Just Caught A Blue Jay

I'm going to try a shorter post today. Maybe I can post more often this way. As you might be able to see in my pictures, I've been taking a lot of pictures of birds. I got this blue jay in some bad light, so I had to enhance the picture just a bit. I liked the bird too much to not share it.

I'd like to thank all of you who identified the junco in my last post. As soon as I saw the first identification from you I slapped myself in the forehead. I said in the post that I should have known what kind of bird it was. I've seen these little birds before in some of your posts, so I knew I've seen them before.

The problem is that my memory is nonexistent nowadays and my research skills are rusty. I actually saw juncos on one of the online bird guides, but theirs didn't look anything like mine. I thought even then that maybe my bird was a junco, but how could I say so if there was no match? Once identified though, I did a junco search on Google Images and there they were, hundreds of pictures that looked just like my little bird!

I also mentioned in my last post that I was going to go in search of the closest nature park to me, a place called Five Ridge Prairie State Preserve. The place is huge and I know right where it is, but I didn't know where the entrance was. I did my search and still can't find it! After I got back home I found an address for the place, so I'm going to try again in the next few days if the weather doesn't get too bad.

One thing neither you or I will have to search that hard for is all inclusive family holidays. That's because the link is right here. Much easier to find than my hidden nature park, and you won't have to drive a bunch of hilly dirt roads to do it. All it takes is a click of your mouse.

I really wish I would have taken a few pictures for you while I was on my nature park search. The tops of the hills I was driving on offer some spectacular views of the countryside. The problem is that I'm still a city boy so I'm a little nervous driving some of these places. In some areas there is a pretty huge drop, and I like to move on quickly to places where I feel a little safer.

I will definitely get those pictures for you some time in the future. It might not be until spring, but the wait will be well worth it. I guarantee that they'll be some of my best pictures ever. This country around here is the most beautiful I've seen, and I've always thought at an instinctive level that it is home.

I'll be back soon. I hope you liked my rambling little post, ad, bird, hills and all. Oh, the blue jay says, "Bye."