His Majesty

My blip buddy MaryJo and I went on a bird hunt today. We were looking for white swans or snow geese, and while we weren’t really looking for eagles, we found them. As a matter of fact we found a whole tree full of them, at least 8 sitting in the tree and several others flying around.

But, eagles are crafty critters. They stayed just far enough away that we couldn’t reach them even with the longest lens we had. There were adults and juveniles and the tree they were sitting in was way out behind a muddy, muddy field and a huge barn full of cows.

Being fearless and determined, MaryJo was not about to let the opportunity slip by so she slogged through the mud trying to get close enough to the tree to get a picture. Of course, as soon as she did, the eagles took off. She was wearing boots (smart lady), I was in sneakers and we both quickly discovered that the mud was amply supplemented with cow poop, so at the end of our trespassing adventure, we were……well…….we smelled pretty bad. But we persevered and got a couple of passable shots.

I got some great shots of cows but decided my marginal eagle picture would be my blip. It’ll be harder to get an eagle shot again but the poor cows will be stuck in their muddy, nasty barn for a long time. They made me kind of sad, especially to see the conditions they were living in. It wasn’t a good example of how to take care of animals at all. I spent a number of years on a ranch in Montana and we would never have kept our animals in such condition.

We ended the day with an impromptu stop at a rock and gem show which was full of beautiful rocks and jewelry made from them. I was a little uneasy because I knew I smelled like a cow barn, but we took some pictures anyway. Hopefully nobody was offended.