Flowers Of The Meadow

The animals have been elusive in my usual places the last few times I have been to them. I guess I deserve that for teasing my favorite geese. Since I was having no luck I decided to go out to the meadow and collect some good pictures of some of the best flowers I could find there.

I don't know what most of these flowers are, but I know the first one. It is called Butterfly Weed, and it is a kind of milkweed plant. Look at the fangs on those tiny flowers! Despite the fangs, the bugs seem to love this plant.

There was a yellow bird in that meadow that liked these flowers as much as I do, but it also liked teasing me and playing hide and seek. I never did get a good picture of that bird even though I chased it all the way across the meadow.

These yellow flowers seem to me as if they would be the main flowers in the meadow, but they are almost lost among some of the others. They seem almost common compared to the fiery beauty of the next one, but I still like this one very much.

These are scattered among the other flowers, and you have to really search to find them. I don't know if they are just another deeper color of another flower, but I love the way they resemble fire. I tried to find one with a little more yellow at the tips, but the meadow is big and I lost them while I was chasing that sneaky little bird.

These pink flowers are the ones that dominate the meadow. They seem to be everywhere! You could walk every few feet and find an excellent specimen. I picked this flower specifically because I liked the look of it from where I happened to be standing.

This one is called Goldenrod. Most of you in my part of the world already know this, but maybe some of you that live farther away are just learning it. And for somebody who is new to flower appreciation, like myself, matching the name with the flower is a new adventure. I have some closeups of this flower, but trust me, you don't want to see those blurry photos.

There are more flowers in this meadow, but I'll save them for another time. In the meantime, try out my Poll at the top of the sidebar. It's quick and anonymous. I really want my new polls to be a success, and there's only a few days left for this one. I'll have a new one up when it's finished. I'll try to make them more interesting each time.

That's it for now.

A Crowd Of Ducks

As I write this I just got home from a very long day of hiking and viewing nature. It's close to midnight, and I'm very tired. Still, I wanted to get this little story to you, so you can see the ducks that I saw. I hope the pictures do justice to what I'm about to describe.

There were more ducks than I had ever seen in one place, and they all came running as soon as they saw me. These ducks are used to being fed by humans, so they saw me as their new hero for the time being. I wish I had more for them than just my camera.

These ducks are still wild, but they are very used to humans. They were following me wherever I went, and if they fell behind or got distracted by something else, all I had to do was snap my fingers and they would run to catch up, just like a pack of puppies.

This picture shows what I saw when I first emerged from behind some trees, and the ducks saw me for the first time. I expected them to move away from me, but they came running towards me from all directions. You can see a couple of them at the top left swimming over to get closer.

I wasn't about to try teasing this huge crowd like I did the geese, which incidentally I haven't seen since that day. Can you imagine getting mobbed by hundreds of ducks? That probably would not have happened, but I didn't want to find out.

Even so, they stayed just out of reach from me. If I moved too quickly, they would run a few more feet away, but then waddle right back. There were plenty of quacking sounds for anybody who likes hearing the sound of these friendly birds. Next time I think I'll take some food with me. I hope it will be enough!

Here's one last picture of several of them running after me. I originally intended to end this post before this picture, but I wanted this one in here. I hope you like it.

I'm going to try to keep my hiking short tomorrow so I can catch up on things here on the web. Being gone all day for the last few days has left me far behind here, and I'm missing some of my favorite blogs right now. Besides, I am very tired and I really need a rest.