Birds

Early morning often provides great looks at birds just finished with all-night flights. As the sun starts to rise, some birds that find themselves out over ocean waters or above the Great Lakes will suddenly head for the nearest land. Hundreds of birds can come pouring inland at these times, among them thrushes, warblers, vireos, and tanagers.

During daylight hours, the skies can be filled with everything from White Pelicans to Bobolinks. Expect lots of shorebirds, cormorants, terns, and gulls at the seaside and hawks, swifts, flickers, jays, swallows, and robins overhead almost everywhere.

Butterflies

Most people have heard about Monarchs and their fall migrations to the mountains of southern Mexico, but lots of other butterflies travel in autumn. Some even head north!

Watch in the same places that bird migrants concentrate for American Ladies, Question Marks, Red Admirals, and the more abundant Monarchs – all moving southward. By contrast, Cloudless Sulphurs may be headed north in fall, as their southern populations expand, and Painted Ladies and Common Buckeyes can be watched for flying north or south.

There is only one way to get started, and that is just DO IT! Last spring I watched a mother bird teach her young to fly less than 3 days after their birth – I saw a few ruffled feathers too. The amazing thing was that those baby birds had no clue what they were doing, but by the end of the day they were flying!  Oh how obvious their determination was to me.

You and I don’t have to be any different – they spread their wings and after falling and bumping into things a few times, off they went.

I don’t know why, but I am the queen of procrastination at times. This little blog may become just the beginning of bigger things to come in the near future, and the point is……………..I just jumped right in and did it.  Finally, after how long?  After writing and storing the little tips and articles.  I started feeling like I was rich with material that no one was going to read.  Glad I finally got to it – hope you will be to.