You probably would have laughed too.

It was a BEAUTIFUL day here in central NJ, 70 F. & very sunny.

After breakfast (oatmeal & grapes),
I headed out to Office Depot to mail out 3 eBay sales.
(I now have 3 more ready to go out tomorrow).
From there I headed to 2 retention ponds
at a nearby upscale townhome complex.

I saw lots of mallards & Canadian geese, blue jays and a kingfisher.
I did take a couple of photos of the geese & ducks.
But, what I mostly took pictures of, was a great blue heron
who was seeking fish standing in the water
right next to a big turtle sunbathing on a large rock.
I got them both in frame & in focus.
I must have taken 40 shots of them together
with different settings and repeating as the great blue posed differently.

From there I went to Carnegie Lake in Princeton.
I photographed an osprey soaring overhead, some chickadees,
a mourning dove, more turtles,
and a great blue heron chasing a great egret.
They reminded me of 2 old WW1 fighter planes
with the egret in front trying to evade the closing heron.

Just before dusk I saw an adult red fox in the distance
and also a merlin perched in a tree.
Both were between me and the sun and quite far away.
So, I'm sure those photos are not that good.

OK, here's the funny part.
I had to walk through a wooded part
to get on the sunlight side of some geese & turtles
on a log together in the lake
and also a black cormorant with his wings outstretched to dry them.
So, I was TRYING to quietly crunch my way through the woods
(lots of fallen leaves)
and I got mostly in the position I wanted.

I saw a fallen branch (about 10 feet long) at about a 30 degree angle, leaning on a tree.
The branch was about 4 1/2 inches thick.

So I leaned against it and brought the camera up to my eye.
I was mostly in an upright position, but I leaned back
and slowly put my weight against the branch.
As I was just about to snap a picture of the cormorant,
the branch snapped in two.

I plummeted to the ground and landed directly on my butt.
The upper 1/4 of the 10 foot branch broke off
and did a 360 degree spin and right after my butt hit the ground,
the upper part of the branch whacked me in the top of the head.

I was a little dazed, but I could have sworn,
that I heard several mallards laughing.