The yellow birch is the birch most common on my land. Betula alleghaniensis is its scientific name, and it is in the left hand photo below, followed by white, or paper, birch (B. papyrifera) and river birch (B. nigra).
They are all distinctly different – I do wish I’d gotten a photo of the yellow birch glowing in the sunlight, instead of choosing the most interesting texture of bark; I should have been able to do both!
Driving north along Route 5 in Vermont, I saw a large lump along the side of the road. Of course I slowed down – and then came to a stop, and rolled down the window, and pulled out the camera, and was able to get one shot as it moved off the road and up the hill. There were two large flocks before I saw this guy, but there was always someone on the road behind me, and with no good place to pull over. It’s getting to be breeding season here, and the turkeys seem to be doing well.
Driving south toward Bellows Falls, I saw something out on the ice near the Connecticut River. And I wasn’t the only one – several cars stopped to watch this eagle enjoy it’s fishy lunch, and one of the ice fisher people had a camera trained in it.
Of course, as soon as I posted the geese last night, they decided I could take their photo today! I didn’t get out of the car this time, shooting through the car window, which meant I couldn’t get the half dozen geese that were walking on the ice. Here’s a representative sample –
I wanted the photo I could have labeled “Cold Footed Geese” but they hopped off the ice when I stopped the car.
Walking an Atlantic Florida beach at dawn; I believe these are Willets.
Where the Yeocomico River meets the Potomac in Virginia, the trees are cluttered with eagles. There aren’t always this many, but nearly every time I’m there and outdoors, I see at least one. Kayaking I can paddle past a few trees with nests. This photo was taken early enough in the morning they hadn’t headed out yet; when I came back past an hour or so later, there were only a couple still hanging out. Note how disinterested they are as I paddle past!
Paddling past on the Withlacoochie River, Florida – it opened one sleepy eye, but didn’t move.
https://woollywednesday.com/author/knittingjane/ posted recently “Mostly About Owls” – so I meant to pull up my favorite owl photo yesterday, but got distracted by the hawk, which I posted instead. So here’s the owl – sitting on the electric line to my sister’s house in northern Vermont.
I’ve also knit a couple of owls:
This hawk was hanging out at Governors Creek, in Florida. Again, it was taken from the kayak on a beautiful day. I’m not great at hawk identification – and my bird book is in the car at the bottom of a snowy driveway, so I’m not going to go see if I can look it up! If anyone seeing this is good at bird ID, feel free to use the comments section.
This challenge is one I imposed on myself, having had so much fun with the travel photo challenge. I expect to post ten of my favorite wildlife photos, my only rule being that it’s not something I’ve posted in the past year. Feel free to make your own rules! Start your own topic!
