At Home and at Work

.
Our yards have seen an uptick in bird activity over the past week, with our Northern Cardinals being more in evidence than they have been for weeks.




Personally I think this is because they were reluctant to appear in public while their feathers were embarrassingly scruffy during molting.

Our Red-bellied Woodpeckers have been more frequent visitors, too.




This has made life more difficult for our loyal Downy Woodpeckers, which always have to give way at the suet feeder to the (much larger) Red-bellieds.


We haven't seen the arrival of any winter residents yet, although a Blue-gray Gnatcatcher popped in for a very brief visit the other day.

At Work

The situation on the CyFair campus is very different, with several winter residents and migrating birds having turned up over the past week. The first to arrive were Lincoln's Sparrows and a Ruby-crowned Kinglet. Then I spotted a group of three Common Yellowthroats.




Since Tuesday an American Kestrel has been hunting from a treetop near the boundary gully and yesterday a Blue-gray Gnatcatcher was busy foraging through the trees at the entrance to the nature trail.

Dragonflies and butterflies are everywhere, too, with the most common butterflies being Monarchs and Gulf Fritillaries.

Monarch

Now that fall is here, I really can't wait to do a walk around the campus when I get to work every day!
.