Yellow birds

We were eating our breakfast this morning when we looked out of the window at four bright yellow birds in a tree about ten feet from the Airstream. I managed to get a picture of two of the birds out of the little window that doesn't have a screen. 

The Blackhills Overlook Trail begins from our campground and travels in a big sweeping circle across the northern and western areas of Chadron State Park and then connects with Norwesca Trail that covers the south and the eastern parts. At first the trail is a five-foot mowed path.

It then begins to climb the northern bluffs. We liked this bluff because there is a round, eroded hole at the top left.

The trail climbs through some lower bluffs...

up to the higher elevations.

Eventually we arrived (after climbing 870 feet) at the top of a ridge.

There they are, in the northwest corner of Nebraska, picky-pear!

The trail traveled along the ridge for about 1 mile giving us great views to the south,..

the Park and some eroded valleys.

From the Blackhills Lookout Point you can see the devastation of the 2012 fire and the Blackhills in the distance.  That would be in South Dakota!

Signs of the consequences of a fire.

Meet Linda ("a popular name from the '50s") who staffed the Park office and had a great deal of knowledge about the park. We talked to her about the fire and she told us that a company has a contract to take down the badly charred and dead Ponderosa Pines. The trees are then put through a wood-chipper and carted off to the local college there they are burned in the school's heating system. She also told us that the yellow birds are finches.