We got up by alarm this morning because D was going to show us around. I had my normal breakfast with the coffee to go while J made moose chili with moose meat given to us by D's friend. We left at 7:15 in the Jeep following D and Tootie in D's truck.

Our first stop was Lake Lucille, a place D said would be good for red-necked grebes — it turned out to be great for red-necked grebes. We had set up to photograph from the car before we got to the final destination, and when we got into position there was a young red-necked grebe within shooting distance. Shortly thereafter, an adult came into shooting distance. The adult was fishing, and after a while it caught a small fish and took it over to the chick. They weren't oriented properly to get a good photograph, so we waited some more. The next time the adult caught a fish and took it over to the chick, the alignment was almost perfect! The adult and chick were aligned so they were facing each other and they were angled slightly to get some good light. It was fantastic!

We went to Carter Park in hopes of finding some loons, but there weren't any. There were lots of mallards, and a spotted sandpiper made an appearance. A belted kingfisher stopped briefly as we were putting our gear away in the car.

We went to another location on Lake Lucille and photographed some adult red-necked grebes in even better light than at the first stop.
The highlight of the day was a visit with D's friend R who works with Bird TLC (Training and Learning Center), a "non-profit organization dedicated to rehabilitating sick, injured or orphaned wild birds and providing avian education programs to the public." She has a great horned owl that was injured and cannot be released back into the wild. We had a very nice private photography session with Artemis, the great horned owl. In the image to the left, I used a 1.4x tele-extender and both the 12mm and 25mm extension tubes to get close. Then we photographed sandhill cranes on their property.

J and I grabbed lunch on the way to an unnamed small lake with some pacific loons. We only saw one adult, instead of the usual pair, on the lake and it was feeding two chicks. They were quite wary of us so we couldn't get any great images.

Then we went to hang out with some of D's friends, B (of B&P), L&S, and B. I learned a lot about salmon fishing in Alaska.

We got back to the RV around 5:05. I downloaded images from today and did a quick edit.

D came out around 6:00 to join us for J's moose-meat chili and cornbread muffins. It was tasty.

D went back inside around 7:00 and I did the dishes. I worked up the blog entry for yesterday and did some computer work.