Birds, Bugs, and Butterflies, OH MY: Rocky Fork

January...day 4...The sun is shining and the snow is melting and off I go on a drive. It is very cold but we have no intention to leave the car. We are out just to enjoy and see what we can see.....So we decided that Rocky Fork was the direction we were headed....
Along route 50 we saw this Vulture down on the ground. We decided to take a look....

He looks like he is trying to stand on his head! Very strange....He saw us watching and flew up to the tree branch above.

Our first bird sighting...a Black-faced Vulture.

We turned off 50 at my favorite picture taking place...the Old farm place....

In the winter, you can see the old farm house...here are pictures from past visits

June 2011.

August of 2011, the farm house can't be seen through the trees.

This is 50 across the road....

As we drove around the lake, the scenery was so beautiful...

I would have sat there awhile if it hadn't been so cold....brrrr

There was a thin layer of ice in spots on the lake.

This Blue Heron didn't mind the cold at all...We saw allot of Herons.

Crows were everywhere...this one in a corn field calling for his family.

We were so surprised to see Blue Birds. Not just one or two but more like 7 to 10. They were so pretty...Got the front and back pictures....

We saw American Coots and this group we watch come out of the water and running up the beach to these Canadian Geese. They can run fast! They pecked around for a few minutes and back into the water they went.

Saw 4 different Northern Harriers...It is hard to get picture when they are hunting. If you see one flying over a field, stop and watch. They will hover and dive down for their prey. Very interesting

The marina, looked so strange with no boats.

This is how it looks in Summer.......

This is looking across the lake from the Marina.

The Ring-billed Gulls were sunning themselves on the docks.

We drove on around until we came to the dam and where the McCoppins Mill stood until it burned down in Oct. 1998. I wish I had seen it before.

This is what is left of the Mill.

This is in the summer. The ruins are almost hidden from site. We found that this is a great place to see Herons too.

There were 5 there the day I took this in 2011.

This one was taken in 2012. A very dry summer.

But we could see the fish below us from the bridge.

And there were allot of them.

The other side of the bridge is pretty too....

You can see my car and where I pull off so we can view the Mill. This was the only time out of the car....

Another pretty view of the lake and Coots...they were everywhere...We did see a couple of Ring-necked Ducks and a few Greb and of course the Mallards were plentiful too.

If you still have daylight, Paint Creek is very close and the Dam is very nice area.

These were taken on the bridge..either side. We saw Herons on the ice on the picture below.

There were about 5 and I scared them when I got out of the car to take their pictures...but they came back right away...I guess they didn't want their fishing hole to freeze up.

There is a Ranger building there and they put out bird seed and one never knows what birds one will see...These Starlings were sunning themselves in the top of the tree...the sun made them take on this beautiful orange color..

We also saw Titmouse, Chickadee, Nuthatch, Dove, Blue Jays, Flickers,Chipping Sparrows and Mockingbirds, at least 5 Hawks, (couldn't ID them, some large and some small, all flew off) lots of Junco and Cardinals.