A bad day of birding is still better than a good day at work..

We went out with a good friend and excellent bird photographer, Steve Gosser, to Harrison Hills park in Natrona Heights on Labor Day. We were looking for migrating warblers, as there had recently been a lot of warbler action down there.. but it wasn't a great day for migrating.

It wasn't entirely a bad day, as there were plenty of butterflies to keep us entertained. I'm terrible with my butterflies, but luckily Steve has extensive knowledge of them. He was able to identify everything we spotted that day.

This is a Comma.. why is it called that?....

Because it has a Comma on its wings!

And we saw the butterfly of the day,

Red spotted purple butterfly (although it looks like orange spotted blue)

We saw a couple red eyed vireos, a magnolia warbler, a blackburnian warbler, two wood peewees, and several chickadees, tufted titmice, and cardinals.

This was only one of those that decided to stop and pose for us, out in the open, at eye level..

Most of the time, however, we were running into spider webs with spiders on them. They had built their webs across the paths in the park, and every 20 feet or so we'd run into one, whoever was in lead at the time (mostly Steve). I'm not sure about my spider species, but they had like a demon head looking abdomen that was triangular but had horns sticking out. We never got a good picture, as we were mostly trying to avoid them.

We also came across two interesting caterpillars:

  No idea what either of these are.. they were both fuzzy and I resisted the urge to just pet them with my finger, as they may have been poisonous. But they were both interesting sites of the bird-less day.