Birds and Nature

I continue following the Spotted Sandpiper parent and when possible it's chicks. Over the week-end the parent, who gives warning calls for the chicks to hide when it is concerned, allowed one of it's chicks to come out from the heavy vegetation to learn how to walk along the edge of the river and forage there. I stood very still about 35-40 feet from where the chick was located to get these pics with my long zoom lens. And the chicks have certainly grown taller since I last saw them just 4 days before. Nevertheless the parent bird stayed nearby clearly watching over it's offspring. The pic just above shows the sparse feathering where a tail is growing--they just look like fuzzy-butts. The bills on the chicks are also growing quite a lot both in length and width though clearly much smaller than the parent's bill. And finally yesterday both chicks were out from the thick vegetation and I got the bottom 3 pics of that chick (they are the same size and look j

Another critter I photographed at Florence River Park, this member of the skipper family of butterflies [ "Skippers have large eyes, short antennae (often with hooked clubs), stout bodies, and three pairs of walking legs "] was perched near their wetland area. Though the descriptions of this Silver-spotted Skipper state that the patch on it's hindwing is silver or silver-white from which it gets it's name, it looked whitish in the field just as it does in this pic. SeEtta