Hidden Homes Trail

We went to the hidden homes trail by the San Joaquin River Parkway.  There are large models of animal homes children can play in.  We pretended to be owls in a tree...

 Salmon laying eggs...

 Eagles in a large (8-10 ft in reality) nest...

 Cadis Flys (not shown) and mice.  Eli loved the mouse tunnel.  He kept running around and around and around through it.

The path goes around a pond where we saw birds and even turtles.

 Inside there are quilts made into actual size nests.  They were beautiful, and they encouraged children to sit on them and see how big the nests were.  This is a bald eagle nest with Alianna holding up the eggs.

 The small nest is for quail.  It was interesting to see how many more eggs there were on a quail nest, and how there are not that much smaller than the eagle eggs.

 Alianna is being an egret (I think).

 Alianna is fascinated with owls right now.  She loves that they come out at night when she is sleeping. She has owl pajamas and loves to wear them because night time is time for the owls.  Recently we read a book about bats going to the beach at night when everyone is sleeping (Bats at the Beach by Brian Lies).  It is a really cute, beautifully illustrated book we borrowed from the library.  Now Alianna likes bats too.  For a few days we were pretending to be bats flying to the beach.  She has a great memory and led us in acting out the whole book.