A Strange Looking Eagle

By Jim | Published August 9, 2017




I am currently charging up batteries, gathering photo equipment, and planning for capturing the annual Perseids meteors. Thus, I likely won’t have time to be on social media over the next few days, possibly up to a week. I am, however, going back through some of my older posts and preparing them for scheduled, automatic […]

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Common Visitors

By Jim | Published July 31, 2017




Today’s post features one of the most common butterflies that visit my rural Missouri butterfly garden, the Fritillary butterfly. Most of the time, when it’s sunny and warm outside, I can walk outside and see at least a couple of Fritillary butterflies busy soaking up the sun and seeking nectar from the plants in my […]

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Fun Friday: NIMBY

By Jim | Published July 28, 2017




NIMBY … an acronym for “Not In My Back Yard”, a phrase often used to show the displeasure of something, typically environmentally, about to occur near a residential area. In this case, it relates to finding some Tomato Horn Worms beginning to devour my tomato plants! I planted 8 tomato plants this year, the first […]

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It’s a Zoo Out There, Part 2

By Jim | Published July 26, 2017




In the previous post, I highlighted one of the wonderful “zoo butterflies” visiting the purple coneflowers in my rural Missouri butterfly garden over the past week (if you missed that post, you can find it at this link: “It’s a Zoo Out There, Part 1”). Today’s post features another “zoo creature”, the beautiful Zebra Swallowtail […]

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It’s a Zoo Out There, Part 1

By Jim | Published July 24, 2017




I was hoping to have some new images of dragonflies to post today, but I’ve not seen any around my rural Missouri butterfly garden over the past few days. I don’t know if the extremely hot temperatures are causing them to lay low, or I’ve just not been in the garden at the right time. […]

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A Cat in the Garden

By Jim | Published July 19, 2017




Today I’m featuring another notable find from my recent butterfly garden tour at a wonderful butterfly garden near Paola, Kansas. A couple of butterfly caterpillars (“cats”) were busy feeding on one of the garden plants as I walked the path through the garden. These caterpillars will soon become beautiful Black Swallowtail (Papilio polyxenes) butterflies: In […]

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A Cautious Widow Skimmer

By Jim | Published July 17, 2017




While touring a wonderful butterfly garden near Paola, Kansas last week, I found a somewhat wary Widow Skimmer (Libellula luctuosa) dragonfly, “hiding” behind a stem on the plant he was perched in: Moving slowly, I was able to move to my right to get an image from a slightly different angle: A short time later, […]

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Eastern Kingbird

By Jim | Published July 12, 2017




Today’s post comes from the Loess Bluffs NWR (formerly called Squaw Creek NWR) in northwest Missouri, as I passed through the area on my way home from the Columbia River Gorge of Oregon. The Eastern Kingbird is a common bird in Missouri. This bird is often seen perched on a tree/shrub limb near an open […]

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Little Bird on the Prairie

By Jim | Published July 5, 2017




While recently photographing at the Neil Smith NWR (near Des Moines, Iowa), I photographed one of the many male Dickcissels I saw/heard on a meadow on the refuge. Dickcissels are very common prairie birds and can be seen and heard singing just about anytime I visit a prairie. Here are a couple of my favorite […]

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Fun Friday: Beautiful in Black

By Jim | Published June 30, 2017




While in Des Moines last weekend for the annual art show, I made some time to drive to the nearby Neil Smith NWR to photograph wildflowers and wildlife. One of the highlights was finding and photographing Ebony Jewell-winged Damselflies. I had found a ton of these beauties when in town last year; this year there […]

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