Eastern Neck NWR Butterfly Garden Visit
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The Bayview Trail at Eastern Neck National Wildlife Refuge passes through their Butterfly Garden, a certified Bayscapes garden created using native plants to create a wildflower garden, a living fence, and a water garden. (For those interested, a list of plants used is at the end of this post.)
Here are my best of those butterflies passing through a couple weeks ago that gave me nice photo ops.
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Pearl Crescent
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Pearl Crescent
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Eastern Tailed-Blue
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Common Checkered Skipper
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Common Checkered Skipper
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Monarch
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Monarch
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Monarch
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American Lady
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American Lady
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I also encountered a dragonfly flirting with me.
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Blue Dasher
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And, of course, a bird! They were shooting up on flower heads for seeds and then dropping again out of sight. I was able to get just one goldfinch.
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American Goldfinch
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Hundreds of butterflies can be seen in this garden during the peak of summer. I’ll be eager to see and share them with you next year!
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Eastern Neck National Wildlife Refuge Bayscapes Garden – Plant List
Inkberry (Ilex glabra)
Coast Azalea (Rhododendron atlanticum)
Early Lowbush Blueberry (Vaccinium vacillans)
Butterflyweed (Asclepias tublerosa)
Blue False Indigo (Baptisia australis)
New England Aster (Aster novae-angliae)
Joe Pye Weed (Eupatorium fistulosum)
Wild Geranium (Geranium maculatum)
Cinnamon Fern (Osmunda cinnamomea)
Swamp Milkweed (Asclepias incarnata)
Cardinal Flower (Lobelia cardinalis)
Marsh Marigold (Caltha palustris)
Gayfeather (Liatris spicata)
Pink Coreopsis (Coreopsis rosea)
Blue Flag (Iris versicolor)
Virginia Bluebells (Mertensia virginica)
N.Y. Ironweed (Vermonia noveboracensis)
Black-eye Susan (Rudbeckia hirta)
Beebalm (Monarda didyma)
Eastern Columbine (Aquilegia canadensia)
Mist Flower (Eupatorium colestinum)
Virgins Bower (Clematis virginiana)
Coral Honeysuckle (Lonicera sempervirens)
Indiangrass (Sorghastrum nutans)
Swamp Sunflower (Helianthus angustifolis)
Wrinkle-leaf Goldenrod (Solidago rugosa)
Sweet Fern (Comptonia peregrina)
Tickseed (Coreopsis verticillata)
Lizard’s Tail (Saururus cernuus)
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Kinglets – Times Two
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We have two species of Kinglets in North America. the Ruby-crowned and the Golden-crowned. I’ve fortunately had both recently visiting my backyard foraging the evergreens, so how cool to share them together in one post for comparisons.
I’ve photographed the Ruby-crowned Kinglet several times in years prior, so I’ll start with the Golden-crowned. It’s more befitting for another reason too….
Welcome to my bird lifer list #245 Golden-crowned Kinglet! 🤗
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Golden-crowned Kinglet
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Above was my first photo taken, definitely blurry; but as I was taking that shot, I saw that yellow crest and knew I had to stay with this bird if I could. It took 16 more shots to get the next two.
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Golden-crowned Kinglet (lifer #245)
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I could not believe it flew to the evergreen closest to me!
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Golden-crowned Kinglet
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The Ruby-crowned Kinglets have been around for several weeks, so I’ve had many more opportunities with them to share some pretty compositions.
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Ruby-crowned Kinglet (my favorite shot ever!)
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Ruby-crowned Kinglet
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Whereas both male and female Golden-crowned Kinglets have a yellow crest and display it at all times, only the male Ruby-crowned has the red crest and only displays it when he is excitedly courting a mate, or challenging a competitor or predator.
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Ruby-crowned Kinglet
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Ruby-crowned Kinglet
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Ruby-crowned Kinglet
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No luck with me catching the rare opportunity of a Ruby-crown’s red crest; but that could be a good thing, they feel safe and comfortable in my backyard for the time being. Or maybe there isn’t a male in my visitors. 😏
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Bald Eagles at the Water
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Here are two more recent photos of Bald Eagles taken at nearby Chesapeake Farms. They love the wetland on that farm. And so do I!
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Bald Eagle (immature)
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Bald Eagle (adult)
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Blue Jays
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Loud and boisterous, the Blue Jay is a fairly common bird over two-thirds of the U.S. as well as in Canada.
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Blue Jay
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They fly with strong wing beats that allow them to ‘bullet’ through the air at high speed!
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Blue Jays in flight
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I hear Blue Jays every morning at sunrise. Already busy looking for food, they are scouring the trees and ground below for seeds and small insects.
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Blue Jay
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Blue Jay
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Blue Jay
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Blue Jays also love acorns! Their fondness for them is credited with helping spread oak trees after the last glacial period.
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Blue Jay collecting acorns to cache
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So if you love oak trees, thank a Blue Jay next time you see one! 😊
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Northern Cardinals – Red Delights
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To catch you up long story short, after returning home from our mid-west summer adventure, we crazily/quickly bought and moved into a small, cozy house on an acre lot four miles away from our property lot that we’re clearing to build our dream home on Maryland’s Eastern Shore.
It deemed perfect to put us local with the building lot immediately for the clearing, the Spring start and continue monitoring of the new home build. Plus it allowed us to begin enjoy living in our new community now. It just wasn’t feasible to have the 2+ hour drive from our previous home and try to move forward with our plans.
Soooo…..I’ve really had two Eastern Shore ‘backyards’ since we’ve been back. And, as I’ve shared in the past month, both backyards have a wonderful variety. I feel truly blessed with my own little bird paradise!
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Northern Cardinal (male)
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With the Northern Cardinal being one of my top favorite birds, to have these birds in our new-to-us home backyard has been a true delight. Being a year-round bird in the Chesapeake Bay region, I’m am hoping ‘mine’ stay around through this winter.
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Northern Cardinal (male)
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This gorgeous male has been slowly getting used to me and that big camera ‘eye’, giving me more chances, while his mate continues to evade me for a pretty photo. I am giving her time, I am patient. 😊
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Northern Cardinal (male)
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Until then, I’ll continue to enjoy watching and listening to the both of them during my mornings.
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Northern Cardinal (male)
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“Cardinals appear when Angels are near….”
❤️ 🐦 ❤️
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Great Blue Herons – Habitat Scenes
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My last post shared Great Egrets in habitat scenes. This post shares Great Blue Herons also in habitat scenes at the same location, Chesapeake Farms.
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Great Blue Heron
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Great Blue Heron
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Great Blue Heron
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Great Blue Heron
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Great Blue Heron
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I told the Great Egrets they had their own post, but this one just had to photo-bomb a Great Blue Heron’s profile shot I was working on. 😏
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Great Blue Heron photo-bombed by Great Egret fly-by
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Great Blue Heron photo-bombed by Great Egret fly-by
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Great Egrets – Habitat Scenes
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The last of our Great Egrets are departing the Chesapeake Bay region, heading south for warmer winter days.
I was fortunate to see quite a few in the past three weeks. For this post, I didn’t crop these much, to share their surrounding habitat scenery.
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Great Egret
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Great Egret
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Great Egret
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Great Egret
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Great Egret
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Always a bonus when reflections come into play! 🤗
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American Kestrel Close-ups
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How fortunate for me to see almost daily American Kestrels flying across or sitting on wires, watching over the local farm fields for their next meal.
As soon as you spot one in the distance, they’ve already seen you and quickly take flight. Then it becomes a “can I get a flight shot?” Usually no, they are such super fast falcons. So for me to get a photo of one either perched or in flight is pretty special.
And then it happened. I got lucky, truly lucky. I was on a rural country road, and ahead there sat a male Kestrel up on the wire to my left. He stayed put as I pulled right up alongside and took a dozen shots. He moved twice giving me two profiles.
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American Kestrel (male)
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American Kestrel (male)
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I quickly moved on before I had another vehicle pull up on me, all while the American Kestrel stayed perched. I couldn’t believe it didn’t take flight!
Here’s a crop both photos above to share some close-ups of this little falcon’s gorgeous coloring and cute little face.
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American Kestrel (male)
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American Kestrel (male)
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After having just fulfilled and posted another one of my “Five On The Wire” series, I couldn’t put these shots aside to wait for the next series. I felt this handsome fella deserved his own post right here and now! 😊
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Five On The Wire – #5
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My folder for my next series of five bird species perched on a wire has been storing shots of four birds for some time, just waiting for bird #5 to make it a post.
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Loggerhead Shrike
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European Starlings
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American Kestrel
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Red-shouldered Hawk
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And the fifth bird that was most obliging to complete this post…..
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House Sparrow
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Backyard Feathered Friends – 10/5/21
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The next day’s lunch and birding date. This could easily become a habit. 😏
It was a cloudy mid-day and all was quiet for the most part. A Blue Jay stopped for a visit, and for once sat nicely in the open instead of hiding like they do.
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Blue Jay
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A Northern Flicker was chasing a female and obliged with a pretty yellow wing-wave on the way by!
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“Sorry, no time to stop!”
Northern Flicker (male yellow-shafted)
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His sweetheart was landing in a tree across the creek. I love all that hidden yellow we are lucky to see in flight!
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Northern Flicker (female yellow-shafted)
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I spooked a Great Blue Heron into flight who spooked me too. I composed quickly for some shots!
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Great Blue Heron
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In the next shot, it looks like the heron had something to say. I’ll take it as, “Gotta go, see you another day!” (my try at a B&W process)
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Great Blue Heron
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And then the enormous GBH wing-wave!
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Great Blue Heron
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A final bird, one I don’t know for sure the exact species. (Anyone?)
I got these two shots, and there’s not much to show to help ID. So I’ll just let it shine as a pretty bird enjoying life way a-top a tree.
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(Species unknown)
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Bay Photos by Donna 