A Great Day

It was in many ways an ordinary day, but a great day as well. As I drove over a ridge to one of my favorite places to walk in forest and field a fledgling common raven flew up from the roadside to land at a convenient distance for a portrait, a photograph that became the picture of the day for August 15 –

Parked the car and headed through an old field on my way to a beaver pond. In the field a small butterfly flitted about; it turned out to be one of the large number of confusing butterflies called skippers. Later, the photograph enabled me to identify (I think) it as one called “the black dash” –

In the beaver pond a beautiful great egret stalked the shallows searching for a frog, a fish, or any other small creature worth eating. Great egrets don’t breed here, but a number wander north in late summer –

I watched the egret for a while as it caught a small fish and shortly afterwards a great blue heron swooped in to chase the egret from “its” pond –

Beyond the beaver pond is a patch of woodland that hasn’t been disturbed for at least threescore and ten years, and in that woodland I found a northern eudeilinia moth spending the daylight hours beneath a small leaf. It wasn’t well hidden since its wings protruded from each side of the leaf –

Nearby was a small cluster of orange pinwheel mushrooms standing about an inch tall –

Then it was past a large wetland where, in the past, an American bittern had resided for a while –

I headed back to the car through another old field where eastern tailed blue butterflies abounded –

So yeah, it was in many ways an ordinary day in forest and field and yet still a great day.