... Three Hundred...

Today is my 300th consecutive blip. Wow. What a great journey this has been - and continues to be!

Today was a good day - the blip-monster presented me with many great things to see, but I knew as soon as I saw this little killdeer doing its wounded-bird display that this would be the one. A long-time friend of ours who we see all too seldom, owns an organic farm a few miles from us. He is also a passionate conservationist with a very worthwhile blog The Clothesline Report. He recently blogged about the killdeer who were nesting in his fields, so I phoned him to ask if I could come by with my camera. Hubs and I had a wonderful stroll through the fields with John. We watched the killdeer pair go through all of their best moves to try to lead us away from their nest, which was laid right in the middle of the asparagus fields. Like some other ground nesting birds, the killdeer do a very convincing display of being wounded, complete with distress cries, in an effort to lead predators away from their nest. Once they've led the predator far enough away, they instantly "heal" and fly off. It was a bit of magic, in the late afternoon light, with the blackbirds and swallows singing in the background.

I posted some other shots of killdeer, as well as barn swallows, tree swallows, and a handsome rooster all taken at The Good Hand Farm on Flickr so you can have a look if you'd like. They have a huge bard so there are a lot of swallows nesting in and around it - lots of swooping and diving. I also posted a shot I was able to get this morning at Kittatinny of an Eastern Phoebe. They are hard to photograph because they move around so quickly, hunting bugs.