Birding Staats Lake

The title of this post should actually be “Fighting the Grey of Winter”, because this is what today's walk was really about.  It’s hard to be motivated when you wake up to another wet cold day of winter. This is where Buster comes in handy in getting us out the door.  After all the morning chores have been done, like coffee, reading the paper, checking e-mail, Facebook, favorite blogs, and having breakfast, Buster begins to whine for a walk.  He doesn’t realize its wet and cold out side and he won't like it.  He only knows the routine and the next most important thing to him is for us to take him on an adventure. He will not let up with the whining and we will have no peace until the walk gets taken care off.  So this morning we piled in the car to drive to some place with concrete sidewalks for a walk that would give us a change of scenery from our own neighborhood.  We considered several possibilities as we drove out of Salemtowne.  We ended up choosing Staats Lake in Keizer because it looked less cloudy to the north.  I had never been to Staats Lake before but it has been on my list for a while as one of those places I wanted to go to check out the birds.  It turned out to be a great choice with a paved sidewalk that circles the lake shoreline, and we got a good list of birds.  Halfway around the lake we also got a good shower, our only option was to just to keep walking.  But my thanks goes to Buster for getting me out the door, I hate moping around the house all day in the grey of winter.