FALL Equinox

3.2 Billion birds have been lost since 1970, 30% of the bird population in North America gone! Sparrows, warblers, blackbirds, hit the hardest.  Cats kill 2.6 billion a year!! Habitat loss and development is the main problem according to the study.  How depressing...we can each do our best to keep our lands/yards as wild and bird friendly as possible. We are their only hope.  Ordinary citizens making good choices and spending their money with companies that are environmentally friendly is the best solution we have to do what our leaders won't...Green spaces MUST be encouraged, and more citizen ownership of special lands needs to happen! Our Government can't be trusted.

                                   early morning in Mother Nature

I can't recall a more trying week...you ever get the feeling every rock you turn over has an ogre under it? That's been my experience lately.  All I can hear in my head is NO NO NO...I must turn this around to YES YES YES.

                                                      

This is an American Chestnut tree!  The only ones I know of around here!  And the nut is inside this very spiny hull.

I think this is a yellow bellied pond slider....he was one of the few that didn't dive for cover as we drove by him at the refuge on Friday!  

The mist was back at the lake when I checked it this morning...very eerie looking, this photo although it's kind of a cool photo alarmed me a bit that piece of fishing line in the tree was out of my reach I do have a plan to try and get it down tho...because this is a man made hazard for birds!

Notice how a spider used parts of it to support his web.  I couldn't reach it without falling in the water.  But I will bring a long pole with me and get it down.  

the early morning mist really adds some drama 

And the golds of the wildflowers add drama to the ordinary roadside...

And what would we do without Goldenrod?  

I got another stamp in my State Parks book when we visited Little Pee Dee State park in Dillon County.  I really enjoyed this park and want to go back.  In 2016 there was a lot of flooding in our state, And the dam of this lake broke...and this year they reopened the lake after rebuilding the dam...

There is a campground and I forgot to take photos of the campground!  Some nice sites right by the lake, looked awesome i can see myself enjoying that.  We had a refreshing picnic break, it was humid the day we were there that has changed since then we think the humidity is gone, it will be back on Thanksgiving day always is hot and muggy on Thanksgiving.  

looks like a rebuild of the fishing pier too... we had a Solitary Sandpiper down by the spillway area with some Killdeer.  A lifer for Sis...

It threw me because it seemed so much smaller than I normally see them!  

 

And the Green Heron was also playing on the rocks...

The Immature Little Blue Heron with his greenish legs

we added up 7 Little Blue Herons around the lake...

We had Great Egrets, Great Blue Herons, and Kingfisher on the lake too...

A really curious Summer Tanager female in the trees came to see what all the fuss was about when we phished at a Black n White Warbler.  The Warbler was not still for a photo,,,,so we kept trying to phish him into submission and we also drew the attention of the Yellow-Throated Vireo a lifer for my sis!  And the first time I got a photo of one! 

What an awesome bird!

 

There is even petrified wood here!  

And at least one woodsy rental cabin, pretty cute looking too...

There's trails to hike, the lake to enjoy, a campground, picnic areas, and they will resume boat rentals when some of the vegetation dies off that crowded into the lake when the dam was broken...

im Little Blue Heron

Cloudless Sulphurs

We do want to visit this park again!  It's about 80 miles Northeast of us, and worth the trip! Summer is Over!

PEACE

Every day is a new Adventure.

Horizons...

Second week of May already seems like this year is on a steamer headed for 2020! Yeah lets not forget that magical number headed our way.  Dates such as that boggle my mind since I'm always reading headstones with birthdates like 1797 or 1840 shows us how very short our life span really is. Hopefully we will all make it well into the the 2020's.  My mom was born in 1924! She is so very close to that century mark. 

Mom with a rhodie she planted many years ago...Happy Mother's Day!

Most of my time these days is spent in a couple of areas of life, family, doing yard work, chores etc, and birding between my trips to town for supplies! My walks in nature are always special to me...so lets jump right in!

I spy with my little eye something that looks so amazing!!

Polyphumes Moth the "Clyclopes Moth" a Giant Silk Moth! 

The vernal Pool hangs on...

A shed Snake Skin, at least 4 ft in length the entire skin was there! 

in the same area where the young Eagles have fledged and only one was around the day we visited...it made me sad he looked so lonely..

Like he was saying "where has my family gone..." sigh must be hard being a bird sometimes...

Down under a nearby bridge chaos of another family was going on as the barn swallows put on a flight show for me....

This is a cellphone shot of the nest of a chipping sparrow...it's in a bush right by mom's front porch we can lean over and see down into it...see the brown dots on the eggs?

and another cellphone shot of the eggs in the bluebird nest gourd...I know you may not be able to see since this is phone has small pixel, but the eggs look as if they have been speckled with tiny brown specks...

What a miraculous job they did building this nest so much work and thought and planning went into it! 

We have many birds nesting here but these are the only ones I've found the nest of...watched the Carolina Wrens as they guided they first brood of fledglings out into the world..

Ive been birding in my 5 mile radius this is one of my favorite wetlands...the roadside one where there is no place to stand have to jump the rail each time a car flies by ....but it's so pretty there!

I called it the Mt Zion wetland...after the road I saw some neat birds there like the Great Crested Flycatcher Male...

This shot captures the beautiful feather detail of this beautiful bird! 

the Yellow Breasted Chats continue to provide me with such a show!! Look at his throat as he makes some of his weird sounds...

Could watch for hours! 

MY latest finds I didn't get good photos of...in case  you are wondering why Im not just jumping into that I did get a shot of the elusive Gray Catbird this week...saw him last week...

And had a loggerheaded shrike out in the open as they normally are, the butcher bird as they are sometimes called due to they like to impale their prey on sharp objects..

Most of the fields around are in amazing color right now with the Ragwort in bloom...

SO my new sightings for the radius this week as I said I got very few photos of them..mainly because of heavy cover, and the birds are so busy finding mates, nest building, it's just a busy time of year for them..

the Mississippi Kite (#102)

had a pair one landed pretty far away...

A Black Throated Blue Warbler, (103)

I know terrible! But you take what you can get he was in and out so fast maybe on my next visit...

same thing  with the American Redstart..(104)

Anyway for the record shot... and then a couple I didn't even get a shot of the Swainson's Warbler (105)...and the Yellow Throated Vireo,(106) along with the heard only Eastern Wood Peewee. (107)  I did get him on tape with a red eyed vireo over singing him..lol 

I found an area where many of the red headed woodies are nesting...

So my count stands at 107 in my 5 mile!!  I made this my big day...it was Monday, and in my radius I  had 61 species for the day!

My Big Day List Here

my little buddy following me around..

Enjoy your week!

PEACE

Every day is a new Adventure.