Small risk taken, wonderful reward - beautiful hour on the water

Last week, I started rallying the folks at work to bring in their boats and do a quick trip on the Allegheny River near the office one night this week. That day turned out to be today. It was a great site to see a three kayaks and a canoe (mine) on vehicles in the company parking lot. One other set of friends with their canoe I don't work with intended to come as well. However, life decided to not cooperate with everyone's schedule. One guy was unable to go for personal reasons, another couldn't because he's a slave to the Company and worked late. The couple decided to call it off because the weather was pretty terrible all afternoon, and it was still raining steadily at 5pm when I talked to them.


Nonetheless, my coworker, Bruce, and I figured we had the boats on our cars already and that it wouldn't hurt to check out the water and maybe get out for a little bit. If it got bad, we'd not be far from the cars.


We put in the Allegheny at a nice launch in Lawrenceville, under the 40th Street bridge. It was raining, but not very hard. This was the small risk I spoke of in the title to this post. Within the first 15 minutes, though, it stopped raining and got progressively sunnier.


What started out as a marginal day for paddling became a beautiful experience out on the water. This was our wonderful reward for avoiding the gumption trap and getting on the river. The river's surface was smooth and calm. The lighting was great. There was a slight breeze. Pretty much perfect weather for paddling.


We came across a great blue heron in a tree near a factory.


I ended up disturbing it, and it flew upstream, allowing for more photographs in different locations.


We turned around near the 62nd St bridge.


Looking at downtown Pittsburgh in the distance. It's only four river miles to the buildings from where this picture was taken. This is one of my very favorite things about Pittsburgh.

Hawk too

On my run this evening I saw this hawk on the pole below a bridge outside of Schenley Park. It was a good day for wild birds in the city. My previous post was about turkeys I saw on my way to work in the AM. This bird was beautiful and my crappy cell phone camera did a poor job of capturing any of its splendor.

Turkeys in Pittsburgh

I ran across turkeys again on my way to work today. My office is just past the bridge in the lower picture and about a mile to a mile and half from the downtown buildings off in the background. I think they're usually more commonly seen in the spring and autumn. This is the same meadowy area (to the right) that sees many families of killdeer spawn every year. It's fun to watch the young run around. It's also fascinating, but sort of disturbing, to see the adults do the injured bird gig to try to draw you away from the nest.

Mourning dove turns into morning doves

The mourning dove's nest is getting a bit crowded. The picture above was taken today by Bethany. The one below was from the morning of 27 April, four days ago. They seem much bigger in such a short time. An earlier post was this one: Mourning dove family.

birds

Frick Park is alive with springtime bird activity.

Mourning dove family

Spring is really here. The mourning doves have returned to the nest in our back porch awning. If you look at the strata in the nest, this is at least the fourth year they've been using this particular nest. The woman dove has laid her eggs and won't leave the nest, even with Guthrie running back and forth under her as he goes outside a million times a day. The picture doesn't do it justice, but she has a beautiful ring of teal around her eye. I hope we don't stress her out too badly.

You can see our neighbor's magnolia tree blooming in the background too!