Mid October

It's October, and there are only a few things still blooming - yellow and purple daisies, those scrawny little daisy fleabanes, and the white joe-pye weed (or queen of the meadow). Birds of course are still around, though the summer visitors have left and the winter ones (juncos, mostly) haven't arrived yet. And there are a few butterflies left this late in October - some whites and sulphurs, and skippers, and the occasional brushfoot still. Here are a few shots from the park over the past week...

First, here's a gorgeous one of those brushfoot butterflies - a red-spotted purple, the southern color morph of the white admiral. This particular one has some extra spots on its upper wing, but there's really nothing else it could be.


Notice how he seems to have only four legs? Brushfoots all have four main, walking-with legs and the other two are tiny, almost vestigal, held up by their heads and (bizarrely) used for tasting things!



And here's a fiery skipper, displaying the skippers' typical "jet-plane" position - upper wings vertical and lower ones spread.



Another skipper, this one a sachem:



This one's a Peck's skipper



Here's a cabbage white, with a little skipper in the back



And a clouded yellow - the last one of the summer/fall, I think...



And on to birds. First, a tiny female goldfinch hiding among leaves.



A mockingbird



A crow catches some sunlight out of the clouds



A hairy woodpecker, early on a gray day - a blurry shot, sorry!


A female red-bellied woodpecker

A cardinal