Summer 2021, Day 26

[I’m reconstructing this post because I don’t know what happened to the original one I wrote and posted.]

This was intended to be a light day, and it mostly was. I started with a spur-of-the-moment drive to a spot I’d been to a couple of times before and where I was immediately drawn to the sight of an adult Red Tail Hawk perched at the top of a distant tree. Fortunately, I had my good camera with telephoto lens in the car and I was able to capture this picture, among others (with special thanks to Canon’s stabilization software!):

After I’d put the camera away, the bird began screeching so I got the camera out again in hopes of capturing it in that posture. Instead, I was fortunate enough to grab a shot of it in flight, but not so fortunate as to have engaged the multi-shot capture system …

Both of these photos are greatly cropped after the fact, but trust me when I say that the bird was not close to me and I would never have gotten these shots without the DSLR in hand.

After that, I took another walk at Antrim Lake (no photos this time) and then headed north to Delaware State Park and the archery range I’d visited last year for the first time. I arrived to find the range shut down and barricaded, but happened across the new replacement range on my way out of there. Unfortunately, that range didn’t seem to be fully ready for use yet (even though someone was there shooting), so I continued back to the hotel to read for a while.

Later in the evening – after beer and food as described in the other blog – I walked to a near-by Graeter’s Ice Cream (another Columbus area favorite of mine) for a two-scoop dish of Black Raspberry Chip and S’Mores. The Black Raspberry is an old favorite, but the S’Mores surprised me by being particularly good and not so horribly sweet as some versions are.

Between Graeter’s and the hotel I crossed a small bridge between two ponds. It’s this kind of landscaping that I really enjoy about this part of the Columbus area. Note the very large bird (a heron, I believe) in the second photo – I surprised it as I walked across the bridge and it flew away from me to land on the right bank. I’m quite sure that wingspan is in excess of 3′.

This is the route of the day’s drives, not far by my usual standards 🙂