Some birds, a few blossoms, Ol’ Snappy, and a lot of bees and butterflies.

I was hoping to see again this morning our surprise new guest at the pond, the young night-heron, since I’ve gotten a little pushback on my identification, and maybe a better picture would cement it one way or the other, but I’m sad to say that it was nowhere to be found. Oh well.

Happily, the young blue heron was there, and it did not seem to be favoring a foot today, so that’s good news.

In fact, at one point, it flew over to the west lawn, perhaps to see what the ducks are always finding up there and took a little walk with no limp that I could see.

There were also at least two green herons about. Here’s one up in a tree over the little bridge in the path around the pond.

And here’s one fishing for some breakfast.

The ducks seemed to have lost their interest in storm debris, and here’s one just resting on a stick instead.

I did catch a glimpse of the big snapping turtle in the pond when it poked its head out of the water for a moment.

It was a beautiful morning, so I ventured down to the river for a change. Man-oh-man, the water had been high recently. There were little bits of plastic and expanded polystyrene farther on shore than I’ve seen them since last summer.

Anyway, I did startle a couple of blue herons, sorry guys, and failed to get their picture. Instead, I did manage to capture this monarch on a sow thistle blossom.

Then I had to head back home, but on the way, I checked the weeds beside the soccer fields, and hit the jackpot! First, I saw my first tiger swallowtail in the park for this summer, and the poor thing looks like it just survived a hurricane.

Plus, there were so many bees, that the swallowtail couldn’t seem to get a blossom to itself.

There were a lot more bees than butterflies, so it was easy enough to catch one of them on their own.

There was another monarch, and it even photobombed the swallowtail, but that one came out blurry, so here’s a prettier picture.

But that’s not all! Here’s a silver-spotted skipper.

And even a Peck’s skipper. The whole gang was there.

Lastly, because I’ve been looking for that swallowtail for so long, here’s just one more image, with one more bee, of course.

And those are all the pictures fit to print today. See ya next time.