Alma

Kris and Lora needed someone to spend an afternoon / evening with Anders and I was available.

I picked Anders up after school and we headed to Lora's apartment.  In no time, we were playing games.  Traffic Jam, Who's face is it, and Scrabble.  He showed me his collection of football cards and we talked about his favorite teams the Packers and the Seahawks.  

It was fun to have some one-on-one time with Anders again.  Most of the time when I see him, there are many other cousins around and he's busy playing with the kids.

We had his favorite for supper, pizza and then we played War.  

War!

He is growing up fast, he'll be 9 in July so I think the next time I get some time with him, 

he can start learning Cribbage.

Anders is a big basketball fan and he has 3 hoops hanging off his bunk bed set.

He also showed me the hat that his older cousins had autographed for him.

Gage #22 & Jack #5

I hope those boys know what role models they are for Anders.

***

On the way home on Thursday, I pulled off the main road to look at some waterfowl.  The Buffalo river runs along Hwy 37 and the birds were plentiful.

I found a pond with an active eagle's nest.

I used the old cell phone camera with binoculars technique.

The nest is upper right, and one of the adult eagles is in the upper middle.

Returning to the nest.

I drove up the road a bit and was surprised to see a Sandhill Crane crossing the road.

When it saw me it backtracked to the marshy area by the road.

They are quite camouflaged this time of year.

Without those red caps, it would be pretty hard to spot these guys.

 I watched these birds for awhile.

Sandhill crane in Wisconsin

 After some dancing around, one of the cranes flew off.

These birds can really make some noise, I was there just in time to hear them vocalizing.

I was running out of time, so I had to move on, but I'll be going back to this area as I saw 3 active eagle's nest close by and there should be quite a few juveniles to see.