Great Falls National Park

For a variety of reasons, I have not been able to get out and walk as much as I prefer.  But today was just so nice out with temperatures in the low 50s and blue sky for most of the morning.

So off I went to Great Falls National Park.  Their website is: 
http://www.nps.gov/grfa/index.htm and I learned something.  I have always inserted the word "National" into the name of parks, as I did in the title of this blog post.  But this is just Great Falls Park.  So how about others?  I used that same website to quickly look up the pages for a few other famous parks.  Yellowstone National Park.  Death Valley National Park.  Yosemite National Park.  While I didn't search too heavily, only Great Falls seems to be missing the word "National."  Go figure

The Great Falls

So, the obvious thing to do is to have a look at the falls from the three observation decks.  The water was up a bit with the snow melt, and infeeders near the left bank were muddying things up a bit while the water in the center channel was running pretty clear.

And speaking of infeeders...

small snow melt stream.

So I started my walk, and it got a lot quieter away from the falls.  But still there was this little babbling brook of snow melt gurgling away.  But after that it was mostly just the crunching of snow underfoot.  And a hint:  It is far easier to see birds and wildlife if you don't have to watch where you are walking, so I wear 18 inch high waterproof muck boots and just walk though the snow and puddles without have to dance around.

And then I spotted a lovely...

American Robin!

And it was just totally quiet while I stood still to photograph the bird, so I decided to put on some music.  The bird looked right at me and...

It started to DANCE!!!

I couldn't believe it, but you have to know the song I was playing...

Okay, so I'm making all this up, but it is what I was thinking.  And so songs kept running through my head as I encountered various things along the way like...

A pileated woodpecker while Quiet Riot's "Bang your head" was on the brain.

I'm not going to put all the videos in this post, but links if you are curious. 
Bang Your Head

So next came a...

Turkey Vulture soaring by as "Sailing" by Christofer Cross was on my mental soundtrack.

Sailing

And right after I took this picture, I saw another large bird coming above the treetops, and got this shot of a raven also sailing by.

Okay, so I had been standing there long enough that the wildlife activity was picking back up, and right down the tree in front of me comes...

A short-tailed gray squirrel. And okay, after "sailing" along with the graceful birds, the only song that came to mind when I saw this half-tail squirrel was The Mississippi Squirrel Revival by Ray Stevens. If you've never seen the video, it's typical of his stuff.

The Mississippi Squirrel Revival

So what more could happen on one short walk?  Well I ended up hiking upstream after going downstream.  Made sense to me, and upstream is where there are usually...

Some ducks! In this case there were 30 or so male ring-necked ducks on the river. And there is no way to avoid this soundtrack The Duck Song by Bryant Oden

The Duck Song  And if that isn't enough Duck Song, there are at least two sequels.


And I heard a bird on the ground, slowly turned and spotted this...

beautiful winter wren, posing instead of flitting around like the little maniacs they are. And I have no idea exactly why I matched this song with this bird, but it was "Walk Like an Egyptian" by the Bangles.

Walk Like an Egyptian  And yes, this is the best video version.

And that was the last thing of interest I saw.  I walked back to my car along the road just to do something different and didn't see much. 

Hope you enjoyed my walk as much as I did.