Crops & Clips-- flashback to December 2018

We will celebrate this December, our final month living in Florida by looking three years back, through the 441 photos I processed in December, 2018. I hope to find images which depict favorite memes: critters of all kinds, especially birds, flowers, butterflies, beautiful skies, reflections...  and scenes which speak for themselves.

Great Egret before sunrise on December 3:

The same bird in full sunlight:

One of my first images of the month was of this Gray-headed Swamphen, demonstrating its use of prehensile toes to pluck and eat the tender shoots of Spikerush:

Little Blue Heron:

Yellow-crowned Night-Heron:

A male Palm Warbler in early morning light:

Yellow-throated Warbler:

Common Grackle:

Northern Mockingbird on Brazilian Pepper:

Blue-headed Vireo:

Female Ruby-throated Hummingbird:

Flowers and fruit of Firebush (Hamelia patens), favored by hummingbirds, butterflies and warblers:

Prairie Warbler:

Male Northern Cardinal:

Female Bald Eagle (Jewel) flying with Tree Swallows:

Immature Red-shouldered Hawk:

Composite view of a female Bobcat sprinting:

Gulf Fritillary:

Tiny flower:

Light fog before Sunrise:

Sun rising over Sunset Lakes:

Our entrance gate all decorated for Christmas:

Rosyfinch Ramblings will be dormant for a while as we are relocating from Florida to Connecticut. Although we both are natives of New Jersey and learned to live with four seasons, this is probably the worst time of year to migrate north. For eighteen years we have not "molted" out of t-shirts, shorts and sandals. As I write this, snow is falling and the wind is howling at our upcoming destination. Hope to be back and enjoying entirely new flora and fauna despite cold noses and toes-es.

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Linking to:

Garden Affair

Nature Thursday

Skywatch Friday

Weekend Reflections

Saturday's Critters

BirdD'Pot

Camera Critters

All Seasons

Wordless Wednesday (on Tuesday)

Natasha Musing

Our World Tuesday

Wild Bird Wednesday

My Corner of the World

Timeless Thursday

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Please visit the links to all these posts to see some excellent photos on display
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Fall migration

Autumn officially arrived and I visited the boardwalk at nearby Chapel Trail Nature Preserve. A Great Egret happened to pose almost directly  under the day-old Harvest Moon:

I was surprised at how quickly the Moon drifted down:

Shooting between tree branches, I had to contort to place the Moon behind the egret:

The egret was not impressed and went about preening:

Actually, I had photographed the Moon a few minutes earlier, moved a short distance along the boardwalk and was lucky to look up and see the egret in a treetop: 

View from the dock near the beginning of the boardwalk. The wet prairie is now flooded and the spike-rush is flourishing. 

Although the morning radar showed heavy migration, birding was very slow. This is the Doppler velocity image at 5:00 AM on September 24. Green echoes are approaching Miami and red are heading away towards The Bahamas and Cuba. Our home is at the small red "+" which seems to be in the heart of the action.

Instead of finding warblers dripping off the trees I logged only a single species. a Prairie Warbler:

A Blue-gray Gnatcatcher was my consolation prize. A distracting dozen or more frolicked in the trees:

A grumpy Anhinga was sunning at the far end of the boardwalk. She protested my intrusion so I backed off after snapping a few images. Her red eyes glistened like jewels:

Non-avian objects of interest included a pair of mating Halloween Pennant dragonflies:

...and a Green Anole:

I had better luck in the Wounded Wetlands near our home. A Female Golden-winged Warbler showed up on September 20, my first ever record of this species in the local patch:

More Blue-gray Gnatcatchers livened up the scene:

A Prairie Warbler hover-gleaned for insects:

Another Prairie Warbler was missing his tail feathers. They should be finished molting and generally only replace tail feathers in pairs. Therefore this may have resulted from a close call with a predator such as a pursuing hawk. As bird banders can attest, some birds will "blow" all their tail feathers when severely threatened or to avoid being captured.

Other warblers included a female Black-throated Blue Warbler, here peering out from Ligustrum blossoms and berries...

..and a drab female or possibly first year male Common Yellowthroat:

Acrobatic Black-and-White Warblers seemed to defy gravity while seeking insects hidden in the bark of a Live Oak:

A Northern Parula warbler was mostly out of sight:

An inquisitive Red-eyed Vireo paid a brief visit:

Oh those eyes! A Brown Thrasher peered out between the leaves:

A migrating male Baltimore Oriole added welcome color to the scene:

Out on the lake, only 5 minutes after sunrise, the Harvest Moon hovered over a swirling cloud (A nice example of the low-light performance of my iPhone 11 Pro Max):

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Linking to:

Garden Affair

Nature Thursday

Skywatch Friday

Weekend Reflections

Saturday's Critters

BirdD'Pot

Camera Critters

All Seasons

Wordless Wednesday (on Tuesday)

Natasha Musing

Our World Tuesday

Wild Bird Wednesday

My Corner of the World

Timeless Thursday

________________________________________________

Please visit the links to all these posts to see some excellent photos on display
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