The Last Days of July

It wouldn't be summer without baseball.

Here's Alexandra mugging for the camera along with Muddonna, the St. Paul Saints' mascot. Ellie, at right, is a bit more demure, but enjoyed the celebrity encounter nonetheless. The Saints prevailed over the Sioux Falls Canaries, 7-0, highlighted by an 8th inning grand slam.
The following day, we explored the Wilkie Unit of the MN Valley Reserve. Tracking along the river, we snacked on wild grapes and saw several impossibly bright (and fat!) goldfinches and even a lovely male indigo bunting, who graced us with a treetop concert.
By now, the land is lush and overgrown from the long, mild days. August heat will brown then September turn all to red, orange and gold-- but for now, green is everywhere.
The little dots against the sky in the photo above (click to enlarge) are swallows sweeping out from under the bridge to catch insects above the marsh and bring them back to their young, who wait in mud nests affixed to the substructure.

In addition to the Minnesota River, there are three lakes (Blue, Fisher and Rice). This area is a major rookery for Great Blue Heron.
We also stumbled across a dozen or so garter snakes sunning themselves beside the path, another sure sign of summer.

Birds of Amsterdam

One of the pleasant surprises of Amsterdam is the abundance of bird life in such a dense urban area with relatively little green space. The gray heron does quite well here, as do magpies, coots, swifts, swamp hens, terns, wood pigeons and a variety of ducks.

Other sightings included the winter wren, great tit, and we even saw a great crested grebe during our boat tour of the canals.
And here are a couple of white storks nesting in the Vogelpark, one of only a dozen or so pairs in the Netherlands.

Amsterdam

It was a bit of an impulse that took us to Amsterdam for the week, a city that neither of us had visited before but had always wanted to. We stayed at the Pulitzer Hotel overlooking the prinzengraacht, or "prince's canal", shown below with an array of houseboats in the foreground and the tower of the Westkerk behind.

Amsterdam, most of it at or below sea level, is a city of canals, the banks of which are cluttered with elegant row houses, many of them dating from the 17th Century.
Although the city is best known for its Red Light District, Rembrandt, Van Gogh and Anne Frank, we really enjoyed the Vogelpark, the Hortus (botanical gardens) and the Artis (Zoo).

You are as likely to see modern wind turbines as you are the classic windmills when traveling in the Netherlands these days, as Holland obtains more of its energy needs from non-petroleum sources than any other industrial nation.
In addition to Amsterdam, we took a day trip to the Hague, which has an interesting mix of old and new architecture.

4th of July on the River

Minneapolis has preserved the banks of the Mississippi as public spaces, and this surprisingly lush strip of land and river is a favorite walk of ours year-round. 

Remarkably, one of the first things we saw today on our walk was a bald eagle flying northward above the river. A swallow darted out to harass it as it approached the Plymouth bridge, and it swooped out of sight. Heading south, we soon reached the iconic Grain Belt Beer sign and Hennepin Bridge.

Farther along, crowds gathered at Mill Ruins Park to await the fireworks display. As it was not dark enough for the show until 10:00, we watched the fireworks of the northern suburbs from our balcony, enjoying the balmy evening air before retiring to bed.