Visit to the Great Blues

We took a second bike ride on Saturday afternoon to see what the Great Blue Herons were up to since our last visit. It appears they've been on a nonstop nest building tear. This guy was taking a brief break before heading out for more branch bits to fortify his/her nest.




I spent a lot of time writing this bit, so I just can't bear to delete it. However, I was informed by the guy that checks the 311 emails at 10:45 in the evening that this lovely brick building I mistook for a water treatment plant is actually a building used for training seminars held by the city and as a kennel for K9 officers (i.e. police dogs). I also learned that the sand beds that used to make our water not taste nasty have been replaced by some high tech tube system that doesn't appear to work at all for removing flavors from our water. Thank god we spent millions of dollars on a state of the art facility. . .[I don't know how I managed to not notice the last time we were here how nice the water treatment plant looks from this side of the river. Yes Minneapolitans, that is where your river water comes from, a lovely brick structure in North East. Actually the water treatment methods they use are pretty cool-- sedimentation basins and mixed media filters (to get most of the ucky tastes/smells out) with 25 billion gallons of water pulled out of the Mississippi and distributed to Minneapolis and surrounding suburbs a year. My husband toured this facility (I think it was this one)in college and I think it was the coolest field trip I got to experience second hand my entire student career.]





My little Canon SD1100 felt completely inadequate next to the lens this photographer had. She had to rest it on the ground after each round of quick fire shots it was so heavy.