Nature Museum

Where does the inspiration that fuels your writing come from?
Movies? Other books? Dreams? Conversations?

Mine can come from all of those, inspiration seems to hit when you least expect it. Today I went somewhere I never thought to go for inspiration - a nature museum.
 In my family it used to be tradition on birthdays to go to the museums here in Ottawa (Science and Tecnology Museum, Nature Museum or the Aviation Museum) Of all of those my favourite was the Nature Museum or "The Castle Museum" as we liked to call it.

Can you guess why?

I, however, had not been there in years. So, I made a point to visit it since I now live in Ottawa. Today was National Museum day so my husband and I got to visit for free!

To put all your fears at rest, that was not a REAL dinosaur, despite what you may think...

At one point I was looking intently into a display case and saw some vesuvianite (the green crystal). I though my husband was standing behind me so I cried out excitedly: "I have some of that at home!" as I turned towards him. Then I realized that it was not my husband behind me as I had thought. It was a woman who ran off rather quickly O_O

They had some of my favourite kinds of birds; loons, falcons and hawks!
One of my characters is named Falcon :)

I also saw a kestrel for the first time and was imediately reminded of Lloyd Alexander's book: "The Kestrel."
He was a favorite author of mine when I was younger.
 

Have you ever visted somewhere and unexpectedly found inspiration? If so, where?