Here's a trip I took a couple summers ago to the beach of Lake Michigan for this #featheredfriday by 
The seagulls are always fun to watch at the Illinois Beach State Park. When it finally gets hot in Illinois this beach is barely warm enough to swim in and its a great area to do some sunbathing while watching the birds. Its also not too swarmed with people.
This day it was a bit humid and muggy with some thunder storms off in the distance. Fortunately it was still quite sunny on the beach itself.
This little concrete structure serves as a good landing strip for the seagulls. I think they were parking here before the thunderstorms hit.
Here's a low ominous cloud that kind of resembles a manta ray. Just about a minute later we got drenched by heavy duty rain. But it only lasted a couple minutes before letting the sun shine again.
There are also quite a few trails around the beach. Here's a puddle that was created by the thunderstorm and a couple goldfinches were using it as a bird bath.
As I approached them for closer shots they all flew off. This guy stopped a while on a tiny branch. You can still see he is soaked.
He looks quite scrappy with all his feathers soaked.
Here's an unidentified fly catcher. It is quite small, perhaps its a wood pewee. That's what its silhouette kind of resembles. I also remember hearing the pewwweeee sound while walking.
Meanwhile in a boggy ditch near the beach I noticed some movement in the muck. I thought it was a muskrat at first but when it climbed out of the water it had a big beaver tail. Sadly I wasn't quick enough to catch the glimpse I saw of the tail on my camera.
I did catch this combo though. A beaver swimming towards the reflection of a great blue heron.
Later on I saw a heron flying over Lake Michigan. Perhaps this is the one the beaver was swimming towards. Hopefully this summer I can find time to bring the family out here again and see if I can get some more bird shots.
That's all for now, thanks for looking :-)