Friday and Saturday in South Toledo Bend

It was certainly a quiet place until Saturday afternoon when more folks started arriving.  It does seem that some folks need to make more noise when they are outside to ensure that the rest of the world knows they are there.  It is the same for folks with big trucks without mufflers or motorcycles with loud exhaust systems added for effect.  Toledo Bend Reservoir is famous for bass fishing, and so fishermen in droves are here on the weekend with their big bass boats.  At the crack of dawn (around 6am) they're off, racing to their favorite fishing holes in their 250hp-powered boats.  We've noted that they don't seem mindful if their wakes around our inflatable kayak, either.

Enough venting!   We promise not to discuss politics either.

This is a great park for birding.  We have seen eagles, herons, egrets, osprey, coots, pelicans, Carolina chickadees, Carolina wrens, titmouse, red winged blackbirds, sparrows, red breasted woodpeckers, starlings, crows, a brown thrasher, cardinals, and more that we hear but cannot ID.  We spent well over an hour on Thursday and again on Friday am photographing birds as they came to feed on crumbs and nuts that we put out.

Here's one of our favorites, the titmouse.

This bluejay was trying to see how many peanuts he could get into his bill.

We were surprised that the woodpecker would come and get bread crumbs off the ground.  He even stood up to a bluejay; backed him down in a way.

This resting heron was very territorial, a second heron flew into the beach area at the campground and immediately he dropped out of the tree and drove off the intruder. 

Early in the morning Marty went out onto the beach to shoot an egret, a heron landed in a nearby tree and then another one came in and there was this aerial skirmish.  It was accompanied by lots of noise.

Paddling in the kayak affords us many opportunities to see wildlife.  This egret must have felt we were chasing him because we were always coming upon him.  He made the error of always going away to the front of us vs flying behind us!

We always enjoy seeing the coots run across the water.  

And here are the last of bird shots from this campground.  Who knows what we will see in the upcoming ones.

Carolina Chickadee

Brown Thrasher

Carolina Wren

All these little birds came to feed on the seeds and nuts we put out on our fire pit.  For certain, they made this a most enjoyable place to be.

Tomorrow, Sunday, we move to Chicot State Park, southeast from where we are now.  We're looking forward to one more day of good weather before a couple of days of promised thunderstorms.  Wifi here is spotty, so we'll take advantage of a Starbucks in Alexandria on our way to Chicot to load reading material onto our iPads.