Really true when you’ve become a bird watcher! We had a 3 day weekend last weekend, the traditional holiday weekend that starts off summer. John and I both took Friday off, turning it into a very luxurious feeling 4 days off. It was quite refreshing, very glad to have taken the extra day!
We started off the weekend with a bird watching scouting trip – meaning we were checking out a new bird site that we hadn’t been to before. Hegewisch Marsh (see the pin below) is on the south side, in a very industrial area. It also has a very atmospheric sounding name, like it should be part of Hogwarts.
One interesting thing about the trails there is that former ATV (those all terrain vehicles that people ride recreationally) tracks in the earth are still there and fill with water to form vernal pools that the local wildlife can really enjoy.
It was an overcast day but really nice for looking at the different colors in the landscape, and also it wasn’t too hot!
While there we saw a lot of barn swallows and also a great blue heron. We also heard a lot of american bullfrogs and on our way out saw an american goldfinch!
On Saturday, we did Garfield Park yoga in our back yard.
I also worked on my summer project of jazzing up the grid by the south side of our back yard. This grid is still here from when we had a fence on this side of the yard. The fence became really rotten over the years and was starting to crumble anyway, so we had it removed but left the structure a few years ago. The up side to having more time at home is that I definitely have more time for gardening!
Liam came over for a socially distant backyard hangout on Sunday. We’ve been reading a lot about different activities and staying apart and in an outdoor setting is very low risk for transmission of any virus, so we felt pretty good about this. It was great to see Liam! We ordered takeout from Flying Saucer and ate it in the back yard.
What’s that – duck daycare opened back up? Either that or this mama duck really does have 7 ducklings. This is one of the wood ducks in the lagoon – taking all the attention from the goslings, which are practically grown at this point, and a few other ducks with “only” 2 or 3 ducklings!
We’re in purple flower season! Love these irisis.
After long, weird periods of shortages, we found that our Dark Matter coffee shop is selling Malort distilled hand sanitizer. Malort is a local spirit that honestly I’ve never had – nobody ever says to try it, you’ll like it, let’s just say! But I was very happy to get this bottle of hand sanitizer since our supplies are getting a bit low.
Oops – slightly out of order but here’s the bridge by Calumet Fisheries, where we stopped after the south side birding on Friday.
I suspect we’ve shown this view before! 
As we’ve started to say to each other, 2020 is feeling like the year of living repetitively. Which is a good problem to have, really, all things considered. But with fewer options out there, we definitely feel like we’re hitting the same places over and over again, walking down the same streets to and from the park… but then this morning we saw a yellow-shafted Northern Flicker (part of the woodpecker family) on our run, so maybe the strategy of admittedly doing the same things but being sure to look more closely is working! (Photo from The Cornell Lab)
Lovely walk in the Hegewisch Marsh! I had no idea it was there. Nice you’re enjoying your patio with yoga, visits from Liam and take-out from Flying Saucer. We occasionally see a yellow shafted northern flicker in our back yard, but I didn’t know its full name and just called it a “Flicker.”
Oh very cool you’ve also spotted a flicker. Aren’t the markings on the back of its head distinctive?
Great pics and posts. Funnily on the way home today (I’m back at the office!!), I was listening to a radio segment filled with new bird watchers who discovered it all in isolation!