Wild Indigo Duskywing - Erynnis baptisiae - mated pair. I could be off on the ID as there are other similar skippers, but these in a dozen photos show no distinctive marks of any of the other less common types.

  Red-Tailed Hawk - Buteo jamaicensis - soars over the farm.

  Clouded Sulphur - Colias philodice - male - in flight. These are very similar to the more common Orange Sulphur except for the latter's orange hindwing spot and lighter orange wash over most of both wings seen from above. Female Orange Sulphurs are less strongly marked with orange which sometimes makes separating female Orange and Clouded sulphurs difficult. Females of both species also have a white summer form in which they are even more difficult to tell one from the other.

  Tobacco is still being grown in Lancaster County. This is a drying shed where clumps of harvested leaf are hung on poles in well-ventilated buildings to dry. The doors are kept open for air circulation and closed in inclement weather to facilitate drying. Sheds of his general type were a common site on the back roads of Prince George's County, Maryland, when I was growing up in the 1950s. I even remember a field trip in elementary school where we spent a day visiting a University of Maryland tobacco research facility, a tobacco farm and the local tobacco auction house. If you are old enough, and I am, you might remember an American Tobacco Company ad that included a bit of an auctioneer's chant ending with the phrase "Sold American."

  Nolde mansion - part of the Nolde Forest Environ- mental Education Center owned and operated by the Pennsylvania state parks which was, in the early 20th century, a forestry restoration project funded by hosiery magnate Jacob Nolde. The faux English manor house was for many years the family home of his son Hans Nolde. If you have ever shopped for bargains at the Reading Outlet Center at 9th and Moss in the city, you were in the former Nolde hosiery mill building. The whole outlet craze which started in Reading was a response to the declining fortunes of the textile industry which was once the backbone of this region's economy.

  Nolde mansion showing the tower at the rear of the house. The arch at the right leads to the walled garden.

  Walled garden at Nolde mansion offers proof that the state is not wasting a lot of taxpayer money on gardeners.

  Pink Flamingo - this bit of suburban kisch was found in the unkempt garden of the Nolde mansion. I saw a huge flock of the real thing in a documentary on Sundance Channel recently. It was one of those Chicken Little warnings about imminent global catastrophe, but the flock was huge and mostly very pink which indicates a healthy population of freshwater crustaceans - without that in their diet, flamingos revert to their normal white color.

  Black Swallowtail - Papilio polyxenes - male - there have been quite a few of these this year, but finding this one resting on the grass outside my door when I returned from a rather uneventful tour of one of the weedy patches on the farm was quite a pleasant surprise.

  WK&S Railroad - the steam locomotive is in the shop these days, so they are using a diesel switching engine on the weekend runs from Kempton to Wannamakers.

 

Wild Indigo Duskywing - Erynnis baptisiae - these skippers are quite abundant, especially this year. This is about the best shot I have had of one so far and one of the few on which you can confirm the identification by the small reddish-brown spot on each forewing - start at the leading edge and follow the line of four adjacent white spots and the single white spot and you will find the small reddish-brown one that distinguishes this species from some other duskywing skippers which might also be found at the same times and places. I spent one hour in the hay field outside my door and found more than a half dozen species of butterflies and skippers I could identify plus a couple of skippers and three sorts of day-flying moths that I have not sorted out yet.

  Painted Lady - Vanessa cardui - the first of the season that I have seen. The books say they fly here from late spring, but I never seem to see any of the Vavessas until late summer or early fall.

  Great Heron - Ardea alba - in flight at Tilden Industrial Park.

  Virginia Opossum - Didelphis virginiana - still feeding regularly from the cats' dish. This is a much better photo than previous ones taken under the same conditions because my new Sony A700 can shoot at much higher ISO.

  Green Heron - Butorides virescens - for once posed patiently on a rock near about ten yards from the road instead of the far end on the pond at Tilden Industrial Park.

  Pearl Crescents - Phyciodes tharos - female above and male below. These have been abundant this year and there were perhaps a dozen in this one stand of flowers. I lingered for a while hoping to find a mated pair, but the courtship was too slow to keep me standing in one place as hot as it (the sun, not the courtship) was.

  Pearl Crescent - Phyciodes tharos - top view.

 

River Otter - Lontra canadensis - swimming in the mill pond at Lenhartsville. I had never seen one in the wild before. They have been a protected species in Pennsylvania for decades, but their numbers and range have been increasing as otters have moved north from Maryland and south from New York into Pennsylvania. An adult male otter may stake claim to a territory encompassing more than a dozen miles of streams, so one ought not to expect to see very many of them.

  Great Egrets - Ardea alba - perch on the edge of the old millpond at Lenharts- ville late on a summer afternoon.

 

Common Buckeye - Junonia Coenia - are quite numerous at the moment, even in places I hadn't seen them before.

  Common Buckeye - Junonia coenia - a fine specimen which posed for me with wings outspread while nectaring on White Clover - Trifolium repens.

  Eastern Tiger Swallowtail - Papilio glaucus - in a rather pleasing composition although it is not a perfect specimen.

  Meadow Fritillary - Boloria bellona - a rather small fritillary, so much so that in flight it could be mistaken for a Pearl Crescent as just a blur of orange and black.

  Gray Hairstreak - Strymon melinus - perhaps the best image yet for this species. These are only slightly larger and better marked than the more numerous Eastern Tailed-Blues. Click on the image to see a larger version of the photo.

  A Cigar Store Indian about a century ago was the tip off that the store sold cigars. Stylish as his traditional costume may be, the connection to tuxedo rentals and men's suits, the stock in trade at Dietrich's in Hamburg, eludes me.