Today was an sort of an experimental day - I took Chelsea on a neighborhood bird watching mission to put my telephoto lens through its paces. We started in our back yard and found one bird in a nearby tree. Then we headed to the front yard to a pool of water that was created by our sprinkler — I've seen lots of birds bathing there and thought we could find some. When we approached we startled all the birds, so we decided to sit and wait for them to come back. Sure enough a few moments later some birds came and cautiously frolicked in the water. Chelsea didn't really want to stay in one place for too long, so we decided to walk around the neighborhood and see what else we could find.
It was kind of like a mini neighborhood safari and Chelsea named herself the "bird leader". She led me down one sidewalk, then up another, and then Chelsea presented me with a pretend "badge" for following the bird leader. After that we headed to the park and got some ice cream. All in all, it was a very successful excursion!
What I loved most was that the whole journey happened within a 5 minute walk from my house. It's nice to know that adventure can happen any where, and at any time. And, you can get a badge for it!
Our first sighting, on a tree in our back yard. Shhh, don't scare it!
Next, we sat still at the end of our driveway... the pavement was kind of hot, but we got our bird sighting!
As we walked around, Chelsea and I could hear way more birds than we could see. On our way back from the park we saw a few birds flying above and so we stopped to watch where they were going. This little guy landed on a railing outside one of our neighbors houses, and I was able to get a shot off before he took off again.
Chelsea the bird leader in action. She kept me moving through the neighborhood at a good pace, and was prepared for anything! She even had a sleeping bag in the event we needed to set up camp overnight.