Westboro Birds and Butterflies

The day started out with rotten weather, and because I was up at 2:30AM removing an embedded tick (YUCK), I stayed in bed and gave up on an early nature walk.  Shortly after George left for the gym, he called to say there was blue sky to the west of us.  Blue sky?  It was supposed to be rainy all day!  I finished up my chores and hit the road, heading west.

I started the day at the model airplane field in Westboro.  I saw a lot of birds here including:

American Kestrel
American Robin
Brown Thrasher
Common Yellowthroat
Eastern Bluebird
Eastern Kingbird
European Starling
Gray Catbird
Killdeer
Northern Flicker
Northern Mockingbird
Pine Warbler
Red-Winged Blackbird
Song Sparrow
Tree Swallow
Yellow Warbler
Warbling Vireo

I hiked a few of the trails, which were quite buggy after all the heavy rains we just had.

 Canada Mayflower

Starflower

Yellow Warbler

Warbling Vireo

Northern Watersnake

another view - just to show how large it is!

FOY Pearl Crescent!

Eastern Kingbird
(obeying the rules)

 Juvenal's Duskywing

Grapevine Epinemus moth

 Northern Pine Looper moth

 Cedar Apple Rust

Galls develop on juniper trees on needles and small twigs.  Once mature, these galls swell considerably and produce orange, gelatinous horns during rainy spring weather.  Well, I guess we've had rainy spring weather, and here is the proof!  As the rains end, the galls die, and the portion of the twig where the gall was will die.

Cabbage White