Goodness and Beauty

We are called upon to counter unimaginable cruelty and sheer evil with the Goodness and Beauty which abounds on our amazing planet. This little female Downy Woodpecker makes trip after trip to our feeders daily. She and her mate have been investigating the Downy Woodpecker House we put up a couple of months ago. Hopefully they will spend some time in the house this winter and then raise a family next spring. Interesting fact...male Downys are larger and have the longer and more powerful bill of the pair allowing him to chisel deep into the bark of a tree while the smaller female uses her bill to chip away the bark looking for tasty morsels. Therefor the pair feeds efficiently by not competing with each other. Cool right?!

Today's 'extra' is a shot of 3 Tree Nymph Butterflies I took this morning during a visit to the Butterfly Rainforest at the Florida Natural History Museum at UF.