A pair of red-headed woodpeckers spent the morning trying to chase all the other birds, including a pack of bluejays, out of our woods.

It was dark, rainy, and difficult for photography this morning, but I managed to get this photo of a group of wood ducks on our pond. They’ve been hanging around for at least a month. We also had a number of different warblers come through today with the rain front. It’s still unseasonably warm, though.

Here are some photos from our vacation in Glacier National Park. For the first few days, heavy smoke from wildfires burning in the west side of the park made photography a big challenge. And we had rain and snow for about half of the remaining days. But we had a wonderful time hiking in the the Many Glaciers, Saint Mary, and Two Medicine areas on the east side of the park, and I still managed to take over 300 pictures. These are a few of our favorites. All of them were taken with my 10-20mm wide angle lens.

Wild Goose Island on Saint Mary Lake (Saint Mary area).

Mount Grinnell from Swiftcurrent Lake (Many Glaciers area)

Ptarmigan Falls-Iceberg Lake Trail (Many Glaciers area).

Altyn Peak from Fishercap Lake (Many Glaciers area).

Cascade below Virginia Falls (Saint Mary area). I need to work on this photo some more to pull out the beautiful blue in the pool below the cascade.

Siyeh Pass Trail on Baring Creek, above Sunrift Gorge (Many Glacier area). There are a couple of glaciers hidden in the clouds at the middle of the picture, but we’re not sure if we actually saw them. All the glaciers in the park are projected to be gone by 2030.

Two Medicine Lake from Scenic Point Trail (Two Medicine area).

High meadow on Piegan Pass Trail (Saint Mary area).

This old mill, a couple of miles south of us, was built in 1842 and burned down by the Union army in 1864. It was apparently never re-built, but the walls are still standing 143 years later. I took these photos just at sunrise.

We’re really excited by the variety of ducks that have shown up on our pond this spring. So far, we’ve seen: wood ducks, hooded mergansers, green-winged teal, and ring-necked ducks. Except for the wood ducks, which nest nearby, the others are passing through on their way north.

I’m building a bird blind that will hopefully allow for better photos. Here are a couple of long distance shots of the ring-necked ducks. I also posted this on iNaturalist.com, and got two confirmations within an hour. Man, those birders are serious.

Over the past week, we’ve had Mergansers, Wood Ducks, Mallards, and a Green-Winged Teal stop by. A pair of wood ducks and a single teal showed up together this chilly morning. The wood ducks took off as soon as they saw me, but the teal stayed long enough for me to get a photo. I wish it was a little better focused, but this is the closest I could get to him (about 50 yards). The first thing I noticed about him was the yellow on the tail.

Yesterday, Anne found this wood frog on the lawn near the road. She looks just like an oak leaf.

Today, the hooded mergansers stopped by on their way north. We saw them on the pond almost exactly two years ago, just before we bought the place. They probably stopped by last year, and we just missed them. Sorry the photo isn’t very good.

We bought a trail camera to try to identify the critters roaming around our place at night. We set it up yesterday and got photos of a passing fox (7:30pm) and raccoon (half past midnight. They were on the path on the other side of the second stream, about 30 feet from the pond.

We’re going to try to position the camera and adjust the settings to get less blurry pictures next time. Hope it works!

Hoping to make our pond more wildlife friendly, we planted wild rice today. The rice seed is very stinky. We rolled it up in mud scooped from one of the streams and dropped it in about one foot of water on the south side of the island and the opposite shore of the pond. These may not be the best sites because the drop off is fairly steep, so the area the rice prefers (6 to 18 inches of water) is pretty narrow. But we are experimenting. We planted one pound of seed, half on each side. The water temperature was about 45F, which we hope is cool enough to prevent sprouting. The weather is expected to turn cold tonight.

While we were paddling around, a fish jumped. So things are moving around in January. Not sure if that’s a good thing.

Here are a couple photos of a Great Blue Heron flying over our pond. I like the fall colors in the background, but I wish I’d set the aperture on the camera a little wider to reduce the field of vision and blur the background a little. In the photo on the left, he’s in the process of landing.