The Laughing Kingfisher

My husband and I made plans to do our Thanksgiving day feast with family on Friday, which left the actual Thursday of the holiday free. A few years ago, when we did not have family plans, we went to the free turkey dinner at the Knights of Columbus in Bellefonte. So we did that again, and the food was good, and we gave a donation, and we even had a few leftovers to take with us.

After the meal, on our way home, we stopped at Fisherman's Paradise for a little Thanksgiving day hike. We only saw a few people there. The roads there and back, oddly enough, were devoid of people. You could have sworn that it was a scene from After The Apocalypse, with everybody raptured up but us.

We had not visited that section of Spring Creek Canyon in a while, and so we especially enjoyed our lovely walk on the pathway by the creek. We were strolling along, when I heard raucous laughter from a bit further down the stream, and I saw a flash of blue as a kingfisher landed on a branch over the creek.

Of course, I stepped close to the nearest tree and leaned on it to do some awesome Canon PowerShot super-zooming. I took about a half-dozen photos of the laughing kingfisher. The pretty little blue bird with a wild hair-do seemed to be especially gleeful. "It is a GOOD day for kingfishers," I said. And indeed it was.

The soundtrack song is this favorite from the Hooters: Heaven Laughs.

And heaven laughs when we say good-bye
It ain't so far to the other side
Someday soon we will meet again
Say it over and over and over 'til then