Birds And Butterflies

Richard and I love birds! We try to identify all of them that we are able to see. (It's hard in bright sunlight and they fly away, of course!)  This is a bird called a killdeer and we have observed a pair of them on the very top of Arabia Mountain.  They look very much like a bird at the seashore, with their long legs and the way that they fly.  Their cries sound like "KILL-DEER". My  Daddy calls them "Kill-dees", but of course, it is the same bird.  They lay their eggs on open ground, amongst pebbles just out in the open.  If you go too near to the eggs, one will pretend that it has an injured wing to distract you from their eggs... Audrey from www.audreygoeslocal.blogspot.com saw one of these recently.  Audrey, here is the photo of the kildeer that we saw on Arabia Mountain!

 We have an extremly valuable item to put water in for our birds.  It is a plastic saucer for a flower pot!
Let you tell you though, this is like a treasure for our birds.  You cannot believe how popular this is, especially in our hot Georgia summers.  This is a tufted titmouse and we just call it a "tufty". 

 This is a male cardinal and will look even brighter than this once our winter is past.   The cardinal is one of the last birds in the evening to come down to our patio for food or water.

 We saw this butterfly at the trail at Arabia Mountain today.  We don't know what it is yet, but we will find out!  The pattern on the wings reminds me of a guitar.  Notice that the diamorpha in the background is beginning to have white buds, will be flowering very soon now.

 Richard got a better close up of this bird but then, it was out of focus!  It is a brown headed nuthatch and it had really been tap, tap, tapping on this tree!  I put this on here so you can see the blue sky!

 Another butterfly from Arabia Mountain above and a carolina wren that was also on our patio.  Sorry that isn't a very good photo of it, but it is such a quick little bird, with that little tail that flicks up and down, and it is such a nice shade of brown too.  It will make a nest in some odd places, such as a mailbox, a wreath on your door, or a bag of nails hanging up in a shed.  They are dear little birds and many people are thrilled if they choose to nest near your homes.  They have a beautiful song.

This is a mockingbird which was from our walk at Alexander Lake at Panola Mountain. Besides mocking other birds, they also have lovely white bars on their wings which you can see when they fly or when they are resting like this. They will often spread their wings out very widely and then back again...they think birds do this perhaps to get rid of insects. I think they might do so just because it feels good to stretch in that nice sunshine.

 An American robin.  Please notice that it is very different from the robins in England.  It is from the thrush family and is much more like an English blackbird.  (I love robins, both English and American.)   This is a female robin. On the male, the dark feathers will be darker and the orangey bit just a bit more brighter.

Oh look, Richard has given me the camera! We walked this trail today.  At Arabia Mountain, it is the one mile rock trail that goes down to the lake which we have not photographed before.  I will show you photos of that but it will have to wait until the next post.  Our time changed this weekend, it's such a shame to lose an hour when every minute is so important! Never mind, we'll get it back in the autumn.  Hope everyone enjoys birds and butterflies as much as we do!