Despite the warm weather, 5 of us participated in the July NASWC Bird Walk this morning. We were lucky and enjoyed a nice breeze and partly cloudy skies for most of the walk. After a slow start we were able to find 33 species of birds. Here are some highlights.
- Bill Dodd identified this vibrant purple flowered plant as Western Ironweed. It's so great that Bill and a few other regular folks on my bird walks know how to identify lots of plants and butterflies!
- A small group of Carolina Chickadees and Black-crested Titmice crossed the trail right over us giving us great looks at these small but common year-round resident species.
- We encountered this group of 8 Snowy Egrets and watched them actively hunting in the creek. Snowy Egrets don't stay as still as other kinds of herons and egrets when hunting. They run and jump around, chasing small fish and aquatic insects.
- By the footbridge we saw 2 of the flycatchers I recently wrote about in my Summer Flycatchers blog posts: Western Kingbirds and Great Crested Flycatchers. Here is one of the Western Kingbirds we saw.
- Right by the trail we found this resting Pipevine Swallowtail butterfly. In my experience, it's fortunate to find one staying still enough to take its picture.
3 comments:
As I was cutting the lawn this afternoon, a Tiger Swallowtail kept flying around me as I made the circle. Beautiful.
Mike
Lovely butterfly pic! It is so rare for them to sit and pose like that! ;)
Thanks! Yes, as soon as we got a little closer to that butterfly it flew off.
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