A Comet and a fish in the sky

We've waited for good conditions to see comet Neowise, and luckily we had a clear, dark sky the other night. We couldn't see it in plain sight, but it showed up in long exposure photos. It's pretty cool that we can just step outside our side door and witness celestial phenomena. I should be better at knowing all the constellations, though, given how much time I look up at all the stars.

While we were outside this afternoon, a woman who lives across the street told us that there was an osprey eating a fish in the tree right by our house. Not something you hear neighbors say, right? But sure enough there was! We watched the bird snacking on the fish and every so often a less tasty fish bit fell about 75 feet onto the ground right by our front door (warning--photos of fish bits at the bottom of this journal entry!). Our neighbor said she's witnessed this scene at least three times recently, so if we see more fish bits on the ground we'll know why. (Much better than seeing discarded pizza slices and chicken bones in front of our old house in Adams Morgan.) Our neighbor seems to be a nature lover, but perhaps watcher is a more accurate term? We just overheard her yell out to someone, "I've been watching a frickin' raccoon for 15 minutes!"

Aside from watching things in the sky, we got to enjoy some time in the water this week, too. We went to Owl's Head and spent part of an afternoon floating around on swim tubes in the chilly water. Sam says it's too cold to do lap swimming, which she longs to do, but it's Maine and not the Aegean Sea!