Crops & Clips: Early morning scattershots

Most winters we have three American Kestrels, all males, each occupying and defending three adjacent territories along our route in the Wounded Wetlands. One year there were none and last year only one remained all winter. For the past couple of weeks one has persisted in the "Royal Palm" territory nearest the entrance, which I designate number one of the three. 

The smallest of our falcons, he chased away a Merlin and fended off pesky mockingbirds and Blue Jays. He is almost always roosting prominently on the central spires of the Royal Palms which define the area that he defends.

American Kestrels are handsome birds:

Notable warblers migrating through---

Black-throated Green Warbler:

Yellow-throated Warbler:

Black-throated Blue Warbler:

Northern Parula female...

...and male:

Common Yellowthroat male:

Prairie Warbler:

Yellow-rumped Warblers signaled the end of warbler migration...

...leaving no doubt about how they got their names:

Vireos included the Red-eyed...

Blue-headed...

White-eyed...

Yellow-throated...

...and the uncommon Bell's Vireo:

The tropical storm systems created very high water in the lakes, unfavorable for wading birds. The lakeside marsh is flooded and my favorite "peninsula" is under water. Here, before sunrise, anticrepuscular rays converge over the marsh opposite the sun:

A male Ruby-throated Hummingbird partakes of the nectar we provide on our back patio (photo taken through the double pane windows on our sliding glass door):

His throat patch (gorget) is actually black, and the ruby-red color is seen in direct sunlight, due solely to reflection and refraction from feather structures:

About thirty minutes before sunrise, a contrail deposited by an airliner is now bathed in sunlight. If you look closely you can see the Planet Venus in the sky to the right (enlarge and squint):

A little later, it looks as if a missile has made a direct hit-- the end of civilization?:

Oh, do I see a monster cloud looming over the disaster site?

My week has been punctuated by a relapse in my PMR condition. I had been tapering down my Prednisone dose but now must raise it back up to 10 milligrams and then reduce it by 1 milligram every three weeks. Feeling better now. Doing the math-- assuming all goes well I could be down to zero in...  only 30 weeks!???? June, 2021???? Our Illinois granddaughter's Quinceañera (fifteenth birthday celebration), now delayed by one year, is scheduled for April, 2021. We have not seen family in more than a year. She sent us a video she created to cheer us up. It worked!

= = =  = = =  = = = =  = = = = =

Linking to:

Skywatch Friday

Weekend Reflections

Saturday's Critters

BirdD'Pot

Camera Critters

All Seasons

Wordless Wednesday (on Tuesday)

Natasha Musing

Our World Tuesday

Wild Bird Wednesday

My Corner of the World

Timeless Thursday

________________________________________________

Please visit the links to all these posts to see some excellent photos on display
________________________________________________

Crops & Clips: Flashback to October, 2017

As I do each month, I enjoyed looking back over my archived photos, taken three years previously, to remember how things were then and maybe get some idea of what to expect this year. (A big difference is that during the present year we never got back to Illinois because of the Coronavirus pandemic.)  As usual, I searched for images which reflected favorite memes: critters of all kinds (especially birds), skies and clouds, reflections, flowers and fences, as well as scenes which speak for themselves. We began the month at our second home in Illinois, after just returning from our stay in New Mexico after Hurricane Irma affected our south Florida home. 

On the first day of October a walk in Hawk's Bluff Park near our daughter's second home in Batavia, Illinois yielded a sighting of an immature Cooper's Hawk. It was in the same tree where it may have been raised by the resident pair which nested there earlier in the year. Indeed, the park was named after the area which it preserved, where ancient oaks were home to Red-tailed Hawks as well as this species:



Lippold Park, also in Batavia but across the Fox River, had a newly constructed pavilion with a boardwalk and an elevated viewing platform:

  

The boardwalk traverses a pond and leads to the river's margin:



Song Sparrows inhabited the areas of low brush:



We hiked and birded at our favorite Batavia location,  Nelson Lake Marsh/Dick Young Forest Preserve. One of its several trails crosses a creek spanned by "Audubon Bridge," amid a mixed habitat of prairie, wetlands and woodlands:



We saw many White-throated Sparrows,...





...Swamp Sparrows,...   





...and several warbler species, including Nashville Warbler...



...Black-throated Green Warbler...



...a female Common Yellowthroat...



...Tennessee Warbler...



...Orange-crowned Warbler...



...and both kinglet species, here the Golden-crowned Kinglet:





Male Golden-crowned Kinglets show a variable touch of scarlet in their crowns...





...but a Ruby-crowned Kinglet refused to display a red crest (or maybe it was a female who lacks one):



Acrobatic Black-capped Chickadees were busily foraging:



One last look at the fall foliage before  we "migrated" to our southern home for the winter:



Back in Florida, Hurricane Irma had inflicted much damage in our local Wounded Wetlands. The wind had uprooted an entire grove of fruiting Trema trees. They are an important source of winter food for wildlife. Almost all of the larger Tremas were stripped of leaves and most were knocked over. It would be almost three years before any survivors or saplings again set fruit:

   

The Yellow-breasted Chat is a burly warbler-like bird which had just been reclassified as a non-warbler and placed in a family all by itself pending resolution of its relationship to other songbirds. This was only my second-ever local sighting, on October 28: 



Here is a nice view of a male Common Yellowthroat to complement the female I had photographed in Illinois:



An Eastern Phoebe in habitat:



An Adult Bald Eagle flew low over the Wounded Wetlands:



Tropical Storm Philippe, the seventh named storm to strike Florida during 2017, moved in on October 28. The skies turned dark and we rushed home ahead of the rain. Wind damage was minimal:



A cold front dissipated the storm and we finished October enjoying cool air and clear skies. North wet prairie on October 31:




= = =  = = =  = = = =  = = = = =

Linking to:

Fences Around the World

Skywatch Friday

Weekend Reflections

Saturday's Critters

BirdD'Pot

Camera Critters

All Seasons

Wordless Wednesday (on Tuesday)

Natasha Musing

Our World Tuesday

Wild Bird Wednesday

My Corner of the World

Timeless Thursday

________________________________________________

Please visit the links to all these posts to see some excellent photos on display
________________________________________________