Around my bird feeders right now are the usual suspects for this time of year except for this one immature wood duck that first showed up on Halloween day. I originally thought it was a female juvenile due the large white area around its eye but now the feathers coming in on the body are becoming indicative of a male.
He is not yet a strong flyer but hopefully gaining strength quickly each day by eating the high fat bird seed. Time is of the essence for him as freezing weather looks to be moving in this coming week so the open water season is going to be ending soon in Minnesota.
I also had one straggler monarch butterfly that appeared in my garden on the morning of October 20th. It stopped briefly on my hydrangea plant, I believe not to feed but warm its wings as it perched on the plant for a minute. If you are like me, it is easy to worry about these stragglers getting off to a late start - god knows they have enough obstacles to combat as a migrating species in our world today.
Needless to say, its visit certainly made for one of my best photos of this autumn. What these migrating stragglers will do is leave us with the surprise of seeing them when we thought we had said our goodbyes for the year!
