I got up at 6:30 Sunday morning and headed out to the American River Bend Park again.  Last night we had a storm run through; thunder, lightning, pouring rain.  It was fast moving and by daybreak, the clouds were pretty much gone and most of the rain had already soaked into the ground.  I wanted to see if the storm had brought out any kewl fungi.

Nuthin’ on the fungi front, but I did get to see a coyote, egrets, some herons, a couple of Northern Flickers, and an osprey flying overhead.  One of the guys I meet on the trail regularly there said there’s an osprey that hangs around the “riffles” along in the river along that stretch of the park.  When the water is as low as it is, the bird has no trouble spotting fish under the surface.  Interesting.  I’ll have to keep an eye out for it on future excursions.

There was one spot on the trail where I came across “massacre feathers” – which usually indicate that something caught a bird and killed it.  That in itself isn’t unusual.  What pissed me off, though, was the fact that it was obvious that the bird had been “baited”.  Along with the feather litter there was a very distinctive pile of seeds.  Someone had put seed on the trail to bring the bird down, and then killed it, or let their dog kill it.  It’s illegal to harass or kill the wild animals in the park, so I sent the photos of the scene to the park Rangers.  I don’t know if they can do anything about it, but I thought they should know what some jerk is doing out there…

I also went a little further on the trail than I normally do, to the spot where it hooks up with the bike trail.  There’s a little inlet there with a still pond and a small rocky “beach”.  I was able to get some nice reflection shots of the trees on the water there.

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I walked around for about 3 hours and then headed back home.