Eventually you’ll see some nice images from the Great Blue Heron rookery I visited this morning. Standing in a swamp for 2 hours helps one gain an immense appreciation for bug repellent! However, this post is about the topic “Never Stop Birding!” On the way home from the rookery, I needed to stop for gasoline. My fuel station of choice was the Kwik Trip on Rice Lake Road in Duluth. While pumping gas along with 20 of my closest friends, I heard a killdeer. Who cares that a highway ditch along a busy highway may not be my chosen birding location. Thankfully, I always have my super zoom camera in the car. I parked my car away from the pumps and proceeded to bird Kwik Trip.

This image resulted. The location looks like a meadow in the middle of nowhere, but looks are deceiving. I already gave you the location. Do you always have an ear tuned to bird song, and your brain always registering birds even when you are not birding? I do!

I was actually crawling around on the gas station’s lawn trying to take this photograph. I’m sure other patrons thought I was crazy, and could not figure what I thought was so interesting. My goal was to capture the lupine and the killdeer in the same photo. Crawling was required such that I would not scare the bird.

Killdeer and Lupine … Rice Lake Road in Duluth

Killdeer on Nest (Cloverland, Wisconsin)