you, otherwise it would just be too much wonderfulness (which is kind of how we felt about it)

Get ready for birdies, lots and lots of birds. I will identify the few that I know for sure.

And so many dragonflies! We really hit the jackpot that day:

And then the "other things" miscellaneous file, my favourite picture this time being some random kittycat walking by, just checking things out.  He even stopped and posed so I could take a photo.

Whew!  We made it!  All caught up.  That's all the highlights of the past two weeks. Monday we can start fresh once again.  Ya'll have a great weekend. Oh!  And Happy Easter!