Wings of the world week in our corner of New England. Lately we've had lots of Monarch Butterflies in our yard and along the roadside as, I suspect, they fill up one last time before fluttering on south. On our walk this morning a Monarch paced us for a couple of minutes, flying just off my left shoulder and at about the same pace. A little earlier in the walk we also found ourselves being "tailed" by a hawk. I haven't been able to look it up in my bird book yet but it was a medium sized hawk with a tanish chest, maybe a Red Shouldered Hawk. It kept flying across the road in front of us and landing up ahead in a tree or on a wire. Once, when we stopped to look closer, we saw behind it and quite a ways up in the air a much larger hawk riding thermals. Perhaps this hawk is trying make our acquaintance in order to get an introduction to our extensive frog collection? My small backyard pond has attracted over a dozen frogs of various size. Last week Faith came across a snake dragging one of the frogs to it's lair, or at least a more secluded spot for frog consumption.

The other winged fun this week is a backyard full of large Dragonfly. Last evening, as the light started fading, we sat on the porch to eat dinner and watched them flit and zip about. This morning while I was in my sub-basement computer room I looked out the window (which is at ground level) to see a dragonfly hovering in front of the window seemingly staring at me.

info