Wildlife During a Pandemic

I spent the last couple of months in southern Minnesota with my family, and have just returned to my place on the Gunflint Trail to begin working again.  While in southern Minnesota, I took a lot of walks to the local parks with my family.  There was a lot of interesting wildlife that I was able to photograph in that time.  It was still possible to see  nature while observing the governor's stay-at-home order in the city.  Here are some of favorite photos:

Red Fox

Canada Goose

Painted Turtles

 I sent one of the turtle pictures to WTIP, North Shore Community Radio.  It made it into their newsletter, and on their Facebook page.  During this pandemic, the station has been closed to volunteers, and part of their dedicated staff have been working from home to keep everyone safe.  Two of my recorded shows made it onto the air a few weeks ago, but I have not done any new shows  since the beginning of March.  I look forward to the day when we can all conduct live shows again.

Wood Duck

Wood Ducks

Eastern Phoebe

Great Egret

Osprey over a Ball Field

 The ball field where I saw the Ospreys has stadium lights.  One osprey was on one light.  The mate was on the second light, and the nest was on a third light.

Osprey Nest

Great Blue Heron

It took many tries to get this picture of the great blue heron.  I saw it over the course of several walks around Lake Bennett, but it always seemed to be flying away before I could raise my camera.    It felt great to finally capture it on disk.

Mallard on a Nest

Red-winged Blackbird

Mallard Ducks

These ducklings were the first baby birds I observed this year.  They were in a pond in Howard Johnson Park.

Mallard Ducklings

Wood Duck

Canada Goose on a Nest

 If the weather was fair, I almost always brought along a camera on my daily walks through the local parks.  Wildlife photography is a matter persistence, patience, and a bit of luck.  These pictures were taken over the course of two months.

Cottontail Rabbit

Wild Turkey Hen

  I consider myself very fortunate that I was able to spend the two months off with my family.  When the initial closing of my employer's business followed by the governor's stay-at-home order went into effect, I was already visiting my family.  I had two options, spend the time with my wonderful family, or spend an indefinite amount of time in sheer solitude in my apartment on the Gunflint Trail. Of course I stayed with my family.  We had a very nice time with each other, and I wouldn't trade that family time for anything.

Downy Woodpecker

Ruby-throated Hummingbird

My days were spent doing projects around the house, cooking and baking, working on my blogs, doing weekly shopping trips for groceries, and taking long walks.

Wild Turkey Tom

Initially, we spent a lot of time watching the news and all the briefings.  As time went on, we watched less of the news.  To get a break from all the bad news, we watched a wide variety of movies after dinner, along with a fair amount of comedies from the British Isles.

Wild Turkey Tom in Full Display

To read more of my blog articles, go to my other blog at https://sillimanbirding.blogspot.com.  I started a new feature called Bird of the Day, in which I posted a lot of short articles about specific birds, most of which I observed in the last two months.

On this blog, I started to post book, audiobook, and film recommendations.  I plan to continue these new features on each of my blogs.