Lifer 208 with photo!

Okay, I didn't say it was a good picture. But it's a picture! Of a Stellar's Jay! Note the crest!

This guy was perched in a tree above a very noisy crowd of people at a picnic spot in the middle of the Armstrong Woods near Guerneville. They even had a PARROT with them. I didn't get a photo of that. I was too disgusted... and confused! Why would a group of people (a) picnic in such a majestic woodland as this? and (b) bring a parrot to a picnic in the woods? He even had his own little perch, not even in a cage! (Now I wish I'd taken a picture.)

Anyway, that's lifer #208, and he was beautiful. The pic really doesn't do him a bit of justice.

I also saw these two Ravens (?) near the entrance of the woods. They were making the craziest sounds--like a snorting, pig-like sound.

As you can see, we went to the Armstrong Woods State Park today, and we were awed into absolute silence. Words just can't describe what I felt in there; Matty and I just had to stop and look at each other sometimes, and we were both choking up about every five minutes, moved to tears by the trees. I'll put the photos of the trees into a separate post, one with no words, because that's what they deserve. Please check the post below this one for those photos.

Did you know that there are redwoods in only three places in the entire world? The Coastal Redwood and the Giant Sequoia both grow in California. My family went to the Sequoia National Forest when I was in high school, so I saw those trees--and they really were huge. Coastal redwoods are the tallest trees in the world, and Giant Sequoias are the largest (shorter but fatter). Dawn Redwoods only grow in China.That's two of the three spots for redwoods right here, 45 minutes away from us. The only ones in the entire world--these trees that were saplings a thousand years before the common era.

And we saw them today.