A Day with Biker Bear & the Osprey

I had a great day with Anni (AKA Biker Bear). She arrived at my house at 5:50 AM and visited a bit with Maggie, Keara, Emily, Christine, Rachel, and Penny.

We headed out to Huntley Meadows park just south of Washington, DC and had a great time photographing, swallows, heron, turtles, frogs, Red Winged Blackbirds, a carpenter bee, and miscellaneous other critters.

After that, we went to Mason Neck State Park (Northern Virginia) where we met a park ranger tending to the bird houses. She was kind enough to open several of them up so that we could see the eggs in one and 3 babies in the other. We then went down to one of my favorite spots (the "pond") and got great shots of dragons and butterflies. We saw an Eagle in flight but both of us got pretty crappy shots.

After that, we went to Occequan State Park and found a nest with four Ospreys. I think for both of us that this was the highlight of the day. I've never seen more than two together at any one time. If you look closely at the left part of this picture, you can see how the ""O"ss-sprays" got their name.

After three parks and the sweltering heat, Anni and I had lunch at a deli close to my house and then called it a day. When I got home, I found that I had taken 530 photographs of which 90% turned out. It took me two hours to whittle down the possible candidates for todays blip. The other pictures can be seen on Flickr.

I hope that I will get another chance to go blipping with Anni as well as Deb and maybe other blippers (Alsacianne?) in the not too distant future.

Anni - Thank you for spending the day with me today and have fun on Tuesday. You are the best!