Beauty in the Meadows

I took my afternoon hike at BHCL, in spite of telling myself it was time to shake things up a bit and add a few other locations to the mix.  The meadows were just gorgeous today.  Just gorgeous!  I think you'll agree.

Did you feel your blood pressure drop?  I bet it did!

Here are the winged things that caught my eye:

Common Ringlet (nice camouflage)

Eastern Tailed Blue
(in living color)

Eastern Tailed Blue
(same species, more muted scene)

Eastern Bluebirds, hunting from the fenceposts

Green Lacewing

Eastern Tiger Swallowtail

In my yard, one of the local Broad-Winged Hawks stopped briefly in the tree out front and screeched for a few minutes.

Broad-Winged Hawk

In the backyard, I noticed that a section of the ground that was mostly leaf litter but that was in direct sun was attracting some birds.  First, there was an Eastern Phoebe hunting there.  Soon, a Northern Cardinal flew in and scared off the Eastern Phoebe.  The cardinal appeared to take what looked like a dust bath on top of the leaf litter.  He was soon joined by a few Tufted Titmice.  Very interesting.  A few days ago, I saw an American Robin doing essentially the same thing in another leaf litter area.  He splayed himself flat on the ground, spreading out his wings and getting quite still and flat.  Only after I approached with the camera did he stand back up, shake himself off and move on.

Northern Cardinal

(while he was sitting here, his crest went up and down)