Wings and Wildflowers!

Had a great unofficial DeeMotivation weekend at the Wings and Wildflowers festival. David and I led field trips, and I gave my Profoundly Unscientific Birding Identification talk. The weekend was a blast. If you didn't GOYB this weekend, here's what you missed. Make sure you click to enlarge the pictures, there's some neato stuff here!

We did a walk at Hickory Point park early Saturday morning. This is one of the first critters we encountered, a Spotted Orbweaver.

I'm drawing a blank on what this guy's name is, but he disguises himself as a leaf, and it works so well that I initially walked right by him until someone on the tour pointed him out.

This was a frog.. I think leopard frog? Again, pointed out by someone on the tour. He was very well hidden in a dark part of the swamp.

 HFC David discussing woodpeckers.

This is something neither David nor I had seen before - it was holes drilled by a yellow bellied sapsucker, which is't unusual, they normally make this pattern on trees; what was unusual is that the sapsucker did this on a vine. Weird and cool.

On Sunday, we had a really cool tour of promise ranch. These are some bobwhite quail that they raise on the ranch.

More bobwhite quail.

This was a black racer resting on some moss, spotted by another of our eagle-eyed  participants.

This is a gult fritilary. There were a TON of butterflies out here, one of the best places for butterflies I've been to.

This is a hairy.. ugh, can't remember the whole name. It's an invasive exotic, but pretty nonetheless.

This is a native - the aptly named Beautyberry.

 Wildflowers....

and wings, hence the name of the festival. This is a white peacock butterfly.

This was a really awesome field trip that defined the festival; lots of wings, and lots of wildflowers. The butterfly shown here is a zebra longwing.

If you didn't GOYB, don't despair, there are more festivals coming up in the near future. On October 26-28, we will be leading trips at the Treasure Coast Birding Festival, then in January, I will be teaching classes and leading field trips for the Space Coast Birding and Wildlife Festival.

And, in the very near future, you have the opportunity to GOYB Saturday, October 6 for a walk out at Bok Tower. Remember, you can look at pictures of cool things on the internet, or you can GOYB and experience them in real life. The choice is yours, but is it more fun to tell your friends that you saw a cool web site, or is it more fun to tell them you smelled wildflowers, you heard birds, you had a butterfly land on your shoulder? Make the right choice and join us on a field trip soon!