Crops & Clips: Flashback to October, 2013

Each month I search my archives for images which match the themes of critters, fences, skies, flowers, macros and reflections. This is a peek through the retroscope at photos taken three years ago, in October, 2013. 

I am reminded of creatures and sights I might expect to see again at this time of year. Let's see how far I need to go into the month to find at least one for each meme. I accomplished this goal rather easily and have won the game twenty-two months in a row since starting in January, 2015. As usual, finding fences was my most difficult task, and for some reason very few of my photos included flowers.  

After watching migration in Illinois, we spent the entire month of October at our home in south Florida. On October 3, storm clouds cut short our morning walk:



Fall warblers were passing  through, among them this Northern Waterthrush:



Black-and-White Warbler:



Prairie Warbler:



Wood Storks were locally decreasing in number still relatively common visitors to our back yard lake. Since then, due to habitat loss and excessive rainfall, nearly all have moved northward to breed:



Flock of Cattle Egrets with reflection of neighbor's fence on October 16:

 

My only other reflections this month were cast by a Greater Yellowlegs...



...and, when the wind stopped blowing, that of a Little Blue Heron



A Lincoln's Sparrow appeared. An unusual winter visitor, this was the first one of this species ever reported as being seen in our county (Interestingly, I later photographed one again nearby in November, 2014):



Limpkins nest locally but are also scarce in our birding patch. This was my first photo of one in our neighboring wetlands:



Female Painted Bunting:



Tricolored Heron coming in for a landing:



Dark morph of Short-tailed Hawk:



Brown Thrasher:



Monarch on Ligustrum blossoms:



Black-throated Blue Warbler:



Cape May Warbler:



White-tailed Deer -- doe and yearlings:



White Peacock in our local wetlands:



I captured nice views of both the top and undersides of this Cassius Blue butterfly:

 



By the end of the month, our local pair of Bald Eagles had begun to refurbish their nest. The female (Joy), on the right, is about 25% larger than her mate (Pride).



On October 31, I closed out the month with one of my favorite photos, that of an Eastern Phoebe watching a male Julia butterfly:



Intersecting contrails, in anticipation of the next day's trip to the Texas Panhandle and New Mexico:



= = =  = = =  = = = =  = = = = =

Linking to Misty's  CAMERA CRITTERS,

Linking to Eileen's SATURDAY'S CRITTERS,

Linking to GOOD FENCES by Tex (Theresa). 

Linking to SKYWATCH FRIDAY by Yogi, Sylvia and Sandy

Linking to WEEKEND REFLECTIONS by James

Linking to BirdD'Pot by Anni

Linking to Wild Bird Wednesday by Stewart

Linking to Today's Flowers Friday by Denise

Linking to Wordless Wednesday (on Tuesday) by NC Sue
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Please visit the links to all these memes to see some excellent photos on display

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