I usually go birding alone. There are a couple of reasons; I enjoy being alone for one, and the rest of my family aren’t early risers for another. I occasionally invite my wife or one of the kids to go with me and when they do we have a great time. I invited my wife and son and daughter to go with me to Palo Duro Reservoir this morning, but my daughter and wife had prior obligations today so it ended up just being me and Jake. We had a great time, saw a lot of birds and ended up hiking about 3 miles along a trail up one of the canyons. I haven’t been out of the truck much this winter; it makes a good blind and it’s warm, so the hike was a pretty ambitious one for me. The good news is that I didn’t fall over dead; bad news is that I’m a little stiff and sore now.

Jake carried the camera most of the morning and took some pretty nice photographs that I thought I’d share with you.

Mallards.

Northern Pintails.

Great Blue Heron with breakfast

American White Pelican.

American White Pelican with an escort of Double-crested Cormorants.

And le pièce de résistance, a Bald Eagle dining on a fish. We didn’t see him catch the fish, he landed on a dead cottonwood tree in the lake while we were watching the pelican.

A picture from my cell phone of Jake taking photos of the eagle.