The Great Egret in the first photo was by itself in a pond. Â I was watching another egret flying in, and I thought it might join Egret #1. Â Boy, did it ever!
Egret #1 flew away unharmed.
The end.
Category Archives: Photo Posts
A Backyard Visit
Our house backs up to a small pond, wooded most of the way around the pond, and a kind of buffer zone of wild flowers/weeds. Â The wildflower area is my very favorite spot as it attracts a lot of bees, butterflies, dragonflies, damselflies, birds and critters and insects of every type. Â I never know what I’m going to see when I take an allergy tablet, put on my yellow rubber rain boots to protect me from chiggers, grab my trusty camera and walk a whole 20 feet or so from the back of the house for my big adventure!
I’ve never seen as many dragonflies as we have this year. Â I’m sure it’s as a result of all the rain we’ve had this spring and early summer. Â The most abundant dragons were the Widow Skimmers.
A couple of new finds for me made this an extra fun “outing”. Â A Dot-Tailed White Face Dragonfly:
as well as a Halloween Pennant dragonfly:
There were also some Meadowhawks:
There were so many dragonflies, I even saw two sharing a stem — a Widow Skimmer and a 12-Spotted Skimmer:
A zillion blue damselflies:
and a new bird for my list — a Common Yellowthroat Warbler nestled down in the tall grass (the second photo shows his eyelid closed):
Whew! Â That was all in about a half an hour. Â Can’t wait to get out there and do it all over again.
~Sue
The Birds
I have to say, the best thing I did when I retired was to buy a camera with a super zoom lens. You can get up close and personal with nature, and that is SO MUCH FUN. (42 times zoom!)
Now, having said that, I have to add that most of my Minnesota pictures are taken through my kitchen window. Through my (sometimes) dirty kitchen window. I know it negates some of the advantages of having a good lens, but that’s just the way it is.
Tuesday of this week was a great birding day, out my kitchen window in our flowering crab tree. I have seen some Baltimore Orioles in the neighborhood, and I tried to lure them to my tree with some fresh orange. No Oriole, but I did get a pair of Catbirds. (You can see a bit of the rusty color underneath the tail of the bird on the left.)
A House Finch also stopped by for some orange, and to just look pretty.
The same day we also had a female duck strolling towards the house. I don’t know what it is, but seeing a duck walk up the sidewalk always makes me laugh.
I had also been trying to lure the hummingbirds, and went through two batches of syrup and no hummer sighting. The syrup was being consumed at night, though, and after the second batch was gone, I brought the feeder in on Tuesday. No feeder, so of course a hummer came for a visit!
He loved our crab tree too, and it was in full bloom. Now, two days of rain later, it’s not so nice. I hope he comes back anyway!