Remember this outfit from last fall? That woman slayed in her Alice T-shirt.
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| From empiricalquestion.blogspot.com--the best |
The top/cardigan combo was so perfect, I figured, What the hell, let's do that again! I admit that I was really fond of the light pink scarf but I decided to change it up a little bit this time with a leopard print cami and a necklace. That works too.
Grey/pink striped open cardigan (thrifted, Kohls), $1.00/wear
Grey Alice in Wonderland T (Out of Print), $2.88/wear
Bootcut jeans (thrifted, Target), $0.20/wear
Dark grey ball necklace (Macy's), $2.14/wear
Grey leopard camisole (Kohls)
Bright pink flats (Payless), $0.87/wear
Outfit total: $7.09/wear
In other news...This morning Robert and I drove to a national wildlife refuge that is right down the street from both America's second largest mall and our major airport, about a 15 minute drive from our apartment. We hadn't been there in some time, and it was an absolutely wonderful day for hiking and birdwatching. Cool when we arrived and warming up to about 60 F. It got windy toward the end of our approx. 3.5 hour visit but was otherwise calm and lovely. In addition to the birding, we also got in a 4+ mile walk. (I hit 10,000 steps on my Fitbit before 1:30 p.m.!)
We saw 40 total bird species, including four warbler species--Common Yellowthroat, American Redstart, Yellow Warbler, and Palm Warbler--as well as several Baltimore Orioles, which are always a treat. We added several birds to our state list. One of these amuses me greatly because as we were walking along some ponds that were swarming with Chimney Swifts and various swallows, I joked that we should see a Sand Martin, a bird we saw in Germany. The Sand Martin is called the Bank Swallow in the US (and we've seen it before in TX) but I thought that we were north of its US range. Joke was on me because I saw one! At first I thought it was just another Northern Rough-winged Swallow, albeit one with a cognitive-dissonance-producing dark band under its throat, but Robert showed me the drawing in the field guide and Bam, there it is. As it turns out, we are in the breeding range of the Bank Swallow up here.
It's hard to pick out a favorite sighting of the day, but I think I'm going to go with the bird that we couldn't identify until we were sitting at my computer, looking at the photograph I took. It was a non-descript dark-backed flycatcher but had a patch of something white on it--in the field, it looked like another bird had taken a dump on it. But in the closer view I got with my camera, we could see that it wasn't a white patch ON the feathers--it was a white patch OF feathers. Looking at the Crossley field guide, Robert said, Olive-sided flycatcher? I looked at the book and said, Hey, it even says here "Occasionally shows white tufts near tertials!" Robert was like, I don't think that's what they're talking about. But when I looked at the Sibley field guide with this in mind, it showed a drawing of an olive-sided flycatcher with a huge white patch just like our bird had. Just like this:
Not a bad photo, eh? It helps when the bird positions itself on a clear branch on a sunny day. Isn't that a strange patch of white feathers? We have seen olive-sided flycatcher before--two different occasions at Wild Basin in Austin--but not with this big white patch. So that was a cool little bird mystery solved.
More bird, mammal, butterfly, and flower photos from our trip to come. Stay tuned!
4 comments:
"... warming up to about 60 F." Something I probably never say!
I love that top/cardigan combo too. Glad you allow yourself to wear it again!
And it was fun reading about your birding, too.
Debbie, hah, yes, and I have not had "cooling down to 80 F overnight" in my vocabulary for a while :)
That is a fantastic photo of the bird. Certainly makes identifying birds you are not sure of the ID much easier.
Thanks! I thought the clear blue sky made a nice backdrop. Having a camera with mega zoom, that allows a closer view of the bird than binoculars, is already proving its worth.
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