I had forgotten just how tiring these national dog competitions can be. As mentioned in the previous post, we made it down here for the Canine Performance Events (CPE) Nationals being held in my hometown of Springfield, IL. Imagine a state fairgrounds stuffed to the gills .. or should I say muzzles with face lickers and tail waggers. Suspect they will have the greenest grass they’ve ever had once this is over ha! The various competitions have been going on all this week. Speedway competitions (think drag and barrel racing) and scent work led it off, but now the Big Kahunas have taken the stage with 6 concurrent agility rings in full swing. Raven did well today qualifying in 2 of his 3 runs with 6 more runs still to go over the next two days. Definitely a tough day for him as he is currently passed out between me and the keyboard – even mom is feeling pretty wiped. Ruger has been watching with intent as he hopes to be making his debut at nationals within two years (he needs more titles before he becomes eligible). We already had to get on him about trash talking some of the current competitors.
“I unplug my muzzle in your general direction, sons-of-a-puppyfarm! So, you think you could outclever us French Poodles with your silly knees bent crashing into agility bars. I’ll wave my private parts at your owners! You cheesy load of secondhand electric butt sniffers!”
While we sit Ruger down and have a discussion about sportsmanship, going to let Brad take the reins and bring you an adventure with a talented member of the birding family (and assuredly a fish trash talker as well).
Take it away Brad…
This story comes at the very end of our Upper Newport Bay Nature Preserve (UNBNP) visit. The visit to UNBNP started with Jan finding the California Thrasher (link here). I finally found her among the trails so we wandered around the upper part of the preserve for a while. After Jan and I had been walking amongst the chapparal for a couple of hours, we headed back along the crunchy pea gravel path back towards the car.
One our way out, we bumped into a nice couple, roughly the same age as Jan and I. After chatting for a while, they asked if we had seen the Osprey (Pandion haliaetus). We had not. Just then the man pointed off into the distance at a tree leaning out over the preserve lower levels, right where Jan and I were about 15 minutes ago. Roughly two hundred yards away there was a twig of a tree, with a white/black lump on the end of one of its three branches. Lo and behold there was a large bird sitting there. I zoomed in as far as I could and was able to capture this highly cropped image (not quite as good as Sam’s photos with her 500mm, visit Sam.Rappen here) of an Osprey.
Hit the jump to read more about this UNBNP encounter!
Continue reading Fishing Hawk…by Brad Marks
Wildlife Intrigued 