One of my favorite California birds, the Bushtit - charming, cute, and so cheerful-sounding when flocks move through an area with a chatter of bell-like peeps. But not easy to photograph. They move fast and tend to forage in twiggy thickets - here backlit in the reeds by the lake. Making the lake a park was, btw, my father's idea. He worked in the county Water and Flood Control Department back then, assessing and negotiating properties they needed for projects. When it was proposed to dam up a creek in the valley between a city park and a state park, turning the creek into a reservoir for flood control in rainy times and water reserves in droughts, he lobbied in the department to make the valley into a county park, connecting it to the trails in the other two parks and increasing the public use value of all three. He was just a minor employee, not an elected official or a department head, so his name didn't feature in the official park history. This is why my Mom chose to sponsor a picnic table in the park as a memorial to my Dad when he died. We had a plaque added for her when she died ten years later. We'll be meeting up there for a picnic this coming August on what would have been Dad's 100th birthday.
But now I'd better get moving. I have a long list of things to do after breakfast today - an article review for a journal, prune the berry bushes and fruit trees, do some sewing on son's bunad, housecleaning ... and catch up browsing BF.
