Legume flowers burst forth after a timely rain, making late summer forest floor look like spring.
Tonight’s sunset was quite a contrast to last week’s WordPress Photo Challenge, which had “monochromatic” as its theme.
Green on green is our entry for the monochromatic edition of the Weekly Photo Challenge.
Butterflies and dragonflies in flight can be mesmerizing. However, their erratic flight styles can drive you crazy when trying to capture them in pixels, whether panning with a real viewfinder or even worse, trying to pan using a digital viewfinder and its fraction-of-a-second lag (and no drive or burst function).
Well, a little spray and pray with the shutter yielded my favorite shot of the morning as this red-spotted purple moved through the canopy of the valley forest.
Every so often, the lawn near the fine arts building on the University of Arkansas at Little Rock campus turns into a showcase for student projects.
Here’s hoping no ill winds will blow any time soon.
Fuzzy bumble bee with pollen-powdered face clings to a nodding red sunflower.
The plentiful spring and summer rains were good for wild fruit here on our Ouachita ridge top. While the clusters on vines nearer the house were reduced to raisins by a stretch of 100-degree days, the ones in the woods survived just fine. The birds, raccoons and coyotes will eat well. At least one of the persimmons will wind up being plucked and its seed split for our annual winter forecast.
When the competition at the feeder was too rough, some hummingbirds opted to find nectar in the wildflowers below. The competition there was pretty good too — what with all those butterflies, bees and other pollinators. Here, a hummingbird goes for what must be the juiciest flower in the garden, since the butterfly was already there.
A red-spotted purple emerges from its chrysalis July 22, a week after the photo on the left was taken. What a treat to catch this event just before having to start the morning commute.
Coleman Creek is an urban creek, encompassed in parts by the campus of the University of Arkansas at Little Rock and the neighboring Cooperative Extension Service headquarters. There’s a fairly broad bit of woodlands on either side of the creek at the extension service side. The green areas support small populations of foxes, coyotes, raccoons, red-tailed hawks, kingfishers, various rodentia, stray dogs, bobcats, and at times, camps set up by the homeless.
The creek itself supports fish, turtles, freshwater mussels and crawdads. It is a welcome oasis and a tremendous natural resource right in the middle of town.
The (Urban-Wildlife) Interface 