Saturday...

My mother's house gets a lot of interesting birds, but it's quite hard to catch them holding still long enough to take a photo. This morning, we had lots of finches, both house and gold

and also bluejays, cardinals, sparrows, something black which I couldn't really see properly, and some mourning doves - and I only watched them for about 15 minutes!

As it was cool this morning and we were all up early due to body clocks not being used to US time yet, we had an early morning walk around Lake Elkhorn in Columbia.   We saw some turtles, though not many (it wasn't sunny yet, though, perhaps they'd be out en masse later on one of the logs, sunning themselves...

Here's a view across Lake Elkhorn.

And here we are on the path along the Lake. 

At one point, we noticed martins flying in and out of one of the shelters along the lake, and looking up, spotted the reason why - right in the apex of the shelter. I don't think they were pleased when I stopped to take photos...

Saw this interesting bug - not sure what it was. 

Another lake view. 

Alex had a go at some of the exercise equipment. 

And on the way home, after stopping at Michael's, the library and the Harris Teeter (grocery shop) we hit the farm stand for sweetcorn, peaches and some yummy cherry tomatoes...

We spent the rest of the day lazing around the house - but we'd done a full day's work by about 12 noon!  Guess that's what you get for being up early...