A little more Rain and a strange bird

We sat here this morning and watched as it went from overcast to rain.  Then back to sprinkles and almost a clearing.  But then rain again.  I wanted out of here, but not in the car.  Boat or motorscooter, I didn’t care.

Mid morning we were watching the humming bird feeder, and it was being guarded by the resident male, who was sitting up on my ham radio wire antenna.  He would dive after any intruder other than his females.  Hummers are really territorial like that, but sometimes the others will gang up on him, and as one keeps him busy chasing, the others feed away!

But all of a sudden we had a full sized or even larger than full sized bird on the feeder.  He sat on the perch and pecked away at the little nectar holes.  It wasn’t an oriole because they are yellow and black, or orange and black.  This guy looks like some kind of a wood pecker. Perhaps a Ladder back woodpecker.  But they are supposed to be farther out West not here in Missouri.



I looked on the bird web sites, and the nearest I can tell, he is a sap sucker!  I thought sap suckers were make believe!  But there really is such a thing as a yellow bellied sap sucker.  They peck holes in tree bark, and suck out the tree sap. 

I have no idea if this is a sap sucker, so if someone knows more than I please leave a comment for all of us to learn what is on our bird feeder.

Finally I could stand it no longer and I convinced Loyce to go out on the boat.  It seemed almost sunny.  I sprayed on the suntan stuff, and hoped for the best as we left the dock.  We had some towering clouds, but it seemed to be off in the distance.

We boated up the river (Lake Ozark is the Osage River that is dammed up.)  At about the 12 mile marker we have another old lake side restaurant called Ozark Bar B Que!  What else?  We have gone to this place for 30 years, but it is on the other side of the lake from where we live, so it has to be by boat.

By car it was almost 100 miles around, before they built the community bridge over the lake.  The bridge is toll, and takes around $8 each way.  The price changes at different times of the year, but in the summer it is the highest.

Sitting outside, we ordered a big bucket of onion rings and a sandwich for each of us.  I’ll spare you the food pictures, but we like it a lot.  But it is expensive.  We were almost alone on the deck, as most other customers were inside.



As we were eating, the sky to the North began to get seriously dark!  Really dark!!  We finished and paid.  Once we were back out in the boat, we decided to boat away from the storm. 

We went over by the Lodge of the Four Seasons to the East.  The sky got blacker!  So we headed back West to the darkness.  We had to go around the Horseshoe Bend, but we could see the rain pouring around the curve to the North and then back to the East.

We ducked in next to a dock where  friends of ours Jack and Connie have a condo.  We tied up on the end of their condo’s community dock.  It just poured!!! I was on the covered dock, but Loyce stayed on the pontoon under the canvass top.  She was wiping up the water that was coming in under the canvas roof with a sponge.

After a while, we untied and left as it was now raining at a more normal pace.  But of course, as we were moving at 15 mph, the rain hit us in the face.  All we had was the top, without sides or a windshield.  We pressed on.

I made it back to another condo unit that is out on an island in the middle of the lake.  They have dock slips for customers to come look at the open house units.  But as I slowed down to perhaps take shelter under their roof, it wasn’t raining hard enough to come in under the top any more.

We idled on past the island, and most of the way home.  As I was rounding the corner into our cove, it began to seriously come down again.  The roof of our dock was a welcome refuge.  We were both soaked as though we had jumped into the lake.  We often do just that on really hot days, if we are only wearing shorts and a T shirt.  That is exactly what we had on, so oh well,  so what?

At least I didn’t have to sit up in the screen porch all afternoon and wish I had gone boating.  LOL.

Retired Rod