Rain and lots of water

We had a bit of rain a couple of weeks ago, which filled the rivers and wetland areas. Richard had a photography assignment to focus on water, so we went over to the OSU wetlands park and took photographs on a cool, blustery day.




Richard likes his photography class, and he seems to have a good eye for seeing.










An action pic.











The view he was capturing. He was using black and white film, but this is the same image from my digital camera.











It's been fun to see all the bird nests appear in the trees now that the foliage has dropped. This is an oriole nest.









Leaves and reflections in the flooded riparian forest along the wetlands.









The river was pretty swollen with water for about a week. This is a spot where we usually see great blue herons wading below the dam. The water is up about 5 feet here.










Looking the other way down river.











There was so much water that the billabong was flowing through the floodgate. That's the first time I've seen this much water in the billabong.













Over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, the temperatures went up into the 60's and the sun came out for about 5 days in a row. Woohoo! We did a lot of nice walks in the balmy weather. The water levels fell sufficiently that the herons came back to the area below the dam.














We don't see beautiful blue skies like this in Columbus very often. What a treat.









The sun playing off the goldenrod infructescences was also very nice. These patches are full of sparrows and finches eating the seed.








All of the berries from different species of shrubs also keep the bird populations happy during this time of year.










Alas, the cloudy skies are back again, but I have this picture to remind me of a lovely, long weekend of beautiful fall weather.