I spent my afternoon blissfully wandering around Riverbend in Uxbridge again.  When I got back to the car I checked my voice mail and found a message from my grandmother, who said there had been bombings in Boston and wanted to make sure I was okay (I work there a couple of days a week).  It was all news to me, but a quick check of Twitter and Facebook told me it was true.

While today’s tragedy is not of the magnitude of 9/11 it still feels just as surreal and terrible and wrong.  In some respects it seems inappropriate for me to post my jolly little bird pictures tonight, and yet at the same time I feel like this is exactly the time when we have to appreciate the little stuff.  Things can change in an instant.

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I’ve been trying to get a picture of a bluejay for weeks now.  This is the best I could muster – but look at those tail feathers!

There’s a pair of cardinals nesting here, and I’ve seen them several times in my past few visits.  They’ve been pretty camera shy too – this is the best I could get today of what I think is the female, since the body is brown.  Look at that head though!

I sat by the riverbank for quite some time hoping for better shots, but they were not to be.  Instead I wandered down the path and suddenly something caught my eye down over the river bank:

First blue heron of the season, woohooo!

But THEN….on the walk back I saw several people clustered on the path watching something on the opposite side of the canal bank.  I figured it was a cluster of turtles, but it turned out to be this:

Sadly, tonight, someone is missing a chicken.