Feathered Friday - A drive/day to remember

4-19

A nice stop and go kind of day

Day started out pretty simple, some clouds, okay well mostly clouds, but it is the overcast kind of season. We were headed into town, (Soldotna, Ak), to pick up Onyx's new water bowl. She simply does not like the big one everyone else uses. Road work season is in full swing in Alaska, road closures and all, so a twenty mile detour was on the agenda. Normally we just go straight into town with an Eagle Stop for pictures. Here is what we got to see during the short detour. We had to pull over and get some shots. More coming later from both myself and @shasta I am sure.

I know this is a #featheredfriday post, I just could not resist. It is not that often that we get to see caribou so close up so I wanted to share the shot. It's like he is saying take the picture already so I can go back to grazing.

A lot, (most of them), of the small lakes and ponds are thawing out and have completely thawed or have a good amount of water. The rivers are flowing freely, and the Ducks are in. More bird choices everyday coming on. Still no sparrow song being heard yet, but I am sure they are around somewhere along with the Black-capped Chickadee's. We drove down to one of the river boat launch areas to see if we could see anything. We got lucky for a few minutes.

Unlike their city cousins these ducks are rather skittish and somewhat flighty. I don't think they like their picture taken. They tolerate it for a few minutes though. I did not even get out of the car for this first shot, I did not think they would stay around long.

Here is Miss Mallard trying to be a little coy with a Seagull, or was the Seagull trying to pretend to be hard to get so she could catch him? Only the bird brained know for sure.

And off they go, which was fine with us, it was only about 39 degrees Fahrenheit and there was a pretty good breeze, in other words it was fricken cold, but the shots continued for a bit, before rushing to the car and starting it up.

Of course the seagull could not be left out of the aerial show, he had to show that he could fly also.

It was a good day. Every now and then the sun peeking through, we had some styrofoam snow in Soldotna, not much, but some. My description for almost not quite hail that looks like snow pellets and melts almost as soon as it lands with out making much sound.

Now our day did have some real snow a couple hours after we go home.

Hopefully this is a greening snow. The last gasp that will help turn the brown grass green. It is still early in the spring season, and we do still have chance of snow, rain, fog, and freezing rain and snow and fog. But the green is coming. I noticed some green grass up close to the houses in Soldotna.