A change of pace

After a couple of days of cloudy and rainy weather, yesterday morning dawned cloudy again, but by noon, the clouds had lifted and we had a beautiful, warm, although a bit humid, afternoon and evening.
I did no sewing yesterday and instead chose to spend my time in the nature preserve with a pair of binoculars.  I looked everywhere for birds, but only saw a Great Blue Heron perched on a branch overlooking a swampy pond.  I could see him quite well with my binoculars but he was too far away to get a photo, so I stole borrowed this from the interwebs. The Heron I saw looked just like this guy except he/she was perched on a branch on a dead tree so, above the water.

As we travel around this area, it's not unusual to see these birds flying, with their long legs extended behind them.  They are very common in WI during the warm weather months so I wonder if the ones I see here are wintering where the waters don't freeze.  Hmmm.

Another bird that I often see flying and occasionally on the beach, is the brown pelican. I took this picture a couple of years ago when we were exploring historic Ft. Morgan at the entrance of Mobile Bay.  Once I saw a guy fishing off the beach and right at his side, waiting for a fish or some bait to drop from the fisherman, was one of these birds.  Greedy little thing!  

Even though yesterday's search for birds was quite unsuccessful, I had a very leisurely walk that I enjoyed. There are always others walking in the nature preserve, but not so many that it ever feels crowded, and I like it like that.

After my walk, I did the weekly shopping, came home and by then it was too late in the day to do any sewing.  So I worked on the embroidery project the rest of the day.  Making very good progress on this and I'm feeling optimistic that the entire quilt will be finished by April 1 when it goes into the library show.

Today, Don and I will walk in the preserve again and then I'll sit down at the machine, so I'll have some progress to report tomorrow.