It's a double digit day! 😁 Dark eyed Juncos come to visit our area in the winter. It is one of the few things I enjoy about winter. 😏 They are quite fun to watch as the look around for food. They usually can be seen on the ground looking for it but I captured this one in the River Birch looking a bit puffed out from the cold.
Happy Monday and happy new week! Starting off the week with a flower that is already putting up it's leaves for the year. This is a Surprise Lily after a rain. The leaves have been coming up for over 2 weeks already. They started the week after the below zero weather as we were in the 60s then. It's been yoyoing between normal and cold but nothing crazy like we had. The leaves die off during the summer and then in late July through August the flowers appear and it is quite the lovely surprise to see them.
It's Steamy Sunday here on the Blog! Today's image is one I took of the Porter locomotive as it sat by the Roundhouse right before our safety meeting. The Porter is a tank engine and carries it's water supply in a tank over the boiler. This can help provide traction but can also cause issue as water does not want to inject into a boiler when it is too warm. Since the water is sitting over a hot boiler the water supply needs to be kept fairly full to keep the water cool enough to inject efficiently.
Since we have warmed up a lot I don't mind sharing some photos from when it was cold out. 😀 It was crazy how we went from such bitter cold and snow to more than spring like temps. During the snows the birds were really enjoying the bird feeders and gave me lots of opportunities to capture some images of them. The Blue Jays were even around and gave me a few opportunities at some fun captures like this one. Not sure what it was looking at but I enjoyed the pose.
It's Friday, TGIF! Today's image is a little Sulphur Skipper that was on my Butterfly Bush or Buddleja this past summer. There were lots of these guys around but not many larger butterflies. I thought the bokeh in this image was rather interesting so chose this for today because Friday's Are Bokehlicious!
On a recent bike ride, the weather really warmed up after our -12, we went to the 60s the next week, very weird. Anyway, on the bike ride I saw a large group of deer in a field and crossing the road. I got a few photos of some of them before they crossed to another field and this is one of them.
It's Wildflower Wednesday here on the Blog! Today's image is of one that is a bit hard to capture as it's blooms don't seem to last long. This is a Prairie Wild Rose. They usually bloom May through July. the plant is very resistant to drought due to it's roots that can go as deep as 20 feet. It's hips are a good source of vitamin C and can be eaten raw.
