Skywatch Friday.....

It's SkyWatch Friday time....just one image today from earlier this week.Look up and enjoy the sky today!

For more SkyWatch photos click on the icon on my sidebar. Thanks to the great team who keep this site going strong.
Today we are hanging the quilts for our local quilt show this weekend and my SkyWatch Friday quilt will be in the show. Here is a link to a post I did about making it. I will put a photo of it hanging in the show later after we get the quilts hung.

My SkyWatch Friday quilt in the making....

Wetlands wandering....

We did get to the wetlands today so I will divide the photos up to post for the next few days while I'm busy. This little diving duck was pretty far away, but I think it is a Pied-Billed Grebe.
All by itself.....diving constantly....rides low in the water.

Every time I see a Great Blue Heron now, I wonder if it is one from the Heron rookery.

Photo shy....... didn't stick around too long.

The geese looked so clean today. There are lots of little white feathers all over the water surface, so I would say they are about done molting. All grown up now.

Back on the creek, we saw little tiny frogs. So little!

A few turtles out on the logs.

A small blue butterfly.....can barely see it hiding in the grass.

Lots of the purple asters in the meadow.

A happy bee enjoying one of them.

Left-Overs.....

These photos are left over from last week's visit to the arboretum. I've got a lot of things keeping me busy this week and the weekend will be even worse. Our local quilt show is Saturday and Sunday and the Kuntsfest is also going on in New Harmony those days. Between working at the quilt show and trying to get out to the Kuntsfest, I will probably not even look at the computer starting Friday! Just not enough hours and my knee is bothering me right now for walking anyway. I don't even have captons for these photos, but they don't need any, I guess.

Becky at Woodynook posted one of these caterpillars last week and identified it as a Milkweed Tiger Moth larva. I would not have know that, but agree with her that it looks like a bunch of yarn. Her photo was better than mine...go look :-)

Unless I get out tomorrow or Thursday and take some photos, this might be it for the rest of the week. See you whenever I get caught up again.

Henderson Slough area Part 2....

We traveled on down the road from the swampy area and came to a little rise of land where you could look in one direction...........and see these fields of flowers and the marshy area in the distance where the cypress trees are. (This is where we saw the hornet attack the spider, too)

A friendly grasshopper....

....a different kind.

If you looked the opposite way, there was this little pond with lotus flowers right on the edge of a field!
I just love the flowers and seed pods. I was having a bit of trouble shooting over the tall grasses.

Several Goldfinches were zipping around in the area and liked this tree.

They also liked the puddle at the side of the road....can you see the one getting ready to drink?

A very battered Question Mark butterfly. There were Monarches flitting about, but they would never land anywhere.....sigh.
We had intended to go further up this road, but came to water over the gravel road and we were in my Taurus. We went through one patch of water but the next one looked deeper. We finally gave up and vowed to come back another day.

We headed off to hunt for Jenny Hole....which we never found. We never passed the numbered road it was suppose to be off of. Will have to come back with better maps next time.

However, on the way we spotted a field with a long puddle along one side and this pair of Egrets and a Killdeer were posing. Mike stopped the car some distance away and I got out to see if I could sneak closer.

The Killdeer left first, and the egrets remained a bit nervous.

After one flew away, the other let me sneak along the edge of some trees and get a better look.

Finally he took off, too. I'm not good at flight shots even when I'm expecting them. We will go back to this area before they close the side roads on Nov. 1 for the migratory water birds. Some should arrive before they close the roads. This is the area where I took shots of 1000's of geese last year and I'm looking forward to their return this year.

Henderson Slough Part 1....

Henderson Slough (Kentucky) is the area where I photographed the 1000's of geese last fall. I was trying to find out when they would arrive this year. By coincidence Friday's paper mentioned that there was going to be a Monarch butterfly wing tagging event in that area on Saturday. We figured if we drove over there on Friday, the butterflies would already be there. All of the fields in the area are lined with these yellow flowers, which I assume the butterflies like :-) I did indeed see dozens of Monarchs during the time we were in the area, but they were always fluttering swiftly past my nose in a hurry to get somewhere else! I didn't see any land on the flowers!
Sadly this is my best shot....2 Monarchs "dancing" in the distance.

Another very poor shot....but since it was a new dragonfly for me, I will include it. This is at a great distance and cropped down, but it let me see all the spots on the wings and I think it might be a "12 spotted Skimmer". It has alternating white and black spots on all of its wings.

I had found a map on the internet that showed some areas we could not go to last fall because the roads are closed during the migration season when the fields are flooded and all the water birds pass through. So we went searching for Pond Marsh Creek and Jenny Hole. We found the road to Pond Marsh Creek and it led us to this one place where we could easily see the swamp spreading out in the distance. We saw a couple ducks take off in the very far distance, but that was all. We will go back before they close the road on Nov. 1.

Huge Bald Cypress fill the area and I would love to come back when the ducks and geese are there. Too bad for me...but not the birds...that they make it a safe haven that is unaccessible during their migration time.

I snapped this Hibiscus out of force of habit, barely looking at it, and didn't even see the Katydid until I got home. Need to open my eyes a bit more.

I fell in love with this Scarlet Creeper vine! Aren't those flowers beautiful? Little red morning glories. I would love to have some seeds.

Some nearby red berries

This is a beautiful little flower that I don't know the name of. So dainty looking.

An unknown white butterfly.

This Red Admiral was teasing me and sitting so high up that I could barely see it.

He let me see one wing....how nice.

I'm going to be busy the next couple of days, so I will save half of this post for tomorrow.