Least Terns

We had the prettiest Least Terns pay us a visit today. They are the smallest of all the American terns and only weigh in at about one ounce! We always have had a few in the Bay but never as many as I saw today. Perhaps they were trying to escape the areas that are oil-soaked because of the spill in the Gulf or maybe they were last year's brood returning to nest here. They usually nest on the sand beaches but since Hurricane Katrina deposited a goodly amount of sand in my front yard (I seem to have acquired my own personal beach), a single pair have nested here. I will check to see if I find a nest and perhaps should fence the area to keep marauding animals and clumsy humans from damaging any that are there. It is amazing to me that something so tiny and seemingly fragile can withstand the constant headlong diving that these terns do when feeding. I loved photographing the tiny terns and this one in particular seemed to enjoy it, too!

It was another typical summer day on the Bayou. Intense heat and then cooling rains, a summer cycle that never bores me. The rains are welcome even though today's caught me unawares and soaked the laundry that I had hanging on the clothesline. Helplessly, I stood staring through the screen door at water pouring down upon my freshly laundered bedsheets. Then something that Dad used to say flitted through my head.. "Don't worry, it will all come out in the wash!" He would say this whenever there was some daunting problem weighing on my mind...and he was always right. It would "all come out in the wash". The clothes were allowed to "drip dry" with the assumption that they just needed the extra rinsing that the rain provided. Most problems have a way of working themselves out and we all seem to worry far to much about things that really do not amount to a hill of beans. I have in the past and will try again to not fret over things of which I have no control. Although, I will try to remember that I have clothes on the line before the next rainstorm!