“Leftovers”

One more post from the local sunflower field, then I’m moving on to the second half of my July Colorado photo trip.

Today’s “leftovers” includes some non-bird flying creatures, an unusual large bird, and a pair of land mammals that visited the sunflower field during my multiple trips there. Oh, yes, and a short video of the American Goldfinch can be found at the end of this post. To start off, here is a photo of a Black Saddlebags Dragonfly that was active at the edge of the sunflower field. Unfortunately, he would not land on the flowers, but still a beautiful creature!

 

Black Saddlebags Dragonfly

 

One of my favorite characters of this post is the Hummingbird Moth (Hemaris thyshe), also known as the “Common Clearwing”. I’ve seen quite a few of these beauties this summer and I’m always filled with joy when I get to photograph them!

Hummingbird Moth

Hummingbird Moth

Hummingbird Moth

 

 

One bird I did not expect to see in the wildflower field was a Wild Turkey (Meleagris gallopavo). I had seen this single turkey over the past few months, always on the other side of the road. Never in a group, but always a loner. But I was even more surprised to see him among the sunflowers:

Wild Turkey

 

 

White-tailed Deer (Odocoileus virginianus) are very common in my area, so I was not surprised at all to see a pair of them one morning:

White-tailed Deer

White-tailed Deer

 

 

If you’ve followed my past few posts, all from the same sunflower field, you can readily see that there are a lot of cool critters that lurk around these areas. In the past, I’ve always driven past the fields … or, at best, stopped to make a couple of quick photos. But you can bet that from now on, I’ll be sure to stop and check out the area more thoroughly. It is quite amazing at the species that depend on the common sunflower!

Sunflower

 

 

As a bonus, I’m including a short video of a male American Goldfinch as it collects seeds from atop a sunflower, stopping to sing:

American Goldfinch Video

 

And if you’ve missed any of the prior postings from the sunflower field, you can click on these links:

Posted in Macro Photography, Mammals, Nature Photography, Wildflowers
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