Lots of Doves in the yard here in Pennsylvania. They nest in the evergreens and feast on the birdseen I serve up on the lawn - sometimes a half dozen or more together.

 

In honor of Memorial Day, here is a view of the flags in front of the Blue Mountain Council of the Boy Scouts of America at Cross Keys just south of Leesport, Pennsylvania.

 
Here we are more than halfway through spring and I haven't put up a photo of that proverbial harbinger of the season, the American Robin. Well, here's one I found in a neighbor's yard last week.

 

Bright sunshine and temperature near 90 combine to make this a good day for making hay. This field was cut yesterday but the moisture was a bit too high so in this photo taken earlier today the windrows are stirred with a tedder to facilitate drying. With luck it should be ready to bail tomorrow.

 

This is a different Silver-spotted Skipper (Epargyreus clarus) from the one pictured below, I found them perched just a few feet apart on a shady bank at the end of our road. Compare to the one below and note that the silver-white spot for which they are named is not visible on the upper side of the hindwing which we see here.

 

This and the one above are my first Silver-spotted Skippers of the season. They are quite common around here and you will see lots of them once you get used to them. The difficulty is that many of the skipers have dull coloration and chunky, hairy bodies and the novice may mistake them for moths. Moths tend to have long, tapered antennae, often with hair, while skippers have crooked antennae like hockey sticks, and the antennae of true butterflies are usually cylindrical with a small knob on the end.

Like many skippers I have seen, and unlike most true butterflies, they tend to perch with the forewings extended and the hindwings folded over their bodies. This can confuse an inexperienced observer because you will see the upper part of the forewing and the under part of the hind wing and this is not the way they are pictured in the field guides. This one shows the eponymous silver-white marking on the under side of the hindwing. Compare it to the one above.

 

Apparently our dwindling supply of cats get too much store-bought food. Rabbits and birds are liable to be seen on the lawn even in broad daylight.

 
This is the first Spicebush Swallowtail (papilio troilus) of the season. There are also Eastern Tiger Swallowtails flying now, but no photos yet.

 

Best photo so far this season of our most common butterfly - Cabbage White (pieris rapae). No good photo yet of the slightly less abundant Orange Sulphur.

 

The pair of Cardinals in the backyard in Pennsylvania.

 
An old corn crib in the backyard here in Pennsylvania with the moon above taken at about 6:30 AM yesterday. I wanted to capture the softness of the early morning light on the mountain, but those didn't turn out as well as I had hoped.

 

Here is a female cardinal feeding outside my door in Pennsylvania. I'll post a photo of her mate when I get one clear enough. There are also plenty of doves, blackbirds and so on attracted by the free food I put out for them. Things are progressing slowly on the butterfly front. The cabbage whites have been out for about three weeks and are now plentiful, the orange sulphurs first appeared last week but are still rare, and I have had only brief glimpses of two others which were too fleeting to identify.

 

This is not the latest NASA release from the Hubble telescope. It is just the moon, stars, and lights from a airplane passing overhead with a lot of editing applied using Adobe Photo Deluxe Home Edition.

 

This was taken at the Berks Products quarry near Leesport, Pennsylvania. In the background on the left is the Calpine Ontelaunee Energy Center, a natural gas-fired electric generating station. Beyond that is Mount Penn which forms the eastern boundary of the City of Reading.

 

The Route 61 bridge over the Schuylkill River at Hamburg, Pennsylvania - this time in daylight. Modern highway bridges are easier and cheaper to build, but they certainly don't look as nice as the graceful arches of this one.