Today, I was a little homesick, and I didn’t get up in time for my morning walk… so I decided that I would spend some time in Forest Park as the weather was just lovely. I packed a couple of sandwiches and some tomato juice, and after tramping around…

for one and a half hours, found a lovely spot on the Des Peres creek: I spread out the food and the newspapers that I had bought (Sunday newspapers are SO bulky here!) And chomped my way through the food, the news, and my homesickness. I am in a beautiful city, where I can walk to a beautiful park and attend the theatre and go to the museums just by walking for half an hour, I am with a beloved daughter and son in law and the most wonderful thing that's happened to me...the GD...so why should I feel homesick! I started cheering up a bit. So I completed the process by observing the several people who came to the spot...several elderly people who were on their walk, LOTS of cyclists, and people who came to take photographs in the lovely setting. One such was this pretty girl who had a ballerina costume on; she came to cool her heels in the stream, and her proud parents clicked away (yes, the dad had a Canon!!) I had also decided to do some birding, and was feeling that all I could see were the usual KILLDEER and EASTERN KINGBIRD and starlings and robins...but Nature decided to cheer me up on that one, too. I looked up at the tree where I was sitting, and I was lucky to find TWO kinds of woodpeckers at the same time! Here's the NORTHERN FLICKER.. hard at work pecking at the tree-trunk for food: Right next to it was this RED-HEADED WOODPECKER! It was high up in the tree, almost directly overhead, so it's only partially visible. I watched them for a while, and then realized I had a 45 minute walk to go back home, so I gathered up my things and just stepped to walk on the rocks spanning the stream, when... That's an a male AMERICAN GOLDFINCH ....the very first time I've seen one...what a beauty! Here's the sequence of what it did... looked around... then bathed... in this photo, he looks as if he made a very bad landing, missing the rock....but he was only splashing around! He looked mighty wet and had the spiky Apache look... Here's the sequence that I managed to get on video...