Deer Creek

After the beautiful day on Tuesday, the weather had changed.  This is typical for Ohio!  Today is still warm but storms came thru.  Rain, wind advisories, tornado warnings, just an awful start to the day.  I was sitting in my room making my felt birds....

Watching reruns of McMillian and Wife on Netflix...a really exciting day.  My dear Cecil came in with his jacket on and asked me if I wanted to drive to Deer Creek....I jumped up and said ''YES"

So I grabbed my camera and off we went.....

We decided to have lunch at the lodge first...(Cecil's first time there)...we had the entire dining room to ourselves with the view of the lake.

I had the chicken salad...

Cecil had chicken noodle soup and french fries....

The waitress came over and asked me if I had just taken a picture of the french fries?  I said "Yes, this is his first time and I just wanted to remember it"  (didn't want her to think I was totally crazy and tell her I was writing a blog and needed pictures...blah blah blah....LOL

While we were eating and looking out on the lake we saw 3 Blue Herons fly by. It was windy and they were flying low to the water and then into the trees along the bank.  Then the Vultures flew into a near tree....

One can always expect to see Vultures in this area.

I told Cecil I would show him my "secret places" just in case I have to call him to come rescue us and he would know where to go....

This is the road leaving the lodge...the clouds were amazing...

The area that had been dry for a long time had lots of water flowing .....

No one was on the roads...was like we were the only people left in the world...I just couldn't get over the beautiful clouds.

This is the Osprey nest.  There was more water there too.

We didn't see many birds, I had thought the 3 Herons would have been over where the picture above was taken, usually find them there...but no..on to the next "secret" spot"....

Here we ran into a "murder of crows".  They can always be found at Deer Creek too.  They are very camera shy and after many tries, I finally got this picture before he flew off.

We saw hundreds of ducks out on the water....

 

Can you see all those tiny dotes on the water?  Those are Mallards and I think maybe a couple of others but they were too far away to tell.

A closer look....

Also saw a few Sea Gulls...finally....usually they are easy to find

Another picture of how low the water is during the winter. The water is let out to keep spring flooding from happening.  It is amazing to see how full Deer Creek becomes during a very wet winter and spring.

This area had been  dry all summer too...but was thrilled to see water.....

We walked down to the water edge and thought we saw something in the water!

 It was just far enough away to be hard to tell what it was and I left my binocs in the car...So I took pictures...it was moving and changing, like something either trapped or trying to carry something heavy...we watched and then studied my pictures on the small camera screen

Then finally, we decided it was a log with mud and grasses stuck to it...faking us out!!!!!  LOL

It sure looked like something...the overcast day and the way it was moving...really fooled us!

It was very pretty looking around the area.....

But didn't see a bird or a duck...guess the water is back but not the fish...We found signs that ducks had been there...

But these might have been left from yesterday when the day was so beautiful....???

A bird nest from last summer...wonder what little bird used it?

Walking back to the car the sky had gotten really dark....

We had had a wonderful visit and it never rained but this sky made us decide to head for home.

Was good to get home and hunker down for the night and the cold that was on it's way...