Day 4- CITY PARK

This morning I thoroughly enjoyed starbucks espresso roast, ground for a French press in my little travel mug/French press thingy. YUM!!! What a great way to start the day.

We then went to CITY PARK which was loads of fun! It started off with a little bit of drama in the wild world of the food chain- a hawk? falcon? had just nailed a little dove on the ground at the crest of this hill Sara and I had just walked up to. It was still semi-alive and flapping around… but the predator had retreated to the top of a pine tree nearby, to avoid the dive-bombing denizens of the park- all these different types of birds flying all around the tree top, actually coming at the hawk and trying to keep it away from the injured bird. This was crazy. These birds weren’t even the same kind as the injured one! Little black ones, big black ones- probably 3 or 4 types of birds were looking out for their little friend- here’s the hawk, keeping a watchful eye as he is being harassed-

And finally, he gets ousted from the treetop by a big black crow and goes and gets his breakfast- you can see the bird in his talons trailing behind him:

Wow. What a way to start the morning. We soon came upon this gorgeous Russian olive tree- Che-Chia gives us a sense of scale here-

Sara, Che-Chia, and I were walking around together for a while, gawking at the size and beauty of these trees- here’s Sara under a pine? of some sort, laughing with delight!

And if you look really close, you can see Sara at the base of this enormous cottonwood- Sara, Che-Chia, and I could just touch our hands together around the trunk…

One view of the park-

And Sara having a good ‘ole time with a Scarlet Buckeye! (I told you she was a happy girl, didn’t I?

Here's a few pics of sketches I did today- the first, of a house across the street from the park, and the second, an icon of a poppy pod.

And yet another of Sara, atop a gigantic baseball, doing an interpretive dance of the trees

Some poppies-

And a bee, having a good time in a blue cornflower.

Namrata, Che-Chia, Xun, Tasha, and I were done with our sketching early enough to go have dinner at Chipotle before our evening session- Che-Chia noticed this sticker someone put on the crosswalk sign! And a photo of us (minus me) on the walk home.

That's all for the day! looking forward to the morning- Poudre River.