Plenty of little sights…

The folks in Connecticut will probably be sad when I head home, because I’m sure as heck gonna do my best to bring this amazing weather with me. It has just been stupendous out here.

Anyway, the birds played hard to get this morning, but I did manage to sneak another picture of a yellow warbler in mostly the same spot as yesterday.

The black duck was back, and it appears to be getting accustomed to its fairly public location, because it didn’t make me work too hard for this one.

As I checked for who else might be on that water, look who poked its nose up to say “hi.”

I hadn’t seen a single butterfly this morning, so after lunch I walked around the yard, which was also a bust, and then checked the vacant lot next door. Bingo!

Here’s an Indian skipper (Hesperia sassacus), as far as I can tell, and we might get them in Estabrook Park, but I haven’t seen one there yet.

Here’s an eastern tailed blue, which we have seen in Estabrook, but this time we get to see the inside/topside of those pretty blue wings.

Here’s another new one for me, and it looks like a dark skipper, but I never saw it hold its wings as we see skippers do and the Indian skipper above did, like NASA’s old M2-F2. Instead, I believe it is our first wild indigo duskywing (Erynnis baptisiae), and it holds its wings folded, wide open, or somewhere in between, as most other butterflies do.

After being all excited to see my first pearl crescent in Estabrook last week, I found it pretty funny to see at least two here today. Gotta look in the right spot.

This isn’t a butterfly, of course, but you can bet your bottom dollar that if I ever manage to capture a picture of a praying mantis in Estabrook Park, I’ll show it to you.

Finally, this last butterfly, a gray hairstreak (Strymon melinus), is both new to me and gorgeous, so here is your butterfly of the day. The closest we’ve come in Estabrook so far is a banded hairstreak, back in 2020.