Thursday

I am so thankful for our friends. On Monday and Wednesday of this week I had things I wanted to do - for professional development, psychological health and just plain fun. This poses some logistical problems when you have two children whose primary care in is your hands. On Monday E took the children, even though her kids were in camp. Yesterday it was P who stepped up to the plate for me. Not only were my children safe but happy, stimulated and tired when I picked them up.
Oh, and by the way- I had a fabulous program about birds in the Botanical Garden in which we learned about neotropical migratory birds. Since we tend to walk through the garden paying more attention to plants than searching out birds we didn't see any of the elusive warblers, gnatcatchers or vireos that are our neotropical visitors.

We did hear and see the Red Shouldered Hawks. We located a nest, below the amphitheater and was able to watch a hawk on the nest for a good while. I think he or she had been hunting because the bird was making an amazing racket and looked to be pulling something around with their beak. On our way back we saw two hawks. One in the valley, exactly were we saw him/her two weeks ago, who sat a watched us for a while and then flew off when we got too close. The second one (smaller I think) was up by the edge of the duck pond and glided into the woods by the Hunt Cabin.