Dry Falls!

We took our annual fishing trip to Dry Falls lake in central/eastern Washington with our friend Matt. This year, his brothers also came and fished. As usual it was amazing over there and the wildlife watching is so much fun. There is so much life around those lakes!

Painted turtles- look at their long claws in the second photo. Crazy, huh? They are great swimmers, but prefer sunning themselves by day on the many rocks around the lake.

Damsel fly

Violet-green swallow

Starling with babies in this fantastic deep tree nest.

As you kick around the lake, the Cliff Swallows occupy some of the mud nests. They are often filled with feathers and later in the year, little babies poke their heads out. We were too low to see inside the nests, but I suspect they are on sitting on eggs.

Giant brown trout!

The last day we went to a spring creek called Rocky Ford. It is teaming with life! There were lots of muskrats, birds, fish and even a bull snake.
You can see these huge fish in the water. But...they are very picky and rarely bite a hook. We finally found a 'fly' they liked and Matt's brother, Greg caught a whopper. Matt also caught one, but it hopped off the line before he netted it.



In the early morning of camping, I got up with my camera and walked around looking at birds and scenery. There were tons of killdeer (birds). Each time I came upon one, it started doing this (see picture) as if wounded. So many of them were doing this, that I was totally perplexed. What was this behavior? After reading in my bird book, the amazing mystery was solved. Killdeer are ground nesters and therefore are often easy targets for predators. To distract a would-be predator, the killdeer will roll around like it's dying or injured to lure the predator away from it's nest. Brilliant, right?

Beautiful Northern Flickers

Barn swallow

Crazy! We saw a pelican! I could not believe this because I've only seen one in Washington in my life. This is a white pelican which is more of a warm water coastal bird. One gal there said that for the last couple of years they have been showing up at this spring creek and no one knows why. I'm guessing it's because the trout are the size of logs and word got out.
Nothing says spring like the screech of a red-wing blackbird. The males are black and a beautiful red with tinges of yellow. The females are a boring brown, but I'm sure they are LOADED with personality :).