Happy Monday!

Wishing everyone a great day and a happy new week!

"A walk in nature walks the soul back home."

"May the joy of simple things color the canvas of your soul."

"We take photos as a return ticket to a moment otherwise gone."

Comments off, enjoy your day!

Saturday's Critters # 572

Welcome to Saturday's Critters! Hello and Happy Saturday!

 If you love all God's creatures like I do and also like to blog about them and take critter photos this is where you can share your critter post. Link up your post and share your critters, join in with my critter party ! You can share any kind of critters the real ones, pretend ones, statues and paintings, a new or old post!

Click on images for larger viewing. 

1. Sept 8-10, we were on our Pennsylvania road trip heading to the Poconos and the Delaware Watergap area. We stopped at a rest area with a view of the Susquehanna River. I noticed a lot of Tree Swallows flying around catching bugs.  If you look closely you can see a few of the Swallows. 

2. The Twin Bridges was one of my favorites out of the four Covered Bridges we saw on this day. 

A view of the Twin Bridges. 

3. While taking photos of the covered bridge above, I noticed two Bald Eagles flying above us. 

4. One of the many painted picnic tables, this mural below had flowers, domestic goose and a deer with pumpkins. 

5. My favorite picnic table mural was the Raccoon murals below, it is cute. 

6. The Josiah Hess Covered Bridge.

7. Just upstream a bit, I watched a Great Blue Heron fishing. The heron caught a pretty good sized fish. 

8. This is one of two Great Blue Herons I saw near the creek. 

9. Below you can see the fish, it looked big to me. The heron dipped in the water or was it trying to move the fish around in it's beak. They swallow the fish headfirst goes it goes down smoothly. 

10. You can see below a lump in the back of the heron's neck, the lump is the fish after it was swallowed whole. 

11. I think the heron had to rest after the fish meal, I guess it takes a while to digest. 

I will post more of this trip soon, various waterfalls and the Delaware Watergap.

I am linking up to Heidrun's Mosaic Monday  I hope you can stop by and visit Heidrun and check out the Mosaic Monday post.

Thanks to all my visitors and for your past and present comments. Stop back to see any replies to your comments. I appreciate everyone who loves and respects wildlife. Thank you for linking up a critter post.

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Thank you for sharing your critters and post!

Birding & Covered Bridges

I am linking up with  Mary's Mosaic Monday  and Our World Tuesday

On Saturday morning I was up early with the birds. On the weekends, the first thing I do (after coffee) is to go out on my deck and feed the birds some extra treats like peanuts and the little peanut suet nuggets. I noticed a pretty pink sunrise and I knew this day was going to be a pretty day to do something outside. I woke hubby up and said lets get out and go for a ride. I already had a place in mind, in fact I had just about the whole day planned.

 In the mosaic above is my sunrise, a couple of Bluejays on my deck and the pretty sky and trees around my house.

 On the way to the covered bridges I had to stop and check out a field that birders have been reporting seeing Short Eared Owls. No luck on seeing the owls but we did enjoy watching two Northern Harrier hawks hunt over the field.

I had read that there is a riding tour in Thurmont, Md where you can see three covered bridges all within a thirty mile loop. These covered bridges are also close to a waterfalls in the Cunningham Falls State Park in Catoctin, Md.   Of course, at all of these places I was checking out the area for birds. When I pulled up to the parking lot for the first bridge. I noticed two Red Tailed Hawks sitting close together in a tree. I tried to get a little closer but one flew off and at least I got in a shot of one of the hawks.

The Covered Bridge in this mosaic is named Loys Station Bridge. This bridge is listed on the National Parks National register of historic places. Each bridge had a different truss system, which I tried to show in one of the photos.

 

 My far away shot of my Red Tailed Hawk. I was checking out all along the stream for a Kingfisher, It just looked like the kind of area they would be found. The only other birds seen at this first covered bridge were some Grackles.

I think we surprised the female Belted Kingfisher and flew away only to land a little further away. I love their telltale rattle sound.

I will do a separate post on all three of the covered bridges and a waterfall on my travel blog. But I just wanted to do a post on how I spent my Saturday in the morning at home and a preview of our little day trip.  Covered Bridges and Lighthouses are just a few of the historic places that are definitely worth a trip to see. Oh, and waterfalls are great to see and visit.

To see more wonderful mosaic and beautiful photos please visit Mosaic Monday  and Our World Tuesday