Steve Ceragno reports that while yesterday was mostly a wash, he did head out to DeKorte around 3 p.m., got some some cool Osprey shots and later on was treated to a brilliant sunset. Some nice work from our newest contributor.

We’ll start the week with this submission from Rich Brown, who took this great shot yesterday of a Swamp Sparrow at River Barge Park. Thanks Rich!

Thanks to the nearly 200 people who came out for last night’s David Sibley talk. The event was phenomenal! Sibley, one of the country’s most preeminent field guide authors, gave a talk on the Psychology of Bird Identification. The engaging discussion explored how our minds can trick us to think we see one bird when it’s actually another species, or sometimes it’s not a bird at all.

Mr. Sibley then took questions from the audience and signed copies of field books. Check out photos of some very happy attendees.

Yellow-rumped Warbler

Dennis Cheeseman sent these photos he took yesterday on a lunchtime stroll at Mill Creek Marsh. Today looks to be another great day to get out into nature. Hope everyone can take advantage of it!

Savannah Sparrow

Osprey

Northern Shoveler

Common Yellowthroat

This past Tuesday I was sitting quietly in our butterfly garden. It was a rough week; serious environmental issues seemed to snowball. I was feeling down and exhausted and there was not much gas left in my tank to say the least.  I wondered where to begin and what to do next with the many issues that were piling up, but as I turned and looked over my shoulder a shadow seemed to come out of nowhere. It was a Bald Eagle!

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Here are some final photos of the end of the amazing journey from caterpillar to chrysalis to Monarch Butterfly. We really love the the shots of the Monarch just as it emerges from the Chrysalis, with fluids pumped into the wings from the stored liquid in the bulbous torso until the butterfly is fully formed.

We hope you enjoyed yesterday’s series showing the amazing journey of the Monarch Butterfly, from caterpillar to chrysalis to its majestic emergence. Mickey Raine and his wife, Elaine, took in more than two dozen caterpillars by request from local gardens, saving them from predatory conditions and overseeing the transformation at their home. Mickey’s thoughts on the experience follow, and then we’ll have some final photos later today.

From Mickey: Amazingly, even after years of field study and photography, while also reading about some of these things in books or seeing specials on television, it barely compares when you can actually see the incredible changes occurring right in front of your eyes, and it was as if we were learning something new.

Never did we expect to be educated to this level, for we never thought about these particular moments of transformation, but rather the final resulting forms after the various stage changes. Man is often too blinded in this idea that we are so much more advanced than our cohabitants, but human science can never duplicate what we saw.

In keeping with yesterday’s Monarch Butterfly theme, here’s a collage that Regina Geoghan sent in from her visit to DeKorte on Monday. Thanks Regina!

Here come the Monarchs! Thanks again to Mickey and Elaine Raine for their great work and fascinating insight through their photos of the Monarch Butterfly’s journey from caterpillar to chrysalis to full-fledged butterfly. Mickey and Elaine saved the caterpillars by request from predatory conditions at several locations and allowed them to undergo the maturation process in their own safehouses before returning them to the wild.

We hope you enjoyed today’s series of posts illuminating this amazing journey.