Bluebirds were around all day. I can't tell if they started a nest because they both seem to spend a lot of time eating. The female froze on the suet as though she saw a hawk. All three woodpecker species came for suet at least once. The brown thrasher pair also came to feed together. Their fierce-looking eyes don't reflect their behavior. They give way to smaller birds. The suet was only a nubbin in the morning and gone by noon.
The first daylily bloomed. It was nearly the same yellow as the nearby iris so at first I didn't notice. I also found a sprout of butterfly milkweed. The pink evening primrose flowers danced in the wind all day. Two adult geese with two goslings tried to encroach again. I hustled them downhill.
I saw a yellow and brown swallowtail fly past the rue, probably a palamedes but maybe a giant. A tiger swallowtail, a cabbage white, and something brownish were also flitting around. So were wasps, bees and dragonflies. I rescued a small bee. A gorgeous dragonfly landed in the dogwood and dangled from a twig for as long as I watched. It was a swamp darner, Epiaeschna heros.
I put out a new block of suet and the pileated woodpecker noticed. I was outside at the time so I used the screen on the camera to avoid looking at her directly. It worked quite well except that I had a tendency to tilt the camera. Crows were also around all day. Two of them seemed to be courting but others looked like they were arguing.
Toward the end of the afternoon, two migrants descended on the suet. One was a yellow rumped warbler, Setophaga coronata, and the other a chipping sparrow, Spizella passerina, albeit in non-breeding plumage. Actually, the sparrow might be local but I think it was just making a pit stop. The final visitor of the day was a white breasted nuthatch. However, my one photo of it was pretty poor.
No comments:
Post a Comment