Wednesday, October 03, 2007

2007 Idaho trip - day 7

24 August 2007. Another travel day, but shorter than the others we had on this trip.

We went back to the Galena Lodge area and looked for the American Dipper I had spotted in June when I traveled with my South African friends. We had looked twice before and didn't see a dipper (well, we did see something fly down the stream that probably was the dipper), but we did see lots of evidence that it had been in the area (lots of bird splats on rocks in the stream).

These are finches of some species - probably Cassin's finches.





Same bird.













This is a mountain chickadee.











Well, I'm not sure. Same finch as above?














Third time's the charm. The American Dipper came out to see us just as we were about to give up on it.









Looks like a fat wren, eh?












It didn't stay out in view for very long, but it was long enough to snap a few pics and get my binocular on it before it flew off again.










It's a new favorite of mine.










After we saw the dipper we drove over to Boise for our last night in Idaho. We took a walk along the Boise River from Julia Davis Park to Ann Morrison's Park and back again.

One of the highlights was a good look at a flock of common mergansers fishing in the river. The sun was going down as we walked back to Julia Davis Park and we came upon a small wetland area.




This is an underpass to one of the bridges. This particular spot has special significance to Steve and me from 1979, when we first met.











The spot is a little shabbier now than when we were there in 1979, but it still has sentimental value to us.

No comments: