Stasia, Henne

The day after the feast, we needed to go for a hike, and since my granddaughter was with us and my wife wanted to test her semi-healed broken hip on an actual trail, we decided to head over to the local Henne preserve to walk through the woods to the boardwalk over a stretch of wetlands. This area is always a great spot for birds, and my wife was hoping that the Red-headed Woodpeckers I'd seen and photographed the previous week were still hanging around. The Bald Eagle wasn't soaring, but there were definitely Bluebirds and Swamp Sparrows in the shrubbery, and Stasia succeeded in focusing the binoculars, a perfect size for small hands, on a Catbird, who delighted my cat-loving grandkid with its meow call. Happily, we also got a quick glimpse of a Red-headed, a rare bird around here, but a commoner where my wife grew up in western Indiana. It was an avian taste of home.