Ah yes, today was indeed a spring day and I headed out to Lord Hill Park
for several hours. At Temple pond I had my lunch and soon became sleepy in
the sunshine. I had a brief moment of sympathy for my poor students who were
stuck inside doing WASL testing today... But it passed. A splash across the
pond got me to open one eye. Another splash and I lazily lifted my bins to
see who was interrupting my potential nap. A pied-billed grebe, rather
hurriedly was swimming along the edge when it suddenly sort of jumped out of
the water and flew 5-6 feet. Surfacing directly where the grebe had been an
otter showed its head, and looked about with that sort of permanent smirk
that they wear. It then dove again and about 20 seconds later the grebe
jumped again and up came the otter! All thoughts of napping now were
rapidly retreating and I watched this repeated 4 more times. Finally the
bird scootched up on a sunny log, and the otter did likewise, about 30 feet
away. Was the otter trying to catch and eat the grebe or just playing a
version of tag? Why didn't the grebe just fly away?

Also watched a raven, very high, closely chase an accipiter, quorking and
making interesting raven sounds. The hawk would swerve and twist and turn
but the raven stayed right on its tail. Finally the raven broke off the
chase and returned the direction they had come, quorking and barrel rolling
in triumph.

Almost back to the car a Hairy woodpecker was working a dead branch from the
top and to my amusement the branch broke under the silly pecking bird and it
awkwardly flew up onto the trunk with a exclamation of surprise. I guess
that is an occupational hazard of being a woodpecker.


Rob Sandelin
Naturalist, Writer
The Environmental Science School
http://www.nonprofitpages.com/nica/SVE.htm
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