State Line Fields

 I took a drive to a neighboring area to visit, some  large FIELDS.

When I go anywhere it's never to a mall, a restaurant, a movie, or a grand opening, 

its either a cemetery, a sewage pond,  a corn field,  a rocky shore line, a salt marsh,  or a swamp...

On This day It was a huge wide open field, where people had been reporting the American Golden Plover.  I had not seen an A. Golden since the late 90's on a sod farm Southwest of me, so I figured it was time to see them again.    The fields were huge,  I had my scope if I needed it,  but they ended up being about 90 ft from the road so I saw them with my binoculars and I counted 18 birds but could only get a group shot of 14 so I went with a count of 14 to be safe,  a Northern Harrier scattered them after I had about 20 minutes to try for photos.  

This is a heavy crop of  4 of them grouped together, you want to look for wingtips that extend well beyond the tail, and a broad white line above the eye and in breeding plumage  that line in the male becomes almost a large backwards S down the neck and onto the chest. This is non breeding plumage birds.  This is the closest shot I got, the wind just wouldn't allow me to get a sharp focus...

You can see the big dark eyes,  I enjoyed being out in the open without trees blocking my view....

It's only a 44 minute drive, and the dirt road passes over into North Carolina...here is where I crossed the State Line..

  

Some others saw lots of Horned Lark also, I didn't see a single one! These fields were huge...I did see Some White Throated Sparrow, 

Eastern Towhee, 

And the Savannah Sparrow, 

Several  Song Sparrow 

And about 21 species all together It was a good day for a drive in the country. 

that was earlier in the week....

Today I took the painted rock up to Mary's Hill...the rock I chose is one I brought with me from Colorado, it's a very 3 dimensional rock...

This is the south end of the rock 

The view today was very nice as the last of the fall color is still hanging on the trees down the slope...

On the upper part of the rock I painted in a rainbow, 

A little hard to see I sprayed it with some gloss Finish to protect the paint so hopefully it won't fade off too fast....there's some trees, a pond, and some flowers on the rock, it's a landscape of what we always enjoyed about  the trips we made to Sandhills thru the years...

I placed it at the foot of this tall pine that over looks the hill..on the upper side of the dirt road...

See the one in  center with a long limb pointing down to the right...

And here it is....

The really special thing is as I started out this morning to drive over, a dark cloud came up fast and it began to sprinkle and I had to turn on the wipers for a few minutes then this came out...

That is the one and only rainbow I've seen all year long...

I took it as a HUG....

Hope you all have a fine Thanksgiving if you're celebrating.  

PEACE

Every day is a new Adventure.