Once again, the weather forecast undersold the morning, and it was much nicer than I expected. The pied-billed grebe and a few wood ducks were still on the pond, and the river was full of mallards and Canada geese. The first picture that caught my eye, however, was these two white-crowned sparrows perched beside the river at the north end and closer together than I’m used to seeing birds do around here. I wonder what was up with that. Perhaps that’s just what they do, and I’ve just never noticed it before. I’ll have to keep an eye out for it now.
Meanwhile, a lot closer to the ground, this field sparrow, our first of the fall migration, was more-closely modeling the behavior I’ve grown to expect from sparrows in this neck of the woods.
Speaking of fall migration, this eastern wood-pewee perched right over the riverbank, is probably the last one we’re going to see till spring. In fact, the ebird website was skeptical that I had seen one at all and asked for supporting evidence.
Once again, I’m light on bird pictures today, but the bugs were good yesterday, and this stunning creature, which sort of looks like a bee, but not exactly, is a narrow-headed marsh fly (Helophilus fasciatus).
Finally, in addition to the fiery skipper I showed you yesterday, I found its less-flashy cousin, this Huron skipper aka Huron sachem, enjoying the nectar of the New England asters in the bioswale at the corner of Wilson and Olive.
Lastly, I see we are forecast to trade some of the sunshine we’ve been enjoying over the past few days for some stiller air, which I have a hope will improve my chances of finding whoever might have arrived overnight.
