Time to quit procrastinating

I had several things in mind to do yesterday, but my procrastinating mind talked me out of doing them.    I took a day off and didn’t do much of anything other than laundry.  I didn’t even cook, and went out to dinner with Katie and Bruce.  What a slug I was!  I did thoroughly enjoy it, though. 

 

I’ll be leaving here in four days, so this morning I was determined to take care of several outside chores in preparation for my departure.  The biggest task was hauling the inflatable kayak up the hill to the rig, washing it down, deflating it, and storing it away.  I also packed away all my outside cooking paraphernalia which included my tripod for cooking over a fire.  The generator got exercised, and I rearranged the basement storage areas.  I was one busy bee.

As I was scrubbing and drying the kayak, the bird life around me was just bubbling!  The raucous great-crested flycatchers sure had a lot of competition for my attention.

Newly arrived orchard orioles seemed to be flitting around everywhere.

And then there were the tanagers.  There were bright flashes of red almost everywhere I looked.  The guy on the left is the summer tanager that is found in the south.  I was really tickled to document the male scarlet tanager, on the right.  Take note, AL and DONNA, these guys will soon be up in your neck of the woods!  Those black wings on the scarlet are the distinguishing feature between the two species.  They won’t come to your feeders, so look for them high up in the tree canopy in the hardwood forests.  Their song will remind you of a robin.

I’ll close for tonight with some of the other flowers and grasses that I found on Friday when I went looking for that white pitcher plant.  There is a very small grasshopper on the hatpin wildflower bloom.  It was amazing to me how long the antennae of this species was.  It’s hard to see in this photo, but the antennae were about twelve times longer than the size of the grasshopper.  How would you like two of those things sticking out of your head? 

 

I’m off very early tomorrow morning with Doug to travel to Bon Secour NWR in Alabama to do an educational program.  I’ve set my alarm for 5:30.  Ugh!  It should be an interesting day.

 

Thanks for stopping by…. talk to you later,  Judy