Even though the weather wasn’t going to cooperate, we took a walk on the Sidewalk Trail on the Misery Bay side. We brought an umbrella if it got bad. Just as we entered the trail, we spotted several Palm Warblers. That was a first for me. They are so pretty. We spotted Mallard ducks and many sparrows (I still have a hard time id the different sparrows.) A Downey Woodpecker was working on some dead wood in the marsh. We spotted a Green Heron near the bridge. As we were driving back out of the park I saw people with spotting scopes in the same place I saw them on Thursday. This needed investigating. It had to be good if people were willing to be out in the rain to look at something. We drove by again and I spotted what they were looking at. A Great Horned Owl with 2 baby owlets! We made the circle again and parked back a bit. I set up my scope off to the side as to not disturb them (the people not the owls as they were plenty far enough away.) This is the first time I’ve ever seen an owl in person. And I got a bonus with the babies. I didn’t bring my camera attachment for the scope so I just held my camera up to it and started filming. The wind was blowing pretty hard so there is movement between me and my camera and the scope but you can still see how cute the babies are. There were two sitting up there but when I took the video you can only see one of the babies.

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When we got to 12th Street the sky got suddenly dark, just like someone shut off the light. It started pouring like crazy. We were sure lucky we weren’t still out on the path. The umbrella wouldn’t have saved us a bit. Here is a little clip of how hard it came down (and it came down for quite a long time) and some unexpected things coming at us from an old building on 12th Street.

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Then, when we got home we found some more unexpected stuff. The neighbor’s umbrella was stuck in our tree, wedged between the tree and the fence. I’m glad I wasn’t there to panic when I saw it flying through the air. The birds liked it. They got protection from the wind coming from that side while they ate away.