Gentle Sightings

I've been driving around alot recently, supervising my crew while they count people for the US government.  I've seen nature at some of its finest, but my favorite shots this week have been at home, just catching every-day life of the birds and flowers around our yard.  This sparrow overcame any concern about me taking its picture to grub out some tasty, wriggling morsels under the spruce tree. The striped pattern of its feathers blended in well with shadows as the sun filtered through needles and branches before landing in the dark shade of the tree.

The bird kept flying off into the woods with the food then returning to the same tree.  I don't know what it found, but it must have been a delicacy and I suspect that there was a nest nearby.

While I gathered  pale yellow summer squash from our vegetable garden, a nearby pheobe gathered bugs.  Most of this morning's breakfast came from just above the grass but was spotted by the phoebe's keen eyesight from the corner of our firewood shed. The usually dull brown phoebe glowed like a mirror reflecting the morning sun.

Flowers, too shown through the week as seen by this clean white cosmo.

It is back to work in the morning gathering data on the human species.