I visited Huntley Meadows today with my brother-in-law, Paul, and my nephew, Matt.  We had a good time getting some photographs of a variety of wildlife including these barn swallows. This group above was a chorus providing their rendition of World Cup vuvuzela. Butterflies, dragonflies, frogs and turtles were also in abundance.

The first creature we saw this morning was a…muskrat?….nutria?….I honestly can’t tell which it is but it didn’t mind us as it chomped on some floating plant stalks.

One of the amusing sights today was a group of Red-winged Blackbirds harassing a Great Blue Heron.  They did not like having this GBH in the area and conducted a steady dive-bombing effort.  Finally, one of the female Red-winged Blackbirds perched near the Great Blue Heron and they seemed to be sizing each other up.

My goal today was to photograph the new fawns which have been born over the last few weeks at Shenandoah National Park. However, I didn’t see any.  Instead I saw a few things that were unexpected, like the guy above strapped to a large fan, gliding over the park.  But most unexpected was my first ever sighting of a Bobcat in the wild. Did I get a photograph?…well, uh, no.  I managed to grab my camera, get the Bobcat in the viewfinder as it moved through the woods and press the shutter release only to discover that my camera was set to an aperture of f/22 and the exposure in the shade of the woods took 3 secs.  By the time the shutter had closed, the Bobcat was probably at home watching TV.  Rats…but it was still very cool to see one of these.

I spent a lot of time in the Big Meadows area looking for the fawns and ending up photographing other items of interest, butterflies, flowers and the grass above underneath a web covered in dew  drops.  Even though I didn’t find any fawns, there were plenty of deer in the meadow and plenty of people to spook them.

This Barn Swallow was conducting a little self-cleaning and wing stretching this morning before taking off to do some insect hunting.  I was at Huntley Meadows once again and the park was buzzing with Dragonflies of various varieties.  Below are photos of three different types often found here.

On the way out of the park, I came across a young, female Hooded Merganser, standing on a rock.  It appeared she was resting before practicing some more flying.

A hot day led to a powerful thunderstorm rolling through the area this evening and as the clouds started to break up, I thought there might be a nice sunset to photograph.  I headed to Huntley Meadows and indeed the sky was spectacular (and the temperature was also pleasantly cooler).  The scene above shows off the Lizard’s Tail plants which are abundant now. A visit to this park in the evening allows the opportunity to see deer (below), muskrat and beaver, which you don’t normally see in the daytime.

Of course, the usual birdlife is still on hand in the evening and there was a large group of birders searching the wetlands tonight.  They weren’t disappointed with the show. I spotted the Great Blue Heron below, appearing in the wetlands just as the sun set.