We typically visit nature spaces on the weekends in the mornings before it gets too warm, but on Wednesday (08/17) we decided to go for an evening walk at the park. We came across this interesting feather that I later learned once belonged to a Northern Flicker, which is a type of woodpecker.
I hope to see the actual bird one day! They seem to be just as elusive as Blue Jays. I hear them often, but rarely ever see them.
Speaking of elusive, it’s not often we’ll see a dragonfly that isn’t zipping around, but one decided to hang out right by our front door.
We’ve never seen this particular color before. It’s a Emperor Dragonfly.
Saturday (08/27) we visited Mount Saint Mary Park in St. Charles. We’ve been there once before I believe, but it’s been many years. I read they were wrapping up their annual Sculpture in the Park event so I wanted to check it out.
In addition to all the cool sculptures, we saw a lot of wildlife including ducks, pigeons, finches, a hummingbird, and this awesome bird of prey that is either a Red-Shouldered Hawk, or an Osprey.
My bird app says it’s an Osprey (based off the photo), but around the same time I was using it to listen to bird calls and it identified a Red-Shouldered Hawk, so I’m not sure which it was, but it was cool to watch. It even dove and caught a fish at one point, although I was unable to catch that on my camera.
After the park and a trip to a nearby record store (more in another entry about that), we ended up at Stone Creek Miniature Golf in Geneva.
We’ve been there years ago in the evening but I don’t think we’ve ever played during the day. It was perfect weather-wise and it wasn’t too crowded either. Pictures of You by The Cure was playing over their speakers when we arrived which I thought was cool.
Although it wasn’t crowded, there was a large group playing ahead of us, so we were forced to really take our time on each hole as we’d be waiting for our turn at the next one anyway. It took us an hour to play all 18 holes and I’m thankful for that delay. Otherwise we likely would have blown through the course much quicker.
Despite Joe’s teasing about beating me, I actually won by two points!
If it wasn’t for Joe’s recent oral surgery, and having to be careful about what he was eating, we would have stopped somewhere for food, but we ended up going home after golfing. We were away from the house for five hours as it was, so Wookie was happy we didn’t stay out any longer.
