The Latest from Me

I walked the “field” trail at the arboretum today in my first primarily butterflies and dragonflies attempt this year.  Had a Red-banded Hairstreak, several Eastern Tailed-Blues, a Gemmed Satyr, some kind of Cloudywing I think, and yesterday saw two Zebra Swallowtails at the same place.  Among the dragons were an Oklahoma Clubtail, what I think is an Ozark Clubtail, several Mantled Baskettails, and one Stream Cruiser.  Looking at last year’s pictures I appear to have thought these were Slender Baskettails but they look more like Mantled.

Stream Cruiser
Eastern Tailed-Blue
Eastern Tailed-Blue
Gemmed Satyr
Mantled Baskettail
Oklahoma Clubtail
Ozark Clubtail?
Red-banded Hairstreak

A friend reported that as many as 12 White-winged Scoters were there Friday afternoon. Saturday morning there were fewer but I saw three. The light was terrible but I managed to get this shot of a male and female. You can see the namesake white wing and commas near the eyes of the male as well as the scoter-like schnozzola.

I was birding the Lake Maumelle Spillway Sunday morning. Brown Creeper was my target bird. If you are of a certain age, you probably hear “Creeper! Creeper!” in your head and picture Scooby Doo every time you think of that bird. Older or younger that that certain perhaps not. Anyway, as soon as I got close enough to see over the spillway I saw this Long-tailed Duck bobbing up and down. Though rare in Arkansas, I saw one at Lake Dardanelle yesterday and as many as three have been at Lake Beaverfork for about a month. By the way, I had to walk the spillway trail all the way to the end but I did see two Brown Creepers.