A male northern cardinal captured on the camera feeder in the backyard. I used a hipstamatic filter on the image.
Big Foot on the loose on Turkey Mountain.
Another male Northern Cardinal in teh backyard
I love the House Finches when they come to call.
I leave a few peanuts on the feeder. The blue jays and cardinals appreciate it and sometimes squirrels. I use jalapeno flavored birdseed and saffron seeds in the feeder. Birds love them but squirrels don’t like it.
These images are from late March and early April. I have fallen way behind on my posting. I am linking with Saturday’s Critters.
This past week the family spent some time at Hochatown, Oklahoma near Beavers Bend State Park for a little R&R. Since I am retired we can take a weekend getaway during the middle of the week and avoid the crowds! We are not big on crowds.
We rented a very nice cabin with all sorts of amenities. The best thing was all the deer that came by to visit early in the morning.
Deer are really graceful but very wary. As well they should be.
So we sat still on the porch as they came by.
We went hiking a few days in the park. We found this little armadillo on our first hike. They really are intriguing creatures.
But then we come across this snake that Heather almost stepped on. She thought it was a copperhead which is of course venomous. I kept telling her to get close enough to see the shape of the eyes to make sure. She refused. INaturalist confirmed it was a copperhead. It was laying right on the edge of the trail and refused to move so we just edged around him best we could. It was one of the biggest copperheads I have ever seen.
Later on during a walk around our cabin neighborhood we come across Bigfoot. Neither Heather or Kodi were afraid of him one bit.
Kodi loved our getaway. We didn’t take him on any hikes but we did lots of walks around the cabin and took him to a dog friendly brewery. He had a great time. As did we.
We went kayaking while down there, here is an action shot of Logan. We didn’t see any critters on the water except for birds.
Speaking of birds, have you tried the Merlin app. A free app and you download a bird song library and then you turn it on and it ID’s the birds by their songs. It’s amazing. The only thing is that it doesn’t locate the little buggers for you. So now I’m just taking screen shots of what it is hearing. It is truly amazing.
Saturday, I ran in the four mile event of the Greenleaf Trail Run at Oklahoma’s beautiful Greenleaf State Park. I say I ran, its more like I participated with my running friends Paula, left, and Melissa. We trotted a few hundred yards out of the four miles and the rest of the way speed walked it.
There were three races, a twelve mile, eight mile, and ours and each started separately. Since these are trail races, there is almost always a traffic jam right away. Nobody worries about it much though.
We ran through a bunch of great views including a segment out and back on a dam.
The State Parks do a great job of keeping the brush down in the parks. The lack of thorns is especially appreciated.
Melissa and Paula on the trail. I was wearing some brand new Hoka One’s that I bought over a year ago just before I had to quit running. A lot of the trails were on side slopes, which is fine, but the Hokas were too high and put a lot of torque on my ankles. Plus they were not broken in yet.
Warning ahead! Bigfoot area. Eastern Oklahoma is a hot bed of Sasquatch sightings.
And here is the critter himself. It was groundhog day. I didn’t see any groundhogs but Sasquatch couldn’t see his shadow, so does that mean we are having an early Spring?
All three of us finished the race vertically so that was good. I thought the race was great. The course was beautiful, the package pickup was well organized. I love the cotton poly blend long sleeve tee shirt.
They had cool coffee mugs at the end for everybody.
They had great medals as well. You can see Melissa’s above. I went bushwhacking for a nearby geocache at the end of the run. I didn’t find the geocache but the medal fell off when I was out there. Anyway it was cool.
I give this race five stars out of five. Thanks to the organizers and the army of volunteers who did everything from handing out packages, cooking and dishing out the food, marking the course, directing the runners during the race, and a myriad of other jobs.
