And the fight is on!

We spent the yesterday day with Sarah and Lorelei, and got to see Jeremy when he came home from work. This is Lorelei and I, taken late with a cell phone....she loves sleeping on me like this. We almost took a nap together earlier in the day... I was so worn out when we came home that I barely got on the computer. And I just couldn't even make a decision about what to post on here, so didn't do anything.

Please enlarge these for better viewing!

Today we did a little bit of yard work, and had leftover for our evening meal. I got to checking prices of water softeners and dishwashers on here....while trying to keep an eye on the sun. When I thought it late enough, we headed out to the strip pits. On the way we saw deer and turkey, no place to pull over to take any photos. But we no more than got started at the strip pits when I spotted these two ring-necked pheasants.
These are for sure not the most in-focus shots, yet they are better than I hoped for. I was sooo excited at getting to witness this. It is a miracle I got anything at all.
I have never witnessed a fight before.....
and so consider myself blessed to finally see it for myself.
These are in the sequence they were shot...I did get a couple more but they are not good, and by then they noticed me. They took off shortly after this shot. We did see one more pheasant before we came home but it was too late, and I couldn't get close enough anyway.

Other than these, we saw several beaver, all in the water....had one hit the water with his tail when he seen me. At the other strip pit we used to fish at, I seen them regularly, but that has probably been at least 10 years ago.

And we saw lots and lots of deer there! None are very good shots but will try to post one or two in the coming days. Only seen one owl and one Northern Harrier, both very late and both were flying. So no shots at all of them.