Birds and the baby calf

Hello dear friends, I keep meaning to blog more regularly and visit your blogs more, but Internet has not played ball these past weeks. At last, though, this weekend, I have strong signal and am making hay while the fiber buzzes!

Every day (now twice a day) Skabby and I walk to a dam where he dives in, swims, clambers out and we walk home again. Of course, on the way there, Skabby runs ahead, sniffs all the interesting smells, and I take photos. Every time we approach the dam, our noisy approach causes the resident Grey Heron to fly up and away. Yesterday, I kept Skabby on leash until we got near the dam. But oh dear: no heron today. I let him off and he galloped across the bank. As the dog tumbled into the water on the far side, the heron took off just below where I was standing. 

 Skabby plunged into the dam...

...and the resident Grey Heron took off into the blue! 

Skabby climbed out on the bank, shook himself and we turned to come home. A waterbird hovered over the dam, so I stopped to photograph it. It landed in the water and I managed a few photos of the Blackheaded Grebe. 

 A Black-headed Grebe in the water 

On the way home, I stopped to photograph a Sparrow which was eating lunch on the barbed wire. But I kept getting an out of focus picture. I turned to the paddock above and snapped the African Sacred Ibis instead 

 African Sacred Ibis

Last week I posted about the smallest calf born on the farm since I arrived more than two years ago. It's been moved to the nursery which I also posted about. I stopped to photograph it - almost concealed in the long grass next to its shelter. 

 The littlest calf is doing well; here he's resting in the sun

I zoomed out to show the shelters in which the calves are protected against the weatheR

I'm linking to Saturday Critters with Eileen here

I trust you're all keeping safe and well.