Lillian's First Birding Trip

With Lillian's early arrival [1] Leann and I haven't been out birding, lately. But since the fall migration is almost over, we thought we should get out before the number of species bottoms out. So we put Lilli in her car seat, gave her a copy of The Sibley Guide to Birds of Western North America [2] and some binoculars, and set off. (For some reason her hair looked reddish in this photograph and turned out even more so when I manipulated it in the GIMP.[3] In reality her hair is light brown or blondish.) We went out to the Provo Airport Dike since it's close but it still offers a variety of water and shore birds. That way if Lillian started getting fussy, it wouldn't take us very long to get back home. Things were pretty quiet when we reached the dike—most of the birds had already flown to warmer climes. As we got out to the edge of Provo Bay we started to see and hear some fowl.

Along the way I took some photographs of the shoreline. To the north you can see Mount Timpanogos reflected in the water of a canal that runs alongside the dike and the control tower of the Provo Airport.

To the east you can see the Wasatch Mountains, including 'Y' Mountain.

To the south you can see Mount Nebo and the windmills at the mouth of Spanish Fork Canyon.

Lillian slept for part of the trip, but then she woke up hungry. So, while Leann fed her, I wandered around the dike trying to photograph a couple of Monarch butterflies (top; Danaus plexippus). I also took a photo of a hoverfly (middle; family Syrphidae [4]), which resembles a bee (bottom; series Anthophila [5]). All three are on a plant called rabbit brush (often incorrectly identified as a sage brush by the lay public).

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Notes:

[1] Read more at Unexpected Delivery.

[2] See http://www.sibleyguides.com/about/the-sibley-field-guide-to-birds-of-western-north-america/.

[3] If you're unfamiliar with the GIMP, I suggest you read my post Raster Graphics and Vector Graphics.

[4] Learn more at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syrphidae and http://bugguide.net/node/view/196/bgpage.

[5] Learn more at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bee and http://bugguide.net/node/view/8267/bgpage.