The young ones....

Well, I guess between tennis matches, I can at least look out of the window and see how the home birds are doing!This was a surprise! A young Towhee. I knew the minute it raised that black and white tail what it was. The tail must be the first part to look like the adult bird :-)
I only got a couple of shots of it, but am glad to see that the Towhee's had a successful nest. It chased all the little House Sparrows away......I think I like Towhees! The House Sparrow "brat pack" get more than their share of the seeds.

The young Titmice are busy learning to visit all the feeders and peck seeds between their toes.

This one reminded me....very nicely....that it was time to add seeds to the hanging feeders.

The Chickadee and Titmouse were both having a good time picking out seeds. Not much crest on that Titmouse yet or side color.

A young cardinal on the rail. This one was still "fluttering" and hoping daddy would provide some food.

Looks a bit "pouty".

This one looks older, starting to get some color.

Got to get this posted before Federer's match starts!

Goose Pond...the bigger birds

We were fortunate to see a lot of egrets and heron at Goose Pond, but they were too far for me to get really good shots and I can only crop them so much. I shot these from two different spots as you can see by the light on the photos. We could really see a lot of birds from this spot, but there was no where to get closer to them. The one on the left that is bent seems to have a fish in its bill.
More fishing.....the bent one has something in its bill and the one behind it has a large bulge in the throat.

This was the closest I got to any of them......still not a very well-focused shot.

I was surprised how close this one let me get as I was creeping past towards a large bunch of them. However, there was all that tall grass between us!

The best air shot I got.

A couple herons by themselves.

One heron, three egrets. I think the egrets are the Great Egrets. In the flying and stalking shots, I see black feet.

Great Blue Heron ready to take off.

In the air.

I like the farm in the background. If you look closely here, there is a Heron way back in the grass in the middle and then an Egret closer and some ducks....we never did identify them..... across the opening.

Very distant, but I liked this shot anyway. The Egret looks like it is conversing with the ducks.

Egret...ducks....stilt on the right.

Mike spotted this lovely skink (5 Lined Skink, I believe) on a bridge we were walking past.

Monday the US Open Tennis matches start and I may not be out taking photos much. I'm guessing the next two weeks my posting will be hit and miss!

Goose Pond.....Linton, Indiana

We drove up to Linton, IN on Wednesday and searched for Goose Pond.....one of the Fish and Wildlife Areas for the state. I have never been there before. I think it was Lindy who gave me a map of the place when we met last December down here. I've been carrying the map ever since hoping to go check it out! It was easy to find since Indiana state road 59 runs right across the middle of it! There were a few small gravel pull off areas so we pulled over to see what was there.View of the pond on the south side of the road.
And I think this is the north side of the road. We didn't see much at first....

....but there were some small sandbars and a group of Killdeer and Sandpipers were hanging out. These photos are an assortment of what I was able to get without scaring them away. I'm guessing that the sandpipers are Lesser Yellowlegs, because they look the same size as the Killdeer. However, we saw some larger shore birds further away that might have been some Greater Yellowlegs, too.....I don't know for sure on any of this.

It was fun to just watch them.

All Killdeer in this shot....there were maybe a dozen or more....some laying in the sand.

One of the Sandpipers.....closest shot I got.

Another

Don't you wish sometimes you could wave a magic wand and make grass move out of the way???

The sandpipers would start "running" along together.

A couple with the wings outspread letting me see their tails.

In another area where I was trying to photograph some heron and egrets (another post) we saw these black and white shore birds.....Black-Necked Stilts! A life bird for me.

I couldn't get as close to them as the others. I wish I could go back there every day for awhile....so much to see!

Very skinny little birds...."dainty" might be a better choice of words.

I think this is a group of them in the distance......they look larger, but don't know what else would be that color.

I get frustrated when I find a great place like this and don't live close enough to go back every day....sigh. This is about an hour and a half to 2 hour drive from where we live. I hope to go back as the migration of the water birds through this area increases.

Butterflies in the woods.....

When I went to Howell Wetlands on Sunday afternoon, I was hoping to find some interesting birds. Instead I found this one tree in the woods that was being ravished by several butterflies! Two of them were not ones that I had seen this year.The top butterfly is an Eastern Comma and the bottom one is a Tawny Emperor.
I have never seen this little Tawny Emperor, so I wanted to get a good shot. I wish I had seen it with its wings open for more than a brief second or two.

The Eastern Comma is a lot like the Question Mark....without the dot :-)

There was a Question Mark on the tree also, and it was hanging out with these two Hackberry Emperors. The Emperor butterflies like tree sap and rotting fruit....rarely visiting flowers according the butterfly guide. The favorite tree of all of these butterflies and the American Snout is the Hackberry tree. This particular tree is one of several that a beaver (?) has gnawed the bark off of the bottom part.

The two little Hackberrys were really trying to get their noses into that crack in the bark!

The Question Mark just shoved right in there with them.

The Question Mark on its side in another crack.

There were several Buckeyes along the edge of the woods in the leaves and flowers. I have trouble resisting taking photos of them. This one has a tear in the hindwing.

Different light sure brings out the color more!

The Comma was chasing the Tawny Emperor all over the tree as show here and in the video below, but the Tawny always ended up making the Comma go away. ( I never can tell if the video loaded right. This one looks strange at the moment...hope it plays)

Pink and Purple.....

(NOTE: I didn't intend to post two posts in the same day. This post was suppose to be for Thursday and I set the date wrong. So I'm not posting anything new until tomorrow!)

We have some new butterflies in today's offerings.....ones who like the purple and pink flowers :-)Silver-Spotted Skipper (we like to call it the "white elephant skipper" due to the shape of its mark)
Again on these delicate pink flowers. I like this shot with a bit more green to break up the color!

One of the best Cabbage White photos I've ever gotten. I have this on my desktop at the moment.


"Cleared for take-off!"
Love those little Skippers in the "jet fighter position".

A light colored Skipper

A beautiful Black Swallowtail on the zinnia

Ah....open wide!

Skipper and Grey Hairstreak. I chased that Hairstreak all over the place trying to get good photos because it is a new butterfly for me this year. I actually got it to open up and took two photos....both out of focus :-(

Two of the tawny colored Skippers.

"Butter Gone"

My salute to all the missed butterfly photos where they take off just about the time you click :-)

I don't know what these flowers are, but they sure made a pretty backdrop for the Black Swallowtail!

My little Grey Hairstreak and Skipper again.

Sulphur looking very pale.

This is the last of my butterflies from Hartman Arboretum, but tomorrow I have some butterflies that like trees rather than flowers and two of them are new to me!