A day of Nature

One day last week I took a drive to see if the sunflower fields were in bloom. It was hot and humid too. Before I even left town I saw some thistles blooming, with bees a buzzing. I am always amazed by the symmetry and color of these plants. This is a rather small variety of thistle… but with lots of blooms.

When I first started shooting these I was going to catch a bumble bee… but then out of the corner of my eye… I saw a Hummingbird Moth. Not really pretty, but very interesting… in how fast their wings can go. I had to bump my shutter speed up from 1/800th of a second  to 1/1250th of a second to stop the wings without blur, and even then, not quite a perfect there is still a bit of blur.

Before I was finished with the thistles another bit of color caught my eye. A goldfinch having a bit of a morning snack.

The sunflower fields were not in bloom… but maybe by next weekend! So I will keep an eye on the weather. I am lucky,that I only live about 20 miles from the fields and can get there in less than an hour.

So I decided to do a bit of exploring…. with the camera in hand. I found a butterfly

and a strange green beetle, that is called a Tiger Beetle - Cicindela sexguttata,

I also saw at least 6 or 7 different varieties of dragonflies, here are two.

A Halloween Pennant- found hanging out in a wheat field.

A Widow Skimmer. Dragonflies are fascinating creatures, and a very big contributor to our ecology. The have been around since the dinosaurs too.

On the way home, aboard the ferry… I saw these 2 sitting on the stump in the middle of the Potomac River. They are a cormorant, but I am not able to figure out which, for certain.

As always… more later,

Beth