Pleasure House Point

We took the dog for a walk at Pleasure House Point Natural Area in the morning. Apparently it is more sheltered and South-facing despite being close to Chesapeake Bay and further North than our yard.  I saw several plants still blooming, goldenrod, white frost aster, sea lavender, and  golden-asters.   I learned that the tall grasses with sparkling fluff are switch grass.  Sumac berries looked ripe.  A couple of puffballs appeared to have been moved. 

I saw four butterflies.  The first was a buckeye and the last a monarch, but in between there were two together that were too fast from me to identify.  The monarch was feeding on creamy 4-petal flowers on a tree or vine, about 20' up.  I smelled a lovely fragrance that I assume came from them. 

Out on a sandbar, a flock of mostly gulls basked in the sun.  A larger, browner bird may have been a young blackback gull because I saw some adults.  A couple of pelicans preened while another fished.  Cormorants were still fishing too. 

The waning almost-crescent moon hung in the blue sky.   There was a breeze but it wasn't spinning the wind turbines.  

When we got home I discovered a male bufflehead had arrived and joined the female.  He fished and she watched.  Pelicans flew past and one plunged into the water while we were eating lunch.  Turtles shared their log with a young cormorant.  Yellow jackets had discovered the grape jelly and one bully was keeping the others away.  At dusk I saw what might have been the grebe, but might have been a cormorant instead.