It appears that Hurricane Sandy might delay my return plans, which means I might have a few more days to visit family and chase birds…
squirrels
Monte Sano State Park
A Week of Travel
I’m in Alabama this week, visiting family. The yards here are busy with birds and squirrels, and the windows are bright with changing leaves. It all makes me as happy as a basking cat.
(I would love some help identifying the unfamiliar woodpecker, above. Is it a juvenile Yellow-bellied Sapsucker?)
First Landing State Park, October 10
First Landing State Park is beginning to feel the onset of fall. The osprey are migrating, leaving egrets and herons in charge. Grasshoppers carry on as if winter will never come, but the butterflies know better. They’ve disappeared, along with most of the bees. (I did see something that might have been a bee, but it also might have been a fly that wanted me to think it was a bee.)
Despite these changes, summer hasn’t abandoned the park entirely. Mosquitoes still bite and squirrels still play. Crabs forage while frogs sing a frantic final chorus. Turtles patrol the shallow ponds, their backs mounded with mud so that they look like curiously mobile islands.
And the sun is still strong enough to burn if you stay out too long. Like I did today. But I have a good excuse for my over-long walk and uncomfortable sunburn. I was chasing a kingfisher…
Gray Day
Last night, a solitary question mark butterfly stopped in the yard. It didn’t stay long. The yard might have felt lonely and empty after it left, if not for these two rabbits.
I wondered about the second rabbit’s ear damage. Frostbite? Maybe some kind of infection? While the yard’s rabbits seem healthy in general, I do see a lot of ticks on them, especially on their ears. It’s a bit odd, because I rarely find ticks on myself or the dog.
Speaking of the dog, she’s too old and arthritic for rabbit chasing. Or any other kind of exertion. So I was curious, a few days ago, when she treed something in the wax myrtle.
The squirrel waited, shifting its grip now and then, until Indigo and I went inside. Then I watched from the kitchen window as it scrambled down, grabbed one last mouthful of birdseed, and scurried across the fence into our neighbor’s yard. Where the neighbor’s dog promptly treed it again.
None of these photos were taken today, because today has been rainy and gray. It’s a dreary deluge that pours and eases and then pours again. As I worked on this post, the butterfly’s bright orange and the yard’s exuberant green tempted me to fret over our much-needed rain. So I changed the photos to grayscale…
Rae Spencer 