Birds on a wire....

It seems that I have been seeing a lot of bird activity on the wires overhead lately.We saw the Eastern Kingbird on slanted wires like this in several places.
I wonder if it prefers the slanted wire to the horizontal wires for a reason?
At the park we saw more kingbirds.....in a very awkward spot to shoot, but I rather liked all the poles and shapes.

More commonly at the park they sit on these low wires separating the parking area from the soccer fields.

A back view

A different set of wires in a different location....a Dickcissel! I thought this was a new bird to me, but according to my list I saw one last year in May also!

We kept seeing blue birds flying across the road in front of us. This one stopped on the road and appears to be a Blue Grosbeak. I thought we were seeing Indigo Buntings....we did see some, but no photos worth keeping.

The next wire sitters we saw were these Barn Swallows down along the Ohio River in the Henderson riverbottoms area.

In a nearby parking lot we found these other swallows....not sure what kind or if they are young ones? Mike thought maybe they were resting from the wind. It was really blowing that day.

Two more of them.

Not on a wire, not even a bird, but I wanted to put this snapping turtle photo some place! He was lounging on this log in the sun as we drove by down in the riverbottoms area.

The Mockingbird opted for the post rather than the wire :-)

And lastly.....a Robin with a mouthful of worms!

I like watching all the wire sitters and there are certainly plenty of them right now.

SkyWatch Friday......

(Nature post below this one)

It's SkyWatch Friday!

My skies were very blue all week, but the fields are very yellow!Everywhere I go there are seas of yellow plants!
It didn't take much looking on the Internet to find more photos and to find information from Purdue University giving advice to farmers as to what to do about this "weed" that is very prevalent in southern Indiana.

It may be a weed...but it sure makes gorgeous photos!

I liked this old barn sitting there surrounded in yellow.

Crossleaf Groundsel is the main "weed" in these photos and it must really spread judging by the fields that I've seen in the past few weeks.

We saw a couple fields with this yellow flower mixed in as well. Don't know it's name but up close it looks "shiny".....Mike said it looked plastic :-) You would think that all of this would be a butterfly paradise right now. We did find a few flitting around this area.

In the bottomlands by the Ohio River the water is really up as shown by this row of yellow out in the water. Some of these fields won't be plowed for awhile yet and some already have corn in them despite the high water.

That is my SkyWatch post for today.....blue with lots of yellow down below!

For more SkyWatch click on the icon on my sidebar.

The quest for "small flying things"......

It's that time of year when you don't know whether to have the camera set for "close-ups" or for distance. One minute you are trying to capture a bird and the next it is one of the "small flying things" that catch our attention. Over the last few days I have had a lot of encounters with dragonflies, damselflies, butterflies, skippers, moths, bugs. I'm lumping them all together in one post.At Hartman arboretum, I spotted my first Clearwing Hummingbird Moth of the year. I always get excited when I see them....so unusual.
It seemed to like these purple flowers.

Silver-Spotted Skipper from the open position.

The side view with the "white elephant" spot, as we call it.

Blue Dasher male

I have no idea on the name of these two, but they were busy at the edge of the pond.

I really don't know damselfly names and didn't even look it up.

Comma or Question Mark

Green metallic bug (Six Spotted Tiger Beetle)......I saw them in two different places.

Common Whitetail male

Eastern Pondhawk male

Red Admiral

Red-Spotted Purple Admiral

Same butterfly open.....it wouldn't let me get behind it for a better shot.

Don't know this one

Not sure

American Snout.

I remember when I first saw these last year and how strange I thought it looked. I have better photos from last year and will put one on the sidebar.

On a more serious note. These purple traps are hanging in various places around our area. What are they? They are trying to find out if we have the dreaded Emerald Ash Borers in the area yet. This trap was in the conservation area where we go in Henderson, but we have them around Evansville, too.

The first time I've seen a sign with one....explaining and asking people to leave it alone.

We saw one on the grass in a park yesterday.

Someone couldn't resist knocking it down.

Since I have a beautiful ash tree in my yard, I hope they don't find evidence of the borers.....but it doesn't look promising when you look at maps of where they are.

Heron drama.....

Stopped by the Heron Rookery on the way home from looking for butterflies today and boy, did we get lucky again!I had just focused on this heron sitting on this snag.....never seen one land there before. When it suddenly jumped in the water.....
....and came up with a snake! ( It has been suggested this is an eel. Could be!)

It was putting up a battle and the heron started trying to get to a small bit of vegetation where it could stand and fight better.....Look at the concentration in those eyes!

It got on this little "island" of vegetation. The water is really high right now from recent rains, so the heron was in a much deeper area than usual.

He fought with it for quite a while.

The snake would wrap around his beak like in this shot.

He would shake it around and unwind it.

Wrapped again.

He finally got it under control and .....

....swallowed it down. His neck looks pretty bulging right here!

I wonder which nest of babies is going to have snake for dinner tonight?

We could see a chick's head in the top nest.....

......3 good sized chicks in this one!

The same 3 in the top nest and a mother bending over a little one in the nest in the open area. I'm sure there are more, but they are hard to see right now.

At least someone is eating well tonight.....if you happen to like snake!