Catching up.......

I have a bad tendency to flit from one thing to another and take so many pictures that than I get behind in posting stuff I wanted to post! So.......this is officially "catch-up" day! This little frog was sitting beside me by the pond last week while we both watched for dragonflies :-) I believe it is a Northern Leopard Frog, but don't quote me on that.

I call this little finch "skinny legs".......he just seems to have longer than normal legs, or something. He also looks like he is laughing at me, but really he just has a mouthful of seed.

"Do we look alike???

"Have we met before?"

"Maybe if I just ignore him, he'll go away."

I've been trying to find a mimosa tree that had flowers at a level that I could photograph, because I love how they look! This one is obviously too high, but I liked how it looked waving in the wind.

One mimosa shot that wasn't too bad. Pink and fluffy....what more can you ask for in a tree flower??

These barn swallows were over in Illinois at a boat launch place that we stopped at briefly. I think they are so beautiful and the tail is so long. He is posing in a very stately manner.

This is his mate up in her nest above where he is sitting.

Such lovely color and shape!

Purple clover......just thought they were pretty.

Common Whitetail farthest away and Widow Skimmer in front!

Widow Skimmer female.....one of several that were hanging around away from the water's edge in a little patch of sunshine. Resting from egg laying maybe??

Several familes of geese all showed up to eat in this yard.....dozens of them. The adults mostly stood tall watching, while the young ones ate and ate. This one is younger as you can tell by the color.
I guess this video is why they were watching.....this one goose gets very territorial when someone else gets too close! He/she was a very mean old goose!

OK.....maybe I'm sort of caught up with the things I kept forgetting.....at least for the moment.

More squirrels at Olney, Illinois...

It was a beautiful day and driving the hour trip over to Olney was a pleasure with beautiful clouds and golden grasses and Queen Anne's Lace all along the road side, and fields of corn or soybeans everywhere you looked. We stopped in Olney and asked at a convenince store where we were most likely to find a white squirrel and the very helpful young lady told us to try the park out by East Fork Lake. This turned out to be good advice and this is a fairly large lake with a very nice birding area along one side with trails. We want to go back some time in the future. We saw several great blue herons and smaller birds in the distance, but there was quite a bit of boating going on and people fishing.
The minute Mike parked the car, I spotted a white squirrel in the park and jumped out and tried to get some pictures even though it was a ways off. He decided to head up this tree and we never saw him again. I was satisfied to just see one and would have been content with that! We sat and ate a picnic lunch and just watched for awhile in case he came back.

Hanging in the trees of this park are all of these squirrel houses made from old tires! What a great way to recycle tires! I want a couple of these! When we got home I looked on the internet and found this web site. http://www.squirrelhouses.com/buy.html

Think how much nicer this would be than a drafty leafy home???

We headed back to town to try the other park where they ususally hang out, but there was a county fair going on and not much hope for seeing any. Spotted this bird up on the wire.....Eastern Kingbird? Not a bird I really know, so a nice suprise.

Welll.....I got things out of order.....we did hike around a bit on the trails by the lake stalking dragonflies and damselflies and whatever. Mike took this nice fungi picture.

He also took this female dragonfly and I don't now which female it is!

At the town park we saw their regular grey squirrels, which are just as cute as the white ones :-) This is interesting to me, because they are not my usual Fox Squirrels from back home and this is just an hour from where we live. I knew there were grey squirrels around our area, but never see them at our house.

This little guy had found a fallen branch loaded with something good to eat....

.....and decided to ignore us in favor of the goodies.

Just as we were driving through town to leave, I happend to glance over at a very small little park where a man was feeding something.........sure enough, I saw one was a white squirrel! This one was so tame, I could get out of the car and walk all around taking pictures of it and it's friend.

He was tossing them grapes and I believe it is "wrestling" with one here.

.....searching for more

.......here he has a grape and is taking it up the tree to the little sitting post where I took many pictures of him.

I know that a squirrel is a rodent, but never realized how much they look like mice or rats until I saw this white one coming down the tree and don't have the fluffy tail in the picture! We used to have a pet white mouse that looked just like this in miniature! The tail makes all the difference in making you think "cute" instead of "eek....it's a mouse!"

Here he is showing off his tail for me :-)

As we left town we decided to drive all the way around the lake before heading home. There were a lot of big beautiful homes along the lake's shores and also some farms on the other side of the road. We passed this one field full of horses and I thought they were really beautiful with their shaggy manes!

How do they see???

The wire fence and the high grasses caused me some shooting problems.

Isn't he beautiful?

I'll stop here and switch to some other things we saw tomorrow.

Squirrel Sunday.....extra special edition!!!

Mike and I decided to drive to Olney, Illinois.....home of the white squirrels! This is something that I've always wanted to do. I went with only a slight hope or expectation that we might get lucky enough to spot one. We did! This one even posed for us! We saw two and I took 75 pictures.........Do you have any idea how hard it was for me to decide which ones to post?????

White squirrel on alert

(On the way over to Olney we were listening to the Beatle's "White Album"....hmmm...appropriate now that I think about it!)

White squirrel looking at me.

I will post some more tomorrow.....along with the grey squirrels that they come from, which were also very cute :-)........oh, yes......we saw other stuff, too.

Here is the Olney website, if you want to learn more about them and listen to the song written about them.

http://www.ci.olney.il.us/Visitors/WhiteSquirrel.htm

The blues...mostly.....

All of the sudden I have at least 4 Blue Jays hanging around. I am trying to decide if a couple of them are young ones. They certainly aren't small, but I saw at least one of them sit in the tree shaking its wings like the young birds do when they want food. Gawky looking Blue Jay

(I always get hazy looking pictures through this window)

Do I look better this way??

Side view

I have had a surge of feeder activity in general and assume a lot of it is younger birds.

I call these young House Sparrows "The Brat Pack" ....there are several more that aren't in this photo!

I have at least 4-5 Downy woodpeckers hanging around! Early this morning right after I hung the suet back up, there were 2 Downys and 1 White-Breasted Nuthatch there, almost before I got back in the house. The feeder they were on is the furthest from where I take pictures and I didn't get any real good shots of all 3 trying to get to the suet at once.

This little downy spent about 15 minutes just hanging in that same spot while I tried to take pictures of it that didn't have dozens of twigs in the way.

One of my young cardinals.....they look so strange when their beaks aren't red yet!

The "Brat Pack" house sparrows are not intimidated by the Red-Bellied Woodpecker, even though everyone else disappears when he comes. He doesn't like sharing and usually chases the Downy away.

I hadn't seen a Pine Siskin for quite awhile, so was surprised when this one showed up to stick its head in the feeder for some sunflower seeds.

More of my Blue Jays

2 of them in the driveway. One was chasing the other one away.

Skywatch Friday..

The flags flying over Ft. Sumter

Happy 4th of July!

The following 2 pictures of the Blue Angels were unfortunately taken before we had a digital camera.....and it shows!

The following are pictures of the Canadian Snowbirds taken last year at the Freedom Festival air show. What a difference a digital camera makes! My husband took all of these pictures, I'm sure. He has a steadier hand for things like this :-)