I got up about 6:30 and headed over to the American River Bend Park. I wasn’t expecting to see a lot, but I wanted to get over there and get some exercise. I didn’t get many photographs while I was out there (mostly ones of the color change in the cottonwood, ash, and liquidambar trees) but I did get a few neat videos. One was of a mother mule deer fording the river with two of her fawns, and another was of a guy catching a large steelhead and bringing it to shore. All the while I was watching him, I thought to myself how much my Mom (who passed in 2002) would have LOVED to have pulled something that big out of the water. I saw a couple of the salmon jump up in the river and splash the water around them. Biiiiig fish.
I was also taunted by yet another elusive Belted Kingfisher; a male who kept flying back and forth across the river. It would land in a tree, wait for me to get closer, then take off across the water… then would fly back and tease me again. I swear I am going to get at least ONE good Kingfisher photo this season! Hah!
I also watched a Great Egret and a Snowy Egret trying to catch fish… but there was a group of female Common Mergansers in the same spot, stirring up the water, and catching all the fish – then gobbling them down right in front of the egrets. Sometimes nature is RUDE, man. Hah-2!
I walked for about three hours and then headed back home, stopping first at Bel Air to pick up some groceries (mostly stuff for lunch during the work week; yes, I go back to work tomorrow).
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