On my way home from Ft.Fisher Saturday morning, I stopped off at Greenfield Lake in Wilmington N.C. for a quick look around.
It has been a few years since I’ve visited this lovely gem and was curious to see if it was as nice as I’d remembered.

It was great! I saw 17 species of birds and an even an alligator pretending to be a log lol!
The one thing I’d forgotten was how big Greenfield Lake is. My “short visit” turned out to be a 5 1/2 mile jaunt haha! It also started raining about halfway though so the last half of the walk was spent under heavy downpours.
No problem though, it was fun anyway!

One of the best birds encountered was of a familiar backyard favorite, the Blue Jay. This bird has been my photo nemesis for years. They are incredibly intelligent and cunning birds who apparently don’t appreciate having their photos taken by me haha!
But on this day, I finally got my first ever un-obscured shot of one in good light.

Woohoo!! I’ve got a lot of respect for these gorgeous brainy birds. In addition to their well known talents of mimicking vocal abilities, Blue Jays may be the only animal besides primates who actually plan their actions based on how they may feel in the future.
For instance, studies have shown they will plan what kind of food they’ll want for breakfast the next morning, how much and where they will get it.
They’ll gather their food then store away the at just right amount, in the right place for later consumption.
Another example of their superb intelligence was with a captive Blue Jay who actually used paper from the bottom of his cage as a tool to reach food outside of his cage. When other jays saw this, they soon were using the same method.
Pretty neat!

Photos by @sally_siko of @birdwatching_nc
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