Steady as she goes…

I’ve got a quick one for you today, more of a status update than a full report. The weather continues to be beautiful, of course, unless the lack of rain is starting to crimp your style.

I stopped by the pond, and the first critter I saw was the resident and rarely seen, giant snapping turtle, perhaps related to our much smaller buddy that keeps climbing out of the river. Maybe they’re trying to have a reunion now that travel restrictions are starting to lift.

I looked for the wood ducks, but only found a mallard hen, whom we haven’t seen in there weeks.

At the river, whatever type of big fish was thrashing yesterday was still thrashing this morning, but I didn’t see anything photo-worthy until the north end where the mallard hen with 4 young ducklings was dabbling in a beautiful golden-green reflection of the morning sun shining on the trees on the island.

Back at the pond, I found that the wood duck hen and her ducklings had magically materialized. Here they are all snoozing on their favorite log.

And here they are after a dog walked by. I didn’t hear her, so perhaps she was just yawning.

I suspect a few of the red-wing blackbird broods have hatched because suddenly the males and females are even more crazy protective of their territory than usual, and as I was trying in vain to get a fun picture of them shouting at me, look was wasn’t paying attention and ended up with a cameo. I bet he was as surprised as I was, and I had about a second to get this picture before he realized his mistake and vanished. It is slightly over exposed, which I tried to fix a little in post-production, but at least it’s in focus.

Lastly, on the avian side, a red-bellied woodpecker, perhaps the same one as last summer, is back to rat-a-tat-tatting on the street lights and yodeling from the top of the light poles.

On to the Lepidoptera. One of the sulfur butterflies sat for a nice, back-lit portrait, but it’s a little difficult to tell which sulfur because of said lighting.

And last, but certainly not least, the little wood-satyrs (Megisto cymela) are back and plentiful!

Finally, let’s wrap it up with this sharp-looking little chipmunk, shall we?