Silly Saturday ...

... not really!  But we did have a great day!

As we hadn't been to Minsi Lake in some time we decided to drive up that way today.  The weather was simply perfect for our excursion.  We spent almost two hours wandering around the lake taking in all the sights.  We had brought our lunch and enjoyed that whilst there.  Most of the pictures in the collage were taken at the lake ... with the exception of the upper middle hummingbird picture and the bottom right frog. 

One of the reasons we wanted to get to Minsi Lake was because of the addition to the property of some Purple Martin nesting towers.  I thought it was going to be too late in the season to see anything at them so we were pleasantly surprised to see about a dozen or so martins.  Being that they are so darkly colored getting a decent shot of one wasn't easy ... even in the bright sunshine.  I did my best and have included two pictures here ... upper right and upper left.  By seeing these lovely birds I've been able to add them to my life bird list ... it's a new one for me!

You may be wondering what that weird red thing is to the right of the hummingbird.  It is the biggest freshwater crayfish I've ever seen!  And just a little bit creepy, too!  

I've included a picture of the kayakers because we stopped to talk with them as he was pumping up the kayak.  We have thought about getting one of these kayaks ourselves so we wanted to know if they liked it.  But since they had only bought yesterday it was too early to tell!

On our way home from the lake we stopped at Jacobsburg State Park to see what was happening there ... it was only a slight detour.  We didn't see any hummingbirds but there were tons of frogs in the pond.  Way more than we normally see ... and many of them were quite small. 

The hummingbird picture in the collage and in the Extras was taken once we returned home.  I was in the pool at the time.  I've included the extra photo to show the little ruby marking on this juvenile male's throat.  He will eventually look like this beauty.