Eastern Tiger Swallowtail - Papilio glaucus - on a strikingly blue flower which I thought quite attractive against a green background.

 

Eastern Tiger Swallowtails - Papilio glaucus - male (right) and female with a Bumblebee of unknown type on Joe Pye Weed - Eutopia purpureum.

 
Red-Spotted Purple - Limenitis arthemis astyanax - seen here in an unusually fortuitous manner. I try to keep a camera handy at all times. Even when I go to the store or out to lunch, the camera goes along. On this day coming back from Hamburg and stopped waiting for a car to turn left into the Hamburg Center, I saw a butterfly flitting across Old 22; so, I grabbed my camera and got this shot through the windshield. It almost looks like a decal on the trunk lid of that car.

 

Silver-spotted Skipper - Epargyreus clarus - (left) and Great Spangled Fritillary - Speyeria cybele - (right) on the same Joe Pye Weed - Eupatorium purpureum. These two species are the only ones common to this area having such bright silvery markings on the undersides of their wings.

 
Great Spangled Fritillary - Speyeria cybele - is the third fritillary common here. The other two sre shown below.

 
Another gem from the archives - this is a Variegated Fritillary. Some other photos of this one made the cut in October when I was trying to make some points about the differences and similarities among the three species of fritillaries common to this area. This is a good view of the face, but that is rarely a useful angle for telling one sort of butterfly from a similar species.

 

Something warm for winter - I recently ran a search of this blog for Eastern Tiger Swallowtail and then looked at my folder of photos of that species and found there were several rather good ones that had not appeared here when they were taken. So, as a winter diversion when new photos of butterflies are not available (unless I lose my senses entirely and head for Florida, the Lower Rio Grande Valley or someplace farther south), I will try every day or so to review a couple of species and post a few that perhaps should not have been overlooked before. Here you see a Meadow Fritillary from over a year ago. Looking at this again I thought the light coming through the wings and the spider web added some interest to a photo that is not particularly useful for noting the finer points of species identification.

 
The Appalachian Trail runs very near - about three miles, or so. Click on the image and scroll over to the right, then look beyond the utility pole in the distance and you will notice the gap through which the Furnace Creek flows. At that point, the Appalachian Trail turns north for a short distance while the Valley Rim Trail climbs the ridge on the right in an easterly direction to Pulpit Rock and the Pinnacle where the Pinnacle Trail follows the more distant ridge you can see back to the west to rejoin the the Appalachian Trail. The Furnace Creek which begins in that valley between the Valley Rim and Pinnacle Trails is the source of the name of Furnace Stream Farms which is the name under which my friends here in Pennsylvania operate their dairy farm and excavating business.

 
Furball's fangs have separated the life from the body of at least one mouse that I know of, but those pictures didn't turn out very well. This work of mouse killing is the only reason I tolerate all these ungrateful critters, although Furball is better than most and will often consent to be petted as the cost of getting to the supper dish.

 
Gray tiger kitten - very cute but not very cooperative about posing. This shot was not an intentional soft focus effect, just the result of shooting through the glass and screen of the storm door. Opening the door would only produce a fuzzy shot of the kitten's tail beating a hasty retreat,

 
Extra birdseed ssemed like a good idea last week when the yard was covered by snow crusted over with ice. I'm not certain of the identity of this visitor, but Dark-eyed Junco is my best guess. Whatever it is, a small number of them are year-round residents here.

 
Icicles were a major feature of our latest winter storm - number six, I think, and it isn't even officially winter for another week.

 

Icy snow on trees silhouetted against the mountain. This past weekend's storm gave little accumulation of snow. Most of the precipitation was sleet and freezing rain that formed a very hard layer of ice on everything.

 
A cloud of mist rises from the snow-covered mountain.

 
13 December - more precipi- tation, this time including freezing rain.

 

Sunset on 12 December - one of our better afternoons lately.

 

8 December - between snowfalls - looking west in mid afternoon. The streaks in the foreground are the last remnants of the most recent snow. I liked this because they seem to be pointing toward the distant silo. Actually, they are just the places where the snow had been packed down into ice by my tires.

 
Soybean harvest is a dusty business, but combines these days have enclosed cabs to keep the operator out of the worst of it.

 
Kitten is hungry but timid. This one - one of the cuter members of this year's crop - is peering intensely at some relatives gathered round the food bowl but won't come to the table while I am watching with the door open.

 
St. John's Lutheran Church, Hamburg - this is the more interesting side of the building architecturally, but there are few good choices for photographing it. It would help to wait for the rest of the leaves to fall, but I hope to be back in South Carolina by then.

 
WK&S Railroad crews were busy on Sunday, November 25. The regular twice daily runs on weekends ends in October, but special charters continue through November. On this afternoon they were removing the caboose and leaving three coaches for the Santa Claus run the following week that marks the end of the 2007 season. Note that the body of this former Reading RR caboose is wood. Although the era of wood construction of rolling stock ended before WW1, the increased freight traffic during WW2 led the Reading to order five new cabooses. Metals of all kind were rationed during the war and the authorities would allocate only enough for the frame and running gear, so these 1942 models were among the last railroad cars constructed with wood.

 
WK&S shop building - the track into the second bay was completed about a year ago so that two locomotives can be worked on at the same time.

 
Corn field after harvest on a neighboring farm - for some reason, scenes of row crops have always been very pleasing to me. Something about the geometry of it, I suppose.

 
365 reasons not to be a farmer - the work never ends. So, I live on a farm, but I don't farm. Here, on the Saturday after Thanksgiving, you see the stubble left behind from harvesting the corn being mowed down so the field will be ready for planting again in spring.

 
Turkey Day 2007 - I didn't see a turkey on Thanksgiving Day (unlesss you count the small bits of one on my dinner plate) but I did photograph a Turkey Vulture circling over the hay field that morning.