Westward, Ho! Day 12: Birds and a Sunset in the Sullivan Recreation Area

The day started with heavy rains brought on by heavy thunderstorm activity that lasted till about 10AM! The loudness of the rain woke me just before 6AM.

After breakfast, I decided to head on over to the Sullivan Recreation Area located to the south of the campground, perhaps a couple of miles away once you get on the highway.  It was still raining but I was able to wait out the last of the rain under the picnic shelter.

Nice area, it's run by the COE and gives you access to a nice swim beach, kids playground equipment, volleyball courts, showers and bathrooms, picnic benches and a nice shelter.

It would remain cloudy until well past 1PM and then things warmed up a little bit.  The cloudy skies kept temperatures pretty good but the water never did warm up to levels I like.  Oh well.

Did a little bit of swimming/wading.  Basically did a lot of reading while catching some sun and while keeping out of the sun under the picnic shelter.

Just before a couple of carloads of kids showed up, I spotted this on the far end of the beach:

I got the tripod out and tried taking pictures using all three zoom levels: optical only, Clearimage zoom (2x) and digital zoom (4x).  So some of the pictures will be fuzzier than others.   I didn't want to get close enough to just use the optical zoom, these birds were wary.

This bird looks like it was mad but it was only yawning:

There were 2-3 of these birds with the black feathers looking like a bad toupee.  Not sure if related to the other birds which I think were seagulls?  

A Heron swooped in while I was shooting and I managed to get closer to it without scaring it.

Of course, once the kids showed up, the first thing they did was to run onto the beach towards the flock of seagulls!  They rose in a big cloud of white wings and dispersed out further on the lake.  Sigh.

I returned to camp, got a late lunch, relaxed some more, ate some more....then returned to the recreation area in time for the sunset.