Tuesday, September 24, 2013

Double Skimmer with a Side of Butterflies

As promised - here are a few photos of Black Skimmers from last weekend.  My one true fan has implored me not to post the gross ones so I'll skip those for this post. 

I LOVE to photograph Skimmers. I take photos of them every time I see them. I can't stop myself.  It has something to do with the specialized bill.

Black Skimmer
They use that bill to find food. Basically, they fly along the water with the bottom of the bill in the water and hope that it hits something to eat, then they snap it shut.  Here is the "money shot" with 2 birds skimming together. Check out the wake they leave behind.

Black Skimmers
They skim along and then the reward - a fish!  Here is one of the birds with his prize and some seaweed too. Zoom in to see the fish up close.

Skimmer with Fish

And then there were butterflies. Lots of butterflies. I don't know anything about butterfly ID, so we made up our own names for most of them. This one is NOT a Monarch. It looks like a Monarch but it is smaller. It's called a Viceroy but we call it Cigarette.

Viceroy Butterfly

Buckeye
Yellow
Pearl Jam
Black Swallowtail
More to come. I have alot of stories and photos to offload this week.  I'll warn you if I post the circle of life photo.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Great post. Great names for the butterflies. Great
"shout-out" as they say in radio. Thank you. HH

Diane Widdop said...

Great blog title. And as always, great skimmer photos. You love photographing skimmer, I love displaying your skimmer photos!

Anonymous said...

Skimmers are one of my favorite birds, too. That bill is so crazy and yet they are so graceful in flight. Love them. Great shots.

I think "pearl jam" s/b that butterfly's official new name.

MD